Three decades. The work that gets done quietly.

Background

Mark Weir began his career in international telecoms in the early 1990s. The work spanned fixed-line and mobile infrastructure build-outs across Europe and into emerging markets where formal telecoms infrastructure was being laid for the first time. By the late 1990s the relationship network across operators, regulators, suppliers, and ministerial offices was the foundation that has underpinned every subsequent project.

The 2000s were the years of senior commercial roles — operator-side and supplier-side — during which the practice's geographic reach extended into West Africa, the Caribbean, MENA, and selected Eastern European geographies. The work shifted from build-out into operational and commercial structures: roaming partnerships, infrastructure-sharing arrangements, and the institutional infrastructure that connects national operators across regions.

By the early 2010s the natural progression was into commodities. The relationship network built in telecoms applied directly: ministerial-level introductions, regulatory permissions, project structuring, and the kind of cross-border counterparty verification that institutional commodity flows require. Energy products first — crude, refined products, gas — and a smaller line in selected non-energy commodities where the network had historic relationships.

The practice today

CMW Consultants Ltd, founded to formalise the consulting practice, runs the institutional commodity-brokerage and trade-finance-introductions side of the work. Xirik FZE in the UAE Free Zone provides the operational vehicle for trade execution where the regulatory and tax structure suits a Free Zone domicile.

Active engagements span MENA energy projects, West African telecoms infrastructure (with the live Sierra Leone telecoms RFI engagement as a reference point), institutional commodity flows where buyer-side and supplier-side both benefit from a verified intermediary, and trade-finance introductions for project owners who need real capital pathways rather than promises.

Working alongside

Josh Weir — son and operating partner of Weir Digital Media and joshweir.uk — runs the digital-infrastructure, AI-orchestration, and verification-platform side of the broader practice. The CMW work and the WDM work are two halves of the same approach: relationship-grounded deal origination on one side, infrastructure-grounded verification and operational systems on the other. The combination is what makes the practice institutional-grade.