Sometimes you receive funny comments and emails… Like… “Do I have to pay for a call?” as if until very recently there was not a time with no unlimited forfeits on your phone and you had to pay for EACH call… Look. I charge US$49.90 for a first call. Not enough to make me rich. At least not yet… and of course, not at that price. But the cost is still enough to make someone stop and ask: “Do I actually have a problem worth discussing?” Free calendars tend to attract three things: “Can I pick...
1 day ago • 1 min read
IBM had the best add possible: “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.” The logic was simple… as it was people they targeted. If it worked, fine. If it failed, nobody could blame you. You had chosen the biggest name. The sure name. Then a competitor added: “And nobody ever got promoted for buying IBM either.” Brilliant. Look. Too many advisers and providers are still selected like this. Through fear. The biggest logo. The thickest proposal. The largest team. The safe choice. Then the proposal...
1 day ago • 1 min read
Ah, Fiji… what a wonderful place! Almost one in three people here is Indo-Fijian. That did not begin with a migration strategy. It began with sugar. The British, those guys that always do things right and say the Spaniards are the devil, needed cheap labour for the plantations. Not in the XVI century… not, in the XIX and XX… So, between 1879 and 1916, they brought around 60,000 workers from India under a system of indentured contracts known locally as girmit. Five-year agreements. A temporary...
3 days ago • 1 min read
2016. Lagos. A very serious consortium thought it had secured a very serious project... The Fourth Mainland Bridge. Thirty-eight kilometres. ₦844 billion. A 40-year toll-road PPP. Wow. The consortium included major contractors, banks and infrastructure investors. They had the Government. They had signed an MoU. They had even announced a three-year construction programme. The champagne was open. Celebrations… But… The champagne was not cold enough. You’d say… details, the important thing is...
4 days ago • 1 min read
A few months ago, I worked on a project where the client refused to use AI. Cybersecurity, they said. Fair enough. Cybersecurity matters. But their solution was extraordinary. They preferred to spend hundreds of hours of senior professionals’ time… At around $500 an hour… On tasks that AI could complete in minutes. Trust me… even if in my pocket… the money does not pay to waste your time like that… These were some of the best professionals in the country. The client did not trust them. It did...
5 days ago • 1 min read
If you thought that nothing could be worse than yesterday example, let me tell you something. Again, the UK. NMC Health was a FTSE 100 company. It operated hundreds of healthcare facilities across the Middle East. It was worth billions. And every year, EY audited its accounts. Seven years. Seven unqualified audit opinions. Around ÂŁ14 million in audit fees. Everything appeared fine. Until 17 December 2019. That day, a small research firm called Muddy Waters published a report. It questioned...
6 days ago • 1 min read
I love the UK’s market… it has shown us so many things… Let’s take for example the UK Post Office. Early 2010s. The guys had a problem. Its Horizon accounting system said money was disappearing. Yeah… just like that… And you still wonder about Brexit… Anyway… the Post Office blamed the usual suspects… the people operating it. Hundreds were prosecuted. Some went to prison. Lives were destroyed. And for years, the official position remained essentially the same: The system works. Ole, with 2...
7 days ago • 2 min read
I always say that politicians cost taxpayers billions. And not because of their salaries, the salaries of their friends and advisers, or the favours repaid while they are in office—or afterwards. No. Because of their incompetence and lack of common sense. For example… Never announce the marriage while you are still negotiating the prenup. This is common sense. Still, politicians with billions in their hands throw common sense in the bin. We even have well-documented cases. With papers… And...
8 days ago • 2 min read
A few weeks ago, I had a call with a colleague in Kenya. He told me about the chaos surrounding the proposed PPP at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. He may even be reading this email. Hello. The story is quite impressive. Kenya needed to expand its main airport. That part was not controversial. JKIA was already operating above its designed capacity. It needed a new terminal. A second runway. More capacity. And Kenya did not exactly have a few billion dollars sitting comfortably in a...
9 days ago • 2 min read