Simon Lewis was appointed chief executive of AFME in October 2010 and is also chief executive officer of GFMA. Previously he was Director of Communications and the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman at 10 Downing Street. He has held a number of senior corporate roles, including Director of Corporate Affairs at Vodafone, Centrica, and NatWest. He was appointed as the first Communications Secretary to The Queen in 1998. He is a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, from which he has a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He also holds an M.A. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley as a Fulbright Scholar. He is a visiting professor at the Cardiff School of Journalism and is Chairman of the Fulbright Commission.

Peter Beales heads AFME's Policy division, with Compliance as his specialist area. His previous career included working for the Bank of England, 1977-1985; FCO (UKREP), 1985-1987; and the British Bankers Association, 1987-1992. He is currently a Member of the Financial Markets Law Committee, the Banking Act Banking Liaison Panel, and the Complinet Editorial Board.

Deborah Botwood Smith heads AFME's external relations activities. Previously she was global head of corporate communications at Investcorp, the transatlantic alternative asset manager in private equity, real estate investment and hedge funds. There she had responsibility for corporate public relations, issues management, corporate creative services and media relations activities for the firm as a whole and for its six business lines. Deborah was previously director of group corporate communications for the Coutts private banking group and, before that, Vice President, corporate relations for Visa's Europe, Middle East, Africa region. She has an MA in Law from the University of Cambridge. She is a Trustee and Member of the Finance and Fundraising Committees of Women & Children First, a UK charity addressing maternal and new born mortality and mortality and morbidity in poor communities in Bangladesh, India, Malawi and Nepal.

Gerry Cross is Head of AFME's Brussels Office and Managing Director for Advocacy. Gerry started his career as a lecturer in Law at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. For eight years he worked for the UK Financial Services Authority, latterly as Manager, Credit Risk Policy. He spent four years at the European Commission (2001-2005) where he worked in the Internal Market Directorate General on the implementation of Basel II in Europe. Prior to his work at the AFME, Mr. Cross worked as a deputy director in the Regulatory Affairs Department at the Institute of International Finance in Washington. Mr Cross is a barrister by training. He has a Law degree from University College Dublin and Master of Laws from Cambridge University.

James Kemp is the Managing Director of the Global FX Division at the GFMA (Global Financial Markets Association), having been hired to establish the Division in October 2010. The Global FX Division has since grown to 22 members, between them accounting for over 90% of the global FX market. The Division is now represented in Europe, N America and Asia and seeks to work with key regulators and Central Banks and other interested parties to monitor policy and regulatory developments that could affect the FX markets and to seek to put in place harmonized regimes and infrastructure to ensure an effective market for all participants. James also sits on the senior management team of AFME in London. Prior to this James was the founder and managing director of the financial markets technology company, Stentra, a market leader in FX e-trading, as well as commodities, fixed income and swaps. Six years after the company was established it was sold to ION Trading in 2008. Following the sale, James remained with ION in a group corporate development role. Other roles have included Head of Equities and Fixed Income Products at Reuters and as a business strategy consultant at The LEK Partnership, working out of London and Chicago.

Michael Lever is head of the prudential regulation division. Michael has spent almost his entire career in the banking sector including nearly 20 years as one of the UK's leading analysts. Before joining AFME in April 2011, he was a partner with Brunswick Group LLP, advising a number of banks and insurance companies on a wide range of financial and corporate reputational issues. Prior to that, he spent over five years as a managing director of Credit Suisse, initially leading its pan-European banking equity research team and latterly as an advisor to a number of major companies in the bank's Corporate Broking division. Between 1986 and 2002 Michael led banking equity research teams at Smith New Court, Nomura and HSBC. He started his career at the Bank of England where he was engaged in banking supervision and contributing to the formulation of regulatory policy.

Paul McGhee is Chief of Staff and joined AFME in August 2011. A former senior civil servant, Paul began his career at HM Treasury, working on EU financial services. From 2005 until 2007, he was seconded to the European Commission as a national expert on financial regulation, working in DG Competition and then in DG Internal Market. Prior to joining AFME, Paul worked for the Scottish Government as head of capital investment and infrastructure finance. He has an MA (Hons) in Politics from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Economic History from the London School of Economics.

Rick Watson is Managing Director and Head of Capital Markets at AFME, the Association for Financial Markets in Europe. In this role he leads staff whose member committees include all the main fixed income and equities-related cash products across Europe, as well as AFME’s investor and corporate relationships. Previously, Mr. Watson was Managing Director, Structured Finance, for FGIC UK Limited. Prior to joining FGIC, Rick was Head of ABS at HSBC Bank plc, where he led a pan-European team of originators of consumer, corporate, CLO, and other structured finance products. He held a similar position at Bear Stearns in London and was previously an Executive Director at UBS Limited. Prior to that he was employed at Morgan Stanley and Freddie Mac. Mr Watson received an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. In January 2006, he co-edited the Euromoney Books publication "Asset Securitisation and Synthetic Structures: Innovation in the European Credit Markets.