trinity [week 2]: dr. ramin khadem

As Chairman of the Finance Oxford Business Club (Finance-OBN) - a rather esoteric way of simply saying "President of the Oxford Finance Club" - I schedule one guest speaker each term (in addition to all the other programs we run: Treks, CFA Review, Oxbridge exchange, Finance Faculty dinner, Stock Trading competition, etc). I cannot say this enough...that the strength of our club depends on the quality of its membership, and in each and every instance, our guest speakers have come from referrals from fellow MBAs. During Michaelmas term we hosted Usman Hayat, director of the CFA Institute's division on Islamic Finance. For Hilary term, we brought in Zeeshan Tayeb of Element Six (De Beers), who generously helped us organize a "Strategic Consulting Project" (SCP) for Trinity term.

For Trinity term, Emily (from my Michaelmas studygroup) arranged to have Dr. Ramin Khadem, Chairman of Odyssey Moon Limited, give a speech entitled, "Reflections on the Root Causes of the Current Economic Crisis." Pretty typical fodder for an MBA audience following the "Great Recession of 2008-09," but what made this speech unique was that Dr. Khadem took an ethical approach to solving the root causes of economic excess.

As a member of the European Baha'i Business Forum, Dr. Khadem was uniquely qualified to speak on the role that moral and ethical values can play in business to enhance overall prosperity. Another twist on this presentation, is that Dr. Khadem has been involved in the commercialization of outer space for the past quarter-century, previously as the CFO of Inmarsat, a global satellite network company that was sold to private equity firms Apax Partners and Permira in 2005. Who better to combine business experience with the "big-picture" perspective?

Following on his success, Dr. Khadem now serves as Chairman of Odyssey Moon Limited, where he aims to develop a "sustainable commercial transportation system to deliver payload services to the Moon in support of science." We've certainly come a long way since Frank Sinatra's 1964 rendition of "Fly Me to the Moon," recorded just 5-years before the Apollo 11 moon-landing mission. In the wake of Goldman Sach's Congressional testimony regarding charges of fraud last week, perhaps Dr. Khadem has the right idea, that when we search for ethical guidance we should look skywards where a more enlightened global perspective can be found.