Chris Darkins
Chris Darkins is a principal at CICAP Advisors a business development firm specializing in strategic development and capital raising for early stage and middle market companies. Chris brings 14 years of experience in structured finance and strategic relationship building as a member of several Fortune 500 and venture backed management teams to his role as Editor of the Darkins Tribune.
Chris’ business career started in 1994 as an intern in the Investment banking group of RBC Dain Rauscher (formerly known as Dain Bosworth). Following his tenure at RBC Dain Chris joined US Bank as Special Assistant to the President of Business Banking where he sat on the companies executive loan committee, as a non-voting member, for loans in excess of $10,000,000.
As a brief respite from Chris’ business career he played 2 seasons for the Championship Green Bay Packers. Between 1996 and 2001 in addition to playing Professional Football Mr. Darkins founded and sold two companies Universal Computer Systems and BossWorks where he was responsible for strategic planning, capital raising, and partnership development.
In 2002 Chris joined AON Corporation as the Director of Risk Capital. At AON he pulled together disparate specialties within the AON group of companies to develop and apply non traditional re-insurance structures to facilitate corporate finance. Chris was responsible for structuring the companies first principal protection guarantee for a $500,000,000 quantitative stock fund and developing Basel II compliant Alternative Risk Transfer structures to meet bank regulatory capital requirements.
Since leaving Aon Corporation Chris has been working with companies as a consultant and principal to achieve their corporate goals through partnership development and capital raising. Chris’ 14 years of experience encompasses approximately $1 Billion in capital arranged from high net worth and institutional investors utilizing traditional and synthetic debt/equity structures.
Chris currently sits on the board of Source One Financial and Driven XChange. Chris is also a member of the Houston Software CEO Roundtable and Vice President for the Houston Chapter of the NFL Players Association. Former board positions include the Minnesota Student Athlete Association and the Minnesota Institute of Technology.
As the editor of the Darkins Tribune Chris will ensure that you and your business are aware of what is happening on K-street and how to profit from it on Main Street. The Darkins Tribune gives you insight on what opportunities are being created or impaired based upon K-Streets actions.