Company

SuperDerivatives’ Board of Directors guides the company’s strategic direction, helping to interpret the financial markets and identify future opportunities. As the guardians of the company’s vision of bringing transparency to the financial markets, the Board members represent an incomparable knowledgebase that combines financial expertise with technological innovation.

David Gershon
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

David Gershon founded SuperDerivatives in 2000 with the aim of introducing transparency to the world of options. Since then, the company has expanded rapidly to have a strong global presence and is today recognized as the benchmark for option pricing and a market leader in derivatives technology including front end platforms, risk management systems, revaluation services and online execution utilities. David’s vision to bring transparency to the world of options has materialized with a significant part of derivatives professionals all over the world utilize SuperDerivatives platforms for their day to day activities. Furthermore, many industry observers credit SuperDerivatives for the sizable growth in the number of options users over the past couple of years and the dramatic increase in liquidity.

Prior to starting SuperDerivatives, David was Global Head of FX Exotic Options for Barclays Capital, based in the bank’s London headquarters. Earlier in his career he had traded at BZW New York (later to become Barclays Capital), covering emerging markets during their most volatile periods, and at Deutsche Bank in New York. David’s career on Wall Street began in 1994 in NationsBank’s mortgage department.

David has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics (Superstring theory), an MBA and an M.Sc. in Finance. The combination of his academic background and rich market experience has proved fundamental in the development of the patented SuperDerivatives benchmark pricing model for options, which uniquely provides an accurate reflection of the bid and offer prices of options in the inter-bank market in all asset classes.

Lewis S. Ranieri

Lewis Ranieri is a Board member and is the Chairman of the Advisory Board of SuperDerivatives.

Mr. Ranieri is the prime originator and founder of the Hyperion and Ranieri Partners affiliated private equity fund. Mr. Ranieri has also served as the Chairman of American Financial Realty Trust, Root Markets, Franklin Bank Corp, Capital Lease Funding, Inc., and Computer Associates (CA), Inc.

Prior to forming Hyperion, Mr. Ranieri had been Vice Chairman of Salomon Brothers Inc. (“Salomon”) and is generally considered as the “father” of the securitized mortgage market. Mr. Ranieri helped develop the capital markets as a source of funds for housing and commercial real estate, establishing Salomon’s leadership position in the mortgage-backed securities area. He also led the effort to obtain federal legislation to support and build the market.

Lewis Ranieri is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award given by the Fixed Income Analysts Society, Inc. and was also elected to the Housing Hall of Fame. In November 2004, BusinessWeek magazine named him one of “the greatest innovators of the past 75 years” and in 2005 he received the Distinguished Industry Service Award by the American Securitization Forum.

Mr. Ranieri acts as a trustee or director of the Environmental Defense Fund, the Metropolitan Opera Association, and the American Ballet Theatre.

Scott A. Shay

Scott Shay has played a very active role on the board of SuperDerivatives since the company’s inception.

Among his other endeavors, Scott serves as Chairman and was a founder of Signature Bank in New York, Managing Director of Ranieri Partners LLC, and as a partner of Hyperion Partners since 1988. As part of Hyperion’s investment activities, Scott has served on the boards of many corporations.

Scott’s involvement in investment banking and venture goes back to 1980. Prior to joining Ranieri/Hyperion, Scott was a director and a senior member of the mergers and acquisitions department of Salomon Brothers.

Sam Somech
Executive Vice President, Head of R&D

Sam Somech is responsible for SuperDerivatives global product development activities and has been an investor and a member of the board since 2004.

Sam is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on middleware messaging technologies and he is an experienced and successful entrepreneur. He founded Data Voice Systems which was acquired by IBM and became the foundation of IBM’s MQSeries®. Sam later co-founded and served as CEO of the software company Level 8 which successfully floated on NASDAQ in 1996. Level 8’s technology was acquired by Microsoft to provide the foundation for its MSMQ Messaging application. Sam was also involved in several technology companies such as Traiana, a financial technology company which was later sold in late 2007 to ICAP and served as Chairman of Itemfield which he sold in early 2007 to Informatica Corporation.