Building Risk Frameworks for a High Impact, Low-Probability Environment

Raul Alonso is a Vice President at Goldman Sachs, where he manages sovereign, economic and geopolitical risk across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa from London. He monitors political, economic, and geopolitical developments across the region to inform the firm's risk appetite, and designs baseline and ad-hoc scenarios covering global macro themes and risks. He previously worked on the sovereign and economic risk team in New York, focusing on Latin American country risk and sovereign advisory. 

Raul is also an adjunct professor at Sciences Po in Paris. Before joining Goldman Sachs, he worked as an economic analyst in the Middle East, based in Dubai and Bahrain. He holds an MPA in Economic Policy from Columbia University, an MSc in International Management from ESADE Business School, and is a CFA charterholder. 

Alfonso de la Torre is Senior Vice President, Global Sovereigns and Economics at PineBridge Investments (now part of MetLife Investment Management), based in London. He works on the firm's Emerging Markets Fixed Income team, focusing on sovereign risk and macroeconomic analysis across global markets.

Alfonso regularly contributes to the firm's research and market commentary on geopolitical and macroeconomic risk, including analysis of trade policy, tariffs, and their impact on emerging market credit and currencies, as well as the transmission of geopolitical shocks - such as shifts in energy markets and the Strait of Hormuz - into sovereign risk and fixed income pricing.

Imran Syed is currently the Head of Stress Testing for Market and Counterparty Risk at UBS.

He was part of the core team that established the Counterparty Market Risk function at Credit Suisse and UBS. Imran has over a decade of stress testing and scenario design experience across Market, Counterparty risk and firmwide stress testing as well as Regulatory Stress Testing. His experience spans across scenario design, execution as well as stress testing infrastructure. Prior to this he set up and led the Equities market risk team for Credit Suisse in India GCC. He was previously the Head of Equities, Capital Markets and Risk Analytics at BofA India GCC.