Ulla Nilsson was founder and Global Head of SEB Futures, the FCM of Swedish bank Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, from 1993 to 2010, one of only a small number of women to have run FCMs. While based in London, the business included sales broking desks in Frankfurt and Helsinki.
In 2004, Nilsson pioneered the SEB Futures project to become the first remote clearing member of Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade from London. The move marked the firm’s first step in a strategy to create a global, central clearing operation with direct connection to all major derivatives exchanges from its derivatives center in London.
She was an industry representation to a number of exchanges including CME, CBOT, Eurex and NYSE Liffe.
Nilsson, who started out as an FX trader with Skanda Banken in her native Sweden, and spent time in Singapore as head of the bank’s trading and capital markets business, is now a firm anglophile, and Managing Director of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce, based in London.
