Ira G. Kawaller

Dr. Ira Kawaller is an economist and expert in financial derivatives and risk management. After working as a housing economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Board and as a general business conditions economist at AT&T Co., he began working in finance on Wall Street in 1980. Since that time, his professional activities have involved derivative instruments in some fashion. He has held Adjunct Professorships at Columbia University and Polytechnic University, teaching MBA-level courses on derivatives and risk management practices. A prolific author, Dr. Kawaller has written articles that have appeared in Derivatives Quarterly, Derivatives: Tax/Regulation/Finance, the Financial Analysts Journal, The Journal of Derivatives, The Journal of Finance, the Journal of the International Association of Financial Engineers and Risk Magazine.

In addition to his litigation work as an expert witness, Dr. Kawaller is the President of Kawaller & Co., LLC, a financial consulting company that assists businesses in their use of derivative instruments for risk management purposes. His clients include a diversified set of financial and non-financial companies having exposures relating to interest rates, currencies and commodity prices. Services cover strategic and tactical guidance as well as assistance in all aspects pertaining to derivatives accounting. Dr. Kawaller previously managed the Kawaller Fund, LP. He has also held positions at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the independent commodity trading firm J. Aron & Co. (now a division of Goldman Sachs), and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He was also a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Derivatives Implementation Group and a member of the Governmental Accounting Board’s Task Force on Derivatives and Hedging. He has been a trustee of both the Futures Industry Institute and the Securities Industry Institute; and he was a member of the board of directors of the International Association of Financial Engineers. He currently sits on the board of Hatteras Financial Corp, a publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trust.

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