FRA Staff

ROBERT W. HARLESS, CFA is a founding member and a recently returned partner of Financial Risk Advisors LLC (FRA). During Robert’s 29 year career he has held positions with BMO Capital Markets, M&I Bank, Huntington National Bank, Bank One, Lotsoff Capital Management, Transamerica Insurance Co. and First Interstate Bank. He held management positions with each of these organizations, overseeing the trading, sales and operations for the activities that he directed. Robert has been involved in the financial markets for almost 30 years. His career has focused on managing financial investments and risks pertaining to interest rates, equities, loans, foreign exchange, and commodities. Robert has tremendous experience in working with regulators and developing start-up businesses. Prior to this position he was the department head for M&I Capital Markets. Robert holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, a MS degree in Managerial Economics and BA degree in Economics from Brigham Young University.

Stephen Pelletier co-founded Financial Risk Advisors LLC (FRA) and oversees its operating and marketing strategy.  He is the founder and CEO of FatTail, a premier provider of contract and inventory management, workflow, and reporting software for online publishers. During his 19-year career, Mr. Pelletier has held positions as a proprietary trader, risk manager, and asset manager at Chase Manhattan Bank, HSBC, and TSA Capital. In each of these roles and when serving as a developer, and SVP of Theoretics, a Derivatives Risk Management Software firm, Steve developed and oversaw development of sophisticated quantitative models supporting investment and risk management decisions. Mr. Pelletier began his professional career at the Executive Office of the President of the United States (Reagan administration) where he was a Junior Economist.  He holds an MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.

RANDY CLYDE is an inactive partner and founding member of Financial Risk Advisors LLC (FRA).  During his 25-year banking career, Mr. Clyde has held positions with ING Bank, CIBC, Chase Manhattan Bank, and First Interstate Bank. For much of this time he has worked in a trading capacity with risk-taking responsibilities. In addition, he has had broad experience structuring new financial products (CDO's, Synthetic GICs) and complex tax transactions; he has also worked as a loan officer. From 2003 to 2009, Mr. Clyde held the position of Credit Portfolio Manager (Managing Director) for ING Bank, with responsibility for the Americas and Asia credit portfolios. In this role he had the responsibility to evolve active credit portfolio management as a working management philosophy and practice--with a focus to optimize economic capital and risk weighted asset usage. He has been an active participant in the International Association of Credit Portfolio Managers (IACPM) during this time. Randy Clyde holds an MBA from Brigham Young University.

Rob Dinerman is FRA's Director of Customer Risk and Financial Systems.  He has a 23 year career in the financial services industry during which time he worked for Salomon Brothers at the inception of the mortgage backed securities market, creating innovative systems to track profit/loss and risk assessments of pooled securities. Since that beginning he has continued his focus on applying technology solutions to assist capital market practitioners.  He is a former employee of Oracle where he focused on simulated trade analytics for dealer clients.  And later at Sun Microsystems, where he specialized in trading systems optimization, including trade reporting and compliance testing to meet SEC requirements. Mr. Dinerman assists clients to find and then implement best practice technologies for reducing risk and increasing return, according to pre-agreed budget targets.  This focus includes both financial as well as business/operations activities.  Mr. Dinerman is a graduate of The Wharton School of Business.

Josh Du is an advisor and affiliate to FRA.  He is currently based in Hong Kong, where he has worked since 2005 for: Sprint Capital Partners, Deutsche Bank, and Merrill Lynch.  In these positions, he focused his efforts on the execution of principal based investment and complex structured product transactions within China.  These engagements spanned multiple industry sectors and Asian countries.  Prior to locating in Asia from the US, Mr. Du worked as an analyst for ING Bank in New York City for the Credit Portfolio Management team, with a mandate to oversee ING’s loan portfolio, and specific focus on economic capital calculation and allocation support.  He is a native Chinese and English speaker.  Mr. Du holds a BS in Finance from Tulane University.

Ted Kunz is a senior consultant with FRA.  During his 13-year career he has worked domestically in the US and internationally in The Netherlands and Hong Kong.  He recently worked in investment banking for Morgan Joseph in New York.  Previously, Mr. Kunz held positions as a general partner in Claremont Partners, a private hedge fund-of-funds, and he served under the Treasurer at Boise Cascade Corporation.  His early career included experience as a derivatives and mortgage products specialist for Sanwa Financial Products and Smith Breeden.  Mr. Kunz holds a BS in Finance and Economics from New York University.  He also earned the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation as well as FINRA Series 7 and State Law 63 licenses.

Robert Nydegger is an advisor to FRA.  He has worked the past 15 years in the financial services industry.  Based in New York, he built and managed a successful global proprietary investing group at Credit Suisse that invested in all instruments across the corporate capital structure.  People on his team and affiliates were based in New York,  London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sao Paulo.  Prior to his various rolls in proprietary trading he was asked to build a research team that focused on the emerging markets (ranked # 1 in the Institutional Investors survey).  Prior to being an analyst, he was a junior investment banker in asset securitization and project finance.  Mr. Nydegger is a graduate of the University of Utah.  He earned the CFA designation as well as FINRA Series 7 (securities representative), 16 (supervisory analyst), 24 (general securities principal), 55 (equity trader) and 63 (state law) licenses.

Jeff Porter has been affiliated with FRA almost since its inception in 1994 and continues today as an advisor and Affiliate.  Mr. Porter is currently a senior portfolio manager for an endowment fund in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Prior to this role, he worked in New York for 13 years trading weather derivatives and commodities at Koch Industries and Hess Energy Trading Company.  He also traded high yield bonds at Bankers Trust.  Mr. Porter was previously a senior consultant in the Risk Management Group at KPMG.  He has advised Metra New Zealand (New Zealand's national weather service) and consulted Wachovia Bank.  Jeff graduated from Weber State University with a BA in Economics and earned his MBA from Brigham Young University.

Aron S. Spencer is a senior consultant within FRA and responsible for client change management and new initiatives.  He is the founder of the business innovation company, InVenture LLC, which assists companies transform creative discoveries and patented inventions into viable products and services. He holds a Ph.D. in Management from the University of California, Irvine, and is a professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology School of Management, where he teaches Entrepreneurship and Management of Technology & Innovation. Dr. Spencer is a valuation specialist.  He has won awards for his research in entrepreneurship, and helped create the NJIT Center for Innovation Acceleration. He is a certified EnableVentures® Supercoach® and has been advising companies for over 20 years.