Friday 28 May 2010

Essential Africa: Capital Markets Conference

Rainbow Consulting is hosting a half day investment conference:
London, Friday 11 June 2010, 8.45 am to 2.00 pm

Registration link

http://www.africanrainbow.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=77.

Time

Topic Speaker(s)
9.00 am
Welcome
Katharine Pulvermacher
Founder & Chief Executive
African Rainbow Consulting

9.15 am
Key Economic and Political Indicators
An institutional investor’s perspective on Africa, covering the many changes that are transforming the landscape

Ritesh Anand
Founder & Chief Executive
Invictus Capital

9.45 am
Trading African Securities
Investors, be aware: liquidity, transparency, regulation and transaction costs in emerging markets may surprise you.

Daniel Broby
Chief Investment Officer
Silk Invest

Coffee & Refreshments
10.30 am
Development Finance Institutions:
International donors are major investors in Africa. Do they crowd out private investment or act as a catalyst?

Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi
Deputy Director, Private Sector Development
UK Department for International Development (DFID)


11.15 am
Private Equity and Venture Capital
What hurdles confront PE and VC funds trying to access the international marketplace
Guy Fraser-Sampson
CASS Business School

11.45 am
Investment in SMEs and Microfinance
The “missing middle” and the base of the pyramid offer a tantalising win-win for investors and investees alike.


Peter Hinton
CEO, Summit Development Group
Howard Finkelstein
Director, Microfinance Club of New York

12.30 pm
Closing Remarks
Mrs. Ruth Barry
Commercial Director
African Rainbow Consulting

Lunch


Speakers
Ritesh Anand
Ritesh Anand is founder and CEO of Invictus Investment Management, a pan-African focussed listed equity fund. Ritesh spent over seven years in various roles at the Wellcome Trust, most recently as Investment Manager for Africa and the Middle East.

Prior to moving to the UK, Ritesh worked as a fund manager for First Mutual Asset Management in Zimbabwe, where he was responsible for four unit trust funds and managed segregated pension funds. Ritesh received his BSc (Honours) in Economics from the University of Warwick, MSc in Strategic Management from the University of Derby and completed the Executive Finance Program at London Business School.

Ruth Barry
Ruth Barry is Commercial Director of African Rainbow Consulting Limited. She holds a Business Diploma from Kings College London and an MSc in Residential and Commercial Property from City University. Ruth is a qualified mediator (Regents College) and also studied Pharmacy and Medicine as an undergraduate at Chelsea College. She has extensive experience in negotiating and managing financial transactions in the property sector, having worked for more than a decade in local and international real estate investment, including developing residential and commercial blocks in city centres and country areas. In her earlier career, Ruth organised fortnightly sales events for commercial and residential property in Europe and East Africa, where she was born and raised.

Daniel Broby
Daniel Broby is Chief Investment Officer of Silk Invest. Silk Invest is a specialist in frontier market investments. He runs a team based in London, Egypt, South Africa and Morocco. He joined Silk Invest having sold the hedge fund he founded (Danfonds Frontier Markets SPC) to the company. Prior to that he worked for Renaissance Investment Management (UK) Limited, where he was Chief Executive Officer. He held various roles and responsibilities throughout the RIM group, principally those of Chief Investment Officer, Head of Asset Management and Director of the Renaissance Africa Fund. His roles involved extensive travel to and from offices in Moscow, Kiev, Nairobi, Geneva and London. In addition to the day to day management of the group's various investment teams, he also oversaw the successful launch of the Renaissance Africa Fund, the Global Macro Fund for RIM (UK) and the successful launch of the offshore Renaissance Russia Infrastructure Fund for RIM.

Daniel has an MPhil in economics and an MSc in investment analysis. He was a board member of CFA (UK) for over 10 years. He was the CFA Institute's President Council Representative for Europe, Middle East and Africa for four years and was presented with the Institute's Society Leader Award in 2006. He now serves as a member of the Capital Markets Policy Council. He was elected an individual member of the London Stock Exchange in 1990 and is a Fellow of the Securities Institute, a Fellow of CFA UK and a Visiting Fellow at Durham University.

