Trailblazing solutions for your financial security

Manuel Ebner

Manuel Ebner graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and a B.A. in Economics. He later received his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business (Arjay Miller Scholar).

Manuel Ebner started his career in strategy consulting, with a particular focus on Technology and Financial Services. He worked at Boston Consulting Group where he was elected Partner. At BCG his primary focus was on Financial Services, specifically Wealth Management, Asset Management, Risk Management and the optimization of IT in Banking. He left BCG to join Artificial Life Schweiz AG as CEO. At Artificial Life he developed AI based online advisory tools and customer support chatbots for leading Wealth Managers and Insurance companies. After Artificial Life he became CEO of Obtree Technologies in Basel. After Obtree he was elected Partner at McKinsey & Company in Zurich. At McKinsey he was part of the Business Technology Office serving leading Financial Services companies. After leaving McKinsey he became CEO of BZ Bank, focused on Wealth Management, Asset Management and Corporate Finance. After BZ Bank he became Country Executive of Bank of America in Switzerland, CEO of Merrill Lynch Capital Markets AG and Board Member of Merrill Lynch Bank Suisse S.A. (Wealth Management). In 2013 Merrill Lynch Bank Suisse was sold to Julius Baer. At Bank of America (Switzerland) he built up Treasury Services, Corporate Banking and Investment Banking. He left Bank of America in 2023 to focus on Advisory and Board Mandates. In addition to his Chairmanship at Smart Wealth he is Advisor of Clearsky (a US based Venture Capital Fund with $850 million AuM) and Board Member and Chairman of Audit Committee of Arival Bank in Puerto Rico.

Gil Ilani

Gil Ilani is the Chief Growth Officer (CGO) at SmartWealth, responsible for driving the company’s expansion and scaling its operations from a boutique venture into a larger organization.

He is an accomplished tech entrepreneur with a strong background in growing companies and implementing innovative growth strategies. He co-founded and led a digital marketing platform, guiding it through significant growth and a successful acquisition in 2019. He then led the digital transformation of a hedge fund, leveraging technology, business expertise, and a strong customer-centric approach to enhance efficiency, scalability, and investors’ engagement.

He graduated summa cum laude with a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science and Psychology and now applies his two decades of experience across business, finance, technology, and strategic development to accelerate SmartWealth’s market reach. 

As CGO, he spearheads strategic partnerships, marketing, and business development initiatives, ensuring that SmartWealth’s cutting-edge AI-driven investment solutions reach new markets and deliver exceptional value to a broader client base. His blend of entrepreneurial vision and hands-on scaling expertise makes him a key driver of SmartWealth’s growth and transformation journey.

Dr. Miró Mitev

Dr Miró Mitev is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Smart Wealth.  He is overseeing the investment management process and is responsible for strategy and product development.

Dr Mitev studied Economics with a major in Investment Banking.  He received his master's degree in Finance and Business Administration from the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. He completed his doctoral studies in Economics with a focus on Operations Research and received his PhD from Karl-Franzens-University in Graz. 

Dr Mitev has more than 20 years of professional experience in asset management and banking. He earned a reputation as a pioneer for artificial intelligence and digitalisation of asset management with his master thesis "Application of artificial neural networks and style investing for asset selection in the modern portfolio management using the example of the Austrian Equity market" in 2000, where he provided a ground-breaking work for the application of artificial intelligence in portfolio management. Master thesis download

In his dissertation in 2003 "A Systematic Investment Process for Alternative and Traditional Investment Strategies" Dr Mitev presented for the first time a fully automated, integrated, and digitalised investment process as the forerunner of today's Robo-advisors. Dissertation download

Between 2002 and 2004 Dr Mitev was a co-lecturer for the application of artificial neural networks and fuzzy logic in the forecasting of financial markets course at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration.

After graduation, Dr Mitev became a quantitative analyst in the investment banking industry. Later in his career, he joined a leading global technology conglomerate where he assumed a management role as Head of Securities Research &Portfolio Management, being primarily responsible for the development of financial forecasting and optimisation technology. Leading the international expert team of engineers, portfolio managers, mathematicians, analysts, and scientists, Dr Mitev laid the foundation for combining applied science with asset management. The proprietary technology developed under his guidance and oversight was successfully used by pension fund managers, asset managers and hedge fund managers as well as investment banks worldwide. Dr Mitev led his team’s collaboration with leading investment banks, resulting in the successful development and implementation of the world’s first investment products that were based on forecasting and optimisation using artificial intelligence at their core.

Throughout his tenure, Dr Mitev had also extensively promoted scientific collaboration with leading universities and supervised numerous graduate and postdoctoral students writing their master's thesis and dissertations on financial forecasting.

