Patrick is a member of the Financial Planning Association of Illinois  and of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA). Both of these organizations advocate for investors by requiring that anyone that calls him or herself out as a financial planner is held to a fiduciary standard.

Fewer than 1% of Financial Advisors have both the CFA and CFP designations.  Patrick is a CFA® Charterholder. Only 1.7% of financial advisors are CFA® Charterholders.

* Earning the CFA® charter is a highly selective process. Fewer than one in five candidates become a CFA charterholder.

* It takes an average of 1,000+ hours of rigorous study and four years of professional experience to become a CFA® charterholder.

* All CFA charterholders are required to annually attest to their compliance with the CFA Institute.

Patrick is also a Certified Financial Planner (CFP). CFP professionals are required pass both a comprehensive CFP® Certification Examination and the CFP Board’s Candidate Fitness Standards (video) , and they must agree to abide by the CFP Board’s Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility (video) which puts clients’ interests first. CFP® certificants are required to complete sixteen hours of continuing education every year. 

To join NAPFA Patrick was required to submit a comprehensive financial plan for peer review. He is also required to complete sixty hours of continuing education in six subject areas every two years. Patrick completed more than seventy-five hours of continuing education in 2018 alone. A NAPFA-Registered Financial Advisor must sign and abide by the NAPFA Fiduciary Oath, a commitment to work solely in the client’s interest at all times.

BOARD OF ADVISORS

Ivan Leveille Nizerolle, CFA, FRM

Ivan has more than thirty years of investment experience. He began his career with Banque du Bâtiment et des Travaux Publics in the treasury department. In 1989, he moved to the Crédit Agricole Group as a derivatives products and interest rate trader on the French and German markets. He moved to Chicago in 1999, and was an analyst focusing on the arbitrage and multi-strategy managers based in North America, before becoming a senior portfolio manager and the managing director of Credit Agricole Asset Management Alternative Investments (CAAM AI), which, at the time, had $15 billion under management.

He is an expert in asset allocation and mutual funds due diligence. Ivan has the French equivalent of a masters degree from the University Paris-Dauphine in financial markets and business management. He also has a master's degree in economics from the University of Paris-Sorbonne and a masters in engineering from the Ecole Nationale des Travaux Publics (ESTP).

Caroline Attia

A former member of the French ski team (nine years), Caroline won a World Cup race in downhill skiing and participated in two Olympic Games. She was a trader for twenty-five years at Crédit Agricole and the Société Générale specializing in interest rates and electronic trading.

Her “high risk” experience in both skiing and trading taught her that, together, the decision-making process, psychology, ethics, and emotions are the keys to success . . . or failure. She is the author of Financiers sur le Divan, a book dedicated to psychology and financial decision-making. Today, Caroline is a therapist and a business consultant.

Caroline holds three degrees: economics, marketing, and psychology from the Universities of Paris-Dauphine, Assas, and Toulouse, respectively, and an MBA from HEC.

Gilles de Barbeyrac

Gilles has spent his whole career working in, and focusing on, credit risk and market risk functions. Gilles worked in the risk management department of Calyon Financial (a derivatives brokerage firm that merged with Fimat in 2008 to form Newedge) from 1999 to 2008 (during which time he passed the CFA exam—level 3); he became Calyon’s counterparty risk manager in 2006. In 2014,

Gilles joined Caceis, a depositary bank that is part of the Crédit Agricole group. Gilles is now the credit risk manager of RBC Investor Services BankFrance, a depositary bank that is part of the Royal Bank of Canada group.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from University Paris Dauphine and an MBA in finance from Loyola University in Chicago.

Laurent Barocas

Laurent is the co-founder of Trakx. He brings more than twenty years of experience in financial markets to the board, and has served on both the buy-side and sell-side of global institutions. Most recently, Laurent joined Bloomberg’s Portfolio Risk & Analytics product team, which focuses on the development and commercialization of Bloomberg’s portfolio capabilities.

Laurent started his career in Chicago as an interest rates specialist for the ABN AMRO fixed-income investment portfolio. He moved to London to hold senior portfolio specialist roles within the investment banking research departments at Citi, and then, Lehman Brothers. In 2008, Laurent became one of the directors of Barclays Capital Index Portfolio and Risk solutions team.

Laurent holds an MSc in computer sciences from Paris-Dauphine University and an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Fabienne Legger

Fabienne brings over twenty years of senior international expertise in the areas of strategy, operations, business infrastructure/transformation, compliance, and international business expansion. She started her career within the Euronext Group (formerly SBF—Bourse de Paris) where she led a number of leadership and consultancy roles in Europe, APAC, and the U.S. During this time, she spent two years in Chicago where she was part of the team which worked on the technology swap between Euronext and the CME (trading/clearing). Then she moved to Switzerland and expanded her know-how to the brokerage, banking, and insurance sectors. She worked for key global players such as Interactive Brokers, Credit Suisse, E*TRADE, SwissRe (or UBS), and held senior management positions such as head of regional business and/or operations. Since 2017, she is head of global services at Finastra for Southern Europe.

Fabienne holds a master's degree in business administration and management. She is passionate about “making business work” in profitable, sustainable, and socially responsible ways.

The board of advisors represents experts who are currently helping, or have helped, Patrick in building a better firm to better serve clients.

We can't predict the future but we can help you prepare for it.