Intervenant

Richard SANDOR

Chairman and chief executive officer - Environmental Financial Products LLC

Richard L. Sandor is chairman and chief executive officer of Environmental Financial Products LLC, which specializes in inventing, designing, and developing new financial markets. EFP was established in 1998 and was the predecessor company and incubator to the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), the European Climate Exchange (ECX) and the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFE).He is also the author of “Good Derivatives: A Story of Financial and Environmental Innovation”. The book is in its second printing and was also published in Chinese by People’s Oriental Press. He is also the lead author of  “Environment Markets: A New Asset Class”, published by the Research Foundation of the CFA Institute. An expanded version of this book will be published in early 2015 by World Scientific Publishing.

A financial innovator known as the “father of financial futures,” he has been at the epicenter of environmental and financial markets for more than four decades. He founded what became the Climate Exchange family of companies including: the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), the world’s first and North America’s only voluntary, legally binding greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system; the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFE), the world’s leading futures exchange for environmental products; and the European Climate Exchange (ECX), Europe’s leading exchange operating in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme. Additional global affiliates included the Tianjin Climate Exchange in China, the Montreal Climate Exchange in Canada and Envex in Australia.In August 2002 TIME Magazine chose Sandor as one of its “Heroes for the Planet” for his work as the founder of the CCX. In October 2007 Dr. Sandor was honored as one of TIME Magazine’s “Heroes of the Environment” for his work as the “Father of Carbon Trading,” and in October 2012 he was presented with the World Federation of Exchanges Award for Excellence. In October 2013, Dr. Sandor was named Chevalier dans l´ordre de la Légion d´Honneur (Knight in the French National Order of the Legion of Honor), the highest decoration granted by the French government, for his accomplishments in the field of environmental finance and carbon trading.

Sandor is a Lecturer in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School and a Visiting Fellow with the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford. He also served as Distinguished Professor of Environmental Finance at Peking University and is a member of the TERI School of Management Advisory Committee in India. Sandor previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University, Columbia University Graduate School of Business and at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

While on sabbatical from Berkeley in the early 1970s he served as vice president and chief economist of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). It was at that time he earned the reputation as the principal architect of the interest-rate futures market. Sandor was honored by the City of Chicago in 1992 for his contribution to the creation of financial futures and his universal recognition as the « father of financial futures.”

In November 2004, Dr. Sandor was the recipient of an honorary degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) of Zurich, Switzerland for his pioneering work in the design and implementation of innovative and flexible market-based mechanisms to address environmental concerns. In May 2005, Dr. Sandor was named by Treasury and Risk magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential People in Finance.” He is also the recipient of the 2008 Financial Management Association’s Outstanding Financial Executive Award, the Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 Award in the “green” category, and was honored by the Environmental Markets Association  begin_of_the_skype_highlightingend_of_the_skype_highlightingwith its 2010 John H. Dales Memorial Leadership in Environmental Markets Award.

From 1991 to 1994, Sandor was chairman of the CBOT Clean Air Committee, which developed the first spot and futures markets for sulfur dioxide emission allowances and supervised the annual allowance auctions conducted on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He also served as vice chairman of the CBOT Insurance Committee and was the originator and co-author of the catastrophe and crop insurance futures and options contracts.

Prior to the creation of the Chicago Climate Exchange, Sandor was a senior financial markets executive with Kidder Peabody, Banque Indosuez and Drexel Burnham Lambert. Sandor is currently a board member of the  Clean Energy Trust, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and an advisory board member for the Center for Financial Stability.

Sandor received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the City University of New York, Brooklyn College, and earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota in 1967. He is involved in numerous civic and charitable activities. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a major benefactor of the Art Institute of Chicago.