Validus appoints senior hires in response to continued business growth

Private debt and banking veterans Sean Duffy and Ron Pathak join the firm to further bolster its market-leading private capital business.

Validus Risk Management (‘Validus’), the leading independent financial risk advisory and technology firm, today announces two senior hires in its Business Development and Client Coverage (BDCC) division in London.

Sean Duffy joins as Senior Manager of Client Engagement where he will cover a range of Private Capital firms, acting as a senior point of client contact and directing service delivery teams to ensure our fund level hedging programmes remain best-in-class globally. His wealth of experience in this field, from both the sell-side and buy-side, will further strengthen our position as the leading advisory firm for fund-level hedging.

Sean joins Validus from Alcentra, one of the largest European private debt managers, where he held the role as Executive Director, in charge of FX and Liquidity management for the firm’s funds. Prior to this he spent five years on the Institutional FX and Rates desk at Lloyds Banking Group.

Ron Pathak joins as Senior Manager of Event-Driven Hedging Solutions where he will advise clients on investment-specific market risks and direct service delivery teams in providing optimal hedging solutions to funds and portfolio companies. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience in capital markets, Ron will complement our existing Global Capital Markets and Deal-Contingent Hedging teams in helping clients navigate and mitigate complex risk scenarios associated with large financings, refinancings and cross-border M&A transactions.  

Ron joins Validus having spent more than two decades specialising in FX and Rates risk management at several top-tier financial institutions including Goldman Sachs, RBS, and Standard Chartered, in London and Singapore.

Alain Smith, Head of UK Client Engagement at Validus, said: “I am delighted to welcome Sean and Ron to the team. Their extensive risk management experience will be hugely valuable as we continue to expand our global offering, and their appointments come at an exciting time for the business as we see an ever-increasing demand for industry-leading risk advisory and hedging solutions”.

Messrs. Duffy and Pathak will both be based in Validus Risk Management’s London office and report to the Head of Client Engagement, Alain Smith who in turn reports to Chief Commercial Officer and head of BDCC, Haakon Blakstad.