Published articles
Methodology, frameworks and sector commentary. Updated when there is something worth saying.
-
Sensitivity analysis is not scenario analysis
Sensitivity analysis and scenario analysis answer different questions. Conflating them in an IC pack is a category error, not a presentation choice. This note sharpens the distinction, names the techniques, and gives the committee reader four diagnostic questions to put to the modeller.
-
Constructing a country-risk premium from first principles
Three approaches dominate institutional country-risk premium construction: the Damodaran sovereign-spread build-up, the CDS-implied route, and the relative-volatility hybrid. Each silently encodes a different assumption. This piece names them and sets out what an IC paper should disclose.
-
Real estate viability appraisals: what has changed since 2024
The inputs that drive a UK viability appraisal have moved materially over the past eighteen months. A short audit of where the standard model is now out of step with the market.
-
IRR revisited: where it misleads investment committees
Internal rate of return is the most widely cited single metric in private capital. It is also the metric most likely to flatter a transaction. A short note on where it breaks and what to read alongside it.
-
A note on terminal value in pre-revenue technology businesses: the case against the perpetuity
Terminal value in a pre-revenue technology model is almost always the largest single number in the valuation. The standard Gordon growth construction is rarely the right way to produce it.
-
A note on weighted-average cost of capital for sovereign wealth and cross-border public-fund deployments
A single-rate WACC obscures the components a cross-border committee needs to see. We set out a layered structure with sovereign-rate base, jurisdiction premium, currency