Howard J. Finkelstein
Howard J. Finkelstein has been practicing law for nearly 30 years, more than 25 for large law firms. On January 1, 2009, Howard resigned his partnership at Akerman Senterfitt to open up his own law practice, focusing on structuring capital market instruments to bring Western capital to microfinance institutions (MFIs) worldwide. He is a piomeer in the securitization of microfinance-related obligations. His work has helped to bring nearly $1 billion to MFIs worldwide.

Mr. Finkelstein sits on the Board of Directors of the Microfinance Club of New York, Secretary of Microlumbia, Inc., and on the Advisory Boards of Green Microfinance, Lend for Peace, Frogtek LLC and African Rainbow Consulting.

Guy Fraser-Sampson
Guy Fraser-Sampson has held many investment posts over the years, including Investment Controller with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. He is also well known for having set up and run for several years the international operations of a leading fund of funds manager.

He currently teaches various investment modules at Cass Business School in the City of London, and performs consultancy assignments around the world for investors, investment managers and government bodies. He is the author of two investment books: Multi Asset Class Investment Strategy and Private Equity as an asset class (currently in its second edition).

Peter Hinton
Peter Hinton has 25 years of commercial experience including 15 years of banking, SMEs and private equity in Africa. He is currently CEO of Summit Development Group, an investment fund that SDG invests in financial institutions across Sub-Saharan Africa in order to transform them into leading banks that provide financial services to SMEs and the financially excluded. Prior to that he was with Enterprise Banking Group , African Banking Corporation, CDC Capital Partners, Africa Trading and BHS. Peter is a Chartered Accountant with a degree in Economics & Accountancy and a master’s degree in Development Economics.

Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi
Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi is currently responsible for setting DFID ’s policy direction on private sector development (PSD) and managing a team of technical specialists that provide advice to key partners in developing countries, the international community and the UK government. Prior to this she led the team responsible for managing the Department’s portfolio to support economic growth in Nigeria. She has extensive experience in private sector led growth and has provided technical advice to governments in East, West and Southern Africa as well as the Eastern Caribbean. This included facilitating the first PSD Strategies in Ghana and Tanzania and successfully managing economic development portfolios exceeding $400m in a number of countries.

She is a political economist by training and an MPhil graduate of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. Her publications include Binding Constraints to Growth in Nigeria (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and Growth and Competitiveness (World Bank, 2007).

Katharine Pulvermacher
Katharine Pulvermacher is the Founder and Chief Executive of African Rainbow Consulting Limited. She obtained her MSc in Economics with reference to Africa with Distinction from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where she also completed the first stage of her PhD focusing on poverty alleviation. Katharine ran a highly successful investment research and marketing programme targeting institutional investors in the main capital markets for eight years. Her published research spans asset allocation, commodities and most recently, public private partnerships in Africa.

As an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, she studied Social Work, Psychology and Sociology, and ran adult literacy classes in her spare time. She is an experienced trainer and group facilitator, has taught at university level in South Africa and the United Kingdom, and ran social reinsertion programmes for the long-term unemployed in the French department of Aude. In addition to her “new-born” - African Rainbow - Katharine is a mother of two sons, whose travels in Africa are almost as extensive as her own.



Wednesday 26 May 2010

Mauritius, Tourist Haven, Banks on Image Makeover

Daniel Broby of Silk Invest speaks to Reuters on Mauritius. http://frontiermarkets.thomsonreuters.com/Pages/MauritiusBanksonImageMakeover.aspx

Low Global Interest Rates, Rising Commodity Prices Seen Helping Frontier Markets Outperform

Tuesday 25 May 2010

North Korea - the forgotten frontier market

North Korea and South Korea have been in a suspended state of war for some time. Tensions with North Korea escalated in response to tension over the sinking a South Korean warship in March. North Korea, led by Kim Jong-il, is the last Stalinist dictatorship. It set off a nuclear device in 2006 and has since test-fired a ballistic missile. It now looks like the war could flare up again. President Lee said if his country's waters, airspace or territory were violated he would immediately exercise his right of self-defence. Barack Obama has ordered that the 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea be put on alert.