BIO

Dr Alexis Stenfors is Professor of Economics and Financial Markets at the University of Portsmouth and a consultant specialising in financial markets, market behaviour and surveillance.

Before returning to academia in 2009, Alexis spent 15 years as a foreign exchange and interest rate derivatives trader at HSBC, Citi, Crédit Agricole and Merrill Lynch, working in Stockholm, London and Tokyo. He began his doctoral research on LIBOR in 2009, almost three years before the LIBOR manipulation scandal broke, and completed his PhD in Economics at SOAS University of London in 2013 with the thesis Determining the LIBOR: A Study of Power and Deception.

His research focuses on financial market microstructure, monetary policy, market manipulation and collusion, and market surveillance. More recent work examines AI-driven detection of market abuse, shadow insider trading, government bond futures, Japanese interest rate markets, geopolitical risk and the application of financial-market surveillance methods to algorithmic behaviour in electricity markets.

Alongside his academic work, Alexis advises exchanges, financial institutions and technology providers on financial-market behaviour, risk and surveillance. He has worked on the development and application of trade-surveillance methodologies and has served as an expert adviser in legal cases involving financial benchmarks, cash and derivatives markets in Europe and North America.

He has held academic positions at SOAS University of London, Leeds University Business School, UC Berkeley Haas, Meiji University, Peking University HSBC Business School and the University of Doha for Science and Technology.

Alexis is the author of Barometer of Fear: An Insider’s Account of Rogue Trading and the Greatest Banking Scandal in History (Bloomsbury) and co-editor of Unconventional Monetary Policy and Financial Stability: The Case of Japan (Routledge).