PwC: Nigerian Report on Ease of Doing Business

[caption id="attachment_12973" align="alignright" width="300"] Author: Folajimi Olamide Akinla[/caption]

In 2016, the Nigerian economy was in a recession recording negative growth of 1.5%. This was mainly triggered by the fall in crude oil prices. There were also foreign exchange shortages and inflation which affected the growth of the services and manufacturing sectors. Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) policies to protect the currency resulted in a decline of foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign portfolio investment (FPI). These factors formed the catalyst for the government to diversify the economy by creating a business environment to attract investment.

In the 2018 World Bank Ease of Doing Business Report (Report), Nigeria was ranked 145 out of 190 economies, moving up 24 spots from the previous year. According to the report, Nigeria was one of the top-10 most improved economies and top-three improved Sub-Saharan countries, including Malawi and Zambia. Nigeria’s improvement in the Ease of Doing Business rankings did not happen overnight. The improvement can be traced directly to certain initiatives and policies introduced by the federal government’s Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC.)

"At the end of the 60 days, EBES recorded a 70% success rate on all reforms and subsequently a 100% rate of success after 90 days. Following the reforms, Nigeria’s ranking increased across board."

PEBEC was set up in July 2016 as an inter-governmental and inter-ministerial body. It is chaired by the vice-president of Nigeria and comprises ten ministers including the ministers of Industry, Trade and Investment, Power, Works and Housing, the head of the Civil Service of the Federation, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, representatives of the Lagos and Kano State governments, the National Assembly, and the private sector. The Enabling Business Environment Secretariat (EBAS) is the vehicle through which PEBEC implements its policies.

[caption id="attachment_12975" align="aligncenter" width="1000"] Nigeria: Ease of doing business, 2018.[/caption]

PEBEC’s core mandate was to improve the ease of doing business, specifically for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) by removing bureaucratic burdens and administrative bottlenecks across government ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs). At inception, PEBEC’s principal remit was to increase Nigeria’s Ease of Doing Business rankings 20 places. At the time, the country ranked 169th. One year later, PEBEC had already exceeded its goal. This is commendable, and kudos to PEBEC and the EBAS, but the critical question is whether this progress is sustainable? More importantly, in the highly competitive global environment, can Nigeria improve further on its ranking?

World Bank Indicators and Methodology

In determining the ranking of each economy, the World Bank analyses eleven indicators directly affecting business owners. Each indicator is analysed to determine economic outcomes and identify regulations or policies needed to improve the ease of doing business. The indicators are: starting a business, labour market regulations, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, trading across borders, paying taxes, enforcing contracts, and resolving insolvency.

Economies are measured based on the ‘distance to frontier’ (DTF) methodology where each economy is given a DTF score and benchmarked against a ‘frontier’ economy which represents the best performed economy - the highest score being 100 and lowest zero. The overall ranking of the 190 economies is determined by sorting the aggregate DTF scores.

National Action Plan 1.0

In February 2017, PEBEC introduced a 60-day National Action Plan 1.0 to implement initiatives aimed at improving the ease of business specifically for MSMEs. The initiatives were implemented across eight indicators including seven of the World Bank indicators. The indicators are starting a business, obtaining construction permits, getting connected to the grid, registering property, access to credit facilities, paying taxes, trading across borders, and entry and exit of people.

In May 2017, the federal government issued the Executive Order No. 001 of 2017 on the Promotion of Transparency and Efficiency in the Business Environment. The order is broken down into six major pillars: Transparency, Default Approvals, One Government Directive, Entry Experience of Visitors and Travelers, Port Operations, and Registration of Businesses.

Some of the initiatives implemented by PEBEC under the National Action Plan 1.0 include:

Starting a Business

Before now, the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) did not have a functional online / electronic platform for prospective business owners to register their businesses. This led to unnecessary queues and congestion at the CAC offices. In addition, the manual registration involved filing seven different forms. There was also a separate process of visiting the stamp duties office for assessment and payment of stamp duties. These challenges often resulted in undue delays, as much as six weeks, to register a company. The average time globally is about two days.

PEBEC set an objective to make it possible to set up a business in 24 to 48 hours. To achieve this, the following measures were introduced:

Online name searches

Allowing online registration of businesses

Improving the reliability and user interface experience of the online portal

Reducing the forms from seven to one

Integrating the payment for stamp duties with the registration process

Currently, the registration process has greatly improved such that it is now possible to register a business in four to five days.

Construction Permits

Before the reforms, it took at least 42 days to obtain construction permits. Some of the causes of delay included lack of an online platform to apply for permits, lack of clarity in the procedures, applicable fees, and qualification of professionals (architects and engineers) permitted to supervise construction activities. In addition, the criteria for obtaining waivers for soil and environmental impact assessment tests were not clear leading to uncertainty and failed applications.

To address these challenges, major reforms were introduced in Lagos and Kano (the most populous states). In Lagos, the Lagos State Physical Planning Permit Authority (LASPPPA) introduced an online platform for applying, tracking, and paying for permits. Rules and procedures on applying for permits and relevant fees were published on LASPPPA’s website. Information on the appropriate qualifications, as well as the applicable laws relating to the qualifications, were published on LASPPPA’s website. To streamline the requirements on soil and EIA tests, soil tests were no longer required for construction below four-stories not being in marshy areas whilst EIA tests are no longer required for low scale construction.

Registering Property

The procedure for registering titles to land was characterised by long delays in obtaining governor’s consent due to the large number of applications, multiple stages in the application process, as well as multiple fees paid by the applicants. There was also no effective complaints mechanism to pass on complaints to relevant authorities and the procedure for conducting due diligence searches at the registry were unnecessarily cumbersome.

To remove these bottlenecks, powers to issue governor’s consent were delegated to specific commissioners. E-signatures were also introduced to replace the governors’ handwritten signatures. The process of registration was also streamlined and a single payment introduced to consolidate multiple payments. A Complaints Unit has been set up for applicants to direct any complaints to and the procedure for conducting searches has been made easier by removing the need for getting a sworn affidavit from the courts.

Similar to Lagos, Kano now publishes the list of documents, fee schedule, and service standards for property transactions making the land registration process more transparent.

Connection to Grid

Before the reforms, there were nine steps to getting connected to the grid. On average, it took almost 200 days to get connected to the grid. However, to improve the process, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) – the regulatory agency – issued draft orders reducing the steps from nine to five and the number of days to 61.

Access to Credit

Nigeria ranked sixth overall for access to credit and was one of four Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries ranked top 10 in this area. Before the reforms, MSMEs encountered considerable difficulty in obtaining loans for their operations due to insufficient information and creditors’ reluctance to accept moveable assets as collateral.

In addressing these challenges the National Assembly (the federal legislative arm) enacted two laws – the Credit Bureau Services Act (CBS Act) and the Secured Transactions in Movable Assets (Collateral Registry) Act (STMA Act).

The CBS Act promotes access to accurate and reliable credit information for creditors to rely on in granting loans to MSME. Under the act, credit bureaus can issue credit ratings of borrowers to banks and other creditors who then have sufficient information before granting loans.

Two of the primary objectives of the STMA Act are to improve lending to MSMEs and facilitate assess to credit secured by movable assets. The act provides the framework for MSMEs to register, in the National Collateral Registry, movable assets used as collateral. The web based register allows creditors carry out due diligence searches on collateral by providing creditors with sufficient information to assess any security interests registered on collateral to help them determine loan terms and conditions.

Trading Across Borders

Many of the goods imported into Nigeria are brought in through the ports in Lagos, particularly Apapa and Tincan. Before the reforms, goods were imported into Nigeria without being properly packaged in pallets and manifests were not available. This caused disorder at the ports as cargoes were not properly packaged and it became almost impossible to determine the arrival of cargo.

Because of this, importers made screening arrangements by themselves without going through the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS.) This created more confusion and opportunities for bribery and rent seeking. Documentation requirements were also onerous.

Sometime in 2017 and January 2018 respectively, the Revised Import Guidelines, Procedures, and Documentation Requirements under the Destination Inspection Scheme (Guidelines) were revised and then an addendum was added to the guidelines. Amongst other things, the guidelines now mandate all containerised cargo to be palletised, the Combined Certificate of Value and Origin has now been replaced with a single Certificate of Origin, and the NCS is now responsible for scheduling and coordinating the Mandatory Joint Examinations to ensure there is a single point of contact between importers and other regulators / officials. The documentation has also been reduced from ten to seven (in the case of exports) and fourteen to eight (in the case of imports).

Entry and Exit of People

Travelers were often faced with filing multiple entry and exit forms, had their luggage subjected to manual searches, uncertainty in the rules for obtaining visa on arrival, infrastructure deficit at airports and their environs, as well as inordinate delays in issuance of visas at Nigerian missions.

PEBEC reforms to address these challenges include consolidating arrival and departure forms, simplifying the rules and procedures for obtaining visas on arrival, eliminating manual searches of luggage, and imposing a 48-hour timeline for issuance of visas by Nigerian missions abroad. Business visas are now issued to expatriates where a temporary work permit would have otherwise been required. The Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) also decentralised the passport re-issuance process by allowing state commands to re-issue passports instead of only at its headquarters in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja. A total of 28 new residence permit production centres have also been opened across state commands. Previously, three state commands shared a zonal production centre, often causing delays and backlogs.

Nigeria’s Progress

At the end of the 60 days, EBES recorded a 70% success rate on all reforms and subsequently a 100% rate of success after 90 days. Following the reforms, Nigeria’s ranking increased across board.

