About MahiFX
The e-FX Engine Room

His technology career spans 17 years taking in a diverse range of industries ranging from vehicle telematics to call centre administration systems, however the last 11 years have been focused on the unique challenges of electronic trading. James was part of the team behind Lehman Brothers' award-winning FXLive platform. Post the infamous collapse he moved to the trading floor to join the team developing the hedging/pricing/analytics technology behind Barclays Capital’s BARX platform (one of the top-three FX single-dealer platforms). When he’s not working to improve the MahiFX products (which is rare) he can sometimes be found DJing in one of the many clubs/bars around London.

Fortunately, he’s managed to offset the visual effects of these with his love of playing rugby, and we are now able to smugly boast about having a former member of the England Under 21 team in our midst.

Following a BSC at Bristol University and the completion of a particularly riveting dissertation on the behaviour of fruit flies (yep, you read that correctly), Tom began his career at PwC, before moving on to Bloomberg where he worked in sales for three years. He then advanced to working in e-FX sales for Barclays Capital, and has just arrived at MahiFX after an eight-year reign at Goldman Sachs, where he held the position of Global Head of e-FX before he found his way over to us (we solemnly swear we didn’t use a pint of cider and a meat pie to lure him in).

However, try as we might, we’ve yet to get him to dish the real dirt on an embarrassing story for this little biography. Obviously, at MahiFX we do not give up on such trivial matters. We’ve already successfully lured him over from his usual healthy lunch to having a much heartier meal consisting of a burger and fries, so rest assured that we’re just biding our time until we can feed him enough alcohol to convince him to spill some stories.

What we can tell you, is that Guy is another very well travelled member of the team, having spent a year country hopping. This included spending some time with nomads in Mongolia, whom he had to prove his worth to by excelling in three manly disciplines: horse riding, archery, and wrestling - volunteered to do these by his wife, of course (clever lady). Nowadays, he’s swapped his Ace Ventura tribe antics for proving his worth to his two young’uns, in the disciplines of nappy changing, toy building, and nursery rhyme singing.

In the meantime though, Nick focuses his attention on Foreign Exchange, which has not only given him a long and successful career, but also a chance reunion with an old fellow pupil from school, Nicola, who later became his wife – well played!

Nick’s first step onto the FX ladder took him to the Bank of America where he was an FX Trader. Since then, he’s worked for numerous big names including UBS, Advanced Currency Markets, and most recently, CFH Clearing. With over 25 years of FX experience, we’re quite convinced that our Head of Retail Sales knows his onions. Word on the grapevine is that he also cuts some mean shapes on the dance floor, something we're all quietly hoping we'll see first hand at the Christmas party. 

Since then, Alex has added ABN AMRO Bank, CMC Markets, and GKFX to the list of companies lucky enough to have him, under roles such as Head of Algorithmic Trading. Most recently, Alex has been working for Oanda as a trader, focusing on such tasks as model building to back test flow for optimum risk management. Needless to say, with all this experience, we’re pretty smug that he’s jumped ship and come over to Team Mahi.

When he’s not working, you might find Alex lovingly tending to his collection of cigars, some of which date back to the 1970s and are all housed in his very own humidor. If he’s not there, he’ll probably be annihilating some poor soul at a game of Scrabble. This is a game that Alex does not approach blithely, after having appeared on a Scrabble-based game show which saw him achieve the highest first round score of the whole series. We won’t go into the words he used but let’s just say he made the letter ‘X’ look very popular, and no, we’re not sure how to pronounce the words it featured in.

Constantly adding to an endless list of skills, Alizee enjoys a range of extreme sports to fuel her competitive nature, and we hear she’s pretty nifty on a pair of skis. She’s always ready for a challenge and can’t bear the thought of losing, which makes her the perfect new member of Team Mahi. Oh, and she comes complete with a lovely French accent too!

*read: intimidated.

His soft Welsh accent has been dulled by his time at Cambridge University where he read Computer Science just as they introduced studying Java at the university. He claims to appreciate a good glass of wine (perhaps not his 6th) and is an enthusiastic guitarist. Despite being relatively quiet at work, we can always count on Andrew to crack out the first (and last) moves on the dance floor at any staff party; a sight we’ll never tire of seeing.

He has over 12 years of software development experience since graduating from Canterbury University with an honours degree in Computer Science. He has worked in a wide range of industries, most recently in financial services and online advertising. He returned home to Christchurch in 2010 having lived and worked in Australia for eight years.

