AMIR ALIZADEH is a Reader in Shipping Economics and Finance at Cass Business School, City University, London, UK. His research interest includes modelling commodity and shipping freight markets, derivatives and risk management, and forecasting. He has published in several academic journals in the area of transportation, risk management, finance and economics, and has been working as an advisor and a consultant.
 
NIKOS NOMIKOS is a Reader Lecturer in Shipping Risk Management and Director of the MSc degree in Shipping, Trade and Finance at Cass Business School, London, UK. He holds a BSc in Economics from Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece and an MSc in Shipping Trade & Finance from Cass Business School. After completing his PhD thesis, which examined the effectiveness of risk management techniques for hedging freight rate risk, he commenced working at the Baltic exchange as Senior Market Analyst, being in charge of the freight indices and risk management section. Since November 2001, he has been with the Faculty of Finance at Cass Business School, where he lectures on Finance, Financial Markets, Futures & Options and Financial Engineering. His current research interests include risk management and risk analysis in shipping, commodity and financial futures markets. His research papers have been published in international finance journals and have been presented in conferences world-wide. He also acts as a consultant on issues of risk management on a number of shipping and financial institutions.