Abaxx Technologies Inc. Announces Additions to Executive Management and Market Structure Advisory Leads

TORONTO, June 02, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Abaxx Technologies Inc., (ABXX:NEO)(ABXXF:OTCQX) (“Abaxx” or the “Company”), a financial software (fintech) company, majority shareholder of Abaxx Singapore Pte. Ltd., the Abaxx Commodity Exchange (ACX), and producer of the SmarterMarkets™ Podcast, announces that Wes Fulford has been appointed to serve as interim Chief Financial Officer and Celine Tan has been appointed Financial Controller of Abaxx Singapore, effective June 1^st, following the successful completion of the integration mandate and planned transition of the Company’s finance team following the reverse take-over of New Millennium Iron Corp. (“NML”) in December of 2020.

Abaxx has also formalized a new Market Structure Advisory team, positioning the Company to draw on the global experience and commercial networks of each advisory lead in their respective markets, and has appointed several new leaders to the group. David Greely has joined as Senior Economic Advisor, drawing on his Macroeconomic and Commodity Market experience as a former portfolio strategist at Bridgewater Associates and former Managing Director and Head of Energy Research at Goldman Sachs; Steven Lowe has joined as a Gold Market Structure Lead, joining Wade Brennan, both having distinguished careers in physical bullion markets. Gus Hadidi leads LNG Market Structure, bringing more the 15 years experience in LNG markets with Enerleb, Fortress Investment Group, and Poten & Partners; and Bruce Tozer leads Voluntary Carbon Markets and ESG Commodities for Abaxx, having held senior leadership positions in environmental markets and agriculture for JP Morgan, Rabobank and Credit Agricole.

“We continue to grow our senior leadership team and global commercial network as we prepare to launch our initial markets in the second half of 2021. Wes has been a valuable member of the Abaxx executive team, having played an integral role in our recent $24.7M bought-deal financing, and bringing over 15 years of investment banking, capital markets and corporate strategy experience to the Company. It was a natural progression to appoint him as the new interim CFO, and we thank the former NML finance team for all of their efforts having completed a successful transition in the newly merged company,” commented Joshua Crumb, Chief Executive Officer and Founder.

“We believe that establishing a sound foundation of industry experts who are aligned with our mission is requisite to cultivating industry consensus, as well as access to key insights on matters including ESG, energy transitions, precious metals, and risk advisory in global commodity futures markets. I have a high degree of admiration for the skills these individuals bring to our company and I am confident that the strength of our management and advisory teams will translate into the success of our mission at Abaxx,” said Josh Crumb.

Wes Fulford, Interim Chief Financial Officer, Abaxx Technologies

Wes Fulford is a seasoned entrepreneur and capital markets professional with broad experience in corporate strategy, development, and governance. Prior to joining Abaxx, Wes served as CEO and Director of TSXV-listed Bitfarms Ltd., leading the company to 291% operational growth in 2019 and cementing Bitfarms’ position as one of the largest publicly-traded companies in its market sector.

Prior to joining Bitfarms, Mr. Fulford spent 15 years in investment banking and asset management primarily based in Toronto, Canada. Most recently, Mr. Fulford led the Fintech and Financial Institutions investment banking practice for Desjardins Capital Markets. During his career as an investment banker, Mr. Fulford has been directly involved in financing and mergers and acquisition transactions valued at over $7.2 billion. Mr. Fulford is a CFA charterholder and a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization.
As an early investor and long-term advisor to the Company, Wes will lead the finance department of Abaxx Technologies and continue to play a leading role in a number of strategic initiatives.

Celine Tan, Financial Controller, Abaxx Commodity Exchange

Celine Tan has spent over 25 years in the energy markets, spanning oil and chemical storage to liquified natural gas (LNG). Her past roles have afforded her a unique background that combines finance, risk management and treasury operations within oil markets, energy storage and LNG trading with focus in Singapore, North Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, Europe, and U.S. The majority of her professional experience has focused on APAC regional finance and business partnerships and brings extensive knowledge in financial planning, budgeting, controlling and operations, as well as M&A transactions and debt/equity financing.

Celine will support Abaxx Exchange as a financial controller to trade and clearing operations.

Bruce Tozer, Strategic Advisor, ESG Commodities & Voluntary Carbon Markets Lead

Bruce Tozer has garnered decades of notable experience specific to carbon markets and organizing industry consensus around environmental, social and governance (ESG) attributes. Having held senior commercial and leadership positions for JP Morgan, Rabobank and Credit Agricole, Mr. Tozer has focused his career on structuring and financing commodity projects that emphasize carbon and environmental markets.

