Janet Tavakoli

Janet Tavakoli is the author of Dear Mr. Buffett: What An Investor Learns 1,269 Miles from Wall Street—to be released January 2009. She is also the author of the global bestsellers in their respective fields: global bestsellers in their respective fields: Structured Finance & Collateralized Debt Obligations, John Wiley & Sons 2003, 2008, and Credit Derivatives & Synthetic Structures, John Wiley & Sons, 1998, 2001.

She is the founder and president of Tavakoli Structured Finance, Inc. (TSF), a Chicago based consulting firm providing structured finance consulting services to major financial institutions. She was years ahead of the financial industry predicting the mortgage meltdown and the global credit bubble. She also predicted the collapse of the thrift industry, Long Term Capital Management, and First Alliance Mortgage prompting Business Week to profile her as "The Cassandra of Credit Derivatives." [2008].

Ms. Tavakoli's frequent television appearances include CNN, CNBC, BNN, CBS Evening News, Bloomberg TV and First Business Morning News. She is frequently quoted in major financial publications including the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, and more.

Tavakoli is a former adjunct associate professor of finance at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business where she taught “Derivatives: Futures, Forwards, Options and Swaps.”

Tavakoli has 18 years of experience in structured finance in trading, structuring, and marketing derivatives and structured products at major financial institutions in New York and London. She is the former Executive Director, Head of Financial Engineering in the Global Financial Markets Division at Westdeutsche Landesbank in London. She headed market risk management for the capital markets group for Bank One in Chicago. Tavakoli headed the asset swap trading desk at Merrill lynch in New York, headed mortgage backed securities marketing for Merrill Lynch in New York, and headed mortgage backed securities marketing to Japanese clients for PaineWebber in New York.

She has appeared as an expert before forums of the International Monetary Fund, Federal Reserve Bank, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A Chicago native, Ms. Tavakoli graduated with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and received her M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Chicago.