National Action Plans 2.0 and 3.0

Due to the success of the reforms, PEBEC implemented National Action Plans 2.0 and 3.0. Under 2.0 (October – December 2017), PEBEC introduced even more initiatives to these areas as well as three additional areas (enforcing contracts, selling to government, and trading within Nigeria) to consolidate the reforms and progress made under the 1.0 Plan. Some of the new initiatives include:

Enforcing Contracts

PEBEC resolved to reduce the time taken to resolve cases related to commercial contracts by training magistrates to handle commercial cases. Recently, the Lagos State government introduced the Small Claims Court under the Magistrates’ Court Law (Practice Directions on Small Claims) where magistrates have jurisdiction to hear commercial cases of claims not exceeding N5 million (c. $16,400). These courts provide easy access to an inexpensive and speedy resolution of debt recovery disputes. It is expected that other states would set up similar courts.

Selling to the Government

The Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), the agency responsible for monitoring and the procurements by the federal government, has various procedures to encourage transparency in the public sector. These procedures are often burdensome for MSMEs. In view of this, PEBEC resolved that simplified processes should be introduced for MSMEs. Many MDAs are now issuing simplified procedures for smaller businesses.

Trading within Nigeria

To encourage the easy movement of goods and people across Nigeria, PEBEC resolved that all illegal roadblocks be removed from all roads across the country. In September 2017, the Nigerian Police Force ordered the immediate removal of roadblocks in all states. This is not the first time government has ordered a removal of roadblocks. However, it appears that many roadblocks have now indeed been removed.

Before, the trademark registry had a backlog of marks yet to be registered. The registry has now been directed to clear all backlogs and then publish over 30,000 outstanding marks.

In February 2018, the government introduced National Action Plan 3.0 to implement more reforms within a 60-day period. About 27 government agencies were involved in implementing the reforms. Some of the major reforms include:

Introducing an online feedback platform where businesses can give feedback to PEBEC. This would allow government to receive real time and direct feedback on the effectiveness of the reforms.

Setting up PEBEC secretariats in each state to allow effective monitoring of reforms.

Enacting an Omnibus Bill to give legislative effect and force of law to executive orders as well as other initiatives.

Creating airport concessions starting from the major airports – Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt.

Top Ten Economies of Africa

Whilst Nigeria was one of the top-ten most improved economies, it remains outside the top 10 economies in SSA. Currently, it sits at number 22 in Africa. The top 10 SSA economies are:

Mauritius (25)

Rwanda (41)

Kenya (80)

Botswana (81)

South Africa (82)

Zambia (82)

Seychelles (95)

Lesotho (104)

Namiba (106)

Malawi (110)

Even though Nigeria made notable progress in the 2018 rankings, there is still scope for improvement when compared with Africa’s top-ranked economy – Mauritius. To close the gap, Nigeria would require at least an annual investment of $100-$120 billion over the next three years (2018-2020). Based on a PwC study on the sub-national business environment in Nigeria, land availability and security, and tax harmonization remain the top challenges to doing business at the state level.

In 2018, Nigeria improved eleven steps (from 182 – 171) on the 2018 Paying Tax Report rankings. Whilst reforms were made to paying taxes, requiring taxpayers to pay tax at the nearest tax office and enforcing use of the centralised electronic payment system (which resulted in a reduction, by 69 hours in the time required to pay tax, to 360 hours), businesses still bear the burden of multiple taxes from different tiers of government and multiple agencies. On the average, businesses are exposed to about 21 different type of taxes. This remains a huge impediment to the ease of doing business.

Conclusion

Government efforts have proved effective given the results contained in the report. However, other critical areas are insecurity, multiple taxation, outdated labour laws, and a lackadaisical civil service. There is also the pressure on different state governments to raise their internally generated revenue. In some cases this has resulted in policies that were not perceived as being business friendly. For example the Lagos State Government introduced a new Land Use Charge Law which effectively increased the duties paid by businesses and individuals. Many taxpayers kicked against this. On a more positive note, the senate recently passed a bill to enact a new Companies and Allied Matters Act. The act gives many of the reforms statutory effect and introduces the Limited Liability Partnerships and Limited Partnerships as additional entities to be relied on by businesses. Other welcome reforms to increase the ease of doing business would be amendments to the Land Use Act and other outdated tax and commercial laws.

About the Author

Folajimi Olamide Akinla is a Manager and Tax Lawyer in PwC Nigeria’s Tax & Regulatory Services unit. He writes regularly on topical legal and tax matters. His core interests are resolving complex legal and tax problems, advising on tax policy and private wealth matters.
He is a member of the Ministerial Committee on the Voluntary Asset and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS), Nigeria’s first full scale tax amnesty.

Before joining PwC, he worked in a law firm renowned for its dispute resolution practice. He is an alumnus of Queen Mary, University of London (LLM, Tax Law) and the University of Lagos (LLB).

About PwC

PwC Nigeria is one of the leading professional services firms in Nigeria with offices in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, over 1,000 staff and 31 resident partners.

"We are committed to serving as a force for integrity, good sense and wise solutions to the problems facing businesses and the capital markets. We are guided by one promise – to do what is right, be it with our people, clients, community, or environment."

Read the article from the CFI.co Summer 2018 print issue, or from the CFI.co app (download from iTunes or Google Play).


Natarajan Chandrasekaran: Ensuring Tata Group’s Future

India’s largest business by revenue, Tata Group comprises no less than 289 businesses that together have just breached the $100bn annual turnover mark. Though Tata Group shows no signs of slowing down, chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran of the holding company Tata Sons is determined to streamline the organisational structure of the corporate behemoth in order to vastly increase operational efficiency, explore synergies, and push up profits. Tata Group has a stake in industries covering nearly the entire spectrum of entrepreneurial activities from growing food to building military hardware and exploring artificial intelligence – and pretty much everything in between.

Mr Chandrasekaran wants to weed out marginal businesses: “If we cannot scale and we cannot consolidate them, then we have to look if maybe there is a better place where that business can flourish.” The current chairman was parachuted into his job after his predecessor was summarily dismissed early last year at the conclusion of a public and rather embarrassing dispute regarding the group’s lagging performance. Excluding the highly profitable IT services provider Tata Consultancy Services, the conglomerate saw its after-tax profits shrink by staggering 72% over a five-year period.

Natarajan Chandrasekaran was brought in to revert the downward trend and repower India’s flagship company. Though the chairman declines to specify the business he considers ripe for divestment, he has already begun offloading some of the group’s minor members such as a business consultancy and a pharmaceutical research company. Late last year, he also sold Tata Group’s consumer-facing telecoms business to its rival Bharti Airtel for an undisclosed sum.

Described in The Economist as a corporation like no other due to its vast scale, palace politics, and historic sense of moral purpose, Tata Group defies categorisation. Now that some of the more pressing issues facing the conglomerate have been addressed, Natarajan Chandrasekaran – Chandra for short – must find a new corporate framework for his still rather unwieldy charge.

As corporate vessels go, Tata Group is huge and made up of superlatives: the group employs slightly under 700,000 people and represents an estimated market value of $155bn. Tata is synonymous with India. The company, founded in 1868 and already a considerable force in the market by the turn of the century, was an early supporter of ndia’s independence and its hero Mahatma Ghandi. Already long before the British let go of the jewel in their colonial crown, Tata companies were instrumental in the country’s industrialisation effort. Later, in the 1990s, Tata helped shape the IT outsourcing revolution which transformed the country into a software development powerhouse.

Even though in the 1990s Tata Group embarked on an ambitious and ultimately successful global expansion drive, the company failed to mind and nurture its bottom line. Under Mr Chandrasekaran’s predecessor, the company was accused of navel gazing – paralysed by analysis. That has now all changed. The new chairman earned his spurs at Tata consultancy Services (TCS) which under his guidance grew into a $60bn business. Chandra is also one of the only a handful of Tata executives able to use his stellar track record to face down former chairman Ratan Tata who relinquished his control of the group in 2012 but remains a larger-than-life behind the scenes presence.

Mr Chandrasekaran is now busy to bring the holding company back to its roots as a source of knowledge and funding for its operational businesses – streamlining internal processes and lines of communication whilst extracting synergies from the group’s constituent parts. He also aims to lessen the burden of history which has made Tata, in the eyes of many, as a vehicle of national development rather than a corporation owing a fiduciary duty to its shareholders. The resulting picture may indeed be less romantic but just might ensure the company’s longevity and help write another 150+ years of Indian corporate history.


CFI.co Meets the Provincia Fondos Management Team: The Team who Made it Possible

Mr Eleta joined the company in January 2016, after Maria Eugenia Vidal was elected governor of the Buenos Aires Province. Mr Eleta and his team have carried out a thorough corporate restructuring resulting in high growth and outstanding performance of the assets under management. Within this period, Provincia Fondos’ market share increased from 0.6% to more than 3%, while its fixed income funds performed within the top-5 in their categories.

Mr Eleta holds a degree in Public Accountancy from the Universidad Católica Argentina and has developed an extensive career in the financial markets for more than thirty years. For over a decade, he chaired the managing boards of ABN AMRO Asset Management, ABN AMRO Trust, and ABN AMRO Securities in Argentina. Mr Eleta also held office as director at ABN AMRO USA (New York) in charge of the Latin American Equity division.

Afterwards, he founded his own asset management company – RIG Asset Management – which was later acquired by a major local financial group.
When Mauricio Macri held office as governor of the City of Buenos Aires, Mr Eleta was appointed Undersecretary of Modernisation and then deputy CEO in city government-owned Banco de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.

