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Jan Cherim would like to connect on LinkedIn. How would you like to respond?   Jan Cherim Managing Partner at Financial Access Capital Partners BV Confirm you know Jan You are receiving Reminder emails for pending invitations. Unsubscribe. © 2013 LinkedIn Corporation. 2029 Stierlin Ct, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.

Jan Cherim's invitation is awaiting your response

Jan Cherim would like to connect on LinkedIn. How would you like to respond?   Jan Cherim Managing Partner at Financial Access Capital Partners BV Confirm you know Jan You are receiving Reminder emails for pending invitations. Unsubscribe. © 2013 LinkedIn Corporation. 2029 Stierlin Ct, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.

Invitation to connect on LinkedIn

From Jan Cherim Managing Partner at Financial Access Capital Partners Amsterdam Area, Netherlands Emerging, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. - Jan Confirm that you know Jan You are receiving Invitation to Connect emails. Unsubscribe © 2012, LinkedIn Corporation. 2029 Stierlin Ct. Mountain View, CA 94043, USA

Lumphini Loop

I have been reading the latest Murakami, a monstrous 1100-page 'thriller', thus far with neither irritation nor boredom.  I am a Murakami fan.  Like much of his work, there is a fantastical edge to it; reality and people are curiously bent, and  otherwise agreeable characters are rendered oddly.  Time drips like a Dali clock.  One of the main characters asks herself if the world has subtly changed without her having noticed.  She goes to a library and searches back issues of the papers to discover where the time-warp appeared. 

In Bangkok now (as I am often at the moment), my own time is not quite right either.  I go to sleep too late, and leave the drapes open in the hope that the morning light will help my system to understand that it is truly time to rise when the alarm goes off in the mornings.  I like to run early, ahead of the rising heat, down the road to Lumphini Park.  This morning my own perceptions are also affected somehow, by Murakami or by jet lag I cannot say.  I stop reading and set off, running easily enough.  January is cooler and dryer than most months -- it is after all Bangkok 'winter'.  But things look strange.  A street vendor fixes me with a cool and penetrating stare, as if something was wrong.  Three blond ladies with identical baby buggies wait outside a US Embassy compound for the gate to open, in silence.  Further along, Chinese ladies in the Park, doing their morning Tai Chi in synchronised elegance, wave wooden swords seemingly directly at me with menacing sweep, in slow-motion.  A policeman on a bicycle stops, crosses his arms, and watches me pass.   Everything is framed in a morning glow as the sun rises, sounds muffled.  I hear only my own breathing, and my heart thudding.  As always, at precisely 8am, invisible loudspeakers suddenly blare the national anthem, and everyone in the bustling park freezes to attention.  All the chatter in the cafes ceases.  I stumble to a stop, facing a flagpole. 

At a secluded and shady bend on a Park pathway where I often stop to stretch, a solitary lady is exercising at precisely my accustomed spot.  I cast about for another suitable space, and settle myself for some sit-ups in the grass under the trees.  Two cats are facing-off against each other across a paper plate of rice laid at the foot of a little shrine.  They freeze suddenly, and turn towards me.  At the same moment, the fallen leaves around me rustle sharply and something prompts me to twist and look, with the cats.  There is a meter-and-a-half-long lizard, its gaze fixed on me, tongue flickering.  The cats are wary.  So am I.  The lizard is familiar to me: he often hangs around this bend in the path, perhaps collecting the rice offerings. 

Carefully, I rise and jog away.  But as much as I feel I am going faster through the bends and over the ornamental bridges, my high-tech watch seems to say that time is slowing; the kilometres accumulate with excruciating slowness.  I do not accelerate.  Occupied and spooked by thoughts of Murakami, I finish my circuit of the Park and sidle my way out through a breakfast market on Radjadamri, nose assaulted by a riot of barbequed meat smoke, piled spices, diesel fumes and fetid water in the drains.  A sudden breeze summons a blizzard of tiny fallen leaves around me and they glue themselves to my sweaty bald head.  A traffic light goes green, I surge ahead, and suddenly it seems urgent that I get back to the quiet sanctuary of my hotel lobby, where the Concierge knows me, smiling with a wai. My watch suggests I have achieved a return to standard time, and the regular world.  The lobby is full of chunky ladies in sky-blue uniforms, a KLM aircrew waiting to leave for the airport.  I am strangely reassured.

Bangkok, January 2013

Shariah Shenanigans

We did a pitch, my Partners and I, at a Shariah-compliant bank somewhere in Southeast Asia the other day.  This was interesting.  Because the CEO of this particular bank was impressed with what we had to say about the future in ‘Green Banking’ and sustainable financial products, we were invited of an evening to come along and make a full presentation about our experience and ideas in this connection to his entire management team and supervisory council. 

