Experience & Activities

Christopher has long experience on both the buy and sell-sides of the financial industry. An Illinois native, he began his career in agricultural commodities at the Chicago Board of Trade but has since worked as a trader, broker, research analyst and fund manager at firms including State Street Global Advisors, Citigroup, and Societe Generale. He has also been a senior consultant with the IFC/World Bank Group.

Mr. Grune is a member of the Nairobi Securities Exchange Derivatives Market Risk Management Governance Committee, sits on the Board of Directors for the CFA Society of East Africa and also serves as the President of the Columbia University Alumni Association of Kenya. He has spoken at numerous African conferences, including African Investor (Ai) London, Ai New York, the Wharton Africa Business Conference, the Harvard Africa Business Conference, the Kenya Institute of Management Leadership Summit and the Africa Banking and Finance Conference.

With a quantitative background, he has long applied his IT skills to operating in the financial markets. In addition to research and trading functions, he has extensive programming experience, has constructed risk models and even took on the responsibility of database/system administrator for a team he led at Citi for a period of time.

His responsibilities have led him to deal with multiple asset classes, including forex, fixed income and equities and he has specialized in markets across several global regions, having filled senior roles in the US, Japan, and Kenya. He is a CFA Charterholder, has an MBA from Columbia Business School as well as a Certificate in Quantitative Finance and the Professional Risk Managers’ designation. He has also passed the FISD Exam.