Search

Recently Written

• An update on the situation in Georgia
• A life’s work can be a place far away
• Financial experts in the region
• Short mission accomplished
• A banker, an ambassador, a journey to Armenia
• Restoration (of old ruins and passion for the customer)
• Keep going despite the hurdles
• The plan…

Popular Categories

Archives

• August 2008
• July 2008

Admin

• Log in
• Wordpress
• XHTML

Only a few days after our arrival back in the UK the conflict in South Ossetia has escalated into a war and is making headlines. When we were in Gori (home town of Stalin in Georgia) no one could have imagined that Russia would find reason to bomb it a couple of weeks later and move in with tanks.

Here are two comments by GML Capital LLP (who have a Georgian investment fund) which I found helpful:

- “We believe it is absolutely not possible that Russia is planning an extensive occupation of Georgian territory beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia, although Russia appears to be seeking to create a demilitarised zone in Georgian territory adjacent to the borders with these two regions, in order to undermine Georgian military capabilities. We expect a cease-fire to be agreed in the next couple of days, and for Russian bombing of Georgian territory to cease, if it has not already ceased. Then the long diplomatic wrangling about the security situations in the two regions will begin. Russia hosts the Winter Olympics in Sochi on the Black Sea coast in 2014 (which is seen in Russia as at least as important for Russia’s “coming out” on the world stage, as this summer’s Olympics in Beijing is to China). Sochi is only 60 km from the border with Abkhazia, and Russia cannot afford to have a war going on so close to its showcase for the world.”

- “The mood in Tbilisi is defiant and very patriotic. The universal feeling of Georgians with whom we have spoken is that it was necessary to bring the situations in South Ossetia and Abkhazia to a head, and to seek a resolution ‘once and for all’. There is strong support for President Saakashvili among everyone we have spoken with, even among those who have been very critical of his actions in the past. The ‘end game’ as our Georgian clients and friends see it, is to have a United Nations or other international peacekeeping force replace Russian ‘peacekeeping’ troops in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in order for residents to be able to return to their homes and live peacefully (including the approximately 300,000 eithnic Georgian refugees from these regions, who were driven from their homes in the early 1990s during extensive civil strife). The Georgian Government has been actively seeking reconciliation with both regions, offering large measures of autonomy but under the sovereign umbrella of Georgia, and the Georgian Government believes that once the situation stabilises, Abkhaz and Ossetian people will find that Georgia has more to offer than Russia. The Georgian Government’s calculus has no doubt included the view that Russia cannot be too supportive of independence (from

Georgia) for South Ossetia and Abkhazia, due to the separatist ambitions of various of its own regions, including Chechnya. Our own view is that the Georgian Government has significant responsibility for provoking this conflict over the last several weeks, and we are not sure that the timing of bringing the issues to the fore was optimal.”

Luca Bosatta

When Malkhaz was in prison as a political dissident under the Soviets he fell in love with a passage from a book that talked about “a place far away”, in Georgian a place far away translates “shorety”. In a KGB prison you didn’t know how long they would keep you or where you would be taken. After he was released during the Perestroika he read archeology and history books and found there was a place called Shorety with ruins of an ancient monastery. He went and found it in a remote forest. Malkhaz has spent the last 21 years excavating and restoring the place (by organising summer expeditions for students). First he had to build a road, about 4km up the mountain through thick forest. Often he uses his own money when other funds run out. His dream and passion is to hand it back to the Church fully functional one day, even if it were to take him his entire life.

(We went to Shorety as a family and spent few days in tents with the students of this summer’s expedition.)

On Tuesday I had an opportunity to meet Aieti before going to the mountains on holiday. Aieti is CEO of the fastest growing financial services company providing things like micro loans, leasing, company research data, electronic banking, corporate finance. I met Aieti last year for the first time. He struck me as someone who could be successful anywhere abroad but he loves his country and engages in its reconstruction. He would be an important partner in identifying projects with a social agenda (he mentioned a few current examples in our conversation) and in the relationship with the management of a company especially when a strategic portion of funding is provided. Aieti is a key partner to the newly launched Caucasus fund by GML International, a London based firm (who’s director I also know). We spent the evening having dinner together with my family in the old capital Mtskheta and then went to see one of the castles where Malkhaz has a team of students excavating.

I feel very privileged to be able to meet special people with great passion and determination to transform their country.

Stepan is co-founder of the Centre for Leadership Development (= CLD, see their website under the “links” column of this blog) which has been going for 8 years and offers a curriculum taught by visiting professors and business people which is unique for Armenia. He is also director of a pharmaceutical distribution company which apparently everyone knows: if it comes to buying expensive drugs where origin and quality matters, they are the undisputed source. Otherwise they are more expensive (and lost market share) because they pay all their tax. His mother-in-law, former member of parliament, Read more

When people (here as well as in the West) hear “social enterprise” they think immediately of certain sectors (like green energy, sustainable farming, organic anything, educational something) and ask me “what sector would you like to focus on?”. I propose to Lado to view social enterprise from a different angle. Lado was head of finance of a leading Georgian bank until very recently when he set up his own corporate finance firm. I propose to him that almost ANY sector can make a direct ’social’ impact by HOW they operate So I would prefer to select enterprises based on their ‘impact niche’ rather Read more

Tbilisi airport seems to get only really busy at 3am at night. That’s when I land and am picked up by my friend Malkhaz, entrepreneur and archeologist. Later in the morning over a chicken soup (for breakfast) we meet Ilia who used to be deputy country representative of the Millenium Challenge Corporation. Together they would like to restore ancient buildings in remote locations and then create a quality tourism experience: visitors would learn about the different Read more

Imagine a Starbucks cafe where you would have to pick up a cup and
walk past three different baristas, each with its own queue, and
where something else is added to your coffee each time. Imagine that
when you get to the final desk (and chocolate powder added to your
foam) your coffee is cold and you have to pour it away.

This is what happened to me at Read more

… is to spend my first week meeting potential future partners in my new venture and looking at a few projects. I would like to discuss a possible structure that we can set up to start a prototype fund in order to gain experience Read more

Other Catalyst in Blogs

• Catalyst in Mozambique
• Catalyst in Micronesia
• Catalyst in Canada
• Catalyst in the Balkans
• Catalyst in Thailand
• Catalyst in Sri Lanka

RSS Feed

Favourites

Blogroll

• Alex
• Donncha
• Dougal
• Matt
• Michel
• Mike
• Ryan