Type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Risk and strategic consulting corporate investigation |
Founded | 1982 |
Founder | Stuart Poole-Robb Allan Bailey |
Headquarters | London and Vienna, , |
Area served | London Hong Kong Vienna |
Key people | Peter Davies, executive chairman, Stuart Poole-Robb, CEO, Sir John Wheeler, non-executive director, Sir Graham Boyce, chairman of the advisory Board, Baroness Chalker of Wallasey, advisory board member |
Website | www |
Merchant International Group (MIG) was a privately owned British strategic research and corporate intelligence company with offices in London, Hong Kong and Vienna.
Merchant International Group was established in 1982 by Stuart Poole-Robb and Alan Bailey who had both previously served in the UK military. Peter Davies, a former Morgan Grenfell and Deutsche Bank banker served as the companies chairman from 2002. [1] The group had an advisory board made up of a number of prominent former public servants including Sir Graham Boyce the former ambassador to Kuwait, and Baroness Chalker of Wallasey. [2] Sir John Wheeler, the former Conservative politician who served as Northern Ireland security minister, served as a non-executive director. [3]
The company worked for a number of UK based multinationals including Cadbury Schweppes, Legal & General, and Kingfisher plc. [4] The company worked with over half the FTSE 100 and 150 of the Fortune 500. MIG also provided global risk research to the World Bank. MIG developed a framework that identified ten categories of Grey Area Dynamics™. Each refers to a range of events, activities and trends that impact upon business. [5]
It provided data to Transparency International alongside the Asia Development Bank, World Economic Forum, and Economist Intelligence Unit to compile its Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). [6]
MIG produced the Marine Piracy Threat Assessment which modelled piracy risks in various parts of the world and was featured each month in the shipping journal Lloyd's List. The reports were some of the first to highlight the statistical increase in global piracy and as a result drew criticism from some parts of the shipping industry for damaging the reputation of some countries and pushing up the cost of insuring vessels entering piracy zones. [7]
Merchant International Group won the European Service Provider of the Year, 1999-2000 at the European Risk Management Awards magazine International Risk Management. In 2004, the company won an award for Product of the Year from StrategicRisk. [8]
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, vessels used for piracy are pirate ships. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilisations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Historic examples include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, and the English Channel, whose geographic structures facilitated pirate attacks. The term piracy generally refers to maritime piracy, although the term has been generalized to refer to acts committed on land, in the air, on computer networks, and, outer space. Piracy usually excludes crimes committed by the perpetrator on their own vessel, as well as privateering, which implies authorization by a state government.
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Transparency International e.V. (TI) is a German registered association founded in 1993 by former employees of the World Bank. Based in Berlin, its nonprofit and non-governmental purpose is to take action to combat global corruption with civil societal anti-corruption measures and to prevent criminal activities arising from corruption. Its most notable publications include the Global Corruption Barometer and the Corruption Perceptions Index. Transparency International serves as an umbrella organization. From 1993 to today, its membership has grown from a few individuals to more than 100 national chapters, which engage in fighting perceived corruption in their home countries. TI is a member of G20 Think Tanks, UNESCO Consultative Status, United Nations Global Compact, Sustainable Development Solutions Network and shares the goals of peace, justice, strong institutions and partnerships of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group (UNSDG). TI is a social partner of Global Alliance in Management Education. TI confirmed the dis-accreditation of the national chapter of United States of America in 2017.
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HBOS plc was a banking and insurance company in the United Kingdom, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Lloyds Banking Group, having been taken over in January 2009. It was the holding company for Bank of Scotland plc, which operated the Bank of Scotland and Halifax brands in the UK, as well as HBOS Australia and HBOS Insurance & Investment Group Limited, the group's insurance division.
Stuart Poole-Robb joined in 2007 and was appointed MD of the KCS Group Europe Company Ltd, a London-headquartered strategic intelligence and risk management consultancy.
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