John D’Agostino

Managing Director

DMS Governance Ltd.

John D’Agostino

Professional Profile

John D’Agostino is a recognized leader in Fund and Corporate Governance, providing guidance and independent oversight to boards to ensure adherence to governance, regulatory and compliance requirements. His expertise is sophisticated private investment vehicles characterized by complex strategies and asset classes, notably derivatives, cryptocurrencies and structured products.

 

John’s experience includes Managing Director of Alkeon Capital, a New York investment advisor employing a long/short investment strategy. His responsibilities included fundamental investment research across industry sectors; global compliance and regulatory management; operations; risk management; and marketing.

 

Previously John worked with KPMG Consulting, where he was part of the firm’s global leadership for the Finance and Hedge Fund consulting groups. While at KPMG, he provided operational and strategic advisory services across a variety of industries, including: financial services, capital markets, derivatives risk and pricing, commodities (physical and derivatives, technology, ecommerce and retailers.

 

John began his career as Vice President and Head of Strategy with the New York Mercantile Exchange, where he helped transition the floor to electronic trading. He also led the effort to develop the first Middle East energy derivatives exchange, in partnership with the Dubai Government.

 

A cum laude graduate of Williams College, John received a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, and he also studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University. He has lectured at INSEAD University and MIT Sloan Business School, and has been featured in two New York Times bestselling business titles, multiple periodicals and participated in numerous industry speaking engagements.

 

Representative Expertise

  • Representing long-short equity funds investing in the technology, media and telecommunications sector
  • Advising funds on cross trade and valuation issues in hard to value Level 3 assets.
  • Representing various hedge funds investing in equity and equity linked securities, bonds and trade claims in emerging and frontier markets.
  • Representing various fund-of-hedge fund structures investing with and seeding sub-managers across investment strategies with assets over $10 billion.
  • Representing private equity funds on special committees to determine fairness in M&A and restructuring activity.
  • Representing high frequency trading funds employing quant driven trading strategies across multiple asset classes and markets.
  • Representing hedge fund structures investing primarily in fixed income relative value arbitrage and municipal security investment with assets over $4 billion.
  • Representing fund structures primarily investing in futures and options market making and relative value strategies with assets over $4 billion.
  • Representing multi-manager hedge funds investing in all strategies via a seed model with operational and portfolio risk oversight.
  • Representing hedge fund structures investing primarily in distressed credit and event-driven strategies and sponsored by prominent activist investor.
  • Advisory committee representation to investment funds in connection with affiliated transactions and other conflict matters.
  • Advising private funds in the design and maintenance of compliance programs.

 

Other Distinctions

Subject of the NY Times best selling business book “Rigged” by Ben Mezrich. Featured in Reid Hoffman’s best selling business book “The Start up of You.”

Profiled in numerous industry periodicals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D%27Agostino_(financial_services)

Published white papers in coordination with MIT Sloan business school on crowdfunding and crypto-currency.

 

Practice Areas

Hedge funds

Commodity Pools

Private Equity

Venture Capital Funds / Portfolio Companies

Crowdfunding/Blockchain/Crypo-currencies

Secondary Markets

Fund of Funds

Distressed investment funds

 

Prior Experience

Alkeon Capital Management

KPMG Consulting

New York Mercantile Exchange

 

Membership & Affiliations 

Guest Lecturer INsead University (prior)

Guest lecturer MIT Sloan Business School

 

Education & Qualifications

Harvard Business School (MBA)

Williams College (BA)

Oxford University