He currently chairs the boards of Provincia Fondos and Provincia Bursátil and is also member of the supervisory board at Caja de Valores, the only central securities depository in Argentina. In addition, Mr Eleta chairs the management committee of Provincia Fondos which also includes Esteban de Apellaniz, Alvaro Aviles, and Jorge Blanco.

Esteban M de Apellaniz joined the company in 2016 as Marketing & Sales manager. Prior to joining Provincia Fondos, he held management positions at Citibank and ABN AMRO in Argentina. Mr De Apellaniz worked as Marketing & Sales manager at ABN AMRO Asset Management and was CEO of Tornquist Sociedad Gerente de Fondos de Inversión.

Mr Apellaniz received a degree in Business Administration from Universidad Católica Argentina where he also held a professorship. He is a highly reputable businessman in the agricultural sector.

Alvaro R Aviles is head portfolio manager of Provincia Fondos. He joined the group in 2011 as an investment advisor, then became one of the portfolio managers in Provincia Fondos, and in 2016 was promoted to head of the portfolio managers team.

Mr Aviles has previously worked at Premium Asset Management and Accenture in both financial advisory and management control roles. Mr Aviles graduated from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella with a Bachelor’s degree in Corporate Economy and a Master’s in Finance.

Jorge Blanco is the COO of Provincia Fondos. He started his career at KPMG and later held management positions at ABN AMRO Securities, ABN AMRO Trust, and ABN AMRO Bank in Argentina. He also worked as COO in Equity Trust Company (Argentina). Mr Blanco holds a Public Accountant degree by Universidad de Buenos Aires. i


CFI.co Meets the VP & MD of CCL Secure: Bernhard Imbach

Bernhard Imbach has experienced almost every aspect of the banknote industry throughout his successful career over the last 35 years. Starting on the shop floor and working up to senior management; designing banknotes by hand to using computer-based technology; and printing on paper to printing on polymer substrate – just some of the journeys on which Mr Imbach has embarked.

Mr Imbach now leads the team at CCL Secure that manufactures the world’s most sophisticated banknote substrate Guardian™. It is currently issued on over 80 mainstream denominations in 24 countries and impressively outperforms paper-cotton, coated-paper, and varnished banknotes in security, durability, cleanliness, and eco-friendliness.

Mr Imbach started his career on the shopfloor at the Swiss banknote printer Orell Füssli. As a young man, he was at first overwhelmed by the millions of Swiss Francs’ worth of notes that he saw every day. However, he quickly transitioned from seeing it as money to a product that had to be delivered efficiently and to a high standard of quality.

“Back in 1982, everything was based on your manual skill set. Computer-driven printing equipment simply did not exist; banknotes were produced by hand drawings. Whereas today, almost everything is accomplished with technology.”

“These developments have brought many new advantages and opportunities to the industry, though I am grateful for having experienced both worlds. It has given me a deep understanding of how we’ve arrived to where we are today, as well as a platform for where we can go tomorrow,” says Mr Imbach.

Mr Imbach spent 25 years at Orell Füssli, which included holding the positions of chief operations manager and member of the executive team. He saw the company go from printing banknotes solely on paper, to introducing polymer in 2003 to expand the company’s capability and market.

While he understands and champions the advantages of new technology, he places the highest value on people.

Mr Imbach worked at Note Printing Australia from 2007 to 2014 during which he was chief executive officer for seven years. One of his greatest takeaways that he brought to CCL Secure from this time was the notion that a company’s greatest assets are its employees.

“Without dedicated and passionate employees, I believe it is impossible to be successful. With this philosophy, I was able to build Note Printing Australia into a world-class quality printer. At CCL Secure, we have a workforce culture that is collaborative, accountable, and committed to innovation, and our people are the reason we’ve had continued success,” Mr Imbach said.

CCL Secure is able to provide its central bank and printer customers with effective end-to-end solutions thanks to its many staff members, like Mr Imbach, that have worked in those companies themselves.

Knowing what he knows now, Mr Imbach said the advice he would give to his apprentice self is to “remain focused on quality, continue to develop your passion, and always push the boundaries.”

Fitting advice given that pushing boundaries is what CCL Secure was founded on almost thirty years ago when it introduced the world’s first polymer banknote in Australia. Ever since, CCL Secure has been a partner to many of the world’s leading central banks that have adopted Guardian™ and provided them with support, advice and solutions taken from the experience of more than 55 billion banknotes issued on Guardian™ substrate.

While Mr Imbach did not divulge the intricate details of CCL Secure’s future plans, he did reveal there will be some very exciting and innovative upcoming products that will revolutionise the world of banknotes once more.

Bernhard Imbach is vice-president and managing director of CCL Secure, the manufacturer of the world’s most sophisticated banknote substrate Guardian™. With more than three decades of industry experience, Mr Imbach was previously CEO of Note Printing Australia and held senior roles at Orell Füssli Security Printing. i


Soledad Gallego-Díaz: Truth to Prevail at Spain’s Largest Newspaper

She is indefatigable in the defence of quality journalism and highly critical of the way the established press has reacted – or failed to do so – to the onslaught of alternative truths, fake news, and other forms of fact-free reporting. At the beginning of June, Soledad Gallego-Díaz (67) was asked to take over the editorship of El País – Spain’s flagship newspaper which she joined shortly after its founding in 1976. Mrs Gallego-Díaz enjoys the near unanimous backing of the paper’s journalists. In a secret vote, fully 97% of El País’ newsroom staff backed the board’s nomination of the experienced journalist and former foreign correspondent. Mrs Gallego-Díaz is the first woman to lead Spain’s largest – and often most feared – newsroom.

With a daily circulation bordering 200,000 copies, El País remains Spain’s most-widely read general newspaper. Only the sports tabloid Marca sells more papers. The appointment of Mrs Gallego-Díaz almost coincided with the presentation of the new cabinet of freshly installed Prime-Minister Pedro Sánchez who named eleven women to his seventeen-strong ministerial team – securing himself a place in the history books as well.

Although it is still a relatively young paper in a country that measures the longevity of its national institutions in centuries, El País has become mandatory reading in the Spanish-speaking world and, indeed, has become its paper of record. The international editions in English and Portuguese reach out to readers in the United States and Brazil where the online edition of El País attracts considerable attention from readers.

In Spain, El País is synonymous with the country’s return to democracy after the death of Generalissimo Franco in 1975. Six years later, the paper gained worldwide fame and acclaim when it put out an emergency edition in defence of the constitution whilst mutinous officers of the Guardia Civil held a large number of members of parliament hostage in Madrid and tanks of rebellious army units took to the streets in Valencia.

Even before King Juan Carlos I forcefully intervened to restore order, El País had managed to rally the nation for democracy. Other national papers, invited to join the constitutional cause, decided to wait and see which side would emerge victoriously – and were later soundly condemned for failing to respond in a time of need.

That courage has become the hallmark of El País, now entrusted to Soledad Gallego-Díaz. However, the new editor faces a number of challenges. The paper’s daily circulation has dropped from a high of about 435,000 in 2008 to less than half that number today. Whilst El País has embraced the internet, it was slow to recognise the ascendancy of mobile devices and only belatedly introduced its own cross-platform app.

Staunchly pro-European and of a social-democratic persuasion, the paper has also been caught on the wrong side of popular sentiment. Mrs Gallego-Díaz is not likely to change that course and has repeatedly vowed to uphold El País’ long-standing principles and resist pressure to make its content slightly less high-brow.

A graduate from the prestigious Universidad Complutense where she read Philosophy, Mrs Gallego-Díaz repeatedly ran into trouble for speaking out during the Franco Era. In 1975, she was fired from her job at the now-defunct Pyresa news agency after organising a strike to protest the execution by firing squad of five antifascist fighters – the last time capital punishment was carried out in Spain.

Upon accepting her new job, Mrs Gallego-Díaz reminded newsroom staff that their job is more important than ever: “It is our duty to report facts, not fiction or opinion. Journalist must erect an impenetrable barrier to alt-truths and fake news. These falsehoods have no place in our columns and undermine the credibility of the press – our most valuable asset.” Mrs Gallego-Díaz also said that she considers fake news a “poison” that distracts from the main issues society faces and, as such, silence the debate on what matters most.


Antony Beevor: History as a Collection of Telling Details

He did it again and delivered an instant classic. After Stalingrad, Berlin, Crete, Paris, and the Ardennes, military historian and author Antony Beevor now revisits and re-examines the fighting in and around the Dutch city Arnhem in The Battle for the Bridges 1944 – a shortcut to victory masterminded by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and an almost successful attempt to bypass the German Siegfried Line which shielded the country’s industrial heartland.

In a field crowded with exceptionally gifted military historians, Antony Beevor stands out for bravery. Few history writers would dare to rework the entire Second World War in a single, albeit hefty, volume and draw new conclusions. In his almost universally praised The Second World War (2012), Mr Beevor includes all fronts, beginning with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and ending fourteen years later with Japan’s signing of the instruments of surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay which signalled the end of hostilities.

Mr Beevor pulls no punches when unravelling the many myths amplified by the passage of time. He concludes that the reputations of both Bernard Montgomery and Erwin Rommel, the two opposing field marshals who met on the battlefields of North Africa, are vastly overblown. The historian points out that Rommel refused to accept responsibility for the German debacle in the desert sands whilst Montgomery proved overly cautious and as a result was unable to fully exploit his advantage.

Mr Beevor brings history alive by giving a voice to its participants. This makes for a gripping account and delivers haunting particulars not usually included such as the details provided by a Russian soldier in a letter to his mother: “One walks on corpses, sits down to rest on corpses, and eats one’s meals on corpses. For about ten kilometres, there are two corpses of Fritzes on each square metre.”

