About The Author

DOUGLAS CASTLE: PROFESSIONAL PROFILE


914.462.2299 (Direct Telephone)

914.514.1673 (Facsimile)

douglascastle (Skype, By Appointment)

douglas.castle@yahoo.com (Email - Preferred)

douglas.castle@icloud.com (Email - Large Document Transfers, By Arrangement)



Douglas Castle is a senior level expert in all matters of high-level corporate negotiations, deal structure and finance, strategic planning, international business, major project management and all aspects of business communication. He speaks, consults and writes frequently about these subjects, as well as about key aspects of leadership, crisis management and the Human Condition. He has authored a great many articles on a very wide variety of subjects. Mr. Castle is currently a private consultant to young companies in several different countries.


Mr. Castle has been, and continues to be a seasoned and acclaimed advisor, director and trustee to emerging enterprises and growing companies worldwide, across a broad variety of industries on matters of organizational development, strategic planning, financing (both institutional equity and debt), international incorporations and negotiating of joint ventures, licenses of intellectual property, and mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Castle’s current passions are centered upon leveraging his wealth of experience in high-stakes corporate negotiations, deal structure, organizational engineering, strategic planning, business communications, social media marketing campaigns and financing to foster innovation and entrepreneurial growth and success in promising early-stage companies.


Mr. Castle’s professional resume has encompassed: international banking, asset-based financing, merchant banking (equity), factoring, purchase order financing, trade financing, leasing, sale/leaseback transactions, credit enhancement and surety bonding, transactional structuring (mergers, acquisitions, LBOs, ESOPs, management buy-outs, transnational and domestic co-ventures), real estate investment syndication, and the creation and monetization of unique investment instruments.


He has written and presented operating plans for international and offshore banks, finance companies, leasing companies, guarantee (bonding and other credit enhancements) companies to various financial institutions and government agencies and ministries; he has chartered a number of international commercial and economic development banks and reinsurance companies in multiple offshore and international jurisdictions -- these institutions had a combined aggregate capitalization at their operating outset of in excess of US$12,800,000,000.00.


During the past thirty five years, he has also incorporated close to one hundred IBCs (International Business Companies) and formed more than a dozen APTs (Asset Protection Trusts) in conjunction with domestic and international legal counsel across many business sectors. He has worked as a turnaround expert for troubled US and UK companies, and has renegotiated loan terms with banks, other creditors, bondholders and shareholders for these companies, both as pre-bankrupts, and as debtors-in-possession or trustees-in-possession.


Some of Mr. Castle’s prior engagements have included: Chairman of Global Edge International Consulting Associates, Inc.; Executive Director of Global Business Intel™, an unincorporated Division of Global Edge Technologies Group, LLC; Director and Senior Consultant of The Castle Consultancy; Managing Director and Member of Global Edge Technologies Group LLC; Acting Chairman and CEO of TNNWC Group, LLC; Senior Financial Analyst In Charge Of Special Projects for National Westminster Bank, plc; Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Banking, Finance and Investments at the Hofstra University School Of Business; Director of Capitol Guaranty Surety Company Inc.; Director of First Empire Capital Corporation and First Empire Autolease, Inc.; Intelligence Contractor for Kroll International Inc.; Interim CEO for AGP Group (publicly-traded, subsequently privately purchased); Member of the Board Of Directors, Triangle Group International, Inc. (publicly-traded, subsequently divided into several private concerns, each one a Management Buyout); and numerous others.


Mr. Castle received his B.S. in Economics from Stony Brook University (1976), with Omicron Delta Epsilon honors (as well as a New York State Regents Scholarship), and he received his MBA in Public Accounting from The Hofstra University Graduate School Of Business (with a graduate fellowship) in 1979.


Mr. Castle is a passionate and prolific speaker and writer about topics relating to Internationalism, futurism, leadership, negotiation, communication, and a variety of other non-financial topics.


You can obtain more information about Douglas Castle’s personal, educational and professional background by visiting his Linked In profile, which can be found by going to http://www.linkedin.com/in/douglascastle



Douglas Castle

914.462.2299 (Direct Telephone)

914.514.1673 (Facsimile)

douglascastle (Skype, By Appointment)

douglas.castle@yahoo.com (Email - Preferred)

douglas.castle@icloud.com (Email - Large Document Transfers, By Arrangement)


This document is Copyright © 2017 by Douglas Castle, with all rights reserved.

Monday, November 13, 2017

4IR: The Fourth Industrial Revolution Is Here.


4IR: The Fourth Industrial Revolution Is Here
What Is It?
How Does One Prepare For It?
Are You Prepared For It?



Is it just me, or does this remind you just a bit of the movie “ET”?




The Fourth Industrial Revolution, or 4IR (it has become very hip to speak in alphanumeric acronyms, although this is quite exclusionist, and creates communication problems between heterogeneous groups engaged in either conversation or combat…), is the fourth major industrial era since the initial Industrial Revolution of the 18th century.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is upon us right now (OMG!) has been described by some self-professed and oftimes pompous multidisciplinary pundits as a “range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, and impacting all disciplines, economies and industries.” Klaus Schwab, noteworthy Founder of the World Economic Forum, has associated it with the "second machine age" in terms of the effects of digitization and AI (“artificial intelligence”) on the economy, but added a broader role for advances in biological technologies.

Schwab sees as part of this revolution "emerging technology breakthroughs" in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous vehicles (accident-free driving, until driving automation systems are hacked, after which I can sense a bumper car jamboree!), 3D printing, quantum computing and nanotechnology. Schwab, in all of his wisdom, has neglected to include machine learning (different from AI) and stem cell technologies in his assessment and definition.

How do we prepare for this wave that is washing over us? I believe that the answer is in doing as much research and reading on every top news topic (the serious ones, and not the ones about celebrity misconduct or “discoveries” from the front pages of tabloids) that emerges. Education has now become our primary survival tool. It is a manual and arduous process (which is oddly ironic, especially in this age of automation and instantaneity), but it is what is required.

Lamentably, this revolution is going to open a wider gap between the few super-wealthy elites and the ever-growing ranks of the working poor. This situation, if it continues could actually foment a Fifth Industrial Revolution (i.e., 5IR) which could either lead to the end of history (in the most adverse sense of the expression), or to a frightening new form of total slavery, such as the world has never witnessed. I hope that I am proven wrong.

Thank you, as always, for reading me.   - Douglas
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