Deciding that he’d grown out of playing sardines Sam initially gave up cramming himself on to public transport in London by furiously cycling the 20 km to and from work. Then, deciding this was not a sustainable solution, he packed up and moved to greener pastures in our New Zealand office, where he now happily enjoys a peaceful and short journey to work. Not content with making sure his software delivers Sam enjoys testing the theory that there is no such thing as a bad single malt and will happily convince you that ice and whisky do not mix.

When he’s not sat tapping away at his desk, Zoltan enjoys cycling, watching a good Sci-Fi movie, or heading out into London’s nightlife, where you can be certain that he’ll be the last one standing with a fresh tray of shots. With a diverse and seemingly endless list of talents, from a slightly unnatural ability to annihilate anybody who dares challenge him to a game of chess, to a newfound ability to demolish and landscape his entire garden from scratch, we’re pretty confident that Zoltan is more than capable of solving any problem we chuck his way.

Tony has had an extensive career both in New Zealand and abroad, namely in London at JPMorgan and SBC Warburg in operations and latterly at Hermes in quality assurance. Upon his return to New Zealand Tony worked at Sungard and Northern Arch in a quality assurance and software design capacity before joining the MahiFX team and helping to build and launch the retail trading platform.

Nicole has a double degree in law and accounting, is a qualified barrister and solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand and a Chartered Accountant. Nicole began her career in the corporate tax team at Ernst & Young in New Zealand before moving to London for five years and working for JPMorgan Chase and AXA Corporate Solutions in their tax, compliance and finance teams. Upon her return to New Zealand, Nicole spent a little more time with Ernst & Young again, before moving to Infiniti Capital Markets, embarking on motherhood, and finally joining the MahiFX team in Christchurch.

On meeting the client for the first time, she immediately took a tumble in the snow taking him down with her – suppose that’s one way of, quite literally, breaking the ice. Bonnie also moonlights as a professional shopper, blessed with an incredible ability to navigate most malls blindfolded (if such a situation were ever to arise). She is uber organized, and loves nothing more than a bit of good old-fashioned order; demonstrated by her colour-coordinated wardrobe, and that warning look when our desks begin to look a little messy. With two young’uns, Bonnie currently spends a lot of her time ensuring she’s not covered in things she shouldn’t be, whilst singing Old MacDonald in a faux American accent.

He can usually be found uttering his favourite phrase, “computer says no.” as he repeatedly prevents us from misbehaving, and keeps us on the straight and narrow as best he can. With his dapper sense of style, Paul saunters into the office every morning safe in the knowledge that in one fell swoop, he has reduced everyone else’s choice of attire to the same level as your Saturday morning hangover pyjamas. This competitiveness is something Paul never leaves at home whatever the occasion, so rest assured that we couldn’t find anyone as good at what he does than Paul – he is literally better than everyone.

On the contrary, Kate was offered a full-time position with the marketing team. Leaving her little hometown of Knutsford (up in t’North), off she headed to the Big Smoke, to discover MahiFX, bootcamp and burgers.

Kate is the team’s literary genius. With a flair for catchy tag lines and perfect grammar, the marketing team is both intimidated and lost without her. Despite this being her first job since graduating, she knows it is the best place to work in the world and we know we are lucky to have her. Sorry about that Lord Sugar.

Nicola is a pretty diverse girl, and is certainly no one-trick pony. Her uni days saw her take up a keen interest in flying as a member of the University Air Squadron… that is, until she realised she hated flying. Nowadays, Nicola tends to keep her feet on the ground - usually behind the decks at a fancy London club or bar. This budding little entrepreneur started off moonlighting as a party planner but was repeatedly disappointed by the number of DJs who failed to impress. Nipping the problem in the bud, she combined her love for parties and music with her dislike of other DJs and became one half of a DJ-ing duo. Adding to our growing list of resident Mahi DJs, Nicola ensures that our clients are left wanting for nothing.

However, despite the bank’s lousy retail exchange rates, the trade was profitable (hurrah!), such was the magnitude of GBP’s crash - a certain Mr Soros reportedly made $1 billion on his trade. Inspired by this experience, Justin began working for a number of media organisations, covering markets including The Wall Street Journal and Thomson Reuters. Also on this impressive list is consultancy work for a boutique investment bank in the City of London, and the UN-mandated Common Fund for Commodities. On the rare occasions when he is not thinking about markets and the economy, Justin enjoys sampling English ales, watching Spaghetti Westerns and eating curry - preferably all at the same time.