Yale School of Management - Valentina Antill '94

"The structuring of derivatives in emerging markets has been my career since I graduated from the Yale School of Management in 1994. Derivatives are also my passion — ignited during my student days at Yale SOM by its tremendous finance program and faculty. There rarely is a day in my career when I do not draw on the financial tools and concepts I learned at Yale SOM, often with phrases of its legendary and enthusiastic financial academics (Ingersoll, Ross, Ibbotson) and lecturing practitioners still reverberating in my mind."

Mrs. Valentina Antill (maiden name Dzeba) is a managing director of the emerging markets derivatives and structured products team in Citigroup in New York, where she is in charge of designing structured derivative solutions for managing currency, interest rate, credit and cross-border risks in emerging markets, custom-tailored for the multinational corporations and supranational organizations (e.g. World Bank).

Throughout her career at Citigroup, Mrs. Antill has played a key role in designing landmark risk-management derivative solutions in emerging markets — facilitating efficient cross-border investment in Latin America, as well as opening the region’s capital markets to foreign issuers. Many of the solutions took an essential place in the history of the Latin American derivatives and have been a cornerstone of Citigroup’s leadership in development of new derivatives markets in the region. Such transactions include, among others, the first derivatives on currencies and credits of Central America and the first "exotic" (i.e. cancellable and bond-contingent) swap structures on Latin American currencies. Mrs. Antill’s risk management solutions involving decomposing and hedging of diverse risks of emerging markets assets have contributed to Citigroup’s winning of various awards, including the recent Euromoney Award of Excellence for Risk Management in Latin America. Mrs. Antill’s local currency default swap structure on Venezuela also earned the Latin Finance Best Derivative Transaction Deal of the Year Award in 2006.

Mrs. Antill has served as speaker and expert panelist in various events organized by supranational organizations, finance ministries, financial institutions and treasurers associations, as well as a guest-lecturer in business schools, including the Yale School of Management.

Mrs. Antill graduated from the Yale School of Management (George Soros Open Society Fund scholarship and Yale University scholarship) and earned BA from the University of Economics in Zagreb, Croatia.

In her early years, Mrs. Antill was a member of the National Tennis Team of Croatia and is still a tennis enthusiast, as well as a fanatic classic cinema buff. She lives in Manhattan with her husband Egan (also Yale SOM 1994 graduate) and their daughter Ingrid.