Eyewitness accounts such as this one appear throughout his books and help explain why Mr Beevor calls WW2 the greatest man-made disaster in history. As he relates the widespread cannibalism amongst starving Japanese soldiers, Mr Beevor drives home the unspeakable horror of war and shines a much-needed light on its human dimension. He does so again in his latest book about the battle for the bridges (Operation Market Garden) which, Mr Beevor writes, was doomed from the start, but still might have succeeded.

The writer approaches the epic battle as a forensic investigator, unearthing all minutiae in an attempt to describe the chaos on the ground as lived by the troops. Again, Mr Beevor assigns a significant portion of the blame for the unfortunate outcome to Field Marshal Montgomery who is depicted as an insufferable bore equipped with an inflated ego. Mr Beevor also rescues the reputation of Polish general Stanislaw Sosabowski who opposed the operation from the start and was made into the scapegoat of its failing.

Mr Beevor also disassembles the myths that accumulated thick and fast after the battle was fought and lost. He makes no attempt to embellish the defeat and turn it – in the vein of Dunkirk – into a heroic victory. Unlike Cornelis Ryan whose 1974 account of the Battle of Arnhem – A Bridge Too Far – was made into a Hollywood blockbuster, Mr Beevor dives headlong into to gory details of a ill-conceived operation that cost more than 3,300 lives on both sides in addition the countless civilian casualties. The German retribution that followed – a blockade of the northern half of The Netherlands – which plunged to non-liberated part of the country into its “Hunger Winter”, the famine of 1944-1945 that killed an estimated 22,000 people.

In his signatory style, Antony Beevor lets the survivors tell their tale, thus highlighting the plight of Dutch civilians caught in the crossfire – an aspect often overlooked or treated as a mere footnote to the grand military procedures unfolding in the Arnhem marshes.

Antony Beevor is a prolific researcher and writer. He has also published major works about the Spanish Civil War and the Soviet Union. Early on in his career, Mr Beevor also wrote two novels, a genre he – perhaps thankfully – never revisited.


Tim O’Reilly: Coding for the Masses

Founder and CEO Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media is not at all surprised that Google, Facebook, and Apple are struggling to preserve their aura of cool.

Mr O’Reilly points to New York Times columnist David Brooks, who was been caught wondering out loud if Big Tech is destined to follow Big Tobacco as “peddlers of destructive addiction”. Mr Brooks argues that social media has not delivered on its promise to end loneliness and has increased solitude and awareness of social exclusion instead.

This happens during the lifecycle of every major new technology, Mr O’Reilly believes. He has been quoted as saying that television, once hailed as a great educator, has made us into “dumbed-down couch potatoes”. The automobile has changed the world but has come a culprit of pollution. With each new development, Mr O’Reilly notes, initial optimism is eventually replaced by a more balanced – and often much less rosy – assessment of the technology’s impact, usefulness, and ultimate meaning.

Tim O’Reilly did exceptionally well out of that optimism. Early on, he recognised the many opportunities of the IT revolution to empower people with a solid understanding of the technologies driving the internet. Starting with HTML, O’Reilly Media launched a series of books – often hefty tomes – and courses to explain programming languages to the uninitiated but curious. Via exceptionally well-structured step-by-step courses, students were able to dive deeper into their language of choice, emerging not only with a solid understanding but also with the ability to apply their knowledge instantly to real-life situations.

Tim O’Reilly is credited with coining the phrase “open source software” for non-proprietary technology and coming up with the concept of Web 2.0 to describe dynamic websites that interact with their users – as opposed to static sites that merely display content. In 1993, Mr O’Reilly’s company also made history by building the internet’s first web portal – the Global Network Navigator (GNN) which two years later was sold to America Online (AOL), a deal which kicked off the dotcom bubble that burst in 2001.

An internet guru with a large following, Mr O’Reilly is not overly concerned about the concentration of power in the hands of a few tech giants; the dominance of these large corporates, he believes, will prove their undoing. Whilst working at Microsoft, early in his career, Mr O’Reilly watched that company exercise so much control over the personal computer market that it would dictate to venture capitalists what to invest in, and tell business people what to do. Innovators were no longer able to make any real money, so they started looking elsewhere. Then along came a new-fangled thing called the internet, and the playing field opened-up.

Mr O’Reilly sees evidence of history repeating. Venture capitalists and entrepreneurs are always trying to figure out how to hitch a ride on the tailcoats of Google, Facebook, Amazon and the other big tech companies, hoping to gain some market share before being gobbled up or put out of business by the big boys. Big Tech is notoriously slow to catch-on and will take a while to turn the ship.

Mr O’Reilly sees these repetitive movements in a more philosophical light: long-term greed, increasingly rare, is actually a good thing because it can engage with customers and partners to make the pie bigger. Everybody can gorge on a larger slice. But Big Tech is mostly motivated by short-term greed and a zero-sum approach to business. Market share becomes all important; not the size of the market.

Few people in the IT business have done more to educate new generations of programmers than Tim O’Reilly. Many of today’s innovators got their first crack at coding whilst hunched over an O’Reilly book – always with a picture of some fuzzy animal gracing the cover – trying to push the boundaries of a language or coming up with novel ways to implement functions or establish routines.

As the coding environment got fragmented with a bewildering number of languages, O’Reilly Media diversified its courses, staying on top, if not a few steps ahead, of developments and trends. The company’s current subscription-based Safari Online series of courses and publications is still the go-to place for anyone brave enough to venture into programming. There is little doubt that the next generation of geeks will also be shaped by Tim O’Reilly.


LBBW: Operating Soundly, Making Big Moves and Breaking New Ground

Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), a mid-sized universal bank, promises its customers – whether corporate, institutional, or retail, to be by their side wherever they go.

With deep roots in Baden-Württemberg, LBBW is also present at economic and financial hubs worldwide. The company places its expertise at customers' disposal — and is just as involved and innovative as they are because LBBW thinks and acts like an entrepreneur.

As an institution under public law, LBBW is owned by the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg, the Savings Bank Association of Baden-Württemberg and the City of Stuttgart. With total assets of €238b, LBBW is ranked among the largest banks in Germany.

LBBW is also one of the leading Debt Capital Markets (DCM) houses in the country. Like no other bank over the past three years, it has further improved its market position and is consistently holding top positions in the league tables for euro-covered bonds (coming in at second place in 2018 and garnering first places in 2016 and 2017). LBBW is also a leading institution with respect to inaugural DCM transactions – and has been so over a significant period, with transactions from all major European jurisdictions and from Canada to Asia.

Also, LBBW has been one of the most frequent issuers in the respective market, with 12 benchmark trades in euros, dollars, and pounds sterling issued over the past three years. After having brought its first-ever senior unsecured green bond to the market in late 2017, LBBW also issued its first Pfandbrief under a green bond framework this past June. LBBW is one of the top partners for structuring and managing green bond issues in Germany.

The LBBW Group has over 10,000 employees working out of 160 locations throughout the country. Its head offices are in Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Mannheim and Mainz. LBBW also looks after its customers at 17 locations worldwide, from New York to London and Singapore.

This bank can be depended on, in good times and bad. LBBW works conscientiously to establish trust — which is indispensable for a longstanding and successful partnership in banking. Many of the customer relationships that LBBW has cultivated have stood the test of time over generations. LBBW promises to provide appropriate financial backing to help meet the needs of business professionals and individual customers alike.

LBBW recognises that companies require capital and first-rate advice in their financing ventures. For the past 200 years, it has been in the company’s DNA to operate on a sound basis while, at the same time, making bold moves. Its mission statement, "Breaking new ground”, is valued by small, large and mid-sized companies; global corporations; and the many other customers that put their trust in LBBW. The company works hard to earn this trust and understands that it must do so each-and-every day.

Q&A Session with Patrick Seifert

[caption id="attachment_22116" align="aligncenter" width="900"] Managing Director: Patrick Seifert[/caption]

What excited you about the businesses you worked for during your earlier career and what excites you about the business you now lead?
Across the different roles I have been in charge of, there have been two recurring patterns: I guess I have always aimed for a tangible link between my job in finance and the real world. In helping clients achieve their corporate objectives with the help of financial services. In other words, putting finance to the service of the client. Pretty basic in that I remain convinced that finance needs to have a meaningful role in economy and society. An obvious example is the strong momentum of sustainable finance and the role green and social bonds increasingly play in the transition of the industrial economy. Which brings me to the second motivation in my career: Replicating successes and making quality advice available to a broader scale of clients. Understanding the essence of business there remains an important driver of growth without compromising on quality.

"I am eagerly waiting to see some normalisation on the interest rate front. The ECB has been supporting the market, and it has not been a surprise to my team and me that their implication will be much longer than initially expected."

What is special about the management style at your organisation, the team you lead, and the workforce?
Management styles change over time and probably have to because the world changes as well. If there is the one driver keeping me motivated, it is the entrepreneurial freedom to develop my franchise. It was what made the difference between my successes and failures. This trust is something I try and delegate as much as possible in the hands of my guys. They are the ones operating close to the market, in need to take educated decisions. I want them to be strong and meaningful in front of their clients — I think we are talking about my management style having a lot in common with empowerment. At the same time, I like to get my hands dirty and remain actively engaged with clients. I’m always in close cooperation with my team and for the benefit of the client when we need to really drill deep and refine the best of ideas. In return, it helps me to remain client-centric when discussing strategic topics in the bank. Keeping the feedback loop short is what matters.

