Risk Advisors Inc. is a New York City based consultancy that specializes in valuing illiquid hard-to-value securities for hedge funds and financial institutions, enabling these firms to mark-to-market their portfolios accurately in changing and volatile market environments.

Our expertise is in hard-to-value securities such as credit derivatives (including CDOs and other structured products), high yield bonds, interest rate derivatives, and illiquid equity investments.

We assess the economic value of these hard-to-value securities by integrating liquidity measures with comparable transaction analysis and financial engineering techniques. We assist firms in estimating the differences between the economic value and the accounting “fair value” of securities in keeping with US GAAP and FASB standards such as FAS 157.

A multidisciplinary approach

Our approach to valuation combines our expertise in risk management for trading desks, financial engineering for complex securities, and securities accounting.

We apply a combination of techniques from these disciplines to create value assessments that better reflect market realities than simply marking-to-model.

We simplify valuation through our services that allow our clients to better monitor risk and quantify their exposure to illiquid securities.

Team

Our consultants are experts in their fields with experience at top tier sell-side and buy-side firms as:

• Risk managers
• Derivative strategists
• Equity analysts
• Securities accountants
• Financial engineers and technologists

Leadership

Sanjay Bharwani

Sanjay Bharwani is the Founder of Risk Advisors Inc. Sanjay has a deep background working on capital markets and valuation issues for buy side and sell side firms.

Prior to this, he was the Chief Information Officer and member of the management team at M. Safra & Co., a multi-strategy hedge fund focused on global macro and systematic trading strategies. At M. Safra, Sanjay was responsible for developing a risk management and technology framework for the fund’s cross-asset portfolio.

Earlier in his career, he served as Practice Manager at Exis Consulting, a boutique capital markets consultancy for emerging markets debt trading, where he worked with US and European financial institutions trading Eastern European, Russian, and Latin American sovereign debt. Sanjay has also worked at Reval, a risk solutions provider and led their effort to develop derivative accounting systems for trading desks.

Sanjay received his MBA in from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he dual majored in Finance and Management. At a young age, Sanjay developed a keen interest in technology and its application to financial markets and developed quantitative trading models and systems for brokerage firms while obtaining his Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Mumbai