Mr. Rutten previously served as Chief - Finance, Risk Management and Information in the Commodities Branch of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Geneva. After working on grain trade and collateralized grain finance in Mali, he joined UNCTAD in 1990. He was a part of UNCTAD till June 2006, except for brief interruptions in 2000-2001, when he worked as Senior Advisor with the International Task Force on Commodity Price Risk Management of the World Bank; and January to April 2002 for work with the Common Fund for Commodities.

In UNCTAD, he was responsible for developing the organization's work on commodity price risk management and structured finance. Since, he has done extensive work in the areas of commodity policies, commodity market reform, institutional development (for the private and public sector), upgrading the skills of the financial sector, and regulations affecting the commodity and financial sectors. He has published as well as given training and policy advice on issues including the practical modalities of use of risk management instruments and structured commodity finance; prudential rules for the use of risk management markets; the development of national and regional commodity exchanges; and the improvement of the legal and institutional framework for commodity price risk management and collateralized finance.

Mr. Lamon Rutten has extensive experience in country-level advisory work on issues related to commodity trade, risk management and finance, as part of the FAO and World Bank teams. He has drafted or co-drafted more than forty papers on these issues and has spoken at nearly a hundred meetings. He is member, on personal basis, of the World Bank’s International Task Force for Commodity Risk Management in Developing Countries, convened by the Bank’s President to revitalize global efforts to address the problem of commodity sector price risk. He has taught commodity marketing and risk management at the Institute of Banking and Financial Management of the École des Hautes Études Commerciales, part of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of the International Investment Group LLC, a US$ 400 million hedge fund specializing in trade finance. Mr. Rutten holds a M.A. degree, with honours, in International Economic Management from Tilburg University, The Netherlands.

See also: 04.30 pm ‘Financial Megatrends: how the new world of IT continues to reshaping markets’