Gender

Male

Location

London

Tell us more about who you are, what you do and where you want to be. What are your main business challenges? (Tip: provide your current Job Title, Industry, company or/and paste your Linkedin profile here). Use as many relevant keywords as possible. Tell us what you can offer the community. What sorts of discussions, events, and activities you can participate in.

I am the CEO of Bronzeye, a group which comprises ex law enforcement, intelligence, financial markets and commodity markets professionals which primarily conducts due diligence on counterparties in commodity and financial market opportunities and transactions. The recent meltdown in the financial markets has juxtaposed with robust, if bumpy, global commodity demand. Investment bankers, retreating from the carnage of their own industry spied the commodity rainbow and have been busy seeking the pot of gold at the end of it. Wealthy individuals and other ‘investors’ add to the mix. They often have little understanding of the markets which they seek to exploit; they see the $, € and £ - which are often illusory anyway - but not the hurdles and the deep, deep holes. The result is a crowded, noisy, largely unregulated marketplace. Eighty per cent, maybe more, of the market is controlled and driven by major commodity houses (Glencore, Trafigura, Cargill, et al). This still leaves many thousands of smaller cargoes to be traded and transported by smaller companies. This is a happy hunting ground for crooks. To them, everyone is a potential mug. No-one is immune, even the big players get scammed occasionally. The inexperienced are scammed frequently. Some never get a deal through, but they keep coming back for more! Time is wasted. Reputations are put at risk and relationships are strained. A huge percentage (perhaps 98%/99%) of bids and offers are fictitious, the approaches fraudulent. To protect themselves, companies demand transparency but rarely experience it. They nevertheless still get sucked in. Fraudsters and journeymen brokers are remarkably adept at hooking and reeling in victims. Their tales are convincing, carefully honed over years. Fraudsters can rely on the fact that the market is opaque and that victims are often reluctant to publicise bad deals for the sake of their reputation. The market place is so large that shysters can circulate with impunity for years. Compliance/Risk managers are the first defence for any trading company. But it is often a suicide mission – and the pay is low. They frequently have limited ‘field’ experience. They face a fiendishly complicated playing field. Complex financial structures, intricate logistical demands and, often, difficult to deal with customers and suppliers. Compliance and risk professionals will often be from legal or back office backgrounds - few experienced traders would choose to step back from the cut and thrust of a trading position to work in the drudge dungeon that is Compliance, if for no other reason than the compensation in the dungeon is nowhere near what it is in the trenches. Consequently, they lack the broad operational experience they really need. Compliance will instead often fall back on trawling the internet - if they find anything they will retain lawyers, who will probably carry out exactly the same 'Google' check before hiring someone expensive to do another one. In the end, the result is three ‘enhanced’ Google checks with three, probably inflated, margins inserted. Often, there is a pressured trading desk agitating for a quick answer. Tight timelines, timezone differences, legal and language problems add to their difficulties. The temptation to pay daft prices to have someone 'Google' for you and then rely on the report as a defence if/when it all unravels is almost predictable. It is relatively easy for fraudsters to produce authentic looking documentation. Criminals are resourceful and aggressive. They seek to exploit every crack in a company's armour – defences are always weaker at a boundary. Globalisation and competition pushes companies to operate in areas where the rule of law is more Wild West than Scotland Yard. Inexperienced operators in difficult to scratch parts of the world add to the noise. Companies obviously attempt to mitigate these risks. But often the default position is to limit their counterparty exposure to those they know. In doing this, they reduce their financial and trading opportunities. But there are real deals out there and real producers and suppliers who would desperately like to meet authenticated counterparties with whom they can conduct business. Bronzeye Group allows market participants to authenticate the deal and those who bring it. We have a broad set of complimentary skills with an intelligence led, analytical approach. We can’t guarantee that you will get the deal done (only the participants can reach agreement on terms and conditions), but you will know that the deal is real and that person who brings it is authorized and able to do so. If you don’t KNOW who you are dealing with and if you don’t KNOW that the deal is real, you are at risk even if, in the end, you don’t get scammed. You will incur real costs though; time, travel and incidental costs soon stack up. Opportunity costs and reputational risk are omnipresent. Stop Googling and do something...

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