Dr Mitev has been a frequent speaker at international conferences and his articles have appeared in various professional publications.

In 2009 Dr Mitev and part of his team joined a leading pan-European asset manager, where they continued further development of forecasting and optimisation technology. In his role as Head of Structured Solutions & ETFs, Dr Mitev was responsible for and oversaw the development of proprietary strategy indices as well as the structuring and launch of Smart-Beta ETFs.

In a subsequent management buy-out, Dr Mitev span off the index business and founded the independent index boutique, iQ-FOXX Indices Ltd, which offered state-of-the-art smart beta indices, forecasting and optimisation services to fund managers, banks and other institutional clients.

In 2016, following a strategic decision to enter the asset management business, Dr Mitev founded the independent asset management firm, Smart Wealth, incorporated in Zürich with the vision to utilise the proprietary forecasting and optimisation technology which he developed over the last 20 years, now providing superior asset management for a broader client base not only institutional investors, but also Family Offices including his and his partner’s families, Ultra and High Net Worth Individuals, asset managers, and other private and professional investors.

Prof. Manfred Deistler

Manfred Deistler is an Emeritus Professor of Econometrics and System Theory at Vienna

University of Technology. He received his Dr. techn. (approximately corresponding to a PhD)

from Vienna University of Technology in 1970. Manfred Deistler has served on the editorial

board of a number of journals, at present he is an editor of Econometrics and Statistics and a

member of the Advisory Board of Econometric Theory. He is a Fellow of the Econometric

Society, a Fellow of IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) and a Fellow

of the Journal of Econometrics.

Manfred Deistler ́s research interests are in econometrics, system identification and time

series analysis. As far as theory and methods are concerned, the focus of his work is on

structure theory and estimation for multivariate ARMAX- and state space systems and for

linear dynamic factor- and errors- in- variables models. In particular his research areas were:

Identifiability in multivariate ARMAX systems, with an emphasis on the „structural“ case,

parametrizations of multivariate ARMAX and state space systems and their relation to

estimation, asymptotic properties of maximum likelihood estimators, asymptotic properties of

subspace estimators, data-driven parametrizations for state space systems and identifiability

in errors-in-variables models. His current research interests are modeling of high dimensional

time series, in particular by generalized dynamic factor models, singular AR systems

(structure theory and Yule Walker estimators), and time series modeling from mixed

frequency data (generic identifiability, asymptotic distributions of extended Yule Walker

estimators and of MLE‘s, blocking). As far as applications concerned, his current interests

are: Analysis of electroencephalograms (focus detection in epileptic seizures based on

ECoG’s, EEG and Alzheimer), forecasting of financial assets and analysis and forecasting of

sales data.

Publications include:

• "The Statistical Theory of Linear Systems". Wiley, New York, 1988, Reprint in SIAM

Classics in Applied Methamatics, Philadelphia, 2012 (with E.J. Hannan)

• “Modelle der Zeitreihenanalyse”. Birkhäuser Springer, Cham, 2018 (with W. Scherrer)

• "Identifiability and Consistent Estimability in Econometric Models". Econometrica 46,

969-980, 1978 (with H.G. Seifert)

• "The Structural Identifiability of Linear Models with Auto-correlated Errors in the Case

of Cross-Equation Restrictions". Journal of Econometrics 8, 23-31, 1978

• "Vector Linear Time Series Models: Corrections and Extensions". Adv. in Applied

Probability 10, 360-372, 1978 (with W. Dunsmuir und E.J. Hannan)

• "The Properties of the Parametrization of ARMAX Systems and Their Relevance for

Structural Estimation and Dynamic Specification". Econometrica 51, 1187-1208, 1983

• "The Behaviour of the Likelihood Function for ARMA Models". Adv. in Applied

Probability 16, 843-865, 1984 (with B.M. Pötscher)

• "General Structure and Parametrization of ARMA and State Space Systems and its

Relation to Statistical Problems". In: E.J. Hannan, P.R. Krishnaiah, M.M. Rao (eds.):

Handbook of Statistics 5, North Holland, Amsterdam, 257-277, 1985

• "The Common Structure of Parametrizations for Linear Systems". Linear Algebra and

its Applications 122/123/124, 921-94, 1989 (with L. Wang)

• "Consistency and Relative Efficiency of Subspace Methods". Automatica, 31, No. 12,

1865-1875, 1995 (with K. Peternell and W. Scherrer)

• "Nonnegative Realization of a Linear System with Nonnegative Impulse Response".

IEEE Tr. CAS (Transactions on Circuits and Systems) 43, No 2, 1-8, 1996 (with B.D.O.

