My dear friend and long-time colleague Adrian Baxter lost his battle with cancer this past Sunday evening. To say that he lost the battle is an understatement. Adrian had a unique and inspirational attitude towards fighting this insidious illness – he faced it with a positive “win-at-all-costs” attitude, an amazing sense of humour and an open style of sharing information about his unfortunate situation. I feel as if he is watching me type these words and encouraging me to share my thoughts with you. Many of the readers of Counting On Currency either knew or knew of Adrian and I am certain that, to a person, there is not one of those people who will not miss him.

Adrian was a great friend to our industry as well. Over many years he worked his way up “through the ranks”, starting as many do (in the equipment side of our industry), as a technician. These early skills would serve him well when working for Currency Systems International (CSI) and being faced with the challenge of selling equipment to an underfunded industry in Asia – his solution was to draw on those skills and create a refurbishment program that continually confounded competitors as they fought to replace aging CSI sorters. From his roots as a technician with Recognition Equipment, he became a Technical Director with Electronic Designs before moving into a long and mutually satisfying career with CSI as their Managing Director for Asia. It was during his tenure with CSI that I first met Adrian. I was struck by two distinct personal traits – first his impish sense of humour – he loved to laugh and make others comfortable doing so – he was always ready to tease peer and supervisor alike. Secondly and most noticeable was his unique accent. If you listened to Adrian for any length of time, you would find yourself trying to guess by his accent, where he was from. When questioned, he would laugh and tell you that based on his accent, he was a man of no particular country. In reality, his accent was a mash-up of Quebec (Canada) english, British english and the melange of accents he experienced in Asia.

In 2005 Adrian assumed the role of CEO of Currency Research, which among other activities is responsible for the organization and staging of the International Commercial Cash Operations Seminar (ICCOS) and the Currency Conference. In the time since, Adrian and his dedicated team of currency specialists have grown the Currency Conference into the largest event of it’s kind in the world. Additionally he took the ICCOS event, which was traditionally held only in the US every 18 months and expanded it to running concurrent events in EMEA and Asia. ICCOS has now firmly established itself as the premier currency conference to attend for those of us in the commercial cash operations business. The other activities taken up by Adrian and his team at Currency Research have also expanded over the years. Currency Research is now recognized as the soul of the movement to support the continued use of currency around the world. Recent research has brought together multiple central banks in a coordinated research project aimed at qualifying the natures of currency usage, anti-counterfeiting measures and the future evolution of currency in an ever more technologically dependant world.

Over the past few years I was struck by Adrian’s sense of compassion and empathy for his fellow man. From helping others afflicted with similar challenges to his own (one of those ironically being my ex- father-in-law, whom neither Adrian nor I knew the other was familiar with), to reaching out to those in need around him and practicing random acts of kindness and senseless beauty. He appreciated the small things in life and was deeply philosophical about the challenges we all face, without being patronizing or condescending. All-in-all, Adrian was one very unique individual and I for one will miss him greatly.

For those who would like to know more about him, I can recommend his LinkedIn page and his Facebook page. Neither of these resources however, will give you the full measure of the man. For those wishing details of the service, or where donations can be made, simply email me at admin@countingoncurrency.com. Tributes and donations can be made here.

Our thoughts and prayers go to Adrian’s wife Sybil and his two children at this most emotional of times…