Last Thursday the UK went to the polls. To everyone’s
surprise, the Conservative party secured a clear victory and, as a result, a
number of senior Labour and Liberal MPs lost their jobs. I imagine them
wandering the streets, forlornly wondering what they will do next. I have a
degree of empathy with them, as I also resigned last week. After just 8 months
with Blackstone/Global Water Development Partners I decided that I needed to do
something else.
I am clearly not a high profile politician. I have not had
to bear the indignity of having 30,000 of my neighbours publically sack me. My
choice has been made independently. Some might conclude that I resigned to show
support for these poor misunderstood politicians. They would be wrong. I am clearly
a lovely, kind hearted and empathetic individual, but I am not completely
stupid.
Others might conclude I did it just to get a juicy topic for
this 100th Note. Again, they would be mistaken. While I take the
task of finding engaging topics very seriously my obsession has not quite
reached that level. (Yet. Wait till we get to No 200)
Perhaps I have resigned just so
that I can taunt the Compliance Officer at Blackstone. Over the past 8 months
he has diligently (laboriously?) read these Notes just to make sure that I
don’t breach the strict rules of private equity confidentiality (yes Roger, you
know I mean you). I can hardly contain my childish delight as I write this very
sentence, knowing full well that Roger will be reading this with growing sense
of panic, asking himself just what it is that I am about to reveal.
Roger, you can relax. I have
not resigned just to have some sport with you. (Well….not in this edition
anyway.)
I am leaving a team of
incredibly hard working, very bright, supremely focussed individuals. Our
parting is as amicable as it could possibly be. I will stay in post until
August, and will then continue to be a ‘Roving Ambassador’ for GWDP, helping
them find investment opportunities that meet their investment criteria.
I am leaving because, deep
down, I am simply not an infrastructure investor. Try as I might I
cannot get excited about writing huge ($100M+) cheques to fund big, de-risked
infrastructure projects. When I started the role I honestly thought I could,
but it has become increasingly clear that this is not my passion, and never
will be. I am a techie at heart. Maybe not a very good one, but I do so love
new technology. Rather than work on big infrastructure projects that have been
neatly de-risked, I positively hunger to work with entrepreneurs who have scary
market risks to resolve and difficult technical questions to answer. Quite
simply, the salesman in me hankers for that delightful buzz that comes from
doing something that disrupts the status quo.
If my epitaph is that I didn’t
possess what was required to be a hard-nosed corporate investment banker and
that I am actually more a cheesy salesman then, you know what, I am good with
that.
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