Their deeply personalized approach as well as highly interactive style did not leave anyone uninvolved. Well structured seminar with real life cases made understanding complex concepts and processes a much easier task, which I would say is the key strength of the TradeСruiser team. While Trainer’s vast experience of course is a big advantage of TradeСruiser, being able to transfer it to other people regardless of their level is the key. The informality of the process and charisma of the trainer got everyone involved and interested at the early stages of the training and captured attention for the length of the whole course. Our work with TradeСruiser proved to be effective and perfect for our needs and we are planning to use their services again as we progress.

Risk management is a fascinating concept and very much in demand today. It has an impact on virtually all aspects of a modern company’s operations. The mere number of new theories, trends, and approaches is beyond reckoning. Unfortunately, quantity does not always transform into quality. Where lies the optimal balance between the exposure assumed and the potential reward? How do you turn the impeccable academic theory into an effective practical routine? There is no single answer to that, but there is a team of professionals really committed to training, development, and integration of risk management systems and solving a specific problem in a specific situation. As a company with a long track record of crude and petroleum products trading in the energy markets, we confidently recommend TradeCruiser’s services packaged as workshops and seminars for a broad audience or tailored corporate training sessions and consultancy. The knowledge and experience our members of staff have gained can immediately be applied in practice: to us that is one of the crucial elements of successful corporate training and development.

The workshop was great! I managed to get far more, both theoretically and practically, than I did from the MBA course. Theory was supported by excellent case studies. A unique selection of professional knowledge and skills! A separate word of thanks goes for the visits you helped arrange.

With my experience of market dealing in a few largest Russian banks, I am confident that the organisation of the dealing room, a trading and a brokering unit is very important. It's vital to be able to understand and to feel the spirit of the dealing room with its unique information and communications environment, the principles on which trading is based. All of that can only be understood and felt during the visits similar to those you arranged for us!

Shell Trading: an unrivaled opportunity to experience what is going on at the heart of an oil giant. The presentation was brilliant, and Shell's representatives were superb handling the difficult task of answering our questions. The explanations were detailed, and covered the principles of funding the trade desks, positions hedging, the structure of trading and how various departments interact. I'd like to emphasise again that this was not a theoretical speculation, this was a detailed overview of an operational trading department – and that's worth a lot!

Platts: I'd like to mention at once that this line of business is not in existence in Russia. The purpose of the meeting was to understand for whom the company operates, and how. Before visiting Platts we studied the materials on the company's website, shared information and opinions with our colleagues, trying to identify the company's goals and objectives. We prepared questions to Platts based on our own understanding of its role in the market. Following the results of the meeting, our perception had positively been very superficial and not entirely accurate.

The presentation covered the corporate philosophy, the Platts products and methodology. We were even shown how the Platts window works, and I finally realised what it was, who needed it and how market participants used it.

The company is developing constantly, introducing new technology, and even the official website did not always provide a clear and complete picture of the company, and some crucial information was lacking or incomplete.

Once again, I realised that it was better to talk face to face with the market professionals than try to solve a jigsaw puzzle from fragmented second hand information!

The current downstream business development strategy for TNK-BP envisions expansion into international markets and the use of various financial instruments to generate additional revenue. These ambitious goals entail higher levels of attention to building commercial competence among traders, the Sales and Logistics Department management, as well as creating an appropriate skill pool. With the help from TradeCruiser we have successfully launched a new talent search and development initiative, bringing the future traders training to a higher level of professionalism and in line with TNK-BP’s strategic goals. The new initiative has become key for young, talented and ambitious employees to build a strong career. The huge experience and unique charisma of TradeCruiser’s chief trainer, Konstantin Babourine, were a core element of success. We are glad to work together with this team of professionals.

The trainer clearly has a vast practical experience and is a top professional in the field. I am looking forward to enjoy another such training workshop in the future.

The key distinctive feature of this course is not the theory, since futures, swaps, and options are well described in specialised publications, and not even in case studies... it is exactly the style of presentation and the aura of the course... Let's start with the latter... It is informal... No need to worry about wearing a tie and thinking about wrinkles on your suit... This informality is not exclusive to the dress code but springs into the DIALOGUE with a presenter and other delegates... This is miles away from a standard boring set of lectures thrust onto the audience by a new-made professor, who reads "mathematical justification of economic theory" stuck in his own notes...

To be honest at some of events and presentations looking at those topics which I visited there was the following logic: "fighting hunger before lunch, and resisting sleep after"... This course on the contrary had an exclusively working climate, which enables every delegate to come up with specific relevant questions and have them answered through the DIALOGUE with Konstantin and other delegates... It seems that this DIALOGUE is the key component of the lecturer's style of presentation... To use a metaphor you are not getting a digested answer to your question put in your mouth but instead get involved in actually generating it! Theory is also being presented along the same lines using case studies and resorting to teamwork thus enabling you to get to the essence of things ON YOUR OWN and not just read through the scribbles in your notes... In other words – INTERESTING! In this way the presenter succeeds in the key aspect - awakening/strengthening the interest of a delegate to the topic in such a way that it wouldn't fade away neither upon awarding a certificate nor in the turmoil of the coming Monday...

At first I was very anxious that I would not meet the high standards of the programme because of my limited knowledge, but all my fears vanished after the first fifteen minutes. You could not say there was nothing difficult about it; yet the trainer was very efficient at making the complex concepts easy to understand. Genius lies in simplicity: a true description of the TradeCruiser advanced training. To me this programme seemed easier than the introductory course, which included many new things rather hard to grasp. The advanced training programme focuses more on solving a variety of risk management tasks.

The search for the best solution gets your mind to work harder, to see opportunities where you would not look for them before, and, more importantly, to look upon your everyday work from a different angle. The trainer's expertise and openness to new challenges and solutions are a natural catalyst.

Too bad this enthusiasm dies out after a few days of the usual routine – this is a course people should attend regularly.