Bob Kopprasch, Ph.D., CFA

Bob Kopprasch, Ph.D., is a Florida-based Bates Group Expert with 44 years of financial services industry experience, including sell-side (research), buy-side (research and portfolio management), and fixed income analytics. Dr. Kopprasch recently retired as a Managing Director at the fixed income portfolio management and analytics platform The Yield Book Inc., a division of Citigroup, where he worked on a variety of projects related to analytics, indices, training, modeling, and model validation.

Dr. Kopprasch began his finance career in 1973 as an Assistant Professor in the business school at American University in Washington D.C., where he taught graduate and undergraduate courses in investments, capital markets, and financial decision making. After receiving tenure, Bob took leave to work at Salomon Brothers, where he ran the Hedge Group, providing hedging solutions to clients and the trading floor. This group also did most of the valuation and education for new security types, which at the time included zero coupon bonds, options on fixed income securities, interest rate swaps. While Dr. Kopprasch never returned to American University, he continued teaching bond mathematics (including option and futures pricing) to all new Salomon trainees.

In 1987, Dr. Kopprasch became head of Goldman Sachs’ fixed income research group. While there, he and several colleagues wrote the first article on adapting Fisher Black’s portfolio insurance approach to the fixed income market. Dr. Kopprasch later left Goldman to join Hyperion Capital. While leading research at the firm, Dr. Kopprasch also became a portfolio manager, running Hyperion’s institutional fixed income accounts, primarily investing in MBS. The firm also did significant consulting to FSLIC, and Dr. Kopprasch was responsible for approving all hedging trades as several multi-billion dollar thrifts were being liquidated. In 1992, the entire team moved to Alliance Capital, Dr. Kopprasch became co-head of fixed income research at Alliance Capital (now Alliance Bernstein) and President of its derivatives subsidiary. In 1995, he joined Smith Barney Capital Management as head of its institutional fixed income unit. In this role, he once again was managing MBS hands-on, and continued in this capacity when Smith Barney merged with Salomon, and then with Citi. In 2002 Dr. Kopprasch moved within Citi to The Yield Book, rejoining many of his former colleagues from Salomon Brothers. As head of Customer Service for Yield Book, Dr. Kopprasch wrote extensively on fixed income analytics, indexing, and portfolio management, and once again taught bond math to customers and new Citi associates in the training program. He was also responsible for Yield Book’s model validation program, required by the Fed.

Dr. Kopprasch has served on the Editorial Board of the Financial Analysts Journal from 1994 - 2009, as well as the Advisory Board of the Research Foundation of AIMR. Other work for the CFA Institute (formerly AIMR) included working on the fixed income specialization committee and the Level III fixed income curriculum committee. He is currently an Associate Editor of the Journal of Investment Management.