James Blount

After graduating from Oxford University and embarking on a short and unsuitable career in accountancy and investment banking, James spent much of 1985 roaming on foot across Soviet-occupied Afghanistan with the mujahideen, as a freelance correspondent for The Daily Telegraph.

From there he found himself recruited into HM Diplomatic Service where he enjoyed ten years of intriguing and often delicate work, including tours as First Secretary Political in the British Missions in both Lima and Islamabad.  He developed a deep understanding of, and affection for, both Peru (and Latin America more widely) and Pakistan (and the broader Islamic world).

Reluctant to waste his Pakistani network of connections at the end of this diplomatic tour, James resigned and put his regional expertise at the disposal of Jardine Fleming Pakistan, the Karachi-based branch of the Hong Kong Asia-wide investment bank, ultimately becoming CEO and, among other things, securing JF Pakistan’s accession to the Karachi Stock Exchange in the face of sustained opposition from local media and finance community.

Following his return to the UK, in 1999 he joined Control Risks, the leading international business risk consultancy, as a kidnap response consultant, responsible for advising clients on the resolution of high-pressure kidnaps and extortions, mostly to start with in Colombia and Mexico, but later also in the Middle East, the Far East, Europe and Africa.  He would return to this role at various points in his long Control Risks career, having been assigned to a range of other senior roles within the group.

Of these the most significant was as the first Country Manager to Iraq in 2003, just after the overthrow by coalition forces of the Ba’athist regime.  Control Risks Iraq was responsible for the security of UK diplomatic and DfID staff and their countrywide contractors employed in the reconstruction programme – and within a year, recognised widely as the leading provider of intelligence-led security solutions, had won numerous other sovereign clients, including the governments of Sweden, Canada, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, as well as some US Government departments, and then a range of large corporates.  From the summer of 2003 through 2004 and 2005, the security environment deteriorated dramatically, requiring constant adaptation and innovation by Control Risks and James’s management team and 250+ operators on the ground.

In 2005 James returned to his kidnap consulting role and spent a year managing one long and difficult Venezuelan case, which was successfully resolved, and in 2006 was asked to set up a regional office for Control Risks Iraq in Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

Having achieved this valuable start-up, James was appointed Director Control Risks Middle East, based in Dubai, where he oversaw the development of a new directorate and its evolution from a small security consultancy into a full-service regional business.

By 2009 he had spent six years in the Gulf (broken only by the Venezuela case) and, pining for the mountains and for time in Europe, took a one-year sabbatical, the highlight of which was a solo traverse on foot of the Pyrenees from Atlantic to Mediterranean.

After a year as a programme director for Aegis Defence Services running the security contract for an Italian oil company in the Basra oilfields in the southern Iraqi desert, James (by then belatedly a father) returned to Control Risks in 2011, initially to set up a small security operation in Tripoli, Libya, following the upheaval of the Arab Spring, and then reverting to his default role as a kidnap responder.  He worked on a wide variety of cases, including kidnaps carried out by proscribed Islamist organisations (both Al Qaeda and ISIS) in Yemen and Syria; several cases of piracy off Somalia and in the Gulf of Guinea; a number of complex extortions involving multinational telecoms networks; and some early examples of virtual kidnapping.  All successfully resolved.

With his freedom of movement inhibited by paternity, James was taken on in 2017 as Director Special Risks by Hiscox plc, the world-leading insurer of special risks (including kidnap), having impressed the chief executive of this division with his ability to engage with clients and to tell a compelling and gripping story.  In this position, and travelling to worldwide markets, he managed the successful roll-out of an innovative risk management policy, which from a standing start was generating after only three years an annual Gross Written Premium of around USD 10m.

Currently he is living in the Dorset countryside from where he provides special risks consultancy services and training, fulfils motivational, instructive and highly entertaining speaking engagements with businesses and boards, and organises well-subscribed treks over the Pyrenees following escape and evasion routes used by allied agents and servicemen during WWII.

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