Ira G. Kawaller
Education
Ph.D., economics, Purdue University
Summary of Experience
Dr. Kawaller provides litigation support and consulting in connection with disputes involving derivative contracts or embedded derivative features. Prior to founding Derivatives Litigation Services, he served as president of Kawaller & Co., LLC, a financial consulting company that assisted commercial enterprises in their use of derivative instruments for managing financial risk. He also served as the managing director of the Kawaller Fund, LP, a derivatives-only hedge fund. In earlier posts, he served as the vice president and director of the New York office of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange; and before that, he held positions at J. Aron & Company, AT&T, and the Federal Reserve Board. A prolific author, Dr. Kawaller has published in leading journals, including The Journal of Derivatives, The Journal of Finance, and the Financial Analysts Journal. He has served as a trustee of both the Futures Industry Institute and the Securities Industry Institute and was on the board of directors of the International Association of Financial Engineers (renamed The International Association for Quantitative Finance). He was a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s derivatives implementation group and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board’s derivative instrument task force on derivatives and hedging. Dr. Kawaller also served on the board of Hatteras Financial Corp., a real estate investment trust, which has since merged with Annaly Capital Management, Inc.