Letter from Dubai

Much of life is driven by coincidences and opportunities. At least, that’s how I ended up with a career in the forex industry and becoming Managing Director of OANDA Middle East.

I got my first job in the City in 1985, following a brief stint as a police officer patrolling one of the roughest council estates near London and Surrey. (My time on the force coincided with the UK miners’ strike, and after two years of crazy experiences I realized police work just wasn’t in my genes.) The opportunity resulted from a chance meeting with a college friend, who worked for a well-known UK commodity broker. He got me an interview and I was hired primarily because I play the drums (my boss at the time was a keen guitarist).

Completely ill-equipped for life in the fast lane, I started as a dealer’s assistant. But within a couple of years I’d moved up through the ranks to run my own book. From there I progressed to advising the firm’s high-value customers and, eventually, management. In 1994, when I moved to HSBC London to help set up their hedge fund and HNWI margin dealing desk, I knew I’d completed the transition from trader to the customer side of the business. This was a highly successful operation for a number of years and I gained a wealth of experience.

An epiphany begets another opportunity
By the time I moved to the Middle East in June 2006 I was somewhat disillusioned with the forex business. The industry appeared to have lost its moral compass and was seemingly inundated with unscrupulous providers that had business models based on high churn and expensive marketing. Forex had become the biggest casino in the world and was rapidly getting a bad name, grabbing the attention of financial regulators in every jurisdiction.

Out of the blue an old friend, for whom I have the deepest respect, asked me to take a look at a firm that had recently come onto his radar—OANDA. I confess that up until that point I’d heard very little about the company.

But OANDA had published a little red book called the Forex Trader’s Bill of Rights. Reading it was nothing sort of an epiphany. Here, it seemed, was a company that represented the yin to everyone else’s yang. I was compelled to investigate.

Through industry contacts I arranged a meeting with OANDA’s co-founders, Michael Stumm and Richard Olsen. My aim was to outline a business plan for an OANDA operation in the Middle East. It was an extremely daunting prospect—I had done extensive research on the company and founders, and the thought of being interviewed by two eminent academics was somewhat intimidating. Rather bizarrely (and now, I realize, apropos of the unique OANDA culture) my interview took place in a Starbucks. I was the only one wearing a suit. I spoke at 100 miles an hour about all the plans I had for OANDA in the region, and left feeling a little dejected and over-eager. I did not expect to hear good news.

Then a couple of weeks later the call came and I was given the opportunity to create OANDA Middle East Corporation. In that moment I realized I’d made another transition, and that when people have faith in you they trust you to do the right thing. This, I believe, is at the heart of what has made OANDA so successful over the years. I look forward to sharing my thoughts on the industry here, as we move forward.