Speaker: Varun Sahni, Acumen Director India

Topic: Investment opportunities in the Indian healthcare industry with a primary focus on low income markets

Date and Time: November 16th 2007, Friday. 6:30-8.30 pm

Venue: Uris Hall Room: 141,Columbia University. (Uris Hall is south of 120th street and between Broadway and Amsterdam ave.)

If you would like to attend or have any questions, please e-mail us at ipeg2005 [AT] gmail.com

This is very short notice, but hopefully many of you IPEG members will be able to make it to this short-notice happy hour.

Many IPEG members are in the process of successfully raising emerging markets focused funds, the latest example of which is Mike Hokenson’s successful closure of the $40 million fund with CDC. There are a bunch of other South Asia and Africa focused funds that are also in the process of being raised or being closed.

Come hear all about it and discuss other issues of interest, over drinks, with your colleagues this coming Thursday, on October 25th from 7:30 pm to 11 pm at Amsterdam Cafe on Amsterdam Avenue at 119th St. Amsterdam Cafe also has a decent food menu, so you can also have dinner there, if need be.

If you are coming, please do RSVP in comments.

The panelists are:

Tom Barry, Founder and CEO, Zephyr Management

Bert van der Vaart, President and CEO, SEAF

Peter Trooper, Senior Investment Officer, IFC Private Equity Department

Yasmina Zaidman, Portfolio Manager, Acumen Fund

Professor David Beim, co-author of the “Emerging Financial Markets” textbook, will moderate.

The panel was designed to bring together a group of individuals that all make investments in emerging markets, but all with different motivations, expectation of returns, and ways of measuring success. We hope that by having such a diverse group of panelists we can examine some of the key questions at the intersection of development and private sector investment, including, “What role do private equity investors play in emerging market economies?”, “Are positive investment returns synonymous with positive development impacts?”, and ”To what extent can or should investors sacrifice medium-term returns for long-term development in emerging markets?”

If you are interested, please register for the conference here. In addition to this panel, there are a number of other interesting panels, including a discussion on Bottom of the Pyramid strategies, Multinationals and Corruption, etc.

Over the past few years a growing number of people in the TED community have become passionate about Africa, a continent that appears to be at an important tipping point. Its problems and challenges are well known. Less well known is that across the continent, change is afoot. Instead of relying on yet more aid bailouts, Africans are starting to take matters into their own hands. Ingenious solutions are being applied to tackle some of the toughest health and infrastructure problems. Businesses are being launched that are capable of transforming the lives of millions. New communication technologies are allowing ideas and information to spread, enabling markets — and governments — to be more efficient. And the numbers suggest that incomes are starting to nudge up and real growth is on the way. A new Africa beckons.

It couldn’t be a more exciting time to be holding the first TED conference in Africa. We invite you to join us on a journey into the continent’s future. The program line-up of 50 speakers — like all TEDs — includes inventors, business-leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists, designers, artists, writers, activists, musicians and mavericks. But they have this in common. They are all doing something valuable for Africa’s future. Their voices will inspire. And their ideas will spread.

TED Global will generate an unprecedented confluence of African and Non-African entrepreneurs,researchers,inventors,designers, business people,financiers,artists and creatives.It will seek to shine a spotlight on those active practical thinkers and implementers that exist throughout the continent and beyond. Prominence shall be given those who are trailblazers in their field and who have the capacity to enkindle others.
Emeka Okafor,Co-Producer TED GLobal 2007

Speaker: Bowman Cutter, Managing Director of Warburg Pincus.

Venue: Venue: Warren Hall, Room 208 (second floor). Warren Hall is located on Amsterdam Avenue, between 115th and 116th Streets.

Mr Cutter has an event to go to at 7:30 pm, so we will start on time, so we have some amount of time factored in for discussions as well. Please make sure you are at the venue by 6:15 so we can start without delays.

As anyone who has attended these events earlier know, they tend to be very informal and more in discussion mode than just a person speaking. We also tend to catch a few beers/dinner after the event, so please work that into your schedules as well, since that’s where a lot of the great connections are made among IPEG members.

As always, feel free to bring along anyone you think might be interested in the subject matter or in interacting with IPEG members after the event. RSVPs will be appreciated, since we need to know how many people to expect.

The CAFE standard does nothing to encourage that change. It requires American automakers to build cars and trucks that meet a minimum standard of average mileage traveled per gallon of gasoline. But the current standard for minimum mileage traveled per gallon of gas consumed is both too low and focused on the wrong challenge. We need to upgrade to a new CAFE: Carbon Alternative Fuel Equivalent. This new CAFE will measure “petroleum mileage” and give automakers incentives and credits for increasing ethanol consumption as a percentage of fuel use of their vehicles, not least by promoting flex-fuel vehicles, which can run on either gasoline or E85 fuel, a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. This approach promises several significant benefits.

First, it could set America free from its dependence on foreign oil. As Brazil’s “energy independence miracle” proves, an aggressive strategy of investing in petroleum substitutes like ethanol can end dependence on imported oil. Second, switching from gasoline to ethanol produced from perennial energy crops like switch grass can slash our carbon dioxide emissions. Third, it could build on a comparative advantage of American automakers. American auto manufacturers are churning out hundreds of thousands of flex-fuel vehicles. Their foreign competitors make far fewer. Promoting these vehicles will help our automakers build on their already strong market share. And fourth, by encouraging the production of ethanol and new renewable fuel technologies, this new CAFE standard could invigorate rural communities in America’s heartland and innovation and research centers along its coasts.

That said, here are sobering statistics from CERA, courtesy of The Economist.

No, it doesn’t look that good, does it? Well, as the fine print says, the cost of bio-diesel in there does not take into account tax credits and subsidies, which you can almost automatically assume when it comes to bio-fuels. And I suspect that the initial subsidy (land, water, power etc) will allow the business to scale to a point where the business becomes truly attractive. The question then is what OPEC will do, because if they can drop the prices to $30 a barrel, bio-fuels are a non-starter. However, I somehow suspect oil prices aren’t going below $50 ever again because if OPEC could drop prices, they would have before the idea of bio-fuels got so much currency.

Entrepreneurs face a multitude of challenges when setting up and growing their business venture. This is even more so for entrepreneurs in emerging markets and developing countries. Access to finance is often the main challenge. The Venture Capital and Private Equity for Development Index gives access to the major funds financing business in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. This practical guide has an easy to use index with funds listed by key fund attributes such as regions, sectors and company size financed. It lists over 270 funds investing in developing countries. The Index is compiled by the Business in Development program of Dutch National Committee for International Cooperation and Sustainable Development (NCDO) in cooperation with the Adapppt Foundation in The Netherlands.

The index, in particular, looked like a useful tool for those of us interested in the role of private capital in economic development.

In addition, the folks who put this book out also have a very interesting website up called the Bid Network. The Bid Network is an online community which lets entrepreneurs submit business plans, which are then routed to investors and partners. I have no idea how efficient or successful the network is, but a web-based model could certainly remove a lot of the transaction costs. Have a look.

BlueOrchard Finance SA, a Swiss investment-management boutique, has teamed up with Morgan Stanley to turn these loans — called microfinance — into bonds, using the capital markets to provide small business in the developing world with long-term financing.
The five-year deal raised almost $100 million from bond investors through BOLD 2006-1, a special-purpose finance vehicle backed by loans to 21 microfinance institutions. While it’s not a huge transaction by bond-market standards, it’s the first time investors have been able to buy into microfinance through a bond issue. It could be the first step in a revolution in how money is raised to pay for development in the third world — and it could also give yield-hungry bond investors a whole new asset class to put their money to work in.

Also covered at the FT