Gold Magazine March - April 2013, Issue 24 | Page 67

Cyprus is going to gain
a tremendous amount of outside
capital in the next 3-4 years,
especially from hedge
fund businesses
off people?’ They looked at me strangely but I said ‘Do your research’. They
did and they saw that 90% of those policies were defaulting so we found a
way to purchase those insurance policies, turn them into bonds, sell them
off (that would never work today, by the way!) to Dean Witter and we
made something like an average guaranteed 17% on every policy that we
bought”.
Those heady days were not to last. The regulations were tightened up and
from making lots of money, Laurent and his colleagues went to making no
money and then to losing money. It was time to move on and it was then that
he came to a key conclusion that was to affect everything he has done since: ”I
realised that all finance is basically the same thing and it’s just packaged differently. What’s the difference between an ETF and a Mutual Fund? Packaging!
What’s the difference between spread betting and Forex? They are almost identical. One is on stocks, one is on currencies. I was fortunate to understand this from
a young age”.
Based on this realisation, Oren Laurent decided that he would work for
companies and start packing up financial products for them.
He did this for some time and then 2008 came. “And we
all know what happened then!” he laughs.
Did he know that the crisis was coming or was it
as big a shock for him as it was for people “on the
outside”?
“Oh yes. We all knew it was coming because we
were aware of the recklessness that was going on
in the market,” he says. “Things had reached
the point where I could call up a client and
get $20 million on the phone from a guy
who had never met me before, just because
I worked at XYZ. Life was too easy; something was obviously wrong. The mortgage
crisis was just coming into play and people
were talking about it, but when you are
making money you think it’s never going
to end”.
In 2008, as Laurent puts it, “Everything crashed” and he and his friends
and colleagues found themselves
sitting around and trying to figure
out what to do with their lives.
“We weren’t doing anything
else at the time,” he recalls.
“We couldn’t call up Joe
and say, ‘Hi Joe, do you
want to trade a little?’
because Joe didn’t want
to talk to you Joe
didn’t want to know
you and God forbid
Joe’s wife should pick
up the phone!”

THE INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT, FINANCE & PROFESSIONAL SERVICES MAGAZINE OF CYPRUS

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Gold 67

07/03/2013 11:48