John Brynjolfsson, CFA
Managing Director

Mr. Brynjolfsson John.Brynjolfsson@ArmoredWolf.com oversees all investment activity at Armored Wolf. He is an expert in the area of managing alternative real assets; and his experience includes commodities, global inflation-linked bonds, event-linked catastrophe bonds, asset allocation and risk management.

A popular and provocative communicator, Mr. Brynjolfsson is a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg TV and PBS’s Wealth Track; has been quoted in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and featured in Fortune; is a member of industry advisory committees; and has testified before the House Financial Services Committee as an expert on catastrophic risk transfer.

 Mr. Brynjolfsson is co-author of Inflation-Protection Bonds and co-editor of The Handbook of Inflation-Indexed Bonds. He has 19 years of investment experience and holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from Columbia College and a master’s degree in finance and economics from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

PROFESSIONAL HIGHLIGHTS:

During Mr. Brynjolfsson’s 19-year tenure at PIMCO, he launched and grew the Real Return platform from $0 to $80 billion in third-party assets, including launching and managing PIMCO’s second, third, and fourth largest public funds. He provided leadership for asset allocation, risk management and consulting functions.

Mohan Phansalkar, Esq.
Managing Director

Mr.  Phansalkar is responsible for all business, legal and compliance matters. Previously he was a Managing Director and Chief Legal Officer of PIMCO, where he oversaw in house and outside attorneys; ensured regulatory conformity and avoidance of legal problems; advised senior management; handled wide variety of other corporate legal issues; and supervised all aspects of the compliance department. Prior to that he was Associate General Counsel for Trust Company of the West, and an Associate at Sullivan & Cromwell where he successfully represented a diverse clientele in a vast array of corporate matters.

PROFESSIONAL HIGHLIGHTS:

• Managed all corporate legal affairs

• Supervised 11 in-house lawyers, 90 legal and compliance support staff, and hiring of outside counsel

• Oversaw SEC filings, state filings, and corporate regulatory compliance

• Counseled CIO, CEO and Executive Committee on legal and compliance matters

• Navigated extensive State and Federal regulatory and enforcement scrutiny for PIMCO

• Worked on structuring Trust Company of the West’s successful acquisition of Crescent Capital.

Tim Alford
Managing Director

Brian Newton
Managing Director

Mr. Newton  is responsible for risk management across the firm. He comes to Armored Wolf from Pareto Investment Management where he served for over 13 years. For nearly a decade he was Head of Risk Management and a member of the Counter party Credit and Legal Affairs Committees. He has also been Chief Compliance Officer since the requirement was established by the SEC.

Before joining Pareto, Mr. Newton served as a Director with BARRA where he managed their fixed income research prior to being their senior representative at BARRA’s joint venture in Tokyo. On returning to the US he led a team that developed the software infrastructure and analytics for fixed income portfolios and interest rate / swap books. He has more than 22 years experience in the financial services industry.

Mr. Newton is a summa cum laude graduate from Northern Arizona University with a BS in Mathematics and was enrolled in the Ph.D. program at U.C. Berkeley from 1979 through 1982. He completed the qualifying examinations in Industrial Organization and International Economics along with courses in econometrics.

PROFESSIONAL HIGHLIGHTS:

• Established a scalable risk management system that reduced errors and costs and received positive assessments from external auditors and, more recently, the internal audit department of the parent bank.
• Led a team that transformed the delivery of the currency risk management strategy from a spreadsheet implementation to a maintainable system of code and supporting databases which substantively reduced operational risk.
• Successfully led research and development of BARRA’S Japanese bond model along with the creation of a global bond model for valuation and risk analysis that was designed for institutional investors.

Melissa Carnathan
Managing Director

Ms. Carnathan is responsible for global business development and investor relations.  She joins Armored Wolf from Merrill Lynch where she was Head of Capital Introductions for EMEA.

Ms. Carnathan has spent the past seven years at Merrill Lynch and UBS providing strategic marketing advice and investor introductions to a wide variety of hedge funds clients across the globe. In these roles, she worked extensively with global investors in hedge funds and she and her teams served as an important link between the investor and hedge fund communities Ms. Carnathan started her career in fixed income and has 15 years experience in the financial services sector.

Ms. Carnathan received her MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, and holds a BA from the University of California at Berkeley.

PROFESSIONAL HIGHLIGHTS:

• Managing Director and Head of European Capital Introductions at Merrill Lynch International in London
• Co-Head of European Capital Introductions at UBS; responsible for developing the Capital Introductions offering and team from its infancy
• Director or Corporate Development at a venture-funded technology start-up; worked with venture capitalists and corporate investors
• Debt Capital Markets Origination; worked with European corporate, banks and sovereigns to achieve their borrowing requirements

Erik Carlson, Ph.D., CFA
Managing Director