Anderson, L. Farina and L. Benvenuti)

• "A Structure Theory for Linear Dynamic Errors in Variables Models". SIAM Journal on

Control and Optimization, Vol. 36, No. 6, 2148-2175, 1998 (with W. Scherrer)

• "Consistency and Asymptotic Normality of some Subspace Algorithms for Systems

without Observed Inputs". Automatica, 35,, 1243-1254, 1999 (with D. Bauer und W.

Scherrer)

• "An Analysis of the Parametrization by Data Driven Local Coordinates for Multivariable

Linear Systems". Automatica,Vol. 40, No. 5, 789-803, 2004(with T. Ribarits und T.

McKelvey)

• "An Analysis of Separable Least Squares Data Driven Local Coordinates for Maximum

Likelihood Estimation of Linear Systems". Automatica, Special Issue on Data-Based

Modelling and System Identification, Vol 41, No 3, 531-544, 2005 (with T. Ribarits und

B. Hanzon)

• "Identification of Factor Models for Forecasting Returns". Journal of Financial

Econometrics, Vol.3, No 2, 256-281, 2005 (with E. Hamann)

• "Properties of Zero-free Transfer Function Matrices". SICE Journal of Control,

Measurement, and System Integration (Invited Paper), Vol.1, No.4, 284-292, 2008

(with BDO Anderson)

• "Properties of Zero-free Spectral Matrices". IEEE Tr. AC (Transactions on Automatic

Control) , 2365-2375, 2009(with BDO Anderson)

• “Generalized Linear Dynamic Factor Models - An Approach via Singular

Autoregressions”. European Journal of Control (Invited paper, with discussion), Vol.

16, No. 3, 211-224, 2010 (with BDO Anderson, W. Chen, A. Filler and Chr. Zinner)

• “AR Systems and AR Processes, the Singular Case” Communications in Information

and Systems, Vol 11, No 3, 225-236, 2011 ( with A. Filler and B. Funovits)

• "Solutions of Yule- Walker Equations for Singular AR Processes", Journal of Time

Series Analysis, Vol 32, No 5, 2011, 531-538 (with W. Chen, B.D.O. Anderson and A.

Filler)

• "Properties of Blocked Linear Systems", Automatica, Vol 48, No. 10, 2012, 2520-2525

(with W. Chen, B.D.O. Anderson and A. Filler)

• "Autoregressive Models of Singular Spectral Matrices", Automatica, Vol 48, No. 11,

2012 pp. 2843–2849 (with B.D.O. Anderson, W. Chen and A. Filler)

• “Multivariate AR Systems and Mixed Frequency Data: g- Identifiability and Estimation”,

Econometric Theory, 2015, online version available (with Mit B.D.O. Anderson, E.

Felsenstein, B. Funovits, L. Koelbl and M. Zamani)

• "The Structure of Multivariate AR and ARMA Systems: Regular and Singular Systems;

the Single and the Mixed Frequency Case”, Journal of Econometrics, Vol 192, No 2, pp.

366-373, 2016 (with B.D.O. Anderson, E. Felsenstein, L. Koelbl)

• "Estimation of VAR Systems from Mixed Frequency Data: The stock and the flow case”,

Advances in Econometrics, Vol 35, pp. 43-73, 2016 (with L. Koelbl, A. Braumann and E.

Felsenstein)

• “Quantifying synchrony patterns in the EEG of Alzheimer‘s patients with linear and non-

linear connectivity markers”, Journal of Neural Transmission, 123(3), 297-316, 2016

(with M. Waser, H. Garn, R. Schmidt, T. Benke, P. Dal-Bianco, G. Ransmayr, H.

Schmidt, S. Seiler, G. Sanin, F. Mayer, G. Caravias, D. Grossegger and W. Fruehwirt)

• “Non-Identifability of VMA and VARMA Systems in the Mixed Frequency Case”

Econometrics and Statistics, 2017, available online (with L. Koelbl and B.D.O.

Anderson)

• “Cointegration in Singular ARMA Models”, Economics Letters, 155, 39-42, 2017, (with

M. Wagner)

• “A New Approach for Estimating VAR Systems in the Mixed-Frequency Case”,

Statistical Papers,, 1-10, 2018 (with L. Kölbl)

• “On the Sensitivity of Granger Casuality to Errors-In-Variables, Linear Transformations

and Subsampling”, Journal of Time Series Analysis, Vol 40, No 1, 102-123, 2019 (with

BDO Anderson and Jean-Marie Dufour)

• “Vector autoregressive moving average models“, In: H. D. Vinod and C.R. Rao (eds):

Handbook of Statistics, Vol 41, Conceptual Econometrics Using R, 145-191, 2019 (with

W. Scherrer)