Michael G. Frodl

Founder & Head of C-LEVEL Maritime Risks

About me

Michael G. Frodl, Esq. is founder and head of Washington, DC-based C-LEVEL Maritime Risks. He and his team collect open source intel (both published and unpublished reports) on modern maritime piracy from all over the world, including East & West African and also Asian, provide rapid as well as deep analysis of events and trends, and make forecasts. Their focus on the business models of the pirates give them their edge. They publish weekly news digests as well as issue analytical reports as events and trends require. They now advise a growing number of senior decision makers among underwriters, shipowners, shippers, seafarers and maritime security firms, as well as senior decision makers in governments, their militaries and coast guards - in the US, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Michael has been an advisor on emerging risks (including environmental, hurricane, climate, energy, anarchist, anti-globalist, cyber, al Qaeda and other terrorist and now also modern maritime pirate risks) for over 15 years to global reinsurers in the US, Bermuda and elsewhere. He has provided similar advice to Washington-based senior decision makers, both public and private, in the national security and homeland security communities since the second Clinton administration. In the 1990s, Michael chaired the Environmental Law Committee of the Bar Association of DC, which led to his co-founding the multi-profession / multi-trade / multi-industry “Forum for Environmental Law, Science, Engineering and Finance” (aka “FELSEF”). The group earned the sponsorship of not just the Bar Association of DC, but also the American Insurance Association, the American Consulting Engineers Council and the Environmental Bankers Association. It would eventually incorporate 1000 member firms and organizations, and include members from three dozen countries on all five continents. It also would attract the interest of specialist reinsurers, some of whom would become his principal clientele. In 2008, while advising the head of the national association of defense contractors on energy security reforms and writing in the group's monthly magazine, Michael took note of the hijacking of 2 million barrels of Saudi crude oil destined for the US, when Somali pirates grabbed the MV Sirius Star in November of that year. Michael spent much of 2009 and 2010 advising senior decision makers in Washington, DC and Bermuda on growing maritime piracy risks. In late 2009 Michael presciently warned a strategic advisor to the Secretary of the US Navy about the looming Somali pirate “pivot” towards Far-East bound energy-tanker rich sea lanes from Hormuz to Minicoy off India - a full year before it took shape and was officially confirmed by London marine and war risks underwriters. In mid 2010 Michael created C-LEVEL Maritime Risks. In April 2011 Michael began to grant interviews to the world press. He also began to speak publicly about maritime piracy at conferences in the US and abroad, including in Buenos Aires, Singapore and Hong Kong in 2011 and then Hong Kong again in early 2012. More can be learned about C-LEVEL Maritime Risks at the firm’s Web site at: http://c-level.us.com.

Contact me