top of page
Vinellahighres_edited_edited_edited.png

Peter U. Vinella, Ph.D.

Managing Director,
Advisor to the Board

EXPERTISE

  • Trading and Investments

  • Risk Management

  • Operations

  • FinTech and Project Management

  • Quantitative Analysis

  • Custody, Trust, and Fund Administration

  • Repo and Securities Lending

Peter Vinella | Financial Services | SEDA Experts 

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.

EDUCATION

University of California, Berkeley

Ph.D. Graduate   
Department of Mathematics
 

University of California, Berkeley

M.A. Mathematics

A.B. Applied Mathematics

 

EMPLOYMENT 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

 

OTHER

Professional Membership

American Mathematical Society
Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics

International Association of Quantitative Finance

Securities Industry and Financial Markets

Association (past)

European Securitization Forum (past)

Loan Syndication and Trading Association (past)

International Swaps and Derivatives Association (member of the FpML Loan Agent Bank Communication Working Group) (past)

bottom of page