Mesut Bilgin

About Mesut Bilgin

I am a seasoned financial markets professional with over 25 years of experience spanning derivatives trading, operational risk leadership, and cross-functional process design across major global hubs including London, New York, and Sydney. Recognized for a pragmatic, data-informed approach to decision-making, I’ve consistently created value by identifying system-level inefficiencies, building practical tools to enhance pricing accuracy and control, and guiding high-pressure teams through uncertainty with clarity and structure.Professional focal points include quantitative structuring, risk control architecture, trade support tooling, operational analytics, and cross-functional issue remediation. I deliver in these areas through rigorous root-cause thinking, spreadsheet and Python fluency, collaborative leadership, and a consistent drive for elegant, useful solutions.Currently, I am the Regional Head of Business Operations Risk for the Americas at Macquarie. I work closely with trading, compliance, and global risk partners to ensure emerging issues are managed with speed and integrity, while continuously improving the systems and narratives that support our firm’s risk culture.Colleagues describe me as calm under pressure, detail-oriented without losing the big picture, and effective across silos. I’m energized by fast, curious teams tackling complex challenges, particularly in environments where trading, data, and systems thinking intersect.I\'m open to connecting with former colleagues, market practitioners, and others working at the intersection of trading, risk, and infrastructure. Please feel free to reach out if you\'d like to connect.

Experience

1. Regional Head of Business Operations Risk, Americas

   Macquarie Group

   May 2023 — Present · Houston, TX, US

   Act as the senior risk representative for all operational risk events, risk reviews, and emerging issues, coordinating across trading desks and risk functions to ensure appropriate escalation, response, and follow-through.• Facilitate and improve the firm’s quarterly risk governance forums, aligning regional updates with global priorities and improving the structure and relevance of executive-level briefings.• Manage root cause review processes for control failures and high-severity incidents, working with stakeholders to define remediations, track implementation, and prevent recurrence.• Build and maintain strong internal relationships across trading, legal, compliance, and audit to drive strategic alignment on control uplift initiatives.• Collaborate with global leads to tailor firmwide operational risk initiatives to the Americas region, ensuring market-specific conditions are considered without compromising consistency.• Oversee readiness efforts for internal audits and regulatory exams, creating narratives and documentation that demonstrate a culture of risk ownership and continuous improvement.• Apply commercial and trading experience to bridge the gap between control design and trading desk execution, helping to translate policy into actionable processes.• Guide teams through periods of ambiguity or stress by providing structured analysis, clear prioritization, and pragmatic recommendations.• Developed or enhanced risk dashboards using Excel to visualize exposure trends and issue severity across desks.• Piloted integration of data quality indicators into operational risk metrics to detect systemic gaps in process or automation.KEY ACHIEVEMENTS:• Led a comprehensive redesign of the regional quarterly risk reporting structure to align executive metrics with real-time control themes.• Played a central role in strengthening cross-border consistency in control application across key business units.

Education

• University of Technology Sydney, Australia

  Bachelor of Science

Skills

• Trading Systems
• Natural Gas
• Derivatives
• Financial Markets
• Trading
• Options
• Commodity