
Carson R. Cole
Founder, Chief Investment Officer, and Chairman of the Board
Carson Cole, 48, founded NUKU Inc. in June 2011. He has over 25 years financial management and research experience, focused on the study and practical management of investments. Mr. Cole served as an investment portfolio manager, head of research at two different firms, and was the founder of DebtTraders Inc., a global institution that specialized in high yield and distressed asset trading, with offices in New York, Chicago, London and Hong Kong.
Throughout his career, Mr. Cole has been an avid user and advocate of technology to facilitate the investment process. In 2005, he began to develop the concept behind NUKU. His vision was to simplify the investment process for investors, but this hinged on the development of radical improvements in technology to individually process an investor's goals. As ‘cloud computing’ was introduced and has matured in the last four years, the ability to launch a service like NUKU became possible, and Mr. Cole began development in 2008. By 2010, developmental showed significant promise, encouraging Mr. Cole to continue the work and to commercialize the NUKU service in June 2011.
Previously, Mr. Cole launched DebtTraders Inc. in 1999, and grew it to annual trading volume of nearly $14 billion globally in high yielding and distressed debt securities, during a period in which this asset class had tremendous appeal to institutional investors. DebtTraders was recognized as a global leader in the identification and sourcing of attractive and difficult-to-find securities in a mostly illiquid market. DebtTraders had over 100 employees, operating 24 hours a day through all major financial markets in New York, Chicago, London and Hong Kong.
Prior to DebtTraders, Mr. Cole served as the Head of Asian Fixed-Income and High Yield Research at Bankers Trust in Hong Kong from 1996 to 1999 and at Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) in Singapore from 1994 to 1996. From 1991 to 1994, Mr. Cole was a portfolio manager at Froley, Revy Investments in Los Angeles, and from 1989 to 1991, he was an analyst and portfolio manager at Colombia Savings & Loan, Beverly Hills, CA. Mr. Cole’s focus over the years has been identifying and valuing securities with high risk-adjusted returns. Mr. Cole graduated from the Whittemore School of Business at the University of New Hampshire in 1989. He has passed the Series 7, 24, 27, 63, and 65 industry exams.