Research Activity - October 2017

Indjikian Moderates the TXF Commodity Finance Conference in Geneva

TXF organized its second Commodity Finance Conference on October 6 at the Hotel Metropol Geneva. Professor Indjikian moderated a session on alternative finance at the conference, which also covered themes like the state of commodity markets, drivers of commodity finance from the perspective of bankers and traders, balancing approaches to financial and physical supply chains, and building sustainable commodity supply chains.

Indjikian began with a broad definition of alternative finance and its increasing role in commodity finance. He then proposed looking at it from a products perspective with a focus on trade receivables securitization. Charles Nahum, the European Director of Finacity, was invited to explain this alternative method of working capital financing, involving banks as main funding providers. Nabil Abdul-Massih, CEO of Inoks Capita, later explored different structures and practices of alternative finance from non-bank sources such as investment funds.

The panel also discussed how companies try to intermingle non-bank alternative finance with bank credits using the former as leverage, and viewed the banks' and other alternative finance providers' approach to mutual cooperation, with participation from George Delyannis, Partner at Park Lane Trade Group. Finally, the moderator and panelists tried to assess the prospects of alternative finance and its role in meeting the funding requirements of SMEs with difficulties accessing trade finance at possibly lower costs.

Dr. Indjikian also published an article on crude oil markets and prices in the September newsletter of Berne Union, an important association of export credit agencies, which can be found here.

Polic Conference Activity

In March at the CISO Summit Middle East organized by MISIT institute in Dubai Viktor Polic, Faculty in Computer Science, talked on bridging the gap between tactical and strategic Information Security Risk Management. The main focus was on CyberSecurity risks as strategic risks.

Particular areas covered were:

- Effectively communicating key risk indicators through risk intelligence
- Collecting information on the most important business activities and prioritizing information security program activities accordingly
- Focusing on human-oriented rather than technology-oriented information security
- Prioritizing information security program activities to effectively address strategic risk

At the same conference Polic also participated on the panel on European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and concerns for Middle East based companies and public institutions.

In July Dr. Polic spoke at the CISO360 Congress in Barcelona organized by Pulse Conferences about the first 100 days of the next generation Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Key takeaways were:

- Effective communication examples with key partners such as Business process owners, Chief internal auditor/investigator, Chief enterprise risk officer, Legal advisor, Chief Finance Officer, Chief Information Officer, Chief of human resources, Ethics officer, Data privacy officer, and other.
- What are useful documents that can provide insights to critical business processes and related crown jewels.
- How to leverage innovative technology and processes such as machine learning to identify areas of critical importance and related key roles?
- How to build a successful security team?