Peter U. Vinella has more than 35 years of experience in the financial industry as a consultant and as an executive with leading financial institutions and government agencies. Mr. Vinella has extensive testifying experience acting as an expert for both plaintiff and defendant over more than 40 engagements. He has authored over 60 expert reports, declarations, and affidavits and has given over 300 hours of arbitration hearing, trial, and deposition testimony in state and federal court and before international arbitration panels.
He has also provided testimony in the Philippines, the Cayman Islands, and Ireland, and he has been qualified to testify in state and federal courts. This includes testifying at trial and hearings eight times including two jury trials. Mr. Vinella is also currently providing consulting services to central banks and government agencies as well as major financial institutions.
His areas of expertise include trading and investment management, risk management, quantitative analyses, operations, trading and investment-related accounting, technology (including software development), trust administration, fund administration, mathematics, probability, and statistics.
He has first-hand experience with a wide range of investment products, including equities, debt instruments, repo and securities lending, listed and OTC derivatives (such as interest rate, total return, asset, and credit default swaps), commercial and consumer loans, and structured credit products such as CDOs and MBS. He has also developed business plans and strategic marketing plans for leading financial institutions and vendors, including JP Morgan, Daiwa Securities, Smith Barney, ADP, Sun Microsystems, Perot Systems, and Sybase. Additionally, he has extensive experience in international markets and has worked extensively outside of the United States.
Prior to forming PVA Toucan with his partner, Dr. Jeanette Jin, Mr. Vinella was a managing director first at LECG and then Berkeley Research Group (BRG) where he provided expert testimony and advisory services in regard to a host of matters primarily involving financial services and technology matters. At LECG, Mr. Vinella was also responsible for managing the firm’s financial services practice, which consisted of over 125 individuals and generated 20 percent of the company’s profits. Both Mr. Vinella and Dr. Jin continue to provide testimony and advisory services through BRG as affiliates.
Prior to his work in litigation support and dispute resolution, Mr. Vinella was a founder, co-owner, and CEO of Wilmington Trust Conduit Services (WTCS), a subsidiary of Wilmington Trust Corporation, the Federal Reserve–regulated bank holding company of Wilmington Trust Company. He was responsible for overseeing all aspects of WTCS, including business administration, sales, operations, research, production technology, and software development. WTCS provided a wide range of administrative, trustee, custodial, operations, accounting, and risk management services to issuers and managers of and investors in credit and structured credit transactions. WTCS also provided fund administration services to hedge funds and private equity funds investing in loans, distressed assets, and structured products.
Before joining Wilmington Trust in 2006, Mr. Vinella was the founder and CEO of PVA International/Toucan Partners, a New York-based consultancy focused on capital markets and risk management. During his 11-year tenure, PVA/Toucan was engaged in more than 100 projects with more than 50 clients on four continents, including money center banks, international brokerages, central banks, government agencies, and investment managers.
Having begun his career in finance in the early 1980s at the risk management boutique BARRA (now part of Morgan Stanley), Mr. Vinella has also held a number of senior positions at leading Wall Street firms, including trader and trading manager, chief information officer, and head of fixed income research. Earlier in his career, he founded Berkeley Investment Technologies (BIT), an early pioneer in algorithm trading and one the first financial services firms to employ UNIX-based distributed systems, relational database management systems, object-oriented architecture, and real-time analytical systems.
Mr. Vinella is a member of the U.C. Berkeley Center for Risk Management Research which promotes research in and education about serious issues in the field of financial risk management. He holds a master’s degree in mathematics and a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from the U.C. Berkeley. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in mathematics at U.C. Berkeley where he frequently presents seminars on various aspects of mathematical finance, stochastic dynamical systems, and non-linear analysis. He also taught mathematics at California State University at Hayward and was a NASA Junior Research Fellow.
Mr. Vinella has co-authored two books with Jeanette Jin (the COO of WTCS) on governance and operational risk management, one published through Risk Waters and the other in manuscript form. He has authored numerous articles in the areas of litigation, finance, technology, and mathematics, including a solicited op-ed piece for the New York Times. Additionally, he is often quoted in the mainstream and trade press, including an appearance on ABC Nightly News with Peter Jennings. He has worked with the U.S. Congress and GAO on a variety of issues including TARP/ESSA, program trading, derivatives regulations, and the impact of September 11 on the U.S. financial system.
EXPERTISE
Trading and Investments
Risk Management
Operations
FinTech and Project Management
Quantitative Analysis
Custody, Trust, and Fund Administration
Repo and Securities Lending
EDUCATION
University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D. Graduate
Department of Mathematics
University of California, Berkeley
M.A. Mathematics
A.B. Applied Mathematics
WORK HISTORY
SEDA Experts, LLC
Affiliate
2020-Current
PVA Toucan LLC
Managing director
2015-Current
U.C. Berkeley Center for Risk
Management Research
Affiliated graduate student
2012-Current
Berkeley Research Group
Managing director
2010-2014
LECG
Managing director
2009-2010
Wilmington Trust Conduit Services, LLC
President and CEO
2006-2009
Toucan Partners/PVA International, Inc.
CEO
1995-2006
Smith Barney Shearson
Trading manager and Arbitrage trader
1993-1995
Berkeley Investment Technologies, Inc.
/Drexel Burnham Lambert
Co-Founder and EVP, BIT Director of
Business Development
1990–1993
EVP, Nameloc
1989–1990
Head of Taxable Fixed Income Research, DBL
1990
Principal and senior scientist, BIT
1986–1989
BARRA
Senior quantitative analyst
1984-1986
California State University Hayward
Lecturer/assistant professor
1982-1984
University of California, Berkeley
Teaching assistant
1980-1981
NASA
Junior research fellow, Computation Fluid
Dynamics Division
1980-1981
Data Dynamics
Senior mathematician
1978–1980
Financial Services
Trading and Investments,
Risk Management,
Operations,
FinTech and Project Management,
Quantitative Analysis,
Custody, Trust, and Fund Administration,
Repo and Securities Lending, SEDA consulting, SEDA financial group, Financial services testifying expert, Financial Industry Experts, Testifying Experts Support, financial expert witness, Dispute Resolution
Contact
Peter U. Vinella, Ph.D.
1185 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
+1 646-626-4555