Speakers

Ms. Marija Boshkovska Jankovski

Marija Boshkovska-Jankovski has joined Central register of the Republic of Macedonia in August, 2017 as General Director of the Institution. As professional in business economics and financial accounting management, she has been involved in the implementation of numerous development projects - essential for the progress of the Central register.

The Central register is self-financed government institution, which is currently in a process of upgrading the existing solutions with a new comprehensive service model – covering all significant aspects that directly affect the quality of services.

Her vision for the Central register arises directly from the needs of the private sector and all service users (including foreign and domestic investors), and from the institutional need to access and share up-to-date information in order to increase the efficiency of their work.

Nick Cowan

Nick Cowan has over 30 years investment industry experience in Developed and Emerging Markets including five years as the Global Head of Equities for ING Barings serving as a Member of Executive Committee. Responsible for 2,500 employees in 43 countries, including 40 stock exchange memberships as well as numerous restructurings, turnarounds, acquisitions and divestments. He is the CEO of the GSX Group that includes the Gibraltar Stock Exchange, the Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange and Juno Services.

Ricco Dun 

At the GLEIF, Ricco Dun is mainly responsible for a) business development projects and b) the connections between the world of the business registers and the new world of the Legal Entity Identifiers (LEI’s). It is important that these worlds understand each other and cooperate. There are already 6 national business registers (becoming) active as a LEI issuing organization.

He is also the Chairman of the Board of the European Business Register (EBR). EBR is the cooperation between business registers from 26 European countries in which they facilitate the exchange of business register information between themselves and for their customers. 

He has been a member of the Executive Committee of the Corporate Registers Forum (CRF). Within the European Commerce Registers’ Forum (ECRF), he has been a member of the Working Group BR2BR (on the interconnection of business registers) and the auditor of the financials. 

He has worked for many years as the Manager of the Business Register of The Netherlands Chamber of Commerce. Before that, he has had several legal and sales & marketing functions, including e.g. the development of all internet based activities for the dissemination of information from the business register. 

He has represented the Netherlands during the negotiations on the EU Directive on the interconnection of business registers in the European Council Working Party and during the discussions on the implementation of the Directive in the Company Law Expert Group for the Business Registers Interconnection System (CLEG-BRIS) of the European Commission.

Joost Fleuren

Joost Fleuren is trained in- and worked in both the Engineering- and Business disciplines, and works at the Chamber of Commerce at the intersection of those. Being the building of services rooted in Tomorrow’s (Information-) Technology. Current focus is the evolving needs and opportunities with new Identity concepts and –technology, amongst others’ those that help, challenge or are inspired by Blockchain developments. 

Jonathan Garcia

Jonathan Garcia is a Partner at ISOLAS LLP in the DLT/Fintech & Financial Services Team and is the other partner in the Team, alongside Joey Garcia, who heads the Team. Jonathan specialises in financial services specifically advising collective investment schemes, investment managers, banks, e-money institutions and blockchain start-ups on licensing and regulatory matters. He has over 10 years of experience as a financial services lawyer and spent six months on a part-time secondment at the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission. He has also co-advised the GSX Limited, the Gibraltar Stock Exchange through its licensing procedure, which now includes the Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange (GBX).

He also sat on the Company Law Reform Committee established by the Gibraltar Finance Centre Council, which led to a full scale review of Gibraltar’s company legislation. He has also advised HM Government of Gibraltar on the introduction of legislation that allows for Limited Liability Partnerships and drafted appropriate legislation.

Vito Giannella

Vito Giannella is UnionCamere Advisor for EU and International Affairs and is currently the ECRF President. He has been involved since the beginning in setting up ECRF as well as EBR - European Business Register network.

Monica Grahn

Monica’s journey has gone from being a lawyer, through various management services to today work as Senior Advisor and Head of a Unit, connected to the Director General and Deputy Director General. Monica has always been driven by a desire to find the best solutions for citizens and business with. The questions often combine law and IT. Monica participates in different groupings within public sector, where development of e-services is the focus. For example the initiative called “eSam”, a digital collaboration between 21 Swedish authorities in order to develop digitalized service for the public.

Since 2013 Monica is a member of the Survey Working Group, until this year responsible to coordinate the work with the International Business Registers Survey and Report.

