From Ballard Burgher at The Moderate Voice:
Interestingly, contrary to many other Trump-Russia observers, Davidson does not think Trump started doing business with oligarchs from the former Soviet republics because they were his only financing option. He maintains that even after his string of personal bankruptcies Trump still had the opportunity to make the Trump Organization a legitimate financial player. However, he thinks Trump gravitated toward shadier deals because he lacked the temperamental qualities required for more legitimate global financial success on the scale that he aspired to.
Building an organization into a legitimate global financial entity is, to put it simply, a hell of a lot of work. There is a ton of due diligence. It requires real expertise in very complex and abstract business concepts as well as understanding of cultural and economic trends. It requires strategic planning and, above all, patience and persistence. Such a business structure also would involve multiple levels of accountability and loss of individual control. The payoff for all of that work is access to vast pools of capital in legal, above-board ways.
By all accounts, however, Trump possesses none of these qualities.