Martin Ricketts was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1944. Following schooling in Scotland and Germany, he graduated as Master of Arts in modern languages at Pembroke College, Cambridge, England and subsequently as Master of Business Administration at the Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires (INSEAD) in Fontainebleau, France. In his early career, Martin Ricketts worked as a translator in Zürich and as a credit analyst in Frankfurt. From 1971 to 1976 he worked as a mergers and acquisitions specialist in Paris. In 1976 he moved to the Principality of Monaco where he worked for 20 years in senior management positions, mainly in mergers and acquisitions, for two major multinational European corporations. During these assignments he implemented merger and acquisition projects in Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United States and in the Czech Republic. He also has the distinction of having launched and successfully implemented the first public tender offer in the Czech Republic since the fall of communism. He is now managing partner of Euroconsult Monaco, Janssens, Ricketts et Cie, in the Principality of Monaco, a company specialized in cross-border mergers and acquisitions as well as in general management consulting. Martin Ricketts is fluent in German, English and French and has a working knowledge of several other languages. He is married to a German citizen and has three children. He is a member of the Federal Council of the Centre International de Formation Européenne (CIFE), Nice, France, and is also a visiting professor of finance at the University of Southern Europe in Monaco. He has also lectured at the EDHEC in Nice, France and at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond VA, USA.