Ms. Siân Jones

Siân leads on DLT policy within the Risk and Innovation team at the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission where she advises government and GFSC leadership on virtual currencies and distributed ledger technology.

Seconded to GFSC, Siân continues to head COINsult, a regulatory strategy consultancy focusing on crypto assets that advises fintech startups, enterprises and governments. She also leads the European Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology Forum, a public policy platform helping EU policymakers and legislators shape sound policy and regulation.

Siân sits on ISO’s technical committee on DLT and is a member of its Governance and Smart Contracts expert groups, and BSI’s national mirror committee.

She is a founding member of the UK Digital Currency Association and led its Regulation & Banking working group. She contributes to leading blockchain podcast, Epicenter, and is a regular speaker and panellist at conferences.

Siân helped found the first publicly-quoted blockchain technology company and the first blockchain platform provider on the UK Government’s G-Cloud.

Her 47-year career in information technology, security, data protection and compliance includes working in Europe, the Middle East and Asia in industries as diverse as banking, transport, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and security.

Rolf Koenig

Rolf Koenig studied law at the university in Muenster, North Rhine-Westphalia. He was appointed as a judge in 2002.

He is director at the local court in Coesfeld, North Rhine-Westphalia. Since 2012 Rolf Koenig is also head of the Project Group RegisSTAR which works on behalf of the Ministry of Justice of North Rhine-Westphalia and is responsible for the development and maintenance of the German electronic Business Register system as well as the International Business Register interoperability.

Keno Kuhlmann

Keno Kuhlmann, Project Manager at Atos Information Technology. M.Sc. Computer Science Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg. Working in national and international Public Sector Projects, such as German and Romanian Passports, Argentine I.D. Card, Border Control Argentina, Passenger Registration Spain, German Patent and Trademark register 

Mojca Kunšek

Mojca Kunsek, Master of Economics, has been director of Agency of Republic of Slovenia for public legal records and related services (AJPES) since 2013.

Her business track has gone from a portfolio manager to consultant of managers’ board in different public and commercial institutions. For her contribution to improving woman management in Slovenia, she received annual award Artemida of 2014, conferred to her by The Association of Managers. Under her leadership AJPES received award for the best IT project in Slovenia for developing register of public information (2015) and for the most socially responsible agency (2016). She is also the author of several articles in a professional journal »The international business legislation« and »Legal praxis« and on some web professional portals.

In last months she was acctively involved in strategic working group for joint registering association EBRA, implementing the BRIS system in Slovenia, finalizing the accreditation process for issuing LEI code and implementing Beneficial owner’s register at AJPES.

Julian Lamb

Julian Lamb is the Director of Registry at the Jersey Financial Services Commission (JFSC), a position he has held for more than 10 years. He is also a member of the Executive Board.

Julian has the primary executive responsibility for the leadership and management of the Registry, while the statutory position of Registrar of Companies is held by the JFSC’s Director General.

Julian is currently in charge of the day-to-day operations of the Companies Registry (Registry), which includes policy and strategic development, and enhancing the Registry’s international reputation.

Prior to joining the JFSC in December 1999, Julian worked in Jersey’s finance industry for more than 20 years, including at director level. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants and the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment.

Julian is a board member of a number of international registry organisations.

Maija Laurila

Maija Laurila is the Head of the Company Law Unit at the European Commission, Justice and Consumers Directorate General. In addition to European company law, this Unit deals with corporate governance law and policy in general and also corporate governance in financial institutions.

She holds this position since October 2016. Previously, she was the Head of the Product Safety Unit in the same department, where her responsibilities included the policy development including standardisation and oversight of consumer product safety law enforcement, the operation of the Rapid Alert System (RAPEX) for dangerous consumer products and the related international cooperation.

Earlier in her career in the European Institutions, she worked at the Directorate General for Competition on anti-trust policy, cartel investigations and coordination of the European Competition Network. Her experience also includes being the Legal Secretary of a judge at the Court of First Instance of the EU (now the General Court). Prior to this, she worked at the University of Helsinki, Finland, as an academic researcher in the field of international economic law and exclusive rights.