We were picked-up to go to the bank by a gaggle of Benz sedans, and somehow as odd man out I ended up in a car with one lady minder, dutifully clad in headscarf, to show the way.  She spoke beautiful English, had been to study for a half-year in Melbourne, was a member of the young Muslim women’s leadership council and had graduated near the top of her university class.  She pumped me, bright-eyed and enthusiastic, for information about Dutch scholarships to do an MBA in Holland.  I was suitably impressed, and said I’d see what I could find out.  I asked about the other younger recruits, and she said that there was a resurgence in faith, so that a bank like this one could choose between well-educated and ethically-driven young folks each year, willing to work hard for a meager wage and the just cause and the advancement of the country as well.  She said a bunch of people would be turning-up to hear us tonight, as ‘green’ issues were high on the younger staffers’ agendas and all this was completely consistent with Islamic principles to do with respecting the environment and being generally ‘sustainable’.  I was even more impressed.

When we entered the hall, however, my young lady minder melted away, and the only women in evidence (in headscarves) were the ladies tending the ample buffet awaiting us.  The conference room was entirely populated by men, all wearing the bank’s brown suit uniform with beige shirt and dark brown logo tie. Beige socks and brown gum-soled shoes completed this outfit.  A little bit like a conference of park rangers, with unfortunate brown-shirt associations. The commercial guys all sat at one table, jackets off and sleeves rolled-up; the admin types sat at another, ties knotted and jackets buttoned.

The head of HR and Investor Relations (curious functional combo, but OK) got up and made a presentation on the bank’s spectacular results.  When the CEO gave the sign, everybody clapped.  When he frowned and clapped louder, everybody clapped enthusiastically.   Happily, this applied to our presentations as well.  Even the senior supervisory board member present clapped loudly when we had finished, the long hairs sprouting from a mole on his chin waving vigorously like a cat’s whiskers.

Substantively, there was an interesting connection here, which I will freely admit had not occurred to me.  Being green and sustainable in their operations and relations with clients was clearly seen as being ethical and properly observant in their operations.  One of their ‘problems’ was to do with how to dispose of the increasing volume of non-Halal income (tainted because of interest) they received, from the Central Bank and others, on balances held with other institutions.  And it was mentioned that indeed the younger bank staff – and there were many of these, with graduate recruitment running at 1,000+ per year – saw these environmental and social issues as terribly important.

But where was all this leading?  We were clearly pulling somebody’s cart here, but whose?  Like so much in Asia, the real agenda was opaque.  Perhaps we were on trial as potential advisers, or were trucked-in to fly a trial balloon, or simply were put on display to gild the CEO’s image: ‘look at the fancy ideas I am busy with’.  A large part of this job of ours has a ‘performing monkey’ element.  Whether the organ-grinder will let us keep some of the coins is always a question.  Just who is actually grinding the organ is not always self-evident.

I resolve to focus on the concrete, and the visible game.  We will pursue the CEO with suitable proposals, and I will try to find scholarship opportunities for the bright-eyed headscarf girl.  But this may be difficult, as only the men had business cards.

Singapore, February 2012     

Tropic Moon

One foot off the KLM machine and I am back in Nigeria. Frequent visitors like me hustle up the ramp, through the busted doors and down the long lino-paved terminal to the immigration queues. Every stumbling heavyweight passed along the way, all those who need to pause for orientation, means 5 minutes waiting time gained. I am as ruthless as a race driver in the corners. I swing my carry-on wide and force a charging Indian fellow into a plant-box.

Doing well, I get to the desk pretty quick, for the usual 3-phase passport inspection. 'Cherim!' someone barks, and I approach a big officer with several stripes. 'How long you in for?' He seems to say. Biting-back anything clever, I just say, '3 or 4 days this time,' collect my stamps and am through into the milling crowds outside the terminal moments later.

A driver I recognise from earlier visits strides forward smiling, hand outstretched. 'You are welcome,' he says, seizing my bag and legging it off at speed into the crowd. I half-trot to keep up, drinking-in the smell of a tropical west African night. A bit of decaying fruit, woodsmoke, exhaust fumes, dust, sweat and, sometimes, a whiff of barbeque. This is a homecoming to me, a welcoming sort of smell. Hawkers make half-hearted attempts to sell me wads of Naira, dollar bills from deep in the last century, bottles of water or cell phone top-up cards. We're parked a long way off, but there is a gentle and friendly breeze that keeps the sweat down.

