Scott Peng, PhD, Founder and CEO/CIO, Advocate Capital Management

Armed with a PhD in plasma physics, Scott Peng was doing next generation research on rockets for NASA before joining First Boston. He soon became engaged in the derivatives market, spending time as well at Lehman Brothers creating structured notes. We first consider some of the notable debacles in this product set, like Procter and Gamble and Orange county, outcomes that Scott sees as the result of shortfalls that end users had in understanding the risks they were ultimately taking on. Seeking to close this gap, Scott wrote “The Structured Note Market”, a deep dive into the financial engineering that underpinned the creation of these products.