The Portico Podcast

In this edition, I speak with Amee Parbhoo, Managing Partner of Accion Venture Lab, a leading global seed-stage investor in inclusive fintech startups. Accion Venture Lab is part of Accion, the pioneering nonprofit that has been investing in financial inclusion for the last six decades.I was excited to speak with Amee because she’s on the front lines of identifying technologies t

In this edition, I speak with Arash Massoudi, Corporate Finance and Deals editor with the Financial Times in London, and also the co-creator of the FT’s must-read newsletter on deal-making: Due Diligence.I wanted to bring Arash on to get a sense of how the world’s most voracious deal-makers are viewing the global landscape: who wins and loses in a world of rising rates, degloba

I was recently invited to give a lightning talk on a topic that’s been capturing much of my mindspace of late: whether crypto can be a better technology for capital formation than legacy options, such as banks, capital markets, and non-bank financial intermediaries. I’ve spent most of my adult life working on the problem of access to capital in the so-called ‘emerging’ and

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In today’s episode, I speak with Aleem Remtula, a Partner on the private equity team at Developing World Markets.DWM is an impact investing firm that has invested debt and equity in over 200 companies across 70 countries over the last two decades.While this experience provides a broad canvas for discussion topics, the focus of my conversation with Aleem is DWM’s investments amo

What are the most important dynamics shaping the global private markets industry today?I would highlight four:Primary fundraising is extremely challenging Consolidation is transforming the strategic landscape The difficult macro environment is necessitating novel liquidity solutions Crypto is emerging as an institutional asset classThese four dynamics present urgent and existential

In today’s episode I speak with Ben Fanger, the Managing Partner and Founder of ShoreVest Partners, an investment firm that specializes in Chinese distressed debt and opportunistic credit. Ben is a pioneer in China’s distressed debt markets, having worked on the country’s first non-performing loan (“NPL”), as well as the first foreign-invested NPL deal 20 years ago. Since

In today’s episode, Mike Casey interviews Howard French, the author of the urgent and essential book Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War. It is, simply, one of the most important books I’ve read. I encourage you to read it and wrestle with its implications.Howard is a professor of journalism at Columbia Universit

In today’s episode I speak with Nnennia Ejebe, a Partner with Adenia who is based in the firm’s office in Accra, Ghana. Adenia has been investing across Africa since 2002, and it is a pioneer of control deals in mid-market African companies. Nnennia provides an amazing overview of private equity investing in Africa, not only of the compelling macro and micro trends that are fos

I’m really excited to share today’s episode, which features an interview with Karim Hussein, a Managing Partner of Algebra Ventures, Egypt’s leading institutional-quality venture capital firm. I was thrilled to speak with Karim for several reasons. First, I find Egypt to be one of the most captivating countries in the world, not only because of its rich history, but also beca