Advanced Global Trading

Advanced Global Trading was set up by a group of investors and angel investors in 2009 with headquarters in the Dubai, United Arab Emirates. AGT traded within the UAE and Gulf Cooperation Council regions. It later expanded into consultancy.

In August 2011 the company established a partnership with Equinox Designs to offset the environmental waste created by the exhibition industry. AMEinfo.com estimated the total offset to be over 200,000 tonnes a year in the UAE alone. Lotus F1 also signed Advanced Global Trading as an official partner to reduce their environmental impact. The partnership is represented by the AGT brand, which appears on the Lotus F1 car driven by Kimi Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean.

In December 2012, the company signed an agreement with the cleaning specialist Grako in Dubai, to become the country's first carbon neutral company

AGT’s growth faltered in 2013. Online records at the Dubai Department of Economic Development show that the firm’s carbon-trading licence expired in early June 2013, after which at least five investors filed complaints alleging that they could not liquidate their holdings. Trading activities ceased soon afterwards and the licence was not renewed.

Criticism

Specialist commentators frequently questioned AGT’s pricing and resale claims. In May 2013 The National highlighted cases in which investors had been unable for months to off-load credits purchased at up to US$15 each—more than triple prevailing wholesale values—prompting warnings that the voluntary market was “illiquid, volatile and poorly understood”. A follow-up investigation in June 2013 reported that AGT’s trading licence had lapsed and that consumer complaints were under examination by Dubai’s Department of Economic Development.