Ricardo Bayon is a Partner and co-founder of EKO Asset Management Partners, a new breed of “merchant bank” seeking to influence, encourage, and profit from new and emerging markets for environmental commodities (carbon, water, and biodiversity). The company will invest in a variety of asset classes and types related to these new markets. Previously, he helped found and served as the Managing Director of the “Ecosystem Marketplace,” a web site and information/analysis service covering these emerging environmental markets. In that capacity he co-authored a number of publications on voluntary carbon markets, including “The State of Voluntary Carbon Markets 2007: Picking up Steam” and “Voluntary Carbon Markets: An International Business Guide to What They Are and How They Work”. His most recent publication on markets for biodiversity, entitled “Conservation and Biodiversity Banking: A Guide to Setting Up and Running Biodiversity Credit Trading System” has just been published by Earthscan in London. For nearly two decades he has specialized on issues related to finance, banking, and the environment. He has done work for a number of organizations, including Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, Insight Investments, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank, IUCN, The Nature Conservancy, Domini Social Investment, among others. His articles have appeared in publications such as The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, the International Herald Tribune,. He has also written numerous publications and chapters on mitigation banking, biodiversity markets, markets for water quality, and other environmental markets. He was born in Bogota, Colombia, and is currently based in San Francisco.