Managing Uncertainty, Mitigating Risk Tackling the Unknown in Financial Risk Assessment and Decision Making

'For nearly a century, Frank Knight's distinction between risk and uncertainty has been much admired but rarely put to practical use. Finally, Firoozye and Ariff have done market practitioners a great service by distilling Knight's insight into the novel concept of UVaR uncertain value-at-risk - and applying it to an insightful analysis of the Euro zone crisis. A seminal piece of work and a welcome addition to a risk manager's toolkit.'

-Cheng Chih SUNG, Co-founder and CEO, Avanda Investment Management; former CRO, Government of Singapore Investment Corporation

'Over the last few years risk management has become increasingly focused on uncertainty. Firoozye and Ariff attempt to put real theory to what risk managers now do in practice. We know that planning for uncertainties is useful. I expect that as we develop these theories and the tools that flow from them we will generate important insights into resiliency and risk decisions. The example of the Eurozone is a particularly salient starting point.'

-Lewis O'Donald, Global Chief Risk Officer, Nomura Holdings Inc.

'Lawyers have long used fallback clauses in contracts to prescribe the parties' behavior in the face of a largely unanticipated (but entirely foreseeable) course of events. As shown in Firoozye and Ariff's insightful new book, modern risk managers face an increasingly similar task; to identify, to quantify (however approximately), and wherever possible to mitigate foreseeable (but unpredictable) outcomes.'

-Lee C. Buchheit, Partner, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, and Chief Counsel for the Hellenic Republic's 2012 debt restructuring

'Working as a lawyer with Nick Firoozye, he challenges you to think differently and then really listens to what you say. He's one of the few thinkers who get to grips with how legal uncertainty and contractual ambiguity from the Eurozone crisis to Russian sanctions and beyond inform our models of financial risk.'

-Bruce Railton, Former Head of Global Markets Legal Team, Nomura