Investment Options

This week began with a couple of important meetings. One was with a Corporate Finance house and the other was with a Bank. Welcome to 2008!

Both related to the establishment and development of Pingar in the UK market and both reflected some of the 'opportunities' I identified in the previous blog. The timing is interesting.

I was reading Rod Drury's excellent blog from New Zealand a couple of days ago and he has written a series of 3 - 4 articles on establishing a successful IT business in NZ. He has chosen to identify some of the key issues particularly impacting on the funding of the said businesses.

Heresy I know at home, but with 12,000 miles between us, I can say that I do not agree with every point made, but Rod's post on the 5th January does make one sobering point.

'You only need to look at the very few angel or venture capital deals done in New Zealand during 2007........'

Being exposed to the angel and venture capital industry here in only a few short weeks has emphasised Rod's point. Whilst I have slightly taken his quote out of context, the limited number of deals closed in New Zealand says as much about the state of the 'risk-adverse' NZ capital markets as it does by the paucity of great investment opportunities in the country. Taking a global view of opportunity, I do sometimes wonder whether some of the limited NZ investment sources really do 'get it'.