A young David Cooney was hoping to become a fighter pilot, racing car driver or an All Black. Although he remains adamant that he still has the ability to do all of these even to this day, he thought it best to begin his career as an interbank spot foreign exchange broker in his native New Zealand. After landing a role as a currency options trader, David moved to London, where he worked for Chase Manhattan and later, Credit Suisse. This was followed by roles at Dresdner Bank in Singapore, where he took charge of the currency options operations for Asia before moving back to London as Dresdner’s Global Co-head of Currency Options. From there David co-headed the global Options desk at Barclays Capital where he was instrumental in developing the award winning BARX platform. As well as running MahiMarkets he can be found indulging his passion for aviation and regularly dashing out of meetings to point at helicopters and shout about them.

Being stubborn, bossy, creative and controlling are all the traits of a leader, Susan firmly assures us. Her career started in e-FX at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, where she was responsible for selling one of the first online eFX trading platforms ‘Piranha’ throughout Europe. This was followed by a move to Barclays Capital where she was given responsibility for European Institutional e-FX clients and later for recruiting and heading a new team of sales professionals to build out Barclay’s e-FX trading platform, BARX, globally. When not working at MahiMarkets she is often found in the gym practising martial arts. We fully recommend paying the bills on time.

Being stubborn, bossy, creative and controlling are all the traits of a leader, Susan firmly assures us. Her career started in e-FX at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, where she was responsible for selling one of the first online eFX trading platforms ‘Piranha’ throughout Europe. This was followed by a move to Barclays Capital where she was given responsibility for European Institutional e-FX clients and later for recruiting and heading a new team of sales professionals to build out Barclay’s e-FX trading platform, BARX, globally. When not working at MahiMarkets she is often found in the gym practising martial arts. We fully recommend paying the bills on time.

James is a Burrito-hunting, turntable-spinning DJ and undercover geek. Since acquiring his first computer at the tender age of five, he has rarely been seen without some sort of gadget at his fingertips. After completing a degree in Computing at Imperial College London he ventured to the University of Manchester to seek a change of student life, and to complete a masters in Advanced Computer Science. His technology career spans 17 years taking in a diverse range of industries ranging from vehicle telematics to call centre administration systems, however the last 11 years have been focused on the unique challenges of electronic trading. James was part of the team behind Lehman Brothers’ award-winning FXLive platform. Post the infamous collapse he moved to the trading floor to join the team developing the hedging/pricing/analytics technology behind Barclays Capital’s BARX platform (one of the top-three FX single-dealer platforms). When he’s not working to improve the Mahi’s products (which is rare) he can sometimes be found DJing in one of the many clubs/bars around London.

Joining our ever-growing Mahi sub-group of rugby players, Will has assumed his position on the Analytics team. Originally from Wales, he first ventured to Manchester to study Physics, and was taught by none other than Professor Brian Cox, as well as a number of Nobel Prize winners, during his degree. Despite undergoing 24 operations on his leg following a serious injury at the age of 18, Will still went on to become the captain of the university rugby club for two years, and won an award from the university - so he’s well practised in both rugby and necking pints. After graduating, Will moved down south and we promptly snapped him up. Although a fluent Welsh-speaker, he’s still an avid supporter of the England rugby team – helping us to ensure that we really outnumber David in the London office.

Known as the Wakatipu Whizzkid, Liam joined MahiMarkets as our intern in 2016, building out our automated acceptance suite as part of the QA team. After graduating with a dual bachelor degree in physics and computer science he joined the development team as a full time developer at the start of 2018. He is also an up and coming member of the Mahi Harriers, having recently knocked of his first half-marathon in his home town of Queenstown. You will often find him zipping round the city on a lime scooter, sometimes riding two at the same time when he’s moonlighting as a Lime Juicer. His current high score is 29.4 kph down city mall while screaming at pedestrians to get out of his way.

Lee is our resident petrol head and heads up the Christchurch development team. Some say he was raised by sheep, and can only turn left. All we know is he’s the Stig’s Kiwi cousin. He provides critical technical support to his less tech-savvy colleagues, and his two key mantras are ‘have you tried turning it on and off again’ and ‘try Google’. As a founding member of the Mahi Harriers he is a keen runner and currently holds the MahiMarkets Half Marathon record. He has over 15 years of software development experience since graduating from Canterbury University with an honours degree in Computer Science. He has worked in a wide range of industries, most recently in financial services and online advertising. He returned home to Christchurch in 2010 having lived and worked in Australia for eight years.

Nicole - or “Sparkles” as she is more commonly known in the office due to her love of all things that glitter - is Manager of the MahiMarkets legal, compliance and finance teams. When she isn’t dragging her colleagues for PB runs round Hagley Park or leading boot camps in the boardroom she plays Mum to two little girls at home (as well as to the boys in the office at work). Nicole has a double degree in law and accounting, is a qualified barrister and solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand and a Chartered Accountant. Nicole began her career in the corporate tax team at Ernst & Young in New Zealand before moving to London for five years and working for JPMorgan Chase and AXA Corporate Solutions in their tax, compliance and finance teams. Upon her return to New Zealand, Nicole spent a little more time with Ernst & Young again, before moving to Infiniti Capital Markets, embarking on motherhood, and finally joining the Mahi team in Christchurch.