Ann Lewis

Ann Lewis joined Companies House in July 2009, and is responsible for the central operations, for customer service and enforcement. Ann was appointed Acting Registrar for England and Wales and Chief Executive between May and September 2017.

Before joining Companies House, Ann was a deputy director within the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in Newport. Ann spent over 30 years at the ONS covering a variety of roles with a great deal of experience of introducing and managing major business change strategies. Ann has managed large teams with complex portfolios, specialising in operational management and business change and efficiencies.

Berit Loog

Zvonko Obradović

Director of the Serbian Business Registers Agency since 2007. 

Zvonko Obradović is the recipient of the annual award for Top Reformer of 2009, conferred to him by the National Alliance for Local Economic Development (NALED), for his exceptional contribution to improving the efficiency of administration and the environment for doing business in Serbia. 

Member of Steering Commitee of ECRF from 2014-2018.

Project leader: Establishment of Regional IT Portal of Western Balkan business registers supported by EBRD.

Nienke Palstra

Nienke Palstra is an adviser in the Anti-Money Laundering team at Global Witness. Global Witness is an international advocacy organisation seeking to expose and break the links between natural resources corruption, conflict and other abuses. Nienke’s work has focused on anonymous shell companies and beneficial ownership transparency, particularly in the UK and as part of negotiations for the 4th and 5th EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive. She has previously worked with the Transparency International EU Office on anti-corruption related to EU external policies and money laundering, coordinating across an international network of national chapters. She has also held positions at Unicef UK and the Overseas Development Institute on international human rights and child protection issues. She has an MSc from the School of Oriental and African Studies and BA from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.  

Russell Perry

Russell co-founded kompany together with his long-time friends and business partners. He drives the direction of the business and loves finding business opportunities others might have overlooked. kompany is a RegTech firm offering a global KYC, AML and UBO. By combining automation and AI (deep-learning), kompany has become the trusted platform for regulated industries, from finance, insurance to real-estate.

Prior to a short exec stint where he returned to the telco world in South Africa, Russell was the start-up CEO of the largest people-search engine with more than 50 million monthly uniques, operating in 13 countries in 11 languages. He expanded the company from a garage operation to a highly profitable business within six months and lead the exit in 2010.
For nearly six years Russell was a member of the senior management team at the online gaming company bwin. He led product management betting with more than EUR 2.5 billion in wagers p.a., established strategic and media partnerships in 25 countries and was instrumental in establishing bwin as the dominant player in mobile gaming.

Russell’s mobile and telecommunications roots go back to 1998 when he joined Austria’s third mobile operator ONE (Orange Austria, then Hutchison 3 Austria) as head of product management data. There he oversaw several European firsts, such as mobile banking, SMS content services, SMS payment for vending machines and the first real-time multi-user gaming platform. In 2001, Russell joined Telefonica Mobile’s 3G Mobile AG in Zurich as Director of Products & Services where he defined and led the launch portfolio of the 3G green field mobile operator.

Born in New York City, Russell also lived in Austria for half of his childhood. He holds a BA in International Studies (concentration on Nuclear Arms Proliferation) from Maryville College, a Master’s in European Integration & Law, a dual MSc/MAS graduate degree in Telematics Management and Telecoms Engineering and continued his executive training at Harvard Business School and the University of Applied Art & Sciences Lucerne / Standford.   Russell has enjoyed teaching several post-graduate courses on telecommunication and business modelling at his Alma Mater, Danube University Krems, the Vienna University of Business & Economics, University of Vienna and other universities.

Michał Piechocki

Michal Piechocki is the co-founder, co-owner and the CEO of the Business Reporting – Advisory Group leading its global operations and advising international governmental and supervisory institutions on adoption of international data standards, methodologies, architectures and technologies. His expertise contributed to projects in Europe, Australia, Asia and North and South America.

Michal serves as a Member of the Board of Directors of XBRL International overseeing development and worldwide adoption of the electronic XBRL standards and a Member of the IFRS Taxonomy Consultative Group (IASB London) where he contributes to the strategy of the IFRS XBRL Taxonomy development and international implementation. Michal chairs the Frankfurt Group Technical Workshop on Optimisation of Data Standards hosted by the European Central Bank. Since 2017 Michal serves as Board Member of the Eurofiling Foundation, a non-profit organisation facilitating dialogue between financial regulators, market participants and vendors. Michal serves as a Member of the Banking and Banking Financial Services Technical Committee at the Polish Normalisation Committee.

