A CASUALTY STUDY IN BEING AHEAD BUT ALSO BEHIND
⋰ ORYX SIS 1 (Oryx Secondary for Information Systems) was the 1ˢᵗ tranche of a failed attempt to create a verticalized secondary banking house, built entirely to serve the scaling needs of the Information/Telecommunication Technologies (ICT) industry… with a niche of reducing time, risk, and cost in perilous emerging markets.
*The project received seed backing via an SPV by a syndicate of mostly Gulf investors and expertise from leading technology-finance execs. As it was discontinued before reaching branding stage, the operating name of the bank never materialized. **Thanks to everyone who believed in its potential *with their savings, sweat, advice, connections.The learning lives on through the people who contributed to it, at firms like Dubai Holding, Qatar Foundation, HP, Credit Suisse AG, ORACLE, Motorola, and AFAQ.
BETWEEN 2006-2010, the ORYX SIS venture sought alliances and friendly LBO candidates to interweave into a global network, offering:
🄰 IP-guaranteed financing for vendors & buyers
🄱 real/virtual safe-custody boxes for secure patent treasuring
🄲 a private liquidity management vehicle & exchange for protection from foreign monetary fluctuation (pre-dating cryptocurrencies)
🄳 IT asset securitization, with escrowed inter-company trade
** 🄴 specialised services** (M&A advisory, outsourcing of tech-literate debt collection services, options/ESOP management, investor relations support, economic intelligence, and financial risk management controls)
The stream upon which its model most relied was to be from debt to enterprise end users... via capital lending for software licensing & complex implementation projects, and equipment leasebacks for large data centers, hardware & networks. Benefits to industry were accelerated replacement of legacy systems through reduced financial barriers to customers from moving to the latest technology, enhanced vendor coverage in markets with less-developed SME financing options, and generally reinvigorating growth through ICT spending & margins.Despite having legally circumvented subjections to regulatory delay through its associate structure and mixed offshore / online location, it still gave way to changes in the industry (favoring devices plus the Cloud/XaaS model over the perpetual licensing / systems integration approach), laggard banker mindsets, difficulty differentiating perceptions from the international Silicon Valley Bank, and cashy Tier 1 vendors starting their own in-house tech finance divisions.But what put the final nail in the coffin? The financial crisis of 2009, and Bitcoin’s invention of blockchain commencing the populous and open FinTech & DeFi movements, changing the banking system forever. ⋱
Now, onto the new.
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