James Rickards

Contributor

James G. Rickards is Senior Managing Director for Market Intelligence at Omnis, Inc. and co-head of the firm’s practice in Threat Finance &amp; Market Intelligence. Mr. Rickards is a seasoned counselor, investment banker and risk manager with over thirty years experience in capital markets including portfolio management, risk management, product structure, corporate finance, regulation and operations.<br /> <br /> Mr. Rickards’s career prior to Omnis spans an over 30-year period during which he was a first hand participant in the formation and growth of globalized capital markets and complex derivative trading strategies. He has held senior executive positions at “sell side” firms (Citibank and RBS Greenwich Capital Markets) and “buy side” firms (Long-Term Capital Management and Caxton Associates) as well as technology firms (OptiMark). Mr. Rickards has been a direct participant in many of the most significant financial events over the past 30 years including the 1981 release of US hostages in Iran, the 1987 Stock Market Crash, the 1990 collapse of Drexel, and the LTCM financial crisis of 1998 in which Mr. Rickards was the principal negotiator of the government-sponsored rescue. He has been involved in the formation and successful launch of several hedge funds and fund-of-funds. His advisory clients have included private investment funds, investment banks and government directorates. Since 2001, Mr. Rickards has applied his financial expertise to a variety of tasks for the benefit of the US national security community and the Department of Defense.<br /> <br /> Mr. Rickards is licensed to practice law in New York and New Jersey and various Federal Courts and has held all major financial industry licenses including Series 3, Series 7, Series 24, Series 30 and Series 63. He has been a frequent speaker at conferences sponsored by bar associations and industry groups in the fields of derivatives and hedge funds and is active in the International Bar Association. He has been the interviewed in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Politico and on CNBC’s Squawk Box, as well as Fox, CNN, NPR and C-SPAN and is an OpEd contributor to the New York Times and the Washington Post.<br /> <br /> Mr. Rickards is a graduate school visiting lecturer in finance at Northwestern University and the School of Advanced International Studies. He has recently delivered papers on econophysics at the Applied Physics Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Mr. Rickards has published numerous articles in the fields of cognitive diversity, network science and risk management. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Shariah Capital, Inc., a firm specializing in Islamic finance and is also a member of the International Business Practices Advisory Panel to the CFIUS Support Group of the Director of National Intelligence.<br /> <br /> Mr. Rickards holds an LL.M. (Taxation) from the New York University School of Law; a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School; an M.A. in international economics from the School of Advanced International Studies, Washington DC; and a B.A. degree with honors from the School of Arts &amp; Sciences of The Johns Hopkins University.