Thomas Book is a member of the Executive Board of Deutsche Börse AG, responsible for Trading & Clearing. A pioneer in electronic trading, he joined Deutsche Börse Group in 1995 as a member of the team that rolled out Deutsche Terminbörse’s remote membership concept across Europe and the US, gaining deep insights into the impact of innovation and technology in the exchange industry. As a member of the Executive Board of Eurex and Eurex Clearing, he subsequently shaped Deutsche Börse’s trading and clearing business for many years. From 2007 to 2016, he was responsible for the clearing business of Eurex, expanding the value proposition following the 2008 financial crisis. In 2016, he took responsibility for trading at Eurex as its CEO, before being appointed to the Executive Board of Deutsche Börse in 2018. He is responsible for the Trading & Clearing division, which includes Cash Market, Financial Derivatives, FX & Digital Assets, Commodities and Market Data.

Björn Hagströmer is a Professor in the Finance section at Stockholm Business School, Stockholm University, and a Visiting Research Economist at Sveriges Riksbank (the Swedish central bank). He received his PhD in 2010 from Aston University, Birmingham, UK. Björn’s research interest is centered on financial market structure, with applications to asset pricing, financial econometrics, and liquidity measurement. His work has been published in journals such as Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, and Journal of Financial Economics.

Tanya Panova is the Head of the Securities Markets Unit in DG FISMA. Previously, she has been developing the capital markets strategy as the Head of the Capital Markets Union Unit and served in the private office of Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis where she was responsible for Capital Markets Union, securities markets, asset management, insurance, free movement of capital and competition. In her previous job, Tanya worked on aviation antitrust cases in DG COMP. Tanya is a trained economist with specialization in financial services.

Séverine is market structure expert for equity markets at Deutsche Boerse and was deeply involved in all aspects related to MiFID and MIFIR. She also focuses on other regulatory developments equity-related and supports her institution and clients in their analysis and understanding of the related obligations and requirements. She is the Vice-Chair of the FESE Equity Committee and the co-Chair of the FIX Market Outages working group. Séverine holds a PhD in Economics and Econometrics from Paris la Sorbonne and was previously Deputy Head of the Economic Analysis Unit at the French Ministry of Finance.

Eric is responsible for trading across all asset classes at Allianz Global Investors GmbH. He has more than 30 years’ experience in the asset management industry, having joined Dresdner Bank in 1992. Starting 1996 he traded equity, fixed income and commodity derivatives for Deutscher Investment Trust. In the following years he co-managed various guaranteed and structured funds, developed and ran overlay strategies with P&L responsibility and headed a team of derivatives traders since 2001. In 2016 he was put in charge of Allianz Global Investors’ global trading platform, running teams in the US, Europe and Asia. In recent years his activities have focused on the development and implementation of efficient trading workflows, applied technology in trading, and the seamless integration of trading in the investment process. He has represented trading in larger projects such as MiFID II implementation, Brexit, various legal entity changes, security lending buildout, integrations of acquired asset managers, and proprietary system developments.

Eglantine Desautel is the current Chief Executive Officer at EuroCTP, the company selected by ESMA to build and run the first EU consolidated tape for shares and ETFs. She has more than 20 years of experience in business transformation with a focus on financial services. Prior to joining EuroCTP, Eglantine spent twelve years at Euronext, where she held several positions of responsibility. Most notably, Eglantine was Chief of Staff to the Group CEO and has then led the development and implementation of the new trading system and, more recently, she served as Head of Market Operations and Digital. Eglantine holds an Engineering degree obtained from CentraleSupélec – Université Paris-Saclay and an MSc in Spacecraft technologies and satellite communications from University College London.

Anish joined Optiver in August 2022 as Head of European Equity Market Structure, where his responsibilities include managing exchange relationships, steering advocacy efforts and government relations. Prior to joining Optiver, Anish was Head of European Market Structure at Rosenblatt Securities, responsible for the firm’s European market structure reports and events. Anish is a frequent speaker at industry events across the globe and in 2021 he was awarded the Plato Partnership’s MI3 Market Structure Award for Excellence. Prior to joining Rosenblatt, Anish was a journalist covering market-structure topics for over seven years.

Andreas Fleischmann has served as a member of the Executive Board of Lang & Schwarz AG since September 2025. In his current role, he is responsible for Trading, Business Development, Human Resources and Legal. He brings more than 30 years of experience in the European banking and capital markets industry. Prior to joining Lang & Schwarz, Andreas Fleischmann served as Managing Director of Raiffeisen Continuum, a private equity fund focused on succession solutions for Austrian SMEs. Before that, he spent ten years as a member of the Management Board of Raiffeisenlandesbank Niederösterreich-Wien AG, where he was responsible for Treasury, Organization and IT. During this time, he was responsible for a number of strategic transformation initiatives, including the modernisation of the bank's IT architecture, the enhancement of treasury operations and the implementation of advanced asset-liability management (ALM) methods and systems.

Philippe Guillot began his career in finance in 1987 at DKL James Capel (now HSBC), where he held various positions in the markets. In 1991 he joined Enskilda Securities as a market maker, first in Paris then in London. In 1998, he moved to Crédit Agricole Cheuvreux in Paris, taking over as head of Facilitation, before being appointed Group Trading Director in 2006, first in Paris then in London. During this time Philippe played an active part in numerous working groups and market bodies dealing with MiFID issues in Paris. He was a member of the Securities Trading Committee of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME). He joined the AMF in march 2012. Philippe holds a degree in private law from Paris XI University and is a keen cyclist who has completed the last three Paris-Brest-Paris.