How would you characterise short to mid-term prospects for the industry in which you operate?
From a profitability point of view, recent years have not been great for European banks. More than ever, this suggests consolidation at the horizon. There surely have not been major exits lately and lots of players are still competing for too little of a market. But when compared to the major US banks for example, the fragmentation of European banking simply makes no sense. I, therefore, remain convinced that stronger institutions will take the upper hand. Cleaning their balance sheet, keeping strict risk management, improving on the capital side, and aligning their business model will be major homework to developing economies of scale. Potentially less accommodating markets could be accelerating the elimination process — after all, the market clean-up typically happens in the downturn. We at LBBW are committed to servicing our clients throughout market cycles and, therefore, look forward to upcoming opportunities. The consolidation will be driven by the client, making choices on how much focus and commitment his partner banks deliver going forward.

What are the personal and business strengths that qualify you as a corporate leader?
I am a professional with a generalist management education underpinning my broad work experience. In a world of specialists which the capital markets business often is, this gives me the chance to provide a different angle to colleagues and — more importantly — to clients. Alongside a probably more old-school and reliable approach, I enjoy maintaining long-standing cooperation with many clients. We build relationship that serve clients rather then having a transactional approach. Surely, the next trade matters in this competitive market, but in the end, it’s just another building block in a successful relationship with our clients.

What to your mind makes for good corporate leadership in your particular industry?
For all its sophistication, I observe that capital markets business is kind of slow to include the benefits of digitalisation. At best, this reflects the unique nature of services provided. Yet we probably all sense that there are also activities which could be made more economical for clients and banks likewise. This is obviously where the fragmentation of the European market does not help — a point addressed earlier on. Good corporate leadership, therefore, shows the ability to invest in the future needs of clients without losing focus on today's needs of your clients. You might think this is a very general answer, but I firmly believe that the high level of uncertainty in business, the emergence of new technology, and pressure on profitability is making it very difficult to strike that fine balance.

What are your short-term hopes for the future of your business and the industry as a whole?
I am eagerly waiting to see some normalisation on the interest rate front. The ECB has been supporting the market, and it has not been a surprise to my team and me that their implication will be much longer than initially expected. A lot of these monetary actions were needed but the downside in my view means we need at least some normalisation now. More market dynamic, credit differentiation and real-money investors. Market swings. Opportunities. All reconciled through a market-clearing price, providing a strong incentive for market participants to constantly improve their business models for a successful future.


Adrian Owen: Brain Whisperer

He is almost universally hailed as a miracle worker; a scientist who can release minds trapped inside bodies on artificial life support and suspended in a vegetative state. By using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and an array of new techniques, Adrian Owen has detected and mapped brain activity in patients deemed completely unconscious.

Shown a Hitchcock movie, Jeff Tremblay’s brain lit up with activity. Mr Tremblay also reacted to sounds and images; in fact, his frontal and parietal lobes responded just as those of a fully conscious person. At the time of Dr Owen’s experiment, Mr Tremblay had been in a coma for a full fifteen years, victim of a brawl.

The British neuroscientist is convinced that not all vegetative patients are “braindead”. He describes his findings as a fascinating book, published last year. Into the Gray Zone begins with the well-known story of Cambridge nursery school teacher Kate Bainbridge who lapsed into a coma after suffering a bad cold that caused the inflammation of her brain and spinal cord. Though Ms Bainbridge’s coma lasted but a few weeks, she only slowly recovered her mental faculties. The ordeal, which the teacher remembers well and is now able to describe in minute detail, allowed neuroscientist a unique insight into the workings of the brain, its capacity to self-heal, and ability to function – though only partially – even when severely damaged.

The plight of Ms Bainbridge, and her surprising recovery, sparked Dr Owen’s interest in the twilight zone that separates life from death. The Cambridge teacher distinctly remembers feeling trapped as if locked in a prison without any clue of her surroundings – or the reasons for her predicament.

After examining numerous patients with severely reduced brain function, Dr Owen suffered a welcome epiphany – as he remembers, – whilst on a beach in Australia. In order to proof that a vegetative patient is mentally alive, Dr Owen decided that he would have to coax them into making a wilful decision and catch the resulting brainwave. To do this, he wired his patients up and asked them to imagine, say, a game of tennis or a walk around their home. In each case, a different part of the brain would show activity. Dr Owen had reached into deep inner space for now he could ask simple yes or no questions to be answered by thoughts of sports matches or strolls around the house.

Dr Owen gained almost instant fame when, in the presence of a BBC camera crew, he established communication with Scott who for twelve years lingered in a vegetative state. Hooked up to a scanner, Scott indicated that he was in no pain and proceeded to answer a host of questions. The patient knew where he was, who he was, and showed a clear notion of the passage of time.

“The first time this approach worked, it was like pure magic: we had actually found a lost person.” Since then, Dr Owen has unlocked the minds of many vegetative patients. The techniques he developed are now in wide use. Methods for assessing the mental state of patients in an apparently vegetative state have also improved significantly and currently use electroencephalography which is both less expensive and hardware-intensive. Patients may be examined for brain activity at their bedside.

However, establishing some form of rapport with trapped minds has not helped these patients regain their full faculties. Dr Owen admits that a trajectory towards full recovery is still “many years” away.

The British neuroscientist has also conducted ground-breaking research into the assessment of cognitive functions, developing innovative and comprehensive tests, available online, to scientifically determine memory, reasoning, planning, and attention skills and capabilities. In another large-scale experiment, Dr Owen also investigated the susceptibility of the brain to respond to specific training exercises that seek to extract peak performance. Whilst improvements were indeed measured and quantifiable, the acquired skills are non-transferable – only a single specific function may be bettered, with no detectable beneficial spillage to cognitively closely-related tasks. The brain, in a word, will not be trained.


Kishore Mahbubani: The Pendulum of History

Kishore Mahbubani thoroughly enjoys yanking the West’s chain every now and then. The Singaporean diplomat has the uncanny ability to identify with pinpoint precision the weak spots in the discourse of developed nations, exposing embarrassing thought processes grounded in the lingering leftovers of times long since gone and powers lost decades ago.

Mr Mahbubani makes no secret of the fact that he particularly dislikes the inclination of European and North American governments to freely dispense their wisdom and embark on lectures in order to show interlocutors – mostly developing nations – the error of their ways. “Western minds simply refuse to understand that now is not the time to intervene in other countries’ domestic affairs or criticise internal arrangements. By doing so, the West acts against its own best interests.”

Mr Mahbubani takes the long view of geopolitics and points out that for much of humanity’s convoluted history, China and India constituted the world’s largest economies and only superpowers. It was only the Industrial Revolution which, barely 250 years ago, tipped the balance of power in Europe’s – and later still North America’s – favour. “At the beginning of the 21st century, the world turned yet another corner with its centre of economic and political gravity returning to its original position. “The ascendancy of Asia is one of two great power shifts taking place; the other one is the IT revolution that erupted in California and has changed the world to beyond recognition.”

In his most recent book – Mr Mahbubani is a prolific writer – the diplomat offers a new, and quite controversial, take on post-war history. In Has the West Lost It?, Mr Mahbubani concludes that “no major Western figure” has had the courage to state “the defining truth” of our times. That truth includes the fact that the West is now becoming a mere footnote, or at best a minor chapter, of global affairs. The West is no longer able to set the global agenda, exploit its economic might, or maintain its technological edge. If Mr Mahbubani is to be believed, the West will – in due time – again be confined to the margins of world affairs, an outer region that follows rather than leads.

Mr Mahbubani considers this scenario a historic inevitability, albeit one brought about by the diplomatic mishandling by the United States of its position as the world’s sole superpower during the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Singaporean diplomat does not hide his surprise at – bordering on disdain for – what he describes as US “bungling”. An utter lack of vision on what the role of the country should be in a unipolar world created a sort of power vacuum which others major players such as China tumbled into. According to Mr Mahbubani the US lost its lead with first the war in Afghanistan followed by the invasion of Iraq. Both grand and violent projects aimed to forge new nations in the image of their creator. That mission was not accomplished.

Whilst dismissing Donald Trump as “ignorant of world affairs”, Mr Mahbubani forgets, perhaps conveniently, that the current US president has condemned the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq repeatedly and remains reluctant to commit his countries forces to new overseas adventures.

There is, however, some good news for beleaguered Western nations: Mr Mahbubani does not think it inevitable that China should take over as leader of the world. Asia’s rise, remarkable as it is, by no means guarantees that the region should once more become the centre of the world. Ambitious newcomers must deal with a world that is still organised along Western liberal thought – which, Mr Mahbubani concedes, is not necessarily all bad. Multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund are all designed to “benefit the West”. Whilst that may be too much of a blanket statement, it is to some extent true that these institutions all saw the light at a time when the West’s dominance remained undisputed. Since things have changed considerably since then, Mr Mahbubani argues that some room must be made at the top table to accommodate the rising powers of Asia – a proposal not at all controversial. Hence, Mr Mahbubani suggests the West to actively and generously cooperate with Asia and relinquish some of its power lest it be taken away altogether by developments.

After a career spanning 33 years at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr Mahbubani became dean of the renowned Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore where he also held a professorship in the Practice of Public Policy. Late last year Mr Mahbubani retired from academia. He continues to write thought-provoking books.


Michel Barnier: Keep Calm and Carry On

He has the patience of a saint – and then some. Former French minister of Foreign Affairs Michel Barnier has the unenviable job of explaining to the British government that Brexit means Brexit – to paraphrase Prime Minister Theresa May who first introduced the combative slogan and has lived to regret it; the words keep bouncing back.

