John Seo: Catastrophe Bonds and the Investor Choice Problem — Manifold #61
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Dr John Seo is co-founder and a managing director at Fermat Capital Management, LLC). He has over 30 years’ experience in fixed income bond and derivatives trading and has been active in the Insurance-Linked Securities (“ILS”) market for over 25 years. Prior to forming Fermat with his brother Nelson in 2001, Dr Seo was senior trader in the Insurance Products Group at Lehman Brothers, an officer of Lehman Re, and a state-appointed advisor to the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund. Dr. Seo’s work in catastrophe funds was featured in a cover article for the New York Times Magazine (‘In Nature’s Casino’ by Michael Lewis, 26 August 2007), and he has also testified before US Congress as an expert on the catastrophe bond market (‘Hearings from the 110th Congress’, 6 September 2007). Dr Seo holds a PhD in Biophysics from Harvard University and a BS in Physics from MIT. He is based in Connecticut.

Steve and John discuss:

00:00 Introduction

00:36 Early Career and Influences

02:10 The Investor Choice Problem

07:21 Academic Background and Family Challenges

12:43 First Steps in Finance

30:39 Lehman Brothers

37:29 Introduction to Cat Bonds

44:53 Parallels Between Derivatives and Insurance Markets

01:03:22 Building Fermat Capital

01:09:51 Future of Catastrophe Bonds

Music used with permission from Blade Runner Blues Livestream improvisation by State Azure.

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Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. 

Please send any questions or suggestions to [email protected] or Steve on Twitter @hsu_steve.