Abaxx Technologies Inc.,, a financial software (fintech) company, majority shareholder of Abaxx Singapore Pte. Ltd., the Abaxx Commodity Exchange (ACX), and producer of the SmarterMarkets™ Podcast, announces that Wes Fulford has been appointed to serve as interim Chief Financial Officer and Celine Tan has been appointed Financial Controller of Abaxx Singapore, effective June 1st, following the successful completion of the integration mandate and planned transition of the Company’s finance team following the reverse take-over of New Millennium Iron Corp. (“NML”) in December of 2020.
Abaxx has also formalized a new Market Structure Advisory team, positioning the Company to draw on the global experience and commercial networks of each advisory lead in their respective markets, and has appointed several new leaders to the group. David Greely has joined as Senior Economic Advisor, drawing on his Macroeconomic and Commodity Market experience as a former portfolio strategist at Bridgewater Associates and former Managing Director and Head of Energy Research at Goldman Sachs; Steven Lowe has joined as a Gold Market Structure Lead, joining Wade Brennan, both having distinguished careers in physical bullion markets. Gus Hadidi leads LNG Market Structure, bringing more the 15 years experience in LNG markets with Enerleb, Fortress Investment Group, and Poten & Partners; and Bruce Tozer leads Voluntary Carbon Markets and ESG Commodities for Abaxx, having held senior leadership positions in environmental markets and agriculture for JP Morgan, Rabobank and Credit Agricole.
“We continue to grow our senior leadership team and global commercial network as we prepare to launch our initial markets in the second half of 2021. Wes has been a valuable member of the Abaxx executive team, having played an integral role in our recent $24.7M bought-deal financing, and bringing over 15 years of investment banking, capital markets and corporate strategy experience to the Company. It was a natural progression to appoint him as the new interim CFO, and we thank the former NML finance team for all of their efforts having completed a successful transition in the newly merged company,” commented Joshua Crumb, Chief Executive Officer and Founder.
“We believe that establishing a sound foundation of industry experts who are aligned with our mission is requisite to cultivating industry consensus, as well as access to key insights on matters including ESG, energy transitions, precious metals, and risk advisory in global commodity futures markets. I have a high degree of admiration for the skills these individuals bring to our company and I am confident that the strength of our management and advisory teams will translate into the success of our mission at Abaxx,” said Josh Crumb.
Wes Fulford, Interim Chief Financial Officer, Abaxx Technologies
Wes Fulford is a seasoned entrepreneur and capital markets professional with broad experience in corporate strategy, development, and governance. Prior to joining Abaxx, Wes served as CEO and Director of TSXV-listed Bitfarms Ltd., leading the company to 291% operational growth in 2019 and cementing Bitfarms’ position as one of the largest publicly-traded companies in its market sector.
Prior to joining Bitfarms, Mr. Fulford spent 15 years in investment banking and asset management primarily based in Toronto, Canada. Most recently, Mr. Fulford led the Fintech and Financial Institutions investment banking practice for Desjardins Capital Markets. During his career as an investment banker, Mr. Fulford has been directly involved in financing and mergers and acquisition transactions valued at over $7.2 billion. Mr. Fulford is a CFA charterholder and a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization.
As an early investor and long-term advisor to the Company, Wes will lead the finance department of Abaxx Technologies and continue to play a leading role in a number of strategic initiatives.
Celine Tan, Financial Controller, Abaxx Commodity Exchange
Celine Tan has spent over 25 years in the energy markets, spanning oil and chemical storage to liquified natural gas (LNG). Her past roles have afforded her a unique background that combines finance, risk management and treasury operations within oil markets, energy storage and LNG trading with focus in Singapore, North Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, Europe, and U.S. The majority of her professional experience has focused on APAC regional finance and business partnerships and brings extensive knowledge in financial planning, budgeting, controlling and operations, as well as M&A transactions and debt/equity financing.
Celine will support Abaxx Exchange as a financial controller to trade and clearing operations.
Bruce Tozer, Strategic Advisor, ESG Commodities & Voluntary Carbon Markets Lead
Bruce Tozer has garnered decades of notable experience specific to carbon markets and organizing industry consensus around environmental, social and governance (ESG) attributes. Having held senior commercial and leadership positions for JP Morgan, Rabobank and Credit Agricole, Mr. Tozer has focused his career on structuring and financing commodity projects that emphasize carbon and environmental markets.
At JP Morgan, working closely with the commodities leadership team, Mr. Tozer formulated the strategy that launched the Environmental Markets team in late 2006, successfully establishing operations for end-to-end processes for a multitude of carbon traded products including EUAs, CERs, VERs, RECs, and other related financial products across all aspects of the business platform (trading and sales, legal, compliance, credit, market and country risk, tax, operations etc).