Henriette Peucker has become Chief Executive and Member of the Board of Deutsches Aktieninstitut on July 1, 2024. She began her career in political consulting in Paris and Brussels and from 1997 in investment banking at Schroders (later Citigroup) in London. From 2003 to 2010, she was responsible for the political representation of Deutsche Börse Group's interests in Berlin, Luxembourg and Brussels. Subsequently, as a partner at the communications consultancy Hering Schuppener (now FGS Global), she advised companies in various sectors, particularly on regulatory issues. As Deputy Managing Director of the Association of German Banks (Bundesverband deutscher Banken), which she temporarily headed on an interim basis, she was responsible for the "Policy and Innovation" division.

Christian W. Röhl is one of Germany's most prominent advocates for investment culture, with over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur, portfolio manager, and content creator at the intersection of financial markets and media. He co-founded a print magazine for IPOs in 1998 and subsequently served as authorized signatory at a publicly listed securities bank, advising growth companies on going public. In 2001, he founded a media and consulting firm for structured securities, growing it into an interactive community with advisory mandates for international investment banks exceeding 400 million euros, before selling the business in 2007. Since 2011, he has chaired the advisory board at the isf Institute for Strategic Finance at FOM University. He founded the YouTube channel echtgeld.tv in 2017, focusing on long-term investing with stocks, ETFs, and funds. Since 2023, he has co-hosted the Wirtschaftswoche wealth podcast "Leben mit Aktien" together with Horst von Buttlar, and since 2024 has served as Chief Economist at Scalable Capital and host of the weekly podcast "Asset Class."

Axel Schmidt is Head of Business Development – Retail at Deutsche Börse AG. He is responsible for the strategic development and expansion of retail trading services, with a focus on strengthening retail investor participation in European capital markets. He plays a key role in positioning the Xetra Retail Service as a strategic response to structural changes in European market structure, including increasing fragmentation and the evolving regulatory landscape such as the PFOF ban. The ongoing expansion of the service — including extended Xetra trading hours — aims to enhance execution quality, transparency, and accessibility, providing a competitive and scalable on‑exchange alternative for retail order flow. With extensive experience in market structure, exchange services, and product innovation, he works closely with brokers, banks, and market participants across Europe to improve trading conditions and support the evolution of the European retail investment landscape.

Peter Gomber holds the Chair of e-Finance at the University of Frankfurt, Germany. He is Co-Chairman and Member of the Board of the efl – the Data Science Institute, an industry-academic partnership between Frankfurt and Darmstadt Universities and leading industry partners. He published more than 150 research papers, many of them in leading international journals, and was awarded with the Reuters Innovation Award 2000, the University Award of the DAI („Deutsches Aktieninstitut“) 1999, and multiple Best Paper Awards of international conferences and journals (e.g. the AIS Best Information Systems Publications Award 2020). Peter Gomber is a member of several company boards, associations, and regulatory bodies, e.g. the Exchange Council of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the Academic Advisory Board of Plato Partnership, and the Supervisory Board of Clearstream Europe AG.

Andreas is a Professor of Finance at Goethe University in Frankfurt. He joined Goethe’s Faculty of Economics and Business Administration in 2008. He served as Dean from 2011 to 2015 and is now serving as Dean of Studies. His empirical research is on individual investment behavior, the role of financial advice and on financial innovations. It was published in the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies and the Review of Finance. He acts as the head of the research area “household finance” at Goethe’s SAFE research center and as academic director of the University’s startup center. He is a member of the advisory council to the German Financial Supervisory Authority, of the Exchange Experts Commission (advising the German Federal Ministry of Finance), of the working group consulting ESMA’s Financial Innovation Standing Committee and of Frankfurt’s Fintech center Techquartier.com. He won several teaching awards and was awarded the title “German Professor of the Year” by the student magazine unicum in 2010.

Benjamin Clapham is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt and efl – The Data Science Institute. His research lies at the intersection of finance and information systems, with a primary focus on empirical market microstructure. He investigates how market design, regulatory reforms, and technological innovation shape liquidity, volatility, price discovery, and overall market quality in securities markets. His research covers topics such as algorithmic trading, market safeguards, securities market fragmentation, market integrity, financial market manipulation, and crypto-asset markets. His research has been published in leading international journals and has been presented at major international conferences. He has received several academic honors, including the Best Information Systems Publications Award from the Association for Information Systems.

Constantin Brîncoveanu is a doctoral candidate at the Chair of Business Informatics and Information Management (Prof. Dr. Oliver Hinz) at Goethe University Frankfurt. His research focuses on data-driven business models and user-oriented AI agents. In the e-finance domain, he investigates how hyper-personalized "Financial Co-Pilots" can build sustainable trust. Prior to his academic career, he completed his Master's degree in Business Informatics at TU Wien and gained several years of industry experience as a Machine Learning Engineer and Data Scientist at Deutsche Bundesbank, Magenta Telekom Austria, and Cloudflight. By combining his practical expertise in scaling AI with empirical Design Science Research, he aims to bridge the gap between technical feasibility and user acceptance.