NERA Economic Consulting Announces Senior-Level Promotions

31 March 2016

New York—NERA Economic Consulting, a leading global provider of economic advice and analysis in business, legal, and regulatory matters, is pleased to announce that Richard Druce has been promoted to Associate Director, and Oksana Kitaychik to Vice President. In addition, the following experts have been promoted to Senior Consultant: Dr. Stefan Berger, Dr. Stephanie Demperio, Dr. Ignacio Franceschelli, Dr. Will Taylor, and Ivelina Velikova.

Associate Director | Vice President

Mr. Druce is a London-based member of NERA’s Global Energy, Environment, and Network Industries Practice. He works on a range of economic issues involving the regulation of network utilities, as well as the economic and statistical analysis of gas and electricity markets, including on valuation, due diligence, litigation, and public policy. His recent work has covered electricity transmission charging, power market modeling exercises, willingness-to-pay and econometric cost benchmarking studies for regulated utilities, and work on market design issues in electricity and water. In the last several years, Mr. Druce has advised utilities in the course of periodic reviews of their price or revenue caps, supported clients in the course of appeals against regulatory decisions, and led power sector due diligence assignments.

Ms. Kitaychik is a member of NERA's Securities and Finance Practice based in New York City. She specializes in the analysis of economic issues in securities litigation matters, including damages estimation. Ms. Kitaychik has testified and consulted on a number of matters involving fixed income securities and funds, municipal markets, investment strategies, and investment portfolio analyses. Ms. Kitaychik has worked extensively and led a number of assignments involving broker-customer disputes, financial assets and derivatives valuation (including complex interest rate, credit, and equity derivative products), business valuation, asset and portfolio mispricing, market manipulation, trading strategies analyses, international arbitration matters, and insider trading. She has also developed economic, financial, and statistical models for a number of matters involving risk management, and mortgage-backed and other structured finance securities. Her projects involve financial assets, businesses, and funds located in many geographies, including the US, Eastern and Western Europe, and Latin America.  Ms. Kitaychik has also worked extensively with large, complex data sets and algorithms in various contexts, including regulatory investigations.

Senior Consultant

Dr. Berger, based in Madrid, specializes in a wide range of energy-related topics, in particular covering European gas markets.

Dr. Demperio, based out of NERA’s White Plains, NY office, conducts economic research and analysis in the areas of antitrust, intellectual property economics, commercial damages, public health and policy, and business valuation.

Dr. Taylor is a member of NERA’s Antitrust and Competition Practice based in Auckland, NZ. He is a financial economist and expert in the economics of communications and media markets.

Ms. Velikova, part of NERA’s Securities and Finance Practice in New York City, provides economic analysis in securities litigation matters, including shareholder class actions and arbitrations.

About NERA

NERA Economic Consulting (www.nera.com) is a global firm of experts dedicated to applying economic, finance, and quantitative principles to complex business and legal challenges. For more than six decades, we have been creating strategies, studies, reports, expert testimony, and policy recommendations for government authorities and the world’s leading law firms and corporations. We bring academic rigor, objectivity, and real-world industry experience to issues arising from competition, regulation, public policy, strategy, finance, and litigation.

NERA’s clients value our ability to apply and communicate state-of-the-art approaches clearly and convincingly, our commitment to deliver unbiased findings, and our reputation for quality and independence. Our clients rely on the integrity and skills of our unparalleled team of economists and other experts backed by the resources and reliability of one of the world’s largest economic consultancies. Continuing our legacy as the first international economic consultancy, NERA serves clients from major cities across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.