FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT & INVESTMENT CORPORATION (FIIC) has substantial experience in international project development and finance as well as procurement, logistics, and transport for international construction projects. FIIC has an extensive worldwide track record and has been involved in scores of projects throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
FIIC operates both as a resource on its own behalf and through the following subsidiaries:
| AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL SERVICES Procurement & Construction Management Services |
| UNITRANS INTERNATIONAL, INC. Integrated Logistics Service Provider |
| AMERICAN-IRAQI SHIPPING LINE |
As a coordinator, FIIC structures innovative private sector projects in emerging markets by identifying, securing, and organizing the technical, managerial, and financial resources that ensure world-class, locally appropriate ventures. As a service provider, FIIC offers turn-key solutions that enable international construction industry Clients to delegate vital project tasks while ensuring timely, efficient, and cost effective project completion.
The success of FIIC and its subsidiaries has been recognized through extensive positive client feedback as well as numerous honors and awards including the President of the United States E Award for Excellence in Exporting; the Outstanding Achievement in International Trade award from the Washington International Trade Association; and the Entrepreneur of the Year award from Washington Business Journal/P eat Marwick.
FIIC is dedicated to achieving the highest performance standards in all the services it provides and projects it coordinates, empowering its project teams to meet the needs and interests of its customers, partners, financiers, investors, and other stakeholders.
International project development presents complex technical and managerial challenges to identify, secure, and coordinate the required expertise, capital, and other resources essential to project success. To achieve results, FIICs adheres to a proven strategy that involves (i) identifying a particular need and opportunity; (ii) securing the necessary strategic partners with the requisite technical and managerial expertise; (iii) procuring U.S. government or multilateral finance and investment insurance for risk mitigation; and (iv) attracting private debt and equity capital in correct proportions for a sound financial foundation.
Following this course, FIIC has been responsible for the development, construction, financing, and implementation of scores of technically sophisticated turnkey projects, providing such services as project and financial planning, procurement, engineering, design, logistics, and construction management. FIIC has participated in the development of commercial, educational, and government facilities; large scale housing; hospitals; power plants and transmission substations; water and waste treatment plants; and more. FIIC has proven its capability to harness and apply world-class technical, managerial, and financial expertise and resources to develop innovative ventures appropriate to the emerging markets it serves.
FIIC is now focusing on the opportunities arising from the technologies of the information age. Below is a summary of FIICs philosophy and approach to project development, which is based on an appreciation of the resulting new paradigms and opportunities that are emerging for the developing world.
New Paradigms are emerging in the worlds of commerce, education, and politics based on new and powerful information and communications technologies. The practical affect of these technologies is to empower individuals, enterprises, and organizations to achieve higher degrees of efficiency and productivity thereby revolutionizing traditional approaches to learning, management, procurement, and trade. The race is on to apply and profit from these technologies in all sectors of society. Every day new applications are emerging that transform and improve old processes, enabling empowered individuals and enterprises to achieve and produce more while consuming less time and resources.
The New Paradigms are based on the growing importance of knowledge and know-how within society. All economic systems sit upon a knowledge base. The skills taken for granted in business today are the product of centuries and millennia of cumulative cultural development. Successive generations have learned these skills, adapted them, transmitted them, and then slowly built on the result. Now, the pace of this process is speeding up dramatically. Within affluent nations as well as the developing world, the coining struggle for power will increasingly turn into a struggle over the distribution of and access to knowledge. The ability, for instance, to make a business deal happen very often depends more on knowledge than on capital. At a certain level its easier to obtain the money than the relevant know-how. Knowledge is the real power lever. The appreciation of this fact is transforming the way that companies operate both internally and externally, leading to higher levels of productivity as well as increasing respect for all stakeholders.
For the developing world, the technologies and innovations of the information age can have a particularly significant impact on strategies to improve economic development and wealth accumulation. In fact, enterprises in emerging markets have the capability to immediately participate in the information revolution, become globally competitive, and thrive in the New Paradigm. The principle obstacle is access to the required technical, managerial, and financial expertise and resources.
In emerging markets like everywhere, the most effective means to apply and profit from the technologies of the New Paradigm will be to empower the private sector. The profit motivation is the stimulus that leads private enterprise to apply the power of information technology to rigorously pursue continuous improvements to innovate, reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and generally improve the productive use of limited resources. As a result, societys concept of the private sector and the business community is changing. In the past, business enterprises were perceived mainly as instruments for creating wealth for their owners. Recently, this concept has been expanded to include the social function of wealth distribution as well. Enlightened private enterprises are beginning to appreciate the vital role they perform within society, maximizing returns to shareholders while giving equal consideration to the interests of other stakeholders.
FIIC's mission is to respond to this opportunity by being a catalyst for the transfer of world-class technical, managerial and financial expertise and resources that will stimulate productive economic development in emerging markets. The substantial opportunities to profit are commensurate with the substantial developmental impact that may result as knowledge builds wealth, and wealth irradicates poverty.
Project development under the New Paradigm is ultimately about empowerment. Even companies in emerging markets have the inherent power to be world-class and globally competitive because they have employees and other resources that they can effectively manage. FIICs role is to harness the expertise and resources that will facilitate this process.
Empowerment is ultimately about unleashing the knowledge and motivation that employees posses to do their jobs brilliantly, to bring their best ideas and initiatives to the workplace with a sense of excitement, ownership, and pride. There are two complementary approaches to employee empowerment. The macro approach focuses on the development of a companys internal culture, which should be based on respect for all stakeholders. Stakeholders include customers, employees, vendors, financiers, stockholders, as well as the local community. The micro approach involves the use of information technology to improve workplace systems and processes. Information technologies make it possible to compile, analyze, and report extensive quantities of data on a companys operation, which can be used to monitor and control worker productivity as well as operational and administrative costs. Then, by disseminating this information to employees at every level of a company, employees can be empowered to use the information to identify and take advantage of an unlimited number of opportunities to improve operations, reduce costs, and raise productivity.
The challenge is to apply this management approach within national and corporate cultures that are still dominated by a command and control mentality. The prospective benefits of these new management and information systems justify the required investment of time, know-how, and capital. Based on its extensive experience and background in the developing world, FIIC is particularly well suited to both lead and profit from the introduction and development of this process in emerging markets.
FIIC specializes in structuring and packaging private ventures in emerging markets to attract critical financing and financial resources. This typically entails articulating the project concept; the technical and market opportunities; managements qualifications; as well as the financial profile, constraints, and prospective returns. FIIC requires full transparency and accountability in all ventures it develops or supports. This has enabled FIIC to consistently secure capital from premier public and private investors and financial institutions.
In addition, FIIC also has broad experience in international project and trade finance, counter-trade, international purchase order finance, and the mechanics of international transaction structuring and financing. FIIC has the distinction of successfully engineering transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars throughout the developing world. As explained in the Sections that follow, though it subsidiaries, FIIC also provides worldwide product sourcing as well as comprehensive logistics and transport services.