Roberto Plaja, CFA

Before founding Orthos Advisory AG in 2013, Roberto spent the last three decades in the investment management industry, covering roles of responsibility in a number of global financial institutions.

A graduate from Cornell University (1976) and Harvard University (1979), Roberto worked in 1976-1977 at Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York as Corporate Finance Analyst; during this period, he was involved in various advisory, investment banking and mergers and acquisition deals for large corporate clients of the Firm.

In 1979, he joined Bankers Trust Company in New York where he held various roles in mergers and acquisitions, trade financing and private banking.

From 1984 to 1992 he worked at Continental Insurance Company Asset Management in New York, where his last position was Senior Vice President in charge of International Investments for all subsidiaries and affiliates of the Continental Insurance Company. At Continental, Roberto ran fixed income portfolios and monitored outside managers for equity mandates; he managed a team of 6 people in two offices (New York and London).

In 1992, he joined J.P. Morgan & Co. in New York, first as portfolio manager for the Private Clients Group, running fixed income portfolios. After a short stint in Proprietary Trading, Roberto headed Fixed Income in the Bank’s Paris office, and conjunctively served as member of the Senior Global Fixed Income Team. In 1998, he became the Head of the Duration Team in US Fixed Income, and a member of the Global Macro Strategy Team.

In 2000, Roberto moved to Milano, and joined SanPaolo IMI Asset Management as Head of Fixed Income, responsible for managing a 17-people team running mutual funds, private banking client portfolios and insurance funds. Roberto was also a member of the Senior Asset Allocation Strategy Team of the Firm.

From 2003 to 2005, Roberto was an independent financial consultant to institutions and high net-worth individuals. For most of 2004 he was also CIO of ETRA SIM, an independent asset management firm based in Milano, with responsibility for structuring and running the investment process of the Firm, as well as its asset allocation decision-making process.

Finally, in 2005 Roberto joined Goldman Sachs International in London as Head of the Portfolio Advisory Group in Private Wealth Management. In 2009, he moved to Zuerich and became an Investment Professional at Goldman Sachs Bank AG, from which he retired in 2013.