Wisdom in fragments

The ability to bake your business over a longer period of time and become a stronger public company is therefore critical and is a driver for why they list with us.

When you are a public company, you are all-but forced to think on a quarterly basis. That's how long people hold you on average, between 2-3 months is the average hold period for equity investors. It's therefore much more difficult to think in a long-term strategic way and increase value.

The public markets have slowly but surely become hostile to the small growth companies. Where the public markets used to serve any type of company, they are now only beneficial to companies in excess of a $1 billion market-cap. Sub $1 billion companies really don't have a place to turn for funding, growth and liquidity.

Much jitteriness in this recent crisis has come down to 'flying blind' – where investors and risk managers have been caught somewhat unaware, and do not have the visibility to make decisions with support.

We define the credit risk of a bond portfolio as the volatility of the CDS basket which would perfectly hedge the sovereign risk of the portfolio.

Traditional index bond management gives higher index weightings to the most indebted countries, regardless of their capacity to service their debt. A country facing financial hardship and trapped in a debt spiral to remain solvent would see its index weight increase until the whole mechanism collapses.

People underestimate their personal probability of encountering negative events. It is not so much that individuals believe that negative events will not happen, but rather that these events are relatively unlikely to happen to them.

Former Premier of New Brunswick & Canadian diplomat and businessman

The World Bank states that growth in agricultural sectors is twice as effective at reducing poverty than other sectors.

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We are unapologetically at the high-risk, low-return sweet-spot of agricultural finance. We choose to address geographies and sectors where there are real market failures or at least deep market imperfections.

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If you look for the next Steve Jobs or Richard Branson in developing economies, however, their businesses rarely make it out of the garage as they are missing three critical factors. They lack financial capital, qualified employees plus the knowledge and access to financial markets.

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You've got around 2.6 billion people in the world who survive on less than $2 per day, 75% of them are rural and agriculture is their primary economic activity. Most are, however, mired in a form of subsistence farming that barely allows them to scrape-by.

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The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity....

Irish Playwright & Critic; Won Nobel Prize in Literature 1925

We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that....

UN Humanitarian Coordinator; led Iraq sanctions criticism in 1998

The inconvenient-truth of this situation is that however many observers and commentators espouse rhetoric about solutions for this crisis, without buy-in from the individuals who are responsible for our economy? those words are in vain.

You cannot govern a 21st century globalised business with the management style of an 18th century trading firm. In the same way, the modes (and rationale) of governance must be brought up-to-speed with the nature of the citizens they are responsible for.

Policy-makers will have to do the two things which, more than anything, they avoid at all costs. Firstly Accept responsibility and be secondly… be honest…