Lena Komileva was one of the very first economists to draw the link between a systemic regime change in global market dynamics, credit multipliers in real economies, recession risk and the central bank response in early 2007. After accurately calling the end of the Fed tightening cycle in response to subprime stresses in February 2007, months ahead of the consensus, she wrote about the “impending credit crunch” on 1 June 2007, as stress signals from US subprime securitisation sectors reached European bond market volatility gauges, accurately predicting the balance sheet risk transmission from debt to equity markets and the collapse of the FX carry trade over the weeks that followed.

By January 2008, her economic model showed 85% probability that the US was already in a recession – twelve months before the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) confirmed it. As “dislocated money markets” – a term that Lena coined in the summer of 2007 - defied central banks’ short term liquidity stabilisation measures – Lena’s article in FX Week in March 2008, arguing that the disconnect between elevated emerging market asset valuations and riskier developed market credit impulses was unsustainable, became a prophesy for the steady rise and dispersion of market volatility in the summer of 2008. This ultimately culminated with the collapse of Lehman and the nationalisation of US mortgage markets in 2008, and the start of a new era of central bank policy making that centred on balance sheet size, market liquidity risk premia and deflation tail risk probability management, over traditional rate and inflation targeting.

For the past decade, Lena’s early “lower for longer” calls on market rates, against repeated consensus calls for early tightening from the Fed, the ECB and the BoE in the years between 2009 and 2014, preceded the steady flattening of the US and European core government bond yield curves.

In recent years, Lena has repeatedly warned that the decoupling between the US business and financial cycle is harbouring distortions in US and global risk asset pricing, with significant consequences for the economic risk cycle. Her early calls on market policy mispricing and peak cycle dynamics over the course of 2017, and in particular her call that US 10yr yields are unjustifiably low in August 2017, have resonated strongly with the shift in the global policy tide over the past year and the return of market volatility in 2018.  

Today Lena advises top tier investment decision-makers on financial, macro-economic and policy developments across core G+ markets, as managing partner and chief economist at (g+)economics, a market research and economic intelligence consultancy based in London. With over two decades advising CEOs in banking, custodial, wealth management and legal and regulatory consulting services as head of market economics for the largest European government bonds broker in the world, Lena a regular voice at policy and industry forums, and an economic adviser, working with such institutions as the CFA Institute, the World Gold Council, McKinsey & Co., and the UK Parliament among others. Lena is a regular contributor for Bloomberg, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and the BBC, and a leading independent voice in the international policy debate on global growth themes focusing on market efficiency, international capital flows and monetary analysis.

With a wealth of experience advising top-tier institutional and policy clients, Lena has written extensively on US, UK and Euro area fundamentals combining financial, monetary and macro-economic analysis.

Her focus is on analysing the flow of funds between the financial industry - including the banking sector, private finance and public markets - and the real economy, and its impact on economic and financial stability and policy. Lena was among the very first to argue the global implications from the securitisation crisis in the summer of 2007, including the dislocation of money markets, next-to-zero G7 monetary policy rates, the Great Recession, the Eurozone crisis and the new role for public capital in the functioning of financial markets with the worrying side effects of long-term public debt sustainability and global financial inflation pressures. 

In addition to thematic strategy and economic analysis and forecasting, her product research focuses on foreign exchange, money markets and government debt, and the relationships with other asset classes such as volatility, credit, credit derivatives, equities, emerging markets and commodities.

Lena is a frequent contributor to Bloomberg, Reuters, Financial Times, the BBC, the WSJ among others. She is regularly invited to present at market industry forums and has contributed articles to Bloomberg Brief, the Financial Times, Reuters, FX Week and others. Her research has been extensively quoted in the international press and she gives regular TV and radio interviews.

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