James Rickards is the author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis, published by Penguin/Portfolio, November 2011.
He is Senior Managing Director at Tangent Capital Partners LLC, a merchant bank based in New York City, and is Senior Managing Director for Market Intelligence at Omnis, Inc., a technical, professional and scientific consulting firm located in McLean, VA. Mr. Rickards is a seasoned counselor, investment banker and risk manager with over thirty years experience in capital markets including all aspects of portfolio management, risk management, product structure, financing, regulation and operations. Mr. Rickards' market experience is focused in alternative investing and derivatives in global markets. He has also served as General Counsel at several alternative asset management companies and a stock exchange facility and is expert in fund governance and international fund structures.
Mr. Rickards' career spans the period since 1976 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 Technologies and Omnis). Mr. Rickards has been a direct participant in many of the most significant financial events in recent decades including the release of US hostages in Iran in 1981 and the LTCM hedge fund collapse of 1998 in which Mr. Rickards was the principal negotiator of the government-sponsored rescue. He was involved in the formation and successful launch of several hedge funds and fund-of-funds. His advisory clients include private investment funds, investment banks, litigation counsel, high-net worth individuals and government directorates. Since 2001, Mr. Rickards has applied his financial expertise to a variety of tasks for the benefit of the U.S. national security community and the Department of Defense. 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.
Mr. Rickards has been a frequent speaker at conferences sponsored by bar associations and industry groups in the fields of derivatives, the international monetary system and hedge funds and is active in the International Bar Association. He has been the interviewed in The Wall Street Journal and on CNBC, Fox, CNN, NPR and C-SPAN and is an OpEd contributor to the Financial Times, New York Times and the Washington Post.
Mr. Rickards is a graduate school visiting lecturer in finance at Northwestern University, the School of Advanced International Studies and Singularity University. He has delivered papers on econophysics at the Applied Physics Laboratory, the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the NASA Ames Research Center. Mr. Rickards has written articles published in academic and professional journals in the fields of strategic studies, cognitive diversity, network science and risk management. He is an advisor to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) Support Group of the Director of National Intelligence.
Mr. Rickards holds the following degrees: LL.M. (Taxation) from the New York University School of Law, New York City; J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Philadelphia; M.A. in international economics from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Washington DC; and a B.A. degree with honors from the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences of The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
Mr. Rickards is married, the father of three and lives in Darien, Connecticut. He is an avid sailor with extensive cruising experience in the Caribbean, Mediterranean and New England. He is also an experienced mountaineer following expeditions in the Alps, Andes, Cascades, Canadian Rockies and the Alaska Range.
