CI started in Hong Kong in 1987 when CEO Michael Shone assembled a team of lawyers and investigators (mainly former anti-corruption officers) to manage non-performing loan portfolios accumulated by major banks as the result of the 1983 property and stock markets collapse. Services included asset searches and litigation management.

Among CI's first major clients were Barclays, Union Bank, ABN, Midland Bank, Credit Lyonnais, Banque Nationale de Paris, and Credit Commercial Francais. The single largest case during the period 1987-88 was the clean-up of a US$32 million Far East Bank loan portfolio, principally involving securities and futures margin lending.

CI's activities expanded beyond Hong Kong in 1988 when the company was introduced to the Spanish government credit insurer CESCE and tasked with the recovery of a US$20 million loan to a logging and plywood company in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Successful execution of that task as well as a loan recovery from the central bank of Sao Tome in turn earned CI an introduction to the French government insurer COFACE. COFACE has remained a CI client ever since.

In 1990, CI entered the field of corporate restructuring when Nippon Credit Bank asked us to take on the task of completely reorganizing the operations and management of a corrupt Indonesian bank, including the recovery and clean-up of a US$100 million loan portfolio. Concurrently, CI began to act on behalf of several privately owned Indonesian banks, Bank Bali, Bank Niaga and Bank Panin, as well as the Indonesian government sponsored garment and shoe manufacturing associations.

Since its move to Singapore in 1992, CI has been retained in cases of debt recovery, corporate restructuring, and due diligence and financial fraud investigations throughout East Asia, notably also in India, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan and Korea. We have tried cases or managed litigation for our Asian clients in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, and conversely for Western clients in most East Asian nations.
Since the mid-nineties, we have been granted mandates for sovereign and trade debt cases in a number of countries in Africa which we have successfully recovered.
In 2003 CI began a strategic partnership to enable the successful negotiation of claims in the Middle East and Central Asia and another in 2004 to extend our areas of operations to Eastern Europe and South America.