At JP Morgan, working closely with the commodities leadership team, Mr. Tozer formulated the strategy that launched the Environmental Markets team in late 2006, successfully establishing operations for end-to-end processes for a multitude of carbon traded products including EUAs, CERs, VERs, RECs, and other related financial products across all aspects of the business platform (trading and sales, legal, compliance, credit, market and country risk, tax, operations etc).

At Credit Agricole he headed EMEA sales and origination for agri/soft commodities, carbon derivatives and risk management products where he was responsible for a noteworthy accomplishment in establishing Credit Agricole’s investment with Danone of the Danone Livelihoods Carbon Fund (livelihoods.eu). To further his commitment to ESG, he serves as a Non-Executive Director of M.P. Evans Group PLC, a London-based plantations business oriented around palm oil supply chains in Indonesia which adhere to the highest sustainability and ESG standards.

Bruce will serve as an Advisor to Abaxx Exchange on ESG strategy, as well as development and execution of frameworks surrounding Abaxx’s carbon neutral LNG derivatives products. Bruce Tozer has been a valued advisor to Abaxx Exchange over the past several months, particularly in establishing a working group alongside key industry partners announced in the Abaxx shareholder update release.

Dave Greely, Senior Economic Advisor

David Greely is an economist and investment strategist with over 25 years of experience creating and communicating insights for investments and risk management challenges. He was a Portfolio Strategist at Bridgewater Associates, where he was one of the senior members of the research team selected by the CIOs to advise and to conduct custom research projects and processes to the investment challenges of large sophisticated institutional investors.

Prior to his 5 years at Bridgewater, Mr. Greely was a Managing Director in Global Investment Research at Goldman Sachs, where he was the Chief Commodities Strategist and Head of Energy Research. In his research, he created conceptual frameworks and analytical models capturing the relationships between commodity prices, supply and demand fundamentals, financial market positioning, and the economic environment. He authored numerous original research studies on commodities as an asset class and on the role of commodities in investment portfolios whilst publishing regular market commentary, price forecasts, and trading recommendations for the energy and gold markets.

Mr. Greely also served as a Research Economist at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in Washington DC, and as a lecturer in Economics at the University of Chicago.

Mr. Greely’s appointment to Senior Economic Advisor at Abaxx Technologies will leverage his insights to produce original research backed by economic reasoning and robust empirical analysis in the form of written reports, discussions, and conference presentations.

Steve Lowe, Strategic Advisor, Precious Metals

Steven Lowe is a consultant with 25 years experience in the precious metals markets. Until recently, he was the Head of Business Development at Tradewind Markets; a digital precious metals platform. Prior to joining Tradewind, Mr. Lowe led Scotiabank’s metals business for 20 years, first as Regional Head, then as Global Co-Head and Managing Director.

Over the course of his career, Mr Lowe. has honed his skills in client acquisition and building international businesses that deliver growth and profits to shareholders while managing risk management in commodities market operation. He has extensive Board experience serving on numerous oversight committees including: ALCO, Risk, Credit and AML. He also sat on the Board of Scotiabank Europe, LBMA, Scotia Capital Europe Ltd, Futures and Options Association, Canada UK Foundation and Trustee of the Bank’s Pension Fund.

Mr. Lowe brings to Abaxx unparalleled industry knowledge, partnerships and ongoing exposure to key strategic issues across the precious metal value chain.

Wade Brennan, Strategic Advisor, Precious Metals

Wade Brennan is the CEO of Kilo Capital, a private customer centric bullion bank and precious metal merchant who support companies that use gold, silver, and PGM metals while offering financing and hedging strategies for the bullion market. Prior to Kilo Mr. Brennan spent the majority of his career at ScotiaMocatta as the Director of Precious Metals Sales and Trading in North American and then as the Head of Precious Metals Sales for EMEA.

Working in parallel with Steve Lowe, Mr. Brennan will provide a deep understanding of the challenges inherent to the precious metals industry, forming a team with decades of experience in bullion markets, corporate lending, risk and asset management to make recommendations for restructuring products and services in the bullion markets.

Gus Hadidi, Strategic Advisor, LNG

Gus Hadidi brings over 13 years of experience in private equity and advisory in the energy sector. He served as a Managing Partner at Enerleb, an LNG-focused development fund financing power and renewable energy projects in the Middle East. Additionally, Mr. Hadidi spent several years at Fortress Investment Group, today widely known as New Fortress Energy [NASDAQ: NFE], a NY-based energy private equity fund, focused on LNG upstream and downstream project development. As an introduction to working in LNG and Natural Gas markets, Mr. Hadidi served for 5 years in an advisory capacity at the prominent firm Poten & Partners.

