Speakers

Mr Lay is currently senior managing director of The Rock Creek Group, an asset management firm based in Washington, D.C., that manages globally diversified portfolios of public and private assets for major institutional investors. In addition to his responsibilities in the firm, Mr Lay works with international institutions, private foundations and NGOs seeking to develop new approaches to increasing the scale and reducing the cost of financing for humanitarian, environmental and other global priorities. As treasurer of The World Bank, Mr Lay and his colleagues managed more than $100 billion in investments for the Bank and other international financial institutions and for more than 40 of the World Bank’s member countries’ central banks, sovereign wealth and pension funds. He also led the World Bank Treasury’s banking and capital markets programmes as they delivered financing and risk management for the World Bank itself and introduced green bonds and catastrophe bonds to deepen the institution’s engagement in mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. At other stages in his World Bank career, Mr Lay served as a country director in Latin America and Southeastern Europe. In an earlier stint in the World Bank Treasury, he conceived and led the issuance of the first “global bond,” which has become a principal vehicle for sovereign and supranational financing in international markets. Before joining the World Bank, Mr Lay was an enforcement lawyer with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where he headed the branch of corporation finance enforcement. Mr Lay holds a BA from Dartmouth College, a JD from the George Washington University, the CFA designation and active membership in the State Bar of California. Since 1992, he has supervised his family’s ranch in Converse County, Wyoming.