In July 2016, Mr Barnier was appointed chief negotiator by the European Commission to help steer the United Kingdom towards the exit whilst safeguarding the interests of the remaining 27 EU member states. To this end, Mr Barnier was given a clear but limited set of instructions by the European Council which includes all heads of state and government leaders of the union. He was also charged with maintaining the full transparency of the negotiating process and decline any and all offers to seal backroom deals.

Whilst the commission may perhaps have displayed a slightly greater sensitivity to the feelings of the British – whose love of all things French is particularly understated – Michel Barnier proved, in the end, an excellent choice. The Frenchman has almost singlehandedly redefined the meaning of stoic. Unperturbed by the firestorm kicked up by the tabloids, Mr Barnier refuses to lose his cool, limiting his periodic interventions to curt, yet elegantly worded, dismissals of the latest scheme produced by his counterparts as they seek to fit their square peg into a round hole.

Mr Barnier is not one to bend the rules, engage in flights of fancy, or deviate from the script he was handed. He also remains perfectly calm and carries on – patiently explaining the workings of the European Union to the uninitiated and delineating the playing field set by his mandate and within which the disentanglement of the United Kingdom from the European Union must take shape.

Sometimes, though, keen observers think they may detect a hint of irritation in Mr Barnier’s sporadic utterings such as when he had to explain, yet again, that the militarily useful features of the European navigation system Galileo – a constellation of thirty satellites – is the preserve of member states only as per the agreement that underpins the €10bn undertaking. Ironically, the clause excluding non-members states from accessing the encrypted bits of Galileo – which will feature and estimated position error of less than one centimetre – was, at the time, included at the express insistence of the British.

Mr Barnier would like nothing more than for the United Kingdom to understand that leaving the European Union implies severing all ties to the bloc, including unfettered access to its specialist agencies, markets, and regulatory entities. So far, the Frenchman has discharged his task with considerable aplomb welcoming and appreciating the steps taken by Prime Minister May to infuse the talks with a greater sense of realism.

Born into a Gaullist family and growing up in the Alpine Isère Department next to Grenoble, Michel Barnier graduated from the École Supérieure de Commerce du Paris, one of France’s Grandes Écoles, which only admits the exceptionally bright. Touted as the world’s oldest business school, Mr Barnier, however, choose politics as his trade. He was elected to parliament, age 27, and went on to rise through the ranks. He helped organise the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville and, the following year, joined the cabinet of Prime Minister Edouard Balladur before receiving an appointment as Secretary of State for European Affairs.

In Europe, Mr Barnier served as commissioner for Regional Policy between 1999 and 2004, returning to the French cabinet as minister of Foreign Affairs, before again taking up a seat on the European Commission as commissioner for Internal Market and Services (2010-2014). The experience gained in this position now serves Michel Barnier well as he tries to remind his interlocutors of the need to reserve the benefits EU’s single market to member states and associated members who abide by the union’s four freedom – the free movement, of capital, services, goods, and labour.

At times, it seems that Mr Barnier keeps to the maxim first pronounced by the 26th US president Theodore Roosevelt who inhabited the White House between 1901 and 1909: Speak softly and carry a big stick. Mr Barnier knows, more than most, that he need never raise his voice, express frustration, or become irritated for he represents the world’s largest bloc of democratic nations who have – to the surprise of friend and foe – kept a united front despite their differences in the face of the United Kingdom’s likewise democratic decision to exit the European Union. Mr Barnier’s job is to make this happen.


Otaviano Canuto, World Bank: Making Returns on Knowledge - How Innovation Can Flow from Globalisation

The April issue of the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook (WEO) included a chapter on how globalisation has helped technology leaders’ knowledge spread faster. Cross-border technological diffusion has not only contributed to rising domestic productivity levels in advanced and emerging economies, but also facilitated a partial reshaping of the innovation landscape. Some recipient countries have become significant new sources of research and development as well as patents.

Globalisation has diffused knowledge and technology…

More trade, foreign direct investment, and international use of patents have disseminated knowledge and technology across borders. This diffusion can lead to increases in average outputs at relatively low costs. Furthermore, its multiple use may generate positive network effects through cross-pollination.

"International sources of technological innovation are changing, as R&D expenditures skyrocket in China and stocks of international patents pile up in South Korea."

Knowledge flows from abroad can have an impact both on productivity, through the adoption of foreign technologies in the production process, and on innovation, when combined with domestic R&D. The WEO estimates that in emerging market economies, “from 2004 to 2014, foreign knowledge accounted for about 0.7 percentage point of labour productivity growth a year, or 40% of observed sectoral productivity growth, compared with 0.4 percentage point annual growth during 1995–2003” (see chart 1). According to the report, these results remain robust even when China is excluded, indicating that productivity effects were broad-based among emerging market economies.

[caption id="attachment_13018" align="aligncenter" width="581"] Chart 1: Contribution of Foreign Knowledge to Labour Productivity Growth.
Source: International Monetary Fund (2018). World Economic Outlook, April.[/caption]

International sources of technological innovation are changing, as R&D expenditures skyrocket in China and stocks of international patents pile up in South Korea (see chart 2). These countries have joined traditional leaders in sectors such as electrical and optical equipment and, especially South Korea, machinery. This has happened even as, since the early 2000s, frontier economies have gone through a slowdown in the increase of labour and total factor productivity, a measure of how efficiently inputs are being used in the production process. These economies have also experienced slower growth in patenting and, to some extent, lower R&D investment.

Competing explanations have been offered for the foregoing, either as a time gap in the transition between the third and fourth industrial revolutions or as a secular decline in opportunities to push productivity forward. In any case, prevailing technological convergence gaps and the possibility of simultaneous use of existing technologies have offered emerging market economies the opportunity to keep advancing even if the rhythm decelerated at the frontier.

The WEO also brings to the fore the results of an empirical exercise showing positive effects of heightened international competition on innovation and technological diffusion. That could be considered an additional channel through which globalisation would be reinforcing incentives to innovate and adopt technologies from abroad.

…but there are local requisites to escalate the ladder of innovation capabilities

Simple interconnectedness does not automatically spark productivity increases and local innovation. Any application of technology needs locally specific content that cannot be acquired or transferred by means of textbooks or other codifiable forms of knowledge transmission. This knowledge cannot be made explicit, such as simply using blueprints, and thus cannot be perfectly diffused as either public information or private property. It must be developed locally.

[caption id="attachment_13019" align="aligncenter" width="886"] Chart 2: Patenting and Research & Development at the Frontier. Source: International Monetary Fund (2018). World Economic Outlook, April.[/caption]

Production, technology adoption, and invention requires a relatively high level of such idiosyncratic knowledge and local capabilities. It is typical for latecomers to start from production and technological adoption and only then move on to invention (see chart 3). That has been the case in South Korea and China. These countries are developing their innovation capabilities after intense learning through using and adapting existing technologies.

Success depends on the presence of a broad set of complementary factors: access to finance, infrastructure, skilled labour, and good managerial and organisational practices. In the absence of these factors, returns from investing in the development of capabilities are likely to be low. Solutions must be found to market failures that generate disincentives to the accumulation of knowledge. The transaction costs associated with doing business, such as trading across borders, hiring and enforcing contracts, also cannot be too high.

[caption id="attachment_13020" align="aligncenter" width="889"] Chart 3: The Capabilities Escalator. Source: Cirera, X. and Maloney, W.F. (2017). The Innovation Paradox, World Bank.[/caption]

This beneficial environment is not widespread, which is why there have not been larger changes in the international innovation landscape. It also explains what Xavier Cirera and William Maloney, economists at the World Bank, have called the “innovation paradox”: low levels of innovation-related investment in developing economies do not correlate with the high returns thought to accompany technological adoption and catch-up. Globalisation may spread knowledge. Profiting fully from that knowledge requires a further effort.

About the Author

Otaviano Canuto is an Executive Director of the World Bank. The opinions expressed in this article are his own. Follow him on Twitter: @ocanuto


CFI.co Meets the CEO of Montpensier Finance: Guillaume Dard

Performance arises from the union of talent and method. This is the conviction of Montpensier Finance, based on a long experience of investment and a resolutely entrepreneurial culture. With over € 2 billion in assets under management, this independent management company based in Paris developed itself around three core competencies: multi-asset, European equities, and convertible bonds.

“We are proud that our three-pronged approach in asset management has helped us realise continuous growth in the past years,” says CEO Guillaume Dard who acquired the company in 2004. “To compete in a complex world, our managers work as a team and use our methods as well as our analytical tools, developed over many years and enriched permanently. Our collegial, qualitative, and quantitative approach allows our managers to have a solid foundation in a rapidly changing financial environment.”

The belief of Montpensier Finance is that companies are facing three major trends: contested globalisation, irresistible digitisation, and growing regulation. Therefore, they unite their bottom-up and top-down visions in their investment processes. This differentiating angle helps managers to identify the growth potential of a company, to understand its lifecycle, and to analyse its valuation, aiming to select the most attractive investment vehicles.

To understand the success of Montpensier Finance, we need to go back thirty years. In 1988, with the backing of the Taittinger champagne family, Guillaume Dard created and developed Banque du Louvre, a pioneer in multi-management. At the time, no bank was practicing that, as they were all focused exclusively on selling in-house products. “We have implemented several partnerships with reputable companies such as Pimco, Goldman Sachs, and Legg Mason. Thus, we have been able to build an array of products of very good quality and Banque du Louvre acquired, as a result, a great reputation and enjoyed strong commercial success.”