Bonnie has been around, so to speak. During her career, she has worked in Swiss, German, and British banks, as well as a brief stint at the Queen’s stockbrokers. She eventually decided it was time for a bit of antipodean action and wound up here at Mahi. Recruited into the infamous Barbie’s Army, Bonnie has an unrivaled collection of anecdotes from her experiences abroad, including the time she went to Lithuania without checking the weather forecast and promptly arrived in a pair of stilettos. On meeting the client for the first time, she immediately took a tumble in the snow taking him down with her – suppose that’s one way of, quite literally, breaking the ice. Bonnie also moonlights as a professional shopper, blessed with an incredible ability to navigate most malls blindfolded (if such a situation should arise). She is uber-organised, and loves nothing more than a bit of good old-fashioned order; demonstrated by her colour-coordinated wardrobe, and that warning look when our desks begin to look a little messy.

It took her a while to find us, but after graduating from Loughborough University with a degree in Politics & Economics and a stint behind an equities desk, Nicola eventually saw the light. Joining Team Mahi and embracing all things fun. Nicola is a pretty diverse girl, and is certainly no one-trick pony. Her uni days saw her take up a keen interest in flying as a member of the University Air Squadron… that is, until she realised she hated flying. Nowadays, Nicola tends to keep her feet on the ground - usually behind the decks at a fancy London club or bar. This budding little entrepreneur started off moonlighting as a party planner but was repeatedly disappointed by the number of DJs who failed to impress. Nipping the problem in the bud, she combined her love for parties and music with her dislike of other DJs and became one half of a DJ-ing duo. Adding to our growing list of resident Mahi DJs, Nicola ensures that our clients are left wanting for nothing.

Justin is our Head of UI/UX. If you’re not sure which one he is, he’s the one quietly but feverishly tapping away on his computer, probably doing something the rest of us will never, ever fully comprehend but will nod our heads enthusiastically at anyway. He also lives in Italy, a move that was largely led by a love of pizza, so that’s probably a better way to locate him. 12 year old Justin always wanted to have David Hasselhoff’s job driving KITT from Nightrider. However, after teaching himself to code, he switched to AI and tells us that this has become his KITT… just with a lot less crime fighting than originally planned. Following a very brief attempt at being a paparazzo (AKA taking a stealthy selfie with Rihanna in the background without realising his flash was on, resulting in being forced to delete the picture by her security personnel), Justin decided street photography was more his thing, and much less likely to land him in trouble with a giant bodyguard. So, when he’s not on his neverending mission to further improve the Mahi product suite, Justin can be found getting snap happy in the streets of Florence, working out in the gym, or having some deep and meaningful conversations with his dog.

As a former maths teacher, Maten knew it was time to move on to greener pastures when he lost a game of chess to a 14 year old in under one minute. Good job too, because the education system’s loss is our massive gain with this pizza-loving computer whiz! When he’s not developing up a storm at MahiMarkets, Maten’s burning off some steam on the football pitch, basketball court, or in the yoga studio… although upon further investigation, we’re not sure how involved he is in the latter after confessing his favourite yoga position is ‘resting’ position. Perhaps the most telling facts about Maten though, are that he’s a self-confessed ‘annoyingly competitive’ person who’s also survived a year of teaching whilst fasting. So, we’re fairly confident he’ll survive our wacky offsite games, rigorous banter, and random work-related requests. We’ll try and refrain from spontaneously quick-firing maths questions at him too, but can’t make any promises on that.

Thanks to a great CV and the promise of plenty of baked goods for the office, we’re proud to introduce one of our Trading Analysts, Kate. We’re also pleased to report she’s delivered on both aspects and is consistently well ahead of schedule: analysing up a storm and providing us with a regular stream of delicious cookies we’re now all slightly addicted to. While studying Maths at the University of Bath, Kate set her hopes on joining the university hockey club to demonstrate her prowess on the astro turf. Sadly, things took a turn and she soon realised she was destined to become part of the team’s social contingency, involving a lot of drinking and fancy dress (including one legendary Oompah Loompah costume). In our humble opinion, this doesn’t sound like a bad trade and it was clearly the perfect precursor to joining Mahi. An explorer at heart, Kate took a gap year to scratch her travelling itch. While hitting up South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand (obviously we don’t even need to ask which country was her favourite… right Kate? Right!?) Kate discovered her love of adrenaline sports and after throwing herself out of a plane a few times she caught the adrenaline junkie bug. Sadly, we’re not sure she’ll encounter much bungee jumping or scuba diving in her analyst role but on the plus side, we’ve got some excellent ideas for our next offsite!