The Risk Black Book: What They Still Do Not Teach You at Banks and Business Schools

How can you grasp true reality beyond borrowers' financial statements in order to prevent repeated losses... while maintaining your viewpoint without the organizational squabbles or subservience that are frequently required to carry out your views?

You rely on data, but data ahead of a deep worldview is putting the cart before the horse. One needs to first enhance one's cognition to grasp the way the world works without relying on data, or else the data is often misleading. Also, the fundamental tools of risk evaluation are often wrongly understood.

In this book, we will travel from a 35,000-foot view to the last few feet. We will not lose sight of the fact that it is the inner transformation & realization of knowledge that matters more than the awareness of the knowledge per se.

The book delivers this with a 5-step journey based on a pithy examination of 5 key aspects (Credit-Cue approach):

1. Root Tools 2. Worldview 3. Molecular Portfolio 4. Perception and Cognition Enhancement Without Additional Information 5. Heterodoxy

Step 1. Root Tools: Redefined and Narrowed. Sharpen your root tools to measure and forecast for tactical counter-party assessment. Confront your assumptions about the basics to develop incisive new tools that bite hard & fast.

Step 2. Worldview: Uncovering Hidden Corners and Interlinkages of Global Order. Develop a worldview to see comprehensively before you measure. No riffraff: Understanding how societies truly operate through the integrated lenses of crime, historical identities, hidden taxation, the unsaid impact of oil and gas policies, the unsaid influence of central banking, money supply, and sensuality.

Step 3. Portfolio: Harness it Entirely to Vanquish Blindspots Forever: Develop tools for molecular decomposition of the entire portfolio & form the basis for an ultra-fast, comprehensive, & continuous stress-based full portfolio review as opposed to limited sample-based reviews.

Step 4. Deep Mind: Hone & Anchor Your Deep Mind without Endless Information. Psycho-analytical tools for developing a deeper mind. What is the fundamental nature of reality & the gaps in the system of logic used by us? How to stop your faults, such as ego and fear, from outgrowing your ability to learn?

Step 5. Heterodoxy: Being Different Without Damaging. How to be a successful heterodox? Why is heterodoxy the best tool to rejuvenate your inner self and also help others, including your adversaries?

How to use this book:

The book is a practitioner's tool kit. Read with an empty mind to get the most from the book. The true worth of the concepts in the book will emerge only through practice. A general read may give you only an academic or intellectual understanding.

Nothing in the book is based on what is not practiced by the author. The author has 19 years of in cross-border finance & special situations advisory. Built and advised >$8 billion in credit portfolios, working for major banks in oil/gas, food/ agriculture, and other sectors in 50 countries. The core parts of the approach were put in place by the author during his time in New York during the 2008 crisis, when he managed and built a $3 billion global credit portfolio with zero losses while working for a major global bank.

Approach: Directional, not literal. Chapters are itemized & address 33 key considerations (individually no more than 10 - 15 minutes read).

Target audience: While anyone with an interest in finance, economics, or business will benefit, the book is written with credit risk managers, underwriters, analysts, & senior hands-on bankers entrusted with counter-party risk management in mind.