“When HSBC became a major shareholder, and decided to merge Banque du Louvre with other entities, I felt the need to take on a new challenge. I therefore took control over Montpensier Finance. My experience of partnership with American asset managers convinced me of a principle: success = process + talent. We have therefore been very attentive to select very talented men and women and to be consistent on the development of our methods.”

One of the proprietary model used for the top-down approach is the MMS (Montpensier Market Scan). “Twenty-five years ago, a manager's challenge was to collect all the information needed to make the right decision. Today, the challenge is to know how to sort and analyse relevant information within a deluge of daily data” says Mr Dard.

The MMS method relies on a four-pillar analysis to determine allocation. First, the economic momentum, examines the acceleration or deceleration of growth. This indicator is composed of ‘lead and lag’ data over a two-year horizon. It gives an indication of potential trend reversals. The second pillar is looking at monetary dynamics, i.e. central bank policies and the behaviour of interest and exchange rates. The third pillar, market valuation includes data on earnings growth, geographical and sectoral data, as well as return on equity, according to different scenarios. Finally, the fourth pillar of the method concerns market dynamics, in which the flows and technical behaviour of these markets are analysed.

“That’s the way we have achieved the first successes of Montpensier Finance,” concludes Mr Dard. i


CFI.co Meets the CEO and Founder of Auka: Daniel Döderlein

Norwegian native, fintech pioneer and Top 200 European fintech influencer, Daniel Döderlein is the CEO and founder of Auka. He has more than twenty years of entrepreneurial experience in the fields of IT, product development, advertising, and financial services. He was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014 by the Norwegian Venture Capital Association.

Sitting on the Google cloud advisory board, Mr Döderlein has a string of firsts to his name. He was the first to develop mobile payments technology in Scandinavia, the first to launch a mobile payment service in Norway (mCASH), and the first to create and run a regulated financial services platform on public cloud.

After Norway’s second largest bank, Sparebank 1, acquired mCash for exclusive use in the country, Mr Döderlein started his current company, Auka. Auka helps banks anywhere in the world to create, launch, and monetise their own mobile payments offering, following the same successful formula of banks in Scandinavia. Auka has been awarded Deloitte Fastest Growing Fintech in EMEA and best mobile payments platform by CFI.co magazine.

Mr Döderlein explains the origins of the business: “I started my first business when I was fourteen, and my first formal company at age seventeen. So besides working in a local telecom store during school, I have never worked for anyone. I have worked alongside my fellow colleagues in companies I have built. I made a lot of mistakes, and still do. But I don't think you could learn in school, or working for others, what I have learned from my journey and would never trade my scars from this with anything.”

“My job as a leader is to get trouble out of the way for the people I serve. And I serve my colleagues. I strive to be transparent and honest in everything I do, and I expect that from everyone I work with. If we can't deal with the truth, whatever plans we make will be a longer route to a solution if we ever get there. At Auka, your title means virtually nothing. We have open doors, and believe that good ideas, strategies, and solutions come from talented and dedicated people, wherever you are formally placed in an organisational chart.”

“Fintech is the most funded industry from an investor perspective at the moment. Financial services is listed as the Number 1 industry for total transformation, and we have never seen more innovation and regulatory changes in any industry at any time as far as I see it. What a ride it has been, and it has just started!”

On corporate leadership, Mr Döderlein emphasises competence: “I’m surprised all the time that the decision makers in the financial services industry do not know how their business actually works, except looking at business cases from a spreadsheet perspective. I could live with that if the person is a prolific leader who inspires and motivates. But I don't see many of those in financial services, sadly.” i


Is AI the Future for Spreadsheets?

By Gianluca Bisceglie

Until just a few years ago, there was no real alternative to Excel. If you wanted to do any type of data analysis, keep financial records, manage your corporate finances and perform risk analysis, Excel was the only tool at your disposal. But, as those of us working with them to make decisions based on numbers will tell you, traditional spreadsheets leave a lot to be desired. Yet, virtually everybody still uses spreadsheets that are vulnerable to data leakage, undetected errors and often bad business decisions.

Data remains at risk. Especially when companies share financial projections, records and other important financial documents (usually in spreadsheets) as attachments across email. Mistakes happen. Type in the wrong email address, or accidentally CC the wrong person and you could cause a whole world of problems. Plus, of course, sensitive data can get into the wrong hands on purpose, be it through a disgruntled employee, service provider or cybercriminal.

What’s more, studies show that up to 90 percent of spreadsheets contain errors. From copy and paste blunders and hidden cells to miscalculations and version control, it is almost worth assuming that you've encountered or created an Excel error at some point.

So, in today’s age of AI and machine learning it stands to reason that this type of tech could be the natural progression for spreadsheets. Many of the big players in the software industry think so. Microsoft announced in early 2018 that it would be adding some AI features to Excel. Google Sheets boasted AI capabilities before that, with auto-suggest for formulas and one-click visual representations of data. But, is AI the magic wand spreadsheet users need, and will it influence productivity?

In theory, intelligence-based features promise huge gains in terms of streamlining operations. With financial analysis for instance, AI may help with layout structure and assumptions, suggesting what the next items to model are and how you should model them. But this is actually no better than an ecommerce site suggesting which books you should buy based on what others are similar to ones you have previously bought.

Yet imagine if, for example, you could just tell the spreadsheet that you have a start-up in the energy sector, and have the financial model laid out for you through AI. Unfortunately, this just isn’t possible, even if the AI could read minds! Even a top consultant cannot come up with a completely perfect model without conversations requiring consciousness.

As any professional dealing with spreadsheet-based analysis daily will tell you, modelling, analysing and presenting a business case is an art as much as a science. An extensively trained machine learning algorithm powering a spreadsheet will still need more information for a proper financial model layout: the size of the company, what type of products or services it offers, and so on. This poses another question, which is: how is the AI trained? What data do we feed into it? All the spreadsheets in the world? Only the ones in your company? The list is endless.

There is another way to improve standard spreadsheets. Automation – without the need of AI – can help suggesting the most common options a trained professional would consider. This still requires an interaction with a chatbot asking contextual questions based on the previous answers. Yet, it removes error probability as it delegates to a machine the task of writing formulae in a spreadsheet based on the answers a human provides.

On the plus side, AI may detect anomalies and warn of potential errors. If problems can be solved with imperative algorithms, they are better and faster than AI. AI is suitable for problems that machines cannot be instructed to solve deterministically. For most businesses, AI can help with workflow, suggesting who should have what permission levels based on past actions.

Finally, could the use of AI in spreadsheets help businesses make better decisions? Only when we will be able to train it to human-level understanding, ethics, business sense and awareness, or when they’ll train themselves – but at that point I doubt they’ll find spreadsheets interesting enough!

About the Author

[caption id="attachment_13036" align="aligncenter" width="214"] Author: Gianluca Bisceglie[/caption]

Gianluca Bisceglie is the founder and CEO of cloud-based software platform Visyond, which uses automation and machine learning to make spreadsheet-based decision-making processes more efficient. www.visyond.com


With Jalo-Waziri at the Helm: Africa’s Leading Securities Depository Embarks on Three-Year Plan

[caption id="attachment_17833" align="alignright" width="300"] Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Central Securities Clearing System Plc (CSCS Plc): Haruna Jalo-Waziri[/caption]

Haruna Jalo-Waziri, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Central Securities Clearing System Plc (CSCS Plc) has nearly three decades of progressive experience in the capital market.

He is a well experienced financial markets expert, specialising in deal origination, investment management, securities trading and regulation.

Jalo-Waziri oversees the strategic direction of CSCS Plc. When he took up his post in November 2017, he set the tone by developing a three-year strategic plan (2018 – 2020) focusing on five strategic pillars: enhanced technology, process optimisation, customer satisfaction, partnership through strategic alliances, and revenue growth.

These pillars will keep CSCS in focus: retaining its global respect and becoming a leading Central Securities Depository (CSD) in Africa – as well as keeping its obligations to stakeholders, while ensuring it remains competitive and profitable for its shareholders.

Jalo-Waziri started his market career at The Nigerian Stock Exchange (The NSE) and subsequently moved to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the apex regulatory organization of the Capital Markets in Nigeria. He worked with Afrinvest West Africa (formerly SECTRUST) and Kakawa Discount House Limited, where he started the Asset Management Department, which he later transformed into a full-fledged company: Kakawa Asset Management Limited (now FBN Merchant Bank). He later joined the services of First Alliance Pension & Benefits Limited (Now ARM Pensions Ltd) in partnership with Mcube South Africa.

In 2007, he was appointed MD/CEO of UBA Stockbrokers Limited, a subsidiary of United Bank for Africa (UBA Plc) which he successfully turned into one of the top five securities trading companies in Nigeria. He thereafter became the MD/CEO of UBA Asset Management Ltd.

Haruna Jalo-Waziri was appointed the Executive Director for Capital Markets at The NSE in 2012, with a primary responsibility for the overall capital market developments. He implemented key initiatives, including a capital markets partnership agreement with the London Stock Exchange Group. He also developed the Sovereign Green Bond, introduced the Federal Government Retail Savings Bond, launched the NSE Premium Board, the MSCI Index Partnership, GICS Adoption and the first dual-listing on the NSE and LSE Main Board.

He has served on several boards, including FSDH Merchant Bank, Nigerian German Chemical Plc, Oakwood Protea Hotel, Central Securities Clearing System Plc and Coral Properties Ltd. He is currently on the board of Special Olympics Nigeria. He is also the current Vice-President of the AIFA Reading Society, an NGO that focuses on promoting a reading culture and the attainment of sustainable educational development across Africa.

