Interview  |  APR 1998

Asoka Selvarajah Of Rabobank International by Thom Hartle

Asoka Selvarajah Of Rabobank International by Thom Hartle According to Asoka Selvarajah, markets do make sense ultimately, but not in a way that most people imagine. To understand the markets, according to Selvarajah, requires a dash of Pythagorean theory, a smidgen of Newtonian physics, and even some chaos. Selvarajah, who works for Rabobank International, one of the largest banks in the world and one of the few European banks with a triple-A rating, was interviewed by Stocks & Commodities Editor Thom Hartle via E-mail over a period of several weeks in January 1998, discussing systematic trading and development as well as trading overseas markets. Q: We like to start with some personal history. What’s your background? A: I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physics and a doctorate in nuclear physics from Birmingham University in England. A fair part of my doctoral years were spent doing research at CERN, the particle physics institution in Geneva, Switzerland. Actually, the Internet was invented at CERN, and I guess I must have been one of the first to write his entire doctoral thesis as an Internet document, back in 1986!

by Thom Hartle