David Merrill

CEO

David Merrill is CEO of FinAnalytica and a long time veteran of the financial technology industry. Previously, David worked at NYFIX, where he was Managing Director, Head of Sales and Client Operations. Prior to this he was Managing Director, Americas at Moody’s KMV where he was responsible for client services, training and marketing globally. David also spent ten years at Omgeo, where he was Managing Director Global Operations.

Boryana Racheva-Iotova

President

Boryana Racheva-Iotova is President of FinAnalytica. She leads FinAnalytica's R&D team and product development of the Cognity platform which offers risk and portfolio construction analytics for the FoF and hedge fund industry. She was co-founder and CEO of the Bravo Risk Management Group - the originator of the Cognity product suite, which was later acquired by FinAnalytica. She holds M. Sci. in Probability and Statistics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Sofia University. Her many articles have recently appeared in premier scientific journals and her forthcoming book will appear in Wiley-Finance. She has 10 years of experience in building risk management solutions and utilizing the latest analytical advancements to meet the needs of financial industry practitioners.

Zari Rachev

Chief Scientist

Zari Rachev was a co-founder and President of Bravo Risk Management Group, the originator of the Cognity methodology, which was acquired by FinAnalytica. Rachev holds the Chair-Professorship in Statistics, Econometrics and Mathematical Finance at Karlsruhe University and is the author of 12 books and over 300 published articles on finance, econometrics, statistics and actuarial science. At the University of California at Santa Barbara, he founded the Ph.D. program in mathematical and empirical finance. Rachev holds a PhD (1979) and Doctor of Science (1986) from Moscow University and the Russian Academy of Sciences, under the supervision of A. Kolmogorov, Yu. Prohorov and L. Kantorovich (received Nobel Prize Economics in 1975 ). Rachev's scientific work lies at the core of Cognity's newer and more accurate methodologies in risk management and portfolio analysis.

Todor Iotov

CFO and Treasurer

Todor Iotov is the CFO and Treasurer of FinAnalytica. Prior to his appointment in early 2009, he consulted with FinAnalytica on a number of strategic operations and business development projects. He also supervised the administration of its overseas subsidiaries. Todor was instrumental in managing FinAnalytica’s acquisition of Bravo Risk Management Group in 2003 and in handling two VC investment rounds since late 2007. Before permanently joining FinAnalytica, Todor was an Executive Director of a boutique provider of quantitative investment advice for clients in the German-speaking European countries. Todor has a M.Sc. Degree in Financial Engineering from Hector School of Engineering and Management, University of Karlsruhe. He graduated with honors in 2007. He also holds a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration and Management from Sofia University where he graduated in 2000.

Michael Palmieri

Director of Product Marketing

Michael Palmieri brings over twenty years of financial services experience to his position as head of product marketing. Palmieri headed U.S. sales of predictive modeling and data mining software in the financial services sector for Insightful Inc. He has held account management, database and technology management positions at Reuters, and marketing and management positions at Soliton Associates. Palmieri holds a bachelor’s degree in Geology from Ohio State University.

Ivan Mitov

Head of Quantitative Research

Ivan Mitov is Head of Quantitative Research at FinAnalytica. He has been working for FinAnalytica for the past eight years doing research and implementation of heavy tailed distributions in the field of financial risk management. Currently he is leading the team which is responsible for the integration, risk analysis and stress testing of complex derivatives portfolios. Previously, he worked on the research, design and implementation of the market risk module and many of the internal financial instruments calculators in Cognity. He was a junior quantitative analyst at Bravo Risk Management Group - the originator of Cognity, which was later acquired by FinAnalytica.  Before joining Bravo Risk Management Group, Ivan worked at the Metalife, a bioinformatics company, doing research in the area of genetic algorithms and protein-protein interactions. Ivan has just completed his Ph.D. thesis in Probability and Statistics at the Sofia University considering heavy-tailed models and an application to the approximation of extreme operational losses. He also holds the M.S. degree in Mathematical Modeling in Economics and Finance from Sofia University and B.S. degree in Applied Mathematics from Sofia University.

Dobrin Penchev

Director of Global Client Services

Dobrin Penchev has more than six years of successful experience in growing key client relationships within the FoF, Hedge Fund and Asset Management space. He holds a BS in Economics from Sofia University and specializes in the areas of finance, banking, financial derivatives and risk management. Dobrin has spent more than eight years with FinAnalytica and the predecessor company Bravo Risk Management Group in various positions and roles. He is now responsible for the premium client services received by FinAnalytica customers globally.

Stefan Minchev

Head of Software Development – Returns-based Products

Stefan Minchev is leading the Software Development for the returns-based version of Cognity. He has been with FinAnalytica for more than 4 years and is an expert in the areas of Java, JavaScript (AJAX), .NET and enterprise architectures. He is also interested in the areas of usability, building user centric software applications, finance and real time trading. Prior to joining FinAnalytica, Stefan worked for Platfarm developing a social networking application and Ingenatic AG, an e-learning solutions software firm, as a Java Developer and User Experience specialist.

Stanislav Lazarov

Head of Software Development – Position-based Products

Stanislav Lazarov has nearly twenty years of experience in software development with a broad range of platforms and technologies. He has been with the team in FinAnalytica since its foundation seven years ago. During that time he worked on expanding the product and growing the organization. Currently, Stanislav is responsible for the development of the position-based Cognity. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Informatics from Sofia University.