For Kevin Iwanaga, accepting the position of CEO of Global Financial Data Inc. was quite a simple decision.
“This is a real gem of a company — a true diamond in the rough,” says Iwanaga, who was was named today by the Board of Directors as CEO and a member of the Board of Directors. “We have a vast amount of unique and proprietary content no other data provider offers. Yet, we are relatively unknown on a global scale. Partially, due to the fact we are based in Southern California where we are far removed from any financial center. The opportunity and potential for growth is phenomenal and the market timing couldn’t be better.
With all the global economic uncertainty, investment strategists look at past economic cycles and trends to help predict future movement’s in the capital markets. GFD’s data goes back hundreds of years capturing global recessions, bull markets, bear markets, interest rate movements and many other key economic indicators. This data is ingested into sophisticated algorithms and models leveraging the latest advances in AI, ML and NLP to gain new insights in patterns, correlations and relationships.
“I am honored and privileged to lead GFD into the next chapters of its story. Our unique datasets will become the market standard for long historical financial and economic data,” says Iwanaga, who was previously GFD’s Executive Managing Director.
During this time of growth acceleration and transformation for GFD, “there is no better person to lead Global Financial Data to the next level than Kevin,” says Dr. Bryan Taylor, GFD’s co-founder, Chief Economist and Member of the Board of Directors. “He is a proven leader and visionary with extensive international experience and deep knowledge of the financial and economic data landscape. His strong data and technical skills combined with acute business vision are precisely what GFD needs as we embark on the next phase in the evolution of our product innovation and growth. His vision on how Hedge Funds, Asset Managers, Buy-side Institutions and academics at top universities will use GFD data with artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing techniques to drive investment modelling and systematic trading strategies is perfectly timed.”
Prior to joining GFD in 2018, Iwanaga held a range of senior management roles with some of the most well-respected Investment Banks and Market Data Providers in the global financial markets including Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, UBS, Bloomberg and New York Stock Exchange/ICE. He has lived in Tokyo, Zurich, London, Hong Kong and New York City. Throughout his career, Iwanaga has been at the forefront of electronic trading technology, market data technology, market data content and most recently the Historical Alternative Data Space.
Global Financial Data started in 1992. Its comprehensive financial databases span global markets offering data never before compiled into an electronic format. It creates and generate its own proprietary data series while investigating new sources and extend existing series whenever possible. GFD supports full data transparency to enable users to verify financial data points, tracing them back to the original source documents. GFD is also an original supplier of complete historical data.
GFD’s customers are amongst the most well-respected financial intuitions, economic organizations, central banks, government agencies and universities around the world including the US Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, The World Bank, IMF, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Bridgewater, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Vanguard, AQR Capital Management, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, London School of Economics, Wharton.
