Charlie Berman

Charlie Berman has been in the international capital markets since the 1980s holding leadership roles at Salomon Brothers, Citigroup and most recently Barclays. In 2018 he co founded Agora to bring new technologies to the antiquated bond market processes that have not materially changed in the past 30 years and require repetitive manual inputting and reconciliation. Focussed on both workflow processes and the digitalisation of bonds themselves Agora seeks to assist issuers, bankers and all downstream service providers in gaining efficiency and releasing people to concentrate on business rather than process. The work will also lead to the evolution of SmartBonds which will perform many of their own functions which today require manual intervention. Agora raised its first seed capital in Q4 2019 and is currently developing software and engaged in advanced discussions and implementation planning with a broad group of market stakeholders and expects to see its software start being utilised in 2020.