As we reach the car, well past the ramshackle but lighted walkway, it is still bright. I look up and see why: there is a full, gleaming african moon. All the way through the beastly traffic to the hotel, past swerving taxi-buses, shiny Land Cruisers and even a heavy truck visible only by the dangling light of the driver's cigarette, the welcoming moon is beaming across the Lagoon, illuminating the throbbing town.


Lagos, 12th September

Hob-Nobbing Goblins: a Letter to the FT

To: The Financial Times, London

Attn.: Lucy Kellaway, Management Columnist

Dear Ms Kellaway,

I have been a faithful and much-amused reader of your columns, as well as a listener, in more recent times, to your World Service broadcasts. These have the non-soothing effect of waking me up to the new work week, early on a Monday morning. I suspect no one has ever told you that the wake-up calls you issue to the corporate masses are, from time to time, quite literal.

I wanted to alert you to a recent occurrence involving your very own esteemed company (the FT), which I personally found so perfidious that it seemed worthy of a larger audience. In any case, I thought, ‘this is one for Lucy’. Here is the story.

My firm is involved in private equity and advisory activities in the financial sector of emerging markets. Networking and hob-nobbing is an important occupational affliction in this sort of business, and last month I signed-up for a promising-looking Africa event in London sponsored by one of the private equity associations, together with the FT’s conference unit. It was in any case FT-branded, and the FT people did all the promotion and organising. I learnt about it by seeing a whopping great advertisement in the newspaper itself. A ‘select’ attendance was promised, and an illustrious roster of presenters. This was a must-attend do, and the reassuringly highbrow image of the FT lent a certain rose-coloured aura of professionalism to the event. So I bit the bullet for a 1200-pound admission charge (for a one-day event, mind you), and marked my calendar.

The first inkling that something was amiss came when my online registration was bungled. First I received an automated email thanking me for my registration and payment, followed by a mail from someone at FT Conferences telling me I was too late and alas, there was no room at the inn. When I sent back a stroppy reply saying that my registration had just been accepted and my Amex charged at the highest possible rate, an apology rapidly materialised. ‘One of the last places’ was mine after all.

On the day of the conference, I bustled into the venue a bit late as usual, grabbed my badge and bag and went into the welcome session. Listening with half an ear to a DFID under-minister welcoming everyone, I emptied the sponsor bag, but didn’t find the only item normally of any interest (well, except for the pens, which the kids sometimes like): there was no list of attendees – neither the institutions nor the individuals attending. Now, realise please that one of primary reasons for attending these things is to scrutinise the attendance list. The whole point of hob-nobbing events is to buttonhole the right people, and to get your targeting calibrated early in the day. I looked out, aghast, at the sea of grey and balding heads in the hall. This was going to be like spin-the-bottle in a dark, haunted house.

In the first break, I cornered an FT-badged lady and asked her if a mistake had been made, and where the attendees list was to be found. She shuffled a bit uncomfortably and said, ‘Erm, that’s a bit difficult, actually. You see, we don’t distribute the list. The stodgy old FT’s privacy regulations are just dreadful. We’re not allowed to pass it round.’ I stared at her quietly, letting her shift her weight a bit back and forth. ‘So,’ I began, ‘this is about privacy? You know, this is a networking event. I promise you that people don’t pay 1200 pounds for a private equity mailing list. This whole event is about getting people together. Now we’re all flying blind – that’s bizarre.’ ‘Well, I know its awkward, but you’ll just have to rush around reading everyone’s badges and do your best.’ She plied me with a hopeful smile, eyebrows raised. ‘You know, we print the names REALLY BIG, so you can spot someone at least 5 yards off.’

Later in the day, I moaned about this to one of the other participants. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘they told us we could have the list if we sponsored the tea-breaks. I told them to bugger off.’ ‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘what about this vaunted “privacy policy” then? You mean to say you can buy an indulgence?’ My new friend shrugged, ‘guess so.’ So I trotted off to find the FT girl of the morning session again. Cornering a colleague, I said that I was so happy with the event that I was considering recommending that my firm talk to the FT about sponsoring a follow-on version. But there was a problem… it really would help to know who was attending, so as to be able to assess the impact.

I had my list in a jiffy. The FT’s “privacy policy” appears to be something of a movable feast. If there are good reasons to prevent people from finding eachother at specialised networking events, OK. But if what is at work is a nasty and brutish display of corporate clout, call it by another name.

With kind regards,

Jan Cherim

Amsterdam, 2nd December, 2010