Christopher Cohen
Christopher Cohen is a seasoned capital markets professional with more than 20 years of experience focusing on strategies related to establishing, operating, and integrating businesses across fixed income.
In 2015, Cohen joined the Royal Bank of Canada. He is the chief operating officer for the bank’s global interest rates sales and trading group and serves as COO for Fixed Income Canada. Cohen is responsible for developing strategy to grow market share in the United States and Europe and to build on the bank's success in the Canadian fixed-income market. Cohen is a member of the bank’s Canadian Fixed Income Operating Committee and chairs the Global Interest Rates Operating Committee. In addition, he oversees the development of capital-relief strategies to maximize ROE through the restructuring of legacy loan and derivative portfolios. Lastly, he serves as senior relationship manager to two of the firm’s top 20 institutional clients.
Previously, Cohen was with Morgan Stanley. He joined the firm in 1995 and held a range of positions within its fixed income division and the corporate treasury group. He spent time in Japan and Korea building out the firm’s special situations group, which focused on the acquisition of Asian distressed loans and hired local talent to evaluate and analyze distressed opportunities. Cohen established Morgan Stanley's first bank in the United States, MS Bank N.A., which provided a more cost-efficient funding model for the firm’s senior lending and warehouse lending programs. Cohen later served as the COO for North America's interest rates product group, where he was responsible for sales and trading strategy as well as the restructuring of the division's business model to adapt to the current regulatory capital environment. As COO, he managed the division's North America liquid flow rates and structured rates businesses, had ownership for managing the division’s global balance sheet, managed the division’s overall expense base, and worked closely with key clients on notable transactions. He also was the point of contact for the global rates business with the SEC, FED, and CME.
During his tenure at Morgan Stanley, Cohen advised key real money and hedge fund clients on cross-asset trading strategies. He originated industry-leading quantitative concept seminars that bridged advanced topics in fixed-income trading and portfolio management with Morgan Stanley’s key clients. In his role in Treasury capital markets, Cohen oversaw and managed the firm’s $140 billion unsecured debt liquidity portfolio. During the 2008 credit crisis, he was actively involved in the $9 billion Mitsubishi UFJ capital raise and was a key member of the Morgan Stanley team that advised the U.S. Treasury on terms related to TARP and the FDIC on the structure of the TLGP program.
Cohen has a BA in economics from Fordham University. He has developed curricular materials that are used at Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business in the MS in Quantitative Finance and other graduate business programs. He has lectured in Gabelli School courses, and he established a speaker series to connect high-profile members of the financial services industry with the Gabelli School faculty and student body.
Cohen has served as a mentor for the Department of Defense Fellowship Program, from which he received the 2014 DoD Fellowship Medal. He is a member of American Corporate Partners that provides mentoring to veterans seeking opportunities within the financial services industry.