Mr. Hadidi is currently a Managing Director at Rhynland Energy Holdings, a NY-based firm engaged in the development of energy storage facilities in the NYISO. Gus holds a Masters in Energy Economics and Chemical Engineering from Cornell University.

Mr. Hadidi has been an instrumental part of the Abaxx Exchange team since 2018 where he has been responsible for the preparation of all futures and physical exchange LNG contract specifications. Alongside the rest of the Abaxx Exchange Executive Team, he has supported business development and strategy around carbon neutral LNG futures contracts.

About Abaxx Technologies

Abaxx is a development stage financial software company that has created proprietary technological infrastructure for both global commodity exchanges and the digital marketplace. The Company’s formative technology increases transaction velocity, data security, and facilitates improved risk management for the majority owned, Abaxx Singapore Pte. Ltd. (“ACX”, “Abaxx Commodity Exchange”, or “Abaxx.Exchange”) - a commodity futures exchange that is seeking final regulatory approvals as a Recognized Market Operator (“RMO”) and Approved Clearing House (“ACH”) with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (“MAS”). Abaxx is also the owner of the LabMag and KeMag iron ore assets, resulting from the reverse take-over of New Millennium Iron Corp, and the creator and producer of the SmarterMarkets™ podcast.

For more information please visit abaxx.tech, abaxx.exchange and SmarterMarketsPod.com

Media and investor inquiries:

Abaxx Technologies Inc.
Paris Golab, Investor Relations
Tel: +246 243-3390
E-mail: ir@abaxx.tech

Forward-Looking Statements

This News Release includes certain "forward-looking statements" which do not consist of historical facts. Forward-looking statements include estimates and statements that describe Abaxx or the Company’s future plans, objectives or goals, including words to the effect that Abaxx expects a stated condition or result to occur. Forward-looking statements may be identified by such terms as “seeking”, “believes”, “anticipates”, “expects”, “estimates”, “may”, “could”, “would”, “will”, or “plan”. Since forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Although these statements are based on information currently available to Abaxx, Abaxx does not provide any assurance that actual results will meet management’s expectations. Risks, uncertainties and other factors involved with forward-looking information could cause actual events, results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Forward looking information in this news release includes, but is not limited to, Abaxx’ objectives, goals or future plans, statements, timing of the commencement of operations and estimates of market conditions. Such factors include, among others: risks relating to the global economic climate; dilution; the Company’s limited operating history; future capital needs and uncertainty of additional financing; the competitive nature of the industry; currency exchange risks; the need for Abaxx to manage its planned growth and expansion; the effects of product development and need for continued technology change; protection of proprietary rights; the effect of government regulation and compliance on Abaxx and the industry; network security risks; the ability of Abaxx to maintain properly working systems; reliance on key personnel; global economic and financial market deterioration impeding access to capital or increasing the cost of capital; and volatile securities markets impacting security pricing unrelated to operating performance. In addition, particular factors which could impact future results of the business of Abaxx include but are not limited to: operations in foreign jurisdictions, protection of intellectual property rights, contractual risk, third party risk; clearinghouse risk, malicious actor risks, third-party software license risk, system failure risk, risk of technological change; dependence of technical infrastructure, an inability to predict and counteract the effects of COVID-19 on the business of the Company, including but not limited to the effects of COVID-19 on the price of commodities, capital market conditions, restriction on labour and international travel and supply chains. Abaxx has also assumed that no significant events occur outside of Abaxx’ normal course of business.

Abaxx cautions that the foregoing list of material factors is not exhaustive. In addition, although Abaxx has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. When relying on Abaxx forward-looking statements and information to make decisions, investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events. Abaxx has assumed that the material factors referred to in the previous paragraph will not cause such forward-looking statements and information to differ materially from actual results or events. However, the list of these factors is not exhaustive and is subject to change and there can be no assurance that such assumptions will reflect the actual outcome of such items or factors. The forward-looking information contained in this press release represents the expectations of Abaxx as of the date of this press release and, accordingly, is subject to change after such date. Readers should not place undue importance on forward-looking information and should not rely upon this information as of any other date. Abaxx does not undertake to update this information at any particular time except as required in accordance with applicable laws. The NEO Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release.