Each year, global trade and finance rediscover the same lesson: risk does not usually fail at the margins — it fails at the point of design.
Fraud, private credit losses, receivables platform collapses, sanctions paralysis and enforcement failures are often treated as separate problems. In reality, they share common structural flaws: fragmented verification, reliance on documents over reality, and speed substituting for scrutiny.
As markets evolve in 2026, the question is no longer whether risk exists — but whether transactions are designed to withstand stress when assumptions fail.
The 3 New Cs: Credit, Counterparty & Compliance
Fraud is a Design Issue: The work we do is synonymous with fraud investigation and asset recovery. When you have done fraud cases for as long as we have, it is remarkable to observe the same modus operandi applying across different contexts – trade finance, crypto, receivable financing, fintech platforms or start-ups. The design architecture is strikingly the same: fragmented information, fabricated documents and growth as a proxy for truth. From eFishery to FTX, First Brands to Greensill, the heart of the structural flaw is the challenge of verification against the velocity of investment decisions.
The Rise of Private Credit: Private credit with its greater flexibility, speed and a higher tolerance for bespoke risk, has expanded rapidly into trade finance. Whether deployed in receivables financing, prepayment or inventory financing, the need to deploy capital quickly and higher risk tolerance means that verification mechanisms are even more critical.
Receivables Financing – Eyes on the Gatekeeper: In the burgeoning invoice financing sector, rapid growth propelled by algorithm-driven onboarding have enabled fictitious trades to be monetised as receivables, because volume and not verifiable value, drives funding decisions; cases like Stenn highlight how a web of fabricated invoices and sham debtor relationships, can be used to access liquidity while the underlying trade is illusory.
Sanctions & Trade Dislocation: Geopolitics have shifted decades’ long trade patterns with new counterparts and countries appearing in the world of trade, bringing it with heightened compliance, credit and country risk. Unwieldy language around sanctions, tariffs, currency shortages, and force majeure in contracts should not displace dynamic counterpart and country risk management grounded in realism on how contracts are performed under pressure.
Green Metals – the Back-to-Back Gap: The trading of green metals such as nickel, lithium, cobalt is often framed as a question of price volatility and supply security but in reality, stands unique from other commodities because of possible misalignment between upstream specification and downstream use, leaving intermediate traders exposed. In that regard, the changing technologies of batteries represent both opportunity as well as risk to those involved.
Asset Recovery – Nimble Approach & Global Playbooks: Across trade finance, receivables financing, private credit, fintech platforms, crypto markets and start-ups, fraud typically involves rapid dissipation and layering of assets. This is why asset recovery today demands a fundamentally different posture. Fraud cases do not progress neatly from judgment to enforcement. They require simultaneous action on multiple fronts such as investigation, freezing orders, tracing and jurisdictional strategy, right from the outset.
Our differentiating factor as a specialist boutique, remains our network and the speed at which we can marshal a global team of lawyers and experts to stop value erosion. And we are pleased to see market recognition by winning Benchmark Litigation’s Boutique Firm of the Year 2025.
2026 Risk Mitigation Report: Risk, Resilience & Recovery
In global trade and finance, the most consequential risks when transactions are not structured to perform under stress, disruption or friction. Download our 2026 Risk Mitigation Report on structural design considerations to manage risk across trade, finance, crypto, receivables and insurance.
This report is written for General Counsel, risk committees, investment teams and senior decision-makers dealing with trade, commodities and finance.