Anthony Provasoli

Anthony Provasoli is a Partner in Hassans’ corporate and commercial department and co-leads the firm’s FinTech team. Anthony’s expertise in FinTech and his particular interests in Blockchain and Crypto-currency stand him out as a leading practitioner in this space. He also acts as an advisor to Modex.

Anthony is a graduate from Nottingham Trent University and was called to the Bar in England and Wales and the Gibraltar Bar in 2005. He specialises in corporate, commercial and financial services matters and also advises on matters of sports law, intellectual property, e-commerce and telecommunications regulation.

Henrik Räihä

Henrik has worked in the Finnish Patent and Registration Office ”PRH” since 2012 in Enterprises and Corporations Unit. He holds a Master of Laws degree and his current position in PRH is Team Manager. His team is responsible for registering businesses and associations in Finland.  Besides team managing, Henrik is working with different projects in PRH such as LEI (Legal Entity Identifier) operations. 

Henrik has been a member of ECRF Survey Working group since 2017.

Stephen Reyes

Stephen Reyes is a founding partner and CEO of Deloitte in Gibraltar and after qualifying in the City of London, has been working in public practice in Gibraltar as a Chartered Accountant for over twenty five years. He advises both international and local companies and private clients, particularly in setting up and operating in Gibraltar. Stephen sits on the Gibraltar Finance Centre Council as its Chairman and is actively involved in Gibraltar’s development as a leading financial jurisdiction and the promotion of its opportunities. Stephen has also served as President of the Gibraltar Society of Accountants and Chairman of its Tax Faculty.

Steve Roylance

Steve is a passionate business and process visionary with a proven track record centered around Identity Assurance. Successfully designing and delivering on strategy both in lean startups and beachheads for traditional enterprise class organisations, Steve is generally the catalyst behind systemic change.  In 2005 Steve assembled all major players in the Certification Authority industry and Browser Industry to form the CA/B Forum (www.cabforum.org) eventually resulting in the adoption of more rigorous validation processes as well as uniting the industry in the creation and adoption of common workflow standards for TLS sever certificate provision.  HTTP 2.0 ubiquitous security for all is at last within reach, building on the billions of transactions already being secured on a daily basis.

Focused on building empowered customer-centric organisations with innovative product workflows & experiences Steve is a veteran of the Identity Assurance industry with several patents adding significant value to the GMO GlobalSign group IP portfolio during his 11 year tenure in the business development role (2006-2017).  Steve is now responsible to accelerate b10v’s Global Identity Strategy through investment, partnership and collaboration and is currently SVP, Identity Services for b10v portfolio company Ubisecure.  The first accomplishment being accreditation by the GLEIF (Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation) as an LEI issuer through the RapidLEI platform.

Stacey-Jo Smith

Stacey-Jo joined Companies House in December 2008, and is a Senior Policy Adviser responsible for the UK company law team. She has held a number of policy roles during her time with the organisation.

Stacey-Jo has a degree in Politics and International Relations, and has previously worked as an operational manager for a data quality company, supporting e-commerce and supply chain management.

She has been involved in international registry benchmarking since joining Companies House in 2008, and currently leads the working group for the International Business Registers Report.

Jonas Udris

Jonas is a corporate and public law expert with 12+ years of experience in the public and private sector, Jonas has managed numerous projects related to legal databases and business registries. He specialises in online voting and is an evangelist for secure and transparent solutions with end-to-end verifiability. Currently focused on creating a concept of a virtual limited company with shares tradable on blockchain.

Ingmar Vali

Ingmar Vali is a visionary, a practitioner and a team leader in the field of e-governance.

In 2002, Ingmar joined the technology competence centre of the Ministry of Justice to build the next generation Land Register. Today Ingmar is a driver of innovation in all court registry fields. Moreover, the passion of Ingmar has always business analysis and change management. In addition, in recent years Ingmar has been leading the analysts’ team in The Sultanate of Oman and Dubai in the field of business registration.