Harald Sperlein is a Vice President (Senior Analyst) with Moody’s Ratings, based in Frankfurt. He is part of Moody’s Sovereign & Sub-Sovereign Group and serves as a lead analyst for European issuers across various countries. His focus is on Sub-Sovereign credits, including regional and local governments, as well as government-related issuers. Harald also contributes his extensive public finance experience to numerous research and publication projects. With more than twenty years of experience in the sector, he is a regular speaker at conferences and provides commentary on public finance issues in the media.

Before joining Moody’s in 2012, Harald held various analytical and managerial positions at KfW Group and Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, two of Germany’s leading public-sector financial institutions. As a credit analyst and rating advisor, he gained a wealth of experience and expanded his knowledge across multiple sectors, including corporate finance, financial institutions and government entities. Harald also spent several years with Standard & Poor’s, following his early career at Deloitte, one of the four major international auditing firms.

Harald holds a Master’s degree (Diplom-Volkswirt) in Economics from the University of Bamberg in Germany.

Christina Maria Sterr is an Assistant Vice President (Analyst) with Moody’s SubSovereign Group, based in Frankfurt. She is the lead analyst for a number of European subsovereigns, including regional and local governments and government-related issuers, covering Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. As a member of the SubSovereign Group, she also lends her public finance expertise to a number of research and publication projects.

Before joining Moody’s Sub-Sovereign Group in April 2022, Christina Maria held various analytical and managerial positions in the financial sector. She has an extensive experience from Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and Intesa Sanpaolo within the capital markets teams and as a credit analyst for banks, corporates and government related issuers. Prior to that, she had spent several years with Moody´s Financial Institutions Group. She has also participated in capital and debt structuring in collaboration with the DCM and M&A teams. Christina has a consolidated ESG experience having worked closely with issuers for product/project selection, and KPI selection.

Christina graduated in Engineering at the University of Munich and holds a Masters Degree in International Economics and Management at SDA Bocconi.

Lena Gillich is an Analyst of the Sustainable Finance team. She has produced over 50 Second Party Opinions (SPOs) since 2021. Her areas of expertise include renewable energy, green buildings, waste management/circular economy, and biodiversity. Lena is actively engaged in developing Moody’s Ratings approach for assessments based on EU Taxonomy and European Green Bond Standard (EuGBS) requirements. 

She has extensive experience conducting EU Taxonomy assessments for corporates, financial institutions, and sovereigns. Lena is a regular participant and speaker in round table and panel discussions, including events like the European Sub-Sovereign and German Laender Forum organized by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF).

Prior to joining Moody’s Ratings, Lena spent four years as a sustainability and management consultant in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (DACH region). During this period, she specialized in developing comprehensive ESG strategies for corporates and implementing them under sector-specific conditions.

Lena holds an M.Sc. in Economics – Finance and Banking from the University of Muenster in Germany, and a B.A. in International Business from the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences of Kleve in Germany. In March 2023, she was successfully certified as an expert in Climate & Renewable Energy Finance at the Frankfurt School – FS-UNEP Collaborating Center.

Dr Norman Rudschuck is Head of Desk, Floor Research, and Managing Director at NORD/LB, where he has been covering the public sector as an issuer for more than ten years now – from municipalities to (European) regions and German Laender all the way to transatlantic provinces as well as agencies and supranationals. He is since mid-2025 responsible for covered bonds too. 

He has many years of capital markets experience and was responsible for macroeconomic forecasts around UK (including Bank of England, interest rates and FX) from 2009-2014. He also analysed the gold price and worked for NORD/LB in London.

Cristiano serves as Vice President of the DeFi & Digital Assets team at Moody's Ratings. His role entails the comprehensive analysis of emerging digital financial products and services, as well as overseeing the digital transition of traditional financial entities. He possesses a solid background in risk management, acquired through his tenure in various consulting and banking institutions. Before joining Moody's, Cristiano worked two years in the decentralized finance space, thereby solidifying his proficiency in the digital finance domain.