Gary Kendall

Gary Kendall founded CDO2 in 2004 as a provider of innovative pricing and risk technology for organizations trading structured credit products. The company was established on the belief all financial organizations should have access to the latest pricing models and enterprise technology, irrespective of their size or trading volume.

CDOSheet allows users to harness the power of grid computing to price and risk manage CDO and CDO squared tranches using simple spreadsheet functions. More information on CDO2 and CDOSheet can be found at www.cdo2.com.

Prior to setting up CDO2, Gary spent ten years working with financial technology for Goldman Sachs and financial software vendor Tamesis. He holds BSc and PhD degrees in Physics from the University of London.

Synopsis

The financial services industry was one of the earliest adopters and is one of the largest users of grid computing, to price and risk manage complex financial instruments. However the widespread adoption of grid computing is still restricted to the very top tier of investment banks because of the massive investment in infrastructure and software that has traditionally been required.

CDO2 was set up two years ago with the specific aim of helping smaller organizations price complex financial investments, called Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), using grid computing techniques. Its product, CDOSheet, was the first Software as a Service (SaaS) product offered on Sun Microsystems' Sun Grid Compute Utility. This enables smaller banks to access CDOSheet as a Web Service over the internet from a spreadsheet, allowing them access to unprecedented computer resources, putting them on an even playing field with their larger counterparts.

Gary Kendall, founder of CDO2, will present the business and technical drivers for his choice of technology and delivery platforms to bring cutting edge grid computing within the reach of the early majority of banks and hedge funds. This will include an overview of JINI, JavaSpaces and the Sun Grid Compute Utility.