Biography

Markus Bates spent the vast majority of his 29 year career trading natural resources before becoming involved in advising and research within the same space.  In addition to his advising and research role with Bankers Energy, he was the Executive Director for Energy Capital Research Group (ECRG), an independent research firm dedicated to providing in-depth knowledge and advisory services relating to the oil & gas, coal, power, industrial, and mining sectors and the Head of Financials for Wood Mackenzie in New York, one of the premier global research and consulting firms in the natural resources space.  He has over 20 years of experience in managing international trading activities as either Executive Vice President or Vice President, namely for a subsidiary of owned  equally by Ruhrkohle AG in New York, a German-based coal and chemicals company that became the second largest miner of coal globally with mines in the Australia, the US and Venezuela, and CoalArbed International Trading in Baltimore, a subsidiary of steelmaker, ArcelorMittal. He has traveled and traded extensively throughout the globe and is fluent in German, Portuguese and Spanish.              

He was a true pioneer trading some of the first export cargoes of many natural resources from China in the early 1990s and some of the first import cargoes into China in the 2000s. He distinguished himself in the commodities trade by leading operations that resulted in becoming the largest exporter of metallurgical coal and coke from China as well as one of the leading exporters of coal from the US for close to a decade. In addition to his experience as a trader, Markus has experience in M&A and structured finance transactions. He holds a graduate degree in Accounting as well as a Florida Real Estate and Series 65 License. He has been advising portfolio/fund managers and global banks about natural resources exclusively for the last decade and overall for the last 18 years.