At Credit Agricole he headed EMEA sales and origination for agri/soft commodities, carbon derivatives and risk management products where he was responsible for a noteworthy accomplishment in establishing Credit Agricole’s investment with Danone of the Danone Livelihoods Carbon Fund (livelihoods.eu). To further his commitment to ESG, he serves as a Non-Executive Director of M.P. Evans Group PLC, a London-based plantations business oriented around palm oil supply chains in Indonesia which adhere to the highest sustainability and ESG standards.
Bruce will serve as an Advisor to Abaxx Exchange on ESG strategy, as well as development and execution of frameworks surrounding Abaxx’s carbon neutral LNG derivatives products. Bruce Tozer has been a valued advisor to Abaxx Exchange over the past several months, particularly in establishing a working group alongside key industry partners announced in the Abaxx shareholder update release.
Dave Greely, Senior Economic Advisor
David Greely is an economist and investment strategist with over 25 years of experience creating and communicating insights for investments and risk management challenges. He was a Portfolio Strategist at Bridgewater Associates, where he was one of the senior members of the research team selected by the CIOs to advise and to conduct custom research projects and processes to the investment challenges of large sophisticated institutional investors.
Prior to his 5 years at Bridgewater, Mr. Greely was a Managing Director in Global Investment Research at Goldman Sachs, where he was the Chief Commodities Strategist and Head of Energy Research. In his research, he created conceptual frameworks and analytical models capturing the relationships between commodity prices, supply and demand fundamentals, financial market positioning, and the economic environment. He authored numerous original research studies on commodities as an asset class and on the role of commodities in investment portfolios whilst publishing regular market commentary, price forecasts, and trading recommendations for the energy and gold markets.
Mr. Greely also served as a Research Economist at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in Washington DC, and as a lecturer in Economics at the University of Chicago.
Mr. Greely’s appointment to Senior Economic Advisor at Abaxx Technologies will leverage his insights to produce original research backed by economic reasoning and robust empirical analysis in the form of written reports, discussions, and conference presentations.
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Steve Lowe, Strategic Advisor, Precious Metals
Steven Lowe is a consultant with 25 years experience in the precious metals markets. Until recently, he was the Head of Business Development at Tradewind Markets; a digital precious metals platform. Prior to joining Tradewind, Mr. Lowe led Scotiabank’s metals business for 20 years, first as Regional Head, then as Global Co-Head and Managing Director.
Over the course of his career, Mr Lowe. has honed his skills in client acquisition and building international businesses that deliver growth and profits to shareholders while managing risk management in commodities market operation. He has extensive Board experience serving on numerous oversight committees including: ALCO, Risk, Credit and AML. He also sat on the Board of Scotiabank Europe, LBMA, Scotia Capital Europe Ltd, Futures and Options Association, Canada UK Foundation and Trustee of the Bank’s Pension Fund.
Mr. Lowe brings to Abaxx unparalleled industry knowledge, partnerships and ongoing exposure to key strategic issues across the precious metal value chain.
Wade Brennan, Strategic Advisor, Precious Metals
Wade Brennan is the CEO of Kilo Capital, a private customer centric bullion bank and precious metal merchant who support companies that use gold, silver, and PGM metals while offering financing and hedging strategies for the bullion market. Prior to Kilo Mr. Brennan spent the majority of his career at ScotiaMocatta as the Director of Precious Metals Sales and Trading in North American and then as the Head of Precious Metals Sales for EMEA.
Working in parallel with Steve Lowe, Mr. Brennan will provide a deep understanding of the challenges inherent to the precious metals industry, forming a team with decades of experience in bullion markets, corporate lending, risk and asset management to make recommendations for restructuring products and services in the bullion markets.
Gus Hadidi, Strategic Advisor, LNG
Gus Hadidi brings over 13 years of experience in private equity and advisory in the energy sector. He served as a Managing Partner at Enerleb, an LNG-focused development fund financing power and renewable energy projects in the Middle East. Additionally, Mr. Hadidi spent several years at Fortress Investment Group, today widely known as New Fortress Energy [NASDAQ: NFE], a NY-based energy private equity fund, focused on LNG upstream and downstream project development. As an introduction to working in LNG and Natural Gas markets, Mr. Hadidi served for 5 years in an advisory capacity at the prominent firm Poten & Partners.
Mr. Hadidi is currently a Managing Director at Rhynland Energy Holdings, a NY-based firm engaged in the development of energy storage facilities in the NYISO. Gus holds a Masters in Energy Economics and Chemical Engineering from Cornell University.
Mr. Hadidi has been an instrumental part of the Abaxx Exchange team since 2018 where he has been responsible for the preparation of all futures and physical exchange LNG contract specifications. Alongside the rest of the Abaxx Exchange Executive Team, he has supported business development and strategy around carbon neutral LNG futures contracts.
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