“Just between 2000 and 2021, the share of public and publicly guaranteed external debt of low and lower-middle income countries (other than that held by IFIs) owed to bondholders jumped from 10 to 50 percent, while the share owed to China rose from 1 to 15 percent. Meanwhile, the share held by the 22 predominantly Western members of the Paris Club of official lenders fell from 55 to 18 per cent. Thus, co-ordinating creditors in a comprehensive debt restructuring operation has become far harder, because of their greater number and their diversity.“
One of the most useful tools in a healthcare investor’s arsenal is medical conferences.
Why? Key opinion leaders (KOLs) meet to discuss the latest data coming out from company-sponsored trials and research. Their views give an unrivaled and direct insight not just into the probability of success but also the commercial potential of various medical interventions.
One way to get a quick overview is summary quotes captured by the Stream blog like this summary of ACC ’23.
NB If you want to have free two-week trial access to the full database of transcripts click here.
Conversation between Tyler Cowen and Yasheng Huang on China.
Wide ranging and in-depth, especially understanding the cultural, historic and sociological drivers that help understand China and turbulence ahead.
“One reason is the charisma power of individual leaders, Mao and Xiaoping … they could do whatever they wanted while being able to contain the spillover effects of their mistakes. The big uncertain issue now is whether Xi Jinping has that kind of charisma to contain future spillover effects of succession failure.”
“This is a remarkable statistic: Since 1976, there have been six leaders of the CCP. Of these six leaders, five of them were managed either by Mao or by Deng Xiaoping. Essentially, the vast majority of the successions were handled by these two giants who had oversized charisma, oversized prestige, and unshakeable political capital”.
Also a super interesting discussion on “why Chinese and Chinese Americans have done less well becoming top CEOs of American companies compared to Indians and Indian Americans”.
Much has changed since then, but this behind-the-scenes Vanity Fair article shines a bright light on the corporate behemoth Arnault and his tactics, as he pursued Gucci in 1999.
If you haven’t come across it already, read and marvel at this article by a Wired journalist who took a tour of a TSMC semiconductor fab.
“Every six months, just one of TSMC’s 13 foundries—the redoubtable Fab 18 in Tainan—carves and etches a quintillion transistors for Apple. In the form of these miniature masterpieces, which sit atop microchips, the semiconductor industry churns out more objects in a year than have ever been produced in all the other factories in all the other industries in the history of the world.” (h/t The Diff)
“The most striking finding is that world electricity energy efficiency (measured as overall primary-to-useful exergy efficiency) has stalled, rising dramatically from 2% in 1900 to 15% in 1960, and remaining nearly stable for the last 50 years, only reaching 17% by 2017.”
Why? Power generation got very efficient from 1900 to 1960 but we started to use the electricity in uses that aren’t efficient (mainly switching use to heat and cool buildings).
“If you look at Mr. Peltz’s track record, this guy used to drive trucks for his father’s food company.You might know that cold drink called Snapple. Nelson Peltz and his colleagues bought that brand after it had been run into the ground by Quaker Oats from $1 billion brand to 300 million brand. Mr. Peltz bought it around 98, 99. Within three years, they turned it around, made it a $1 billion brand again, and sold it off to Cadbury. These are folks who have real experience. They’re not just activist investors. They’ve done this. They have gotten their hands dirty.”
