About Murano.

My great, great grandparents were Norwegian immigrants from Rollag, Norway. My grandparents left South Dakota for New Mexico after WWII. As a young veterinarian, the only job my grandfather could find was working as an agricultural veterinarian in rural New Mexico. He took his wife in a Model-T with $25 dollars to get there. He lost his wallet in Oklahoma and had to ask his dad for a loan to make the trip. 25 years later, he made good after lots of hard work. He was honest, friendly, and ultimately successful. He is my role model. I was able to rise through the ranks fairly quickly, having started in 1996 as a Runner for Dean Witter on the bond floor of the CBOT to working on the Systematic Desk at Carr Futures (now NewEdge). At that point, I decided to do my MBA at HEC Paris in 1999. Unfortunately, every time I do a degree there is a recession or something bad going on and December 2001 was no exception. Fortunately, I was able to find a fund management position at Societe Generale managing credit and credit derivatives. After about 3 years, Nordea was looking to enter into hedge funds and I was hired as one of the key people to start the platform in Luxembourg; later I was managing the platform. 2008 changed the lives of many people, including mine. At the time I was looking to launch an Event Driven Long Volatility fund and was stopped dead in my tracks by the crisis. Hindsight being 20/20, it was probably the best thing that happened to me. At the time, the world really didn’t need Ole Rollag as a fund manager. However, there was a need for management consulting in asset management. As a consequence, I set up Perfecta Partners. I was very nervous about setting up Perfecta Partners in 2009 after having worked for big banks for nearly all of my career. But with a lot of work, it became profitable fairly quickly. Murano was a concept that was so unique, we spun it out of Perfecta in 2011. Working in a small business is intimidating. It feels like the training wheels are off! However, I am amazed how supportive everyone is. What I love about this industry is how nearly all of it is small business, even working with the largest companies in the industry we find that there is an enterprising mentality and lots of mutual support and sympathy. Not only that, but I am privileged to work with some very smart, capable and enterprising colleagues that share in the excitement of seeing something grow… from nothing.

Joining Murano at its inception in 2011, I have worked across both the research and business development arms of the firm. It is nostalgic to think back to the early days of the company, where just four of us were crammed into a tiny office, working to create and build something a bit different, and something that would be useful and valuable for our first handful of clients. We have come a long way as a firm, having now worked with a few hundred different asset managers globally, spanning all asset classes, as well as having spoken with many thousands of institutional investors, and counting. Over the years we have worked hard to constantly make enhancements and improvements to our service offering, while maintaining the same simple yet unique model that fills a gap that we saw in the market. Murano has grown, but we will never be a huge firm, so the value each employee can bring is immeasurable. Our ethos has always been rooted in empathy with both the investor and the fund manager, we need to be helpful to both for this to work. My focus at Murano has been to grow our client base sustainably and we take pride in the calibre of our clients. We have always sought to build long term relationships and it never fails to amaze me how small this industry can be sometimes. As the core business has matured, it is these relationships and the many lessons we have learned through years of speaking with the industry on such a large scale, while watching funds succeed and others fail, that led us to launch Murano Consulting.

I joined Murano in 2023, having spent the early years of my career at RAB Capital, Hermes Fund Managers and Bridgepoint, before relocating to Australia where a long-standing passion for health and wellness alongside a desire to create and build something from the ground up took me down an entrepreneurial path. Having built up and achieved an exit for my start-up, I am delighted to be back in London and to be part of the team at Murano, where I oversee strategic initiatives from development through to execution, and identify opportunities to improve the business and the service we provide to our clients.

