Mark Weir
Director · CMW Consultants Ltd

Mark Weir.

Three decades of international telecoms and commodity-trade origination. The work that gets done quietly, between the deal sheets and the diplomatic cables.

About Mark Get in touch
About

Three decades. Five continents. The work that gets done quietly.

Mark Weir began his career in international telecoms in the early 1990s, working across the build-out of mobile and fixed-line infrastructure during the formative years of the modern global communications industry. From early commercial work into emerging markets where formal infrastructure was being laid for the first time, he built the network of relationships — across operators, regulators, suppliers and ministerial offices — that has underpinned every subsequent project.

By the early 2010s, with telecoms maturing into a steady-state institutional industry, the natural progression was into commodities — first as an intermediary on energy trades, then as a deal originator across oil, refined products, gas and the institutional financing instruments that move physical commodities at scale. Founding CMW Consultants Ltd formalised the consulting practice; Xirik FZE in the UAE Free Zone provides the operational vehicle for trade execution.

EARLY 1990s
Begins career in international telecoms — fixed-line and mobile infrastructure build-outs across Europe and emerging markets.
2000s
Senior commercial roles spanning operator-side and supplier-side. Network of relationships across regulators, operators, ministerial offices.
EARLY 2010s
Transition into commodity-trade origination. Energy products, refined fuels, institutional flows. Costa Blanca relocation.
RECENT
Founds CMW Consultants Ltd as the formal consultancy vehicle; Xirik FZE (UAE) for trade execution. Active engagements include Sierra Leone telecoms RFI, MENA energy projects, MENA refined-products supply.
Services

Three areas of work.

All driven by the same underlying capability — the relationship network across emerging markets, the verification discipline to know what's real, and the experience to structure transactions that actually close.

Commodity Brokerage

Origination, intermediation, and verification across oil, refined products, gas, and selected non-energy commodities. Buyer-side and supplier-side mandates.

Trade Finance Introductions

Introductions to institutional capital for trade and project finance. Family offices, private credit funds, development finance institutions.

Emerging Market Advisory

Project origination and verification in emerging markets — telecoms infrastructure, energy supply contracts, infrastructure project mandates.
Insights

Long-form market commentary.

Three pieces in development for the first wave. Quarterly cadence. Cross-bylined where the topic warrants.

Insight · 2026-Q4

West African telecoms infrastructure: thirty years on

In the early 1990s I spent the better part of three years on West African telecoms build-outs. The work that taught me what infrastructure origination actually involves in this region — and the lessons that still apply today, in a market that has changed almost entirely in technology and not at all in some of its underlying realities.
Insight · 2026-Q4

The MENA energy corridor: where institutional flows are actually moving

The narrative around the Middle East and North Africa energy corridor has moved faster than the underlying flows. A view from inside the deal pipeline of where capital is actually going, where it is hesitating, and what the next two to three years look like.
Insight · 2026-Q4

NCNDA discipline: why the documents matter more than the deal

Non-circumvention, non-disclosure agreements are the most under-respected document in commodity-trade origination. After thirty years of watching mandates close and fail, here is why the discipline of the NCNDA is, more often than not, the single factor that distinguishes an originator who closes from one who does not.
Insight · 2026-Q4

Ground truth versus deck truth in emerging-market project assessment

Every deal that crosses my desk arrives with a deck. The work of the originator is to determine, before any capital commits, where the gap between the ground truth and the deck truth is, how large it is, and whether the deal still works once the gap is honestly accounted for.
Insight · 2026-Q4

Why most mandates don't close (and the few that do)

After thirty years in commodity-trade origination, I keep informal records on the mandates I have been involved in. The pattern of which closed and which did not is more consistent than is comfortable to acknowledge — and the lessons from it are the most important I have learned in the work.
Insight · 2026-05-14

The Discipline of Cross-Border Investment Structuring

Cross-border investment structuring is less about jurisdictions and more about the sequencing of risk transfer. The four risks that structure must address , sovereign, currency, counterparty, and tax , and why structure-as-process beats structure-as-document over a ten-year hold.
Insight · 2026-05-14

A Market Thesis on the Long Cycle in Physical Assets

Capital cycles around physical assets run on a longer cadence than the operating environment that prices them. The current phase, beginning around 2022 to 2024, differs from the post-Global Financial Crisis decade in three specific ways: capital cost structure, operating cost structure, and the formalised regulatory and carbon overlay.
Insight · 2026-Q3

What thirty years of commodity cycles teaches us about Africa today

Three decades across telecoms and commodities reveals a pattern most current Africa coverage misses: institutional capital is not absent, it is structurally mismatched to the deal-flow it is offered.
Insight · 2026-Q3

The verification stack: how a serious commodity intermediary separates real flow from the noise

The practical mechanics of verifying a commodity counterparty before introduction. Where most intermediaries fail and how the work has industrialised in the last five years.
Insight · 2026-Q4

Sierra Leone telecoms RFI: an inside view of a live emerging-market mandate

A working-level account of an active telecoms infrastructure RFI engagement — the actors, the structure, the verification work, and the public-domain lessons for similar engagements elsewhere.
Get in touch

Direct enquiries welcome.

Institutional counterparties, project owners, and family offices. For commodity-trade enquiries, please indicate the product, volume range, geography, and timeframe in your initial message.