Haruna Jalo-Waziri has a degree in Economics from the University of Maiduguri, Nigeria and holds an MBA from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Bauchi, Nigeria. He has, throughout the course of his career, attended local and international courses and seminars on capital markets operations, management and leadership. He is an alumnus of the Lagos Business School and the Venture Capital Institute of America.

He is also a life member of the Institute of Directors.


As Cryptocurrencies Tank: The Future of Blockchain is Hard Asset-Backed

[caption id="attachment_13061" align="alignright" width="300"] Thomas Trutschel - Photothek via Getty Images[/caption]

New type Asset Backed Tokens (ABT) ICOs are part of the value creation of the future for blockchain technology. Ridding the market of fraudulent tokens and new regulation is on the horizon. Some immediate questions: Coming Collapse of Major Crypto Exchanges? Bitcoin to $2,950?

Exchanges Under Regulatory Fire While Tether Plunges 6%

I am writing an urgent article on the state of major crypto exchanges and potential SEC regulatory action that by all the market indications is highly likely to come much sooner than I would have expected. Most major exchanges such as Binance and Bittrex seem to operate as unregistered broker/dealers of securities. By all accounts, both are very likely to have investors who are both U.S. citizens and not accredited investors.

While a 'softer' solution may be reached, the SEC is liable to shut down or freeze the assets of such major exchanges which would have a massive impact on the cryptospace. Regardless of their approach, regulation and enforcement is coming in full measure, and most likely sooner than expected given the recent headlines.

In addition, the Stablecoin Tether has plummeted 6% to $0.94 at the time of this writing. Tether is supposed to be pegged at $1. A 6% drop in Tether is almost unprecedented. Crypto investors have bought billions of dollars worth of Tether this year as a way to peg their crypto investments to the dollar without having to move back into fiat which stems the hemorrhaging in the cryptospace as valuations have tanked. The average cryptocurrency has lost more than -85% of its value with the tenth best performing crypto in 2018 down -77%. In an upcoming piece, I project the price of bitcoin could easily lose another 50% if not more from current levels based on a number of fairly predictive metrics that, when taken together, have had a high degree of accuracy since 2011 in foretelling major trends in the price of bitcoin.

"Binance and BitMEX, however, at least maintain a semblance of banning American users. Users with American IP addresses are often prohibited from participating in the platform, for example."

Other serious issues have reared up. Tether is closely tied to BitFinex, a global crypto exchange. BitFinex ended its relationship with Noble Bank, its banking partner. The amount of US dollars required to back the Tether’s USDT token supply were reportedly deposited in the same bank. Later, reports started to surface that Tether had no money to back its total supply, with many of them calling the stablecoin project a scam. A strong connection between the chiefs of BitFinex, Tether and Noble Bank was also found, especially at the time when the Noble bank became a strong point of concern for the Puerto Rican regulators. Reportedly, regulators issued a warning to the firm.

The question is whether Tether has funds to support its USDT supply or not. With billions of dollar equivalents on the line, the result could be catastrophic. The question can be answered with a clear and transparent audit. Against the promises made in their original whitepaper, the Tether team has not conducted a proper financial audit. It had however hired a legal firm, which already had a business relationship with Tether and Noble Bank, to perform an inspection. No results have been published.

As a consequence of these latest quakes, retail investors are exchanging their Tether holdings for Bitcoin and other top coins over the last 24 hours causing the price of bitcoin to spike several percent while the value of Tether has dropped several percent.

But just as ominous for exchanges such as BitFinex, the following article says, "Binance and BitMEX, however, at least maintain a semblance of banning American users. Users with American IP addresses are often prohibited from participating in the platform, for example."

Yet it seems evident that a number of US citizens who trade on Binance and other major exchanges are not properly regulated, i.e. are not accredited investors. Some don't have an American IP address because they do not live in the US. For those who live in the US, a simple Virtual Private Network service (VPN) is an easy way to get around the restrictions. The SEC may take action against such exchanges in the coming weeks to months, and is one of the primary reasons why we launched Hansecoin http://www.hansecoin.com. It is not just the world's first asset backed token (ABT) platform, bringing fractional ownership into hard assets such as real estate, but it is an ICO in regulatory compliance that is backed by hard assets.

The pointless number of vapid go-nowhere business vaporware in the ICO space which probably covers the vast majority of the 6000+ ICOs launched to date must end. A full blown regulatory response is urgently needed. Such would likely cause the current correction to decimate crypto valuations. But it is what the cryptospace needs just as post dot.com vetting was necessary back in the early 2000s.

We at Hansecoin fully back all regulatory measures thus have been working closely with regulators here in Estonia to insure we remain compliant at every step of the way. It is the world’s first asset backed token (ABT) platform that is compliant with regulations. The first Use Case is backed by real estate. The ABT is the logical next step in the evolution of the ICO in terms of capital raise.

With the Hansecoin ABT platform, multiple investors will be able to own a piece of the capital gain potential and yield of a hard asset such as real estate, some land, an apartment, or an entire apartment complex. The asset provides a floor to the price and increases stability versus speculative tokens and coins.

"The SEC may take action against such exchanges in the coming weeks to months, and is one of the primary reasons why we launched Hansecoin. It is not just the world’s first asset backed token (ABT) platform, bringing fractional ownership into hard assets such as real estate, but it is an ICO in regulatory compliance that is backed by hard assets."

The tokenisation platform will embrace and follow regulations, and when secured, projects all across the EU may deliver underlying yields 7 to 11.4% or higher, potential capital gains, and provide bonuses and access to future project tokens at an attractive discount versus those joining after the Vesting Period. There is a revolutionary future in its application across multiple asset classes. Notably, this tokenisation approach may become a template for asset backed token projects.

The reliability of blockchain technology enables effective fractional ownership of the fruits of an asset via a highly efficient distribution of value while greatly enhancing liquidity in what has traditionally been a fairly illiquid market. Blockchain, when done properly, provides a solid foundation where a far more efficient capital employs real contractors, builders, architects, interior designers, mortgage banks, attorneys, accountants, property appraisers, and experienced realtors and sales agents to all work together to develop land into liveable homes and apartment complexes.

Consequently, it comes as no surprise that the blockchain space is exponentially growing at breakneck speeds across many industries. We at HanseCoin have built a robust superstructure that will allow any hard asset to be tokenised. Additional asset backed projects will be added to the platform as it can be scaled up and eventually white labelled. Further, our platform allows investors to diversify their risk by pegging their investment to the euro, thus stemming the hemorrhaging of steep and often catastrophic losses crypto investors have endured in 2018 in bitcoin, ethereum, and virtually all other cryptocurrencies. Peak-to-trough, the flagship ethereum cryptocurrency has lost -88% of its value.

First Asset Backed Use Case

Our initial project comprises of 6.6 hectares of land with space for 214 apartments across 28 houses including a decent site kindergarten and nursery, just 15 minutes from Tallinn’s city center, and has been permitted with buildings designs and projects approved and relevant infrastructure already built. The next step is construction; the land is thus “shovel ready” to be developed. A capital raise of 6.6 mil euros of construction capital to complement senior debt will be conducted via the issuance of the first round of ICO tokens in the fall of 2018.

Outside the cryptospace and blockchain hype, what remains when the fog lifts? Shovel ready land that is being transformed into residential property. Even if the cryptospace and bitcoin were to go to zero, or regulatory burdens were to become too onerous, the foundation of our project remains intact. From here, additional projects will be added thus the whole platform is scalable and the tokenization approach is suitable for white labeling.

Ultimately, fractional ownership of real estate alone is an untapped multi-billion market. Subject to applicable regulation, fractional ownership should enable a real estate owner to split up their home or property investment and sell off incremental equity stakes. The real estate equity can then be freely traded until, one day, when the property is sold, the owner and equity investor can both enjoy any gain in the property’s value.

But our asset backed tokenization platform does not end with real estate. Other hard assets will also be tokenized. Several such projects await in our queue and should materially impact the value of HanseCoin.

Due to substantial private interest, our project starts with a private sale. If and when suitable, it will become publicly available for sale. Private sale participants will receive bonuses which we will detail in our telegram. Please join today for timely updates: https://t.me/HanseCoin

We’re going into a new era. Buckle up!

by Dr. Chris Kacher

www.hansecoin.com

www.virtueofselfishinvesting.com

The Evolution Will Not Be Centralized™

View the article from the CFI.co app (download from iTunes or Google Play).

About the Author - Dr Chris Kacher Cryptotech / Nuclear physicist turned stock market wizard (KPMG audited) / Top 40 charted musician / Bestselling author

Dr Kacher is CEO of Creative Group Trading, Inc., an investment and trading vehicle for cryptocurrencies. He founded one of the first Internet-based stock advisory services in 1995 then went on to generate triple digit % returns for 6 years in a row during the 1995-2000 period before moving to cash for most of the 2000-2002 bear market. He has published numerous works including 4 books through Wiley & Sons including Bestseller "How We Made 18,000% in the Stock Market" available in five languages.

Dr Chris Kacher has appeared in major business media including CNBC, Reuters and Bloomberg and was a regular contributor to MarketWatch among others until 2012-2013 when he became involved in the blockchain.

Dr Kacher received his PhD in Nuclear Physics from University of California at Berkeley. He co-created Element 110 on the Periodic Table of Elements and "confirmed" the existence of Element 106 which his team named Seaborgium after Nobel Laureate Dr. Glenn Seaborg who discovered plutonium and supervised Dr. Kacher's work as a doctoral student at UC Berkeley.

Disclaimer: Dr. Chris Kacher is a co-Founder of HanseCoin OÜ (hansecoin.com), in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.