“Education got me out of poverty and that is why we sent you to that school!”, is how my grandfather, a WWII veteran from the highlands of Scotland, scolded me when I complained about boarding school. I was 7 years old when I got a scholarship to a boarding school nearby and that is where I grew up. It was an upbringing which is thought of as archaic nowadays but what it taught me was self-reliance and independence. At 18 years’ old I signed up to teach English in Japan for a year being paid just food and board and the experience of working in rural Japan. I learnt conversational Japanese and this prompted me to change my undergraduate degree to East Asian Studies, a course with which I spent a year studying in Nanjing, China, where I then learnt conversational Mandarin. I completed my studies with a masters’ in Management and Finance and knew I wanted to be in the most fast-paced, international industry available. In 2008 I joined Macquarie Securities in London to broke Japanese equities but when the collapse of Lehman Brothers’ changed the industry I was offered a contract in the Singapore office to muck in as the equity department’s coffee boy. I was the MD’s dogsbody, preparing presentations about the Singapore business, sitting with the sales traders, taking notes for the brokers and doing all the work no-one else wanted to do on the equity sales desk. It was an experience I would not have gained in a permanent role. Finally, I moved into Macquarie’s research department to crunch numbers for the regional economist and equity analysts and this is where I got my first taste of analysis and writing reports. I subsequently secured a position in Aberdeen Asset Management’s Singapore office where I was a generalist analyst on the pan-Asian equity research desk. I spent the majority of my time researching public companies across ASEAN and Japan and ended up co-managing the Indonesia country funds and finally the Asia-Including Japan regional funds. I had always wanted run my own business so I left Aberdeen to do so and set up a company in Singapore in which we analysed clients’ businesses, their target markets and helped clients to raise capital by originating mezzanine financing. After 3 good years we decided to close our doors after a sudden change in regulations. It was the most difficult decision I have ever had to make but it was the right one. After more than 10 years in fund management and asset raising in Singapore I decided I would move back to the U.K. if I could find the right role. As Head of Research at Murano I work with a talented team in a business which is going from strength to strength, work with clients who are industry veterans and utilise all my career experience to date.

I believe that every moment counts, and every single person matters and can make a difference. My parents escaped communism in Eastern Europe and while I spent the majority of my early life growing up in the deep South, culturally I was raised Italian. Nowadays, having worked in this city for many years, I am proud to consider myself a true New Yorker. Diversity is in my blood. Somehow I missed the computer science/engineer gene that most of my family possess, but I was always a good problem solver, and have always enjoyed meeting new people. While I was in an asset raising role at an FX focused CTA, I spoke to lots of different investors and tried a multitude of different routes and methods to identify and connect with new contacts. When I became a Murano client and started using the service, I suddenly became aware that there was a better way. I joined Murano in 2018 to focus on building out our US manager base. This role allows me to follow my passion in connecting the right people with the right product. I am fortunate enough to hear first hand from a huge variety of different managers, what makes them tick, and what makes them unique. I am humbled to be a part of the Murano team and contribute to our exponential growth.

My first job was at my parent’s store. I was the small child (found at so many small businesses) that split time between playing in the back and helping customers. It was there that I learned the basics of customer service - how to smile, how to thank, and (most importantly) how to build connections with people I only met for a fleeting moment. I found myself continually attracted to situations where I could foster those connections. Eventually, this led me to the world of private aviation. It was there that I truly had the opportunity to hone my skills. I was tasked with managing relationships with CEOs, Board Members, and UHNWI. I spent over 10 years within that realm, growing to lead sales and customer success teams across the aviation services spectrum.
When I joined Murano in 2024 I had two goals in mind. First, I wanted to get back to my roots and focus solely on building client relationships. Second, I wanted an opportunity to learn a new industry and help new people. In Murano, I found a company who place matchmaking and relationship building at the very core of their service, giving me an opportunity to step into the world of asset management whilst still focusing on bringing the highest level of service to clients.

My background is shaped by a family history of resilience and diversity. My mother’s journey began as she escaped a war-torn Iraq, while my father’s upbringing took him from Hong Kong to Germany to Scotland and eventually to England, as part of a family with deep roots in the military. Reflecting on the unlikely chance that my brother and I were born, I’m inspired by the concept of connection and bridging gaps, values at the core of what we do at Murano. Since joining Murano in 2022, I’ve been proud to contribute to our mission in the asset management industry, helping investors and fund managers around the world connect and build meaningful partnerships. By upholding the highest standards within our research team, we ensure the right managers and investors meet at the right time, delivering valuable service and bridging inefficiencies between investor mandates and fund manager asset raising. My role covers a broad range of responsibilities, with a primary focus on leading a research desk, overseeing training for new analysts, and supporting various other functions like mentoring, client services, and onboarding new fund managers.