Managing Country Risk

What would you do if a law that enabled your investment to operate successfully abroad suddenly changed, and your business could no longer operate profitably there? Imagine exporting goods to a government buyer only to discover after the fact that your home country, or the United Nations, has just imposed an embargo on that country.

Managing Country Risk: A Practitioner’s Guide to Effective Cross-Border Risk Analysis explains how to identify and manage the many risks associated with conducting business abroad. Daniel Wagner, an industry expert with decades of battle-tested experience, provides the real-world insight needed to think outside the box and anticipate the impact of change on your business operations.

Using case studies and practical examples, it supplies essential information on country risk management and explains how these concepts apply to every day operational examples. Considering the impact of perception on investment decisions, it demonstrates how to put a country risk assessment into practice and explains how to create a framework, select the right tools, and map out a country risk analysis methodology.

Appropriate for a wide audience―from individual entrepreneurs and small exporters to multinational corporations―the book provides a solid foundation in the basics of country risk analysis. It facilitates an understanding of the full range of cross-border risks and explains how to manage them.

The strategies, concepts, and tools outlined in the book provide you with the understanding needed to help your organization make more-informed decisions about how it does business abroad. Practical examples and case studies provide the real-world insight needed to add value to the risk management processes in your organization and enhance your company’s ability to make a profit.

Daniel Wagner is the Founder and CEO of Country Risk Solutions (CRS), a cross-border risk advisory firm based in Connecticut (USA). Prior to founding CRS, Daniel was Senior Vice President of Country Risk at GE Energy Financial Services where he was part of a team investing billions of dollars annually into global energy projects. Daniel was responsible for advising senior management on a variety of country risk-related issues, strategic planning, and portfolio management. He created a Center of Excellence for country risk analysis in GE and led a team that produced a comprehensive automated country risk rating methodology.

He began his career underwriting Political Risk Insurance (PRI) at AIG in New York and subsequently spent five years as Guarantee Officer for the Asia Region at the World Bank Group’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency in Washington, D.C. During that time he was responsible for underwriting PRI for projects in a dozen Asian countries. After then serving as Regional Manager for Political Risks for Southeast Asia and Greater China for AIG in Singapore, Daniel moved to Manila, Philippines where he was Guarantee and Risk Management Advisor, Political Risk Guarantee Specialist, and Senior Guarantees and Syndications Specialist for the Asian Development Bank’s Office of Co-financing Operations. Over the course of his quarter century-long career Daniel has also held senior positions in the PRI brokerage business in London, Dallas and Houston.

Daniel has published hundreds of articles on risk management and current affairs, is a non-resident scholar at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, and a regular contributor to foreignpolicyjournal.com, the Huffington Post and International Risk Management Institute (IRMI). His editorials have been published in such notable newspapers as the International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal. His first book - Political Risk Insurance Guide - was published by IRMI.

He holds master’s degrees in International Relations from the University of Chicago and in International Management from the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird) in Phoenix. Daniel received his bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Richmond College in London. Daniel can be reached at daniel.wagner@countryrisksolutions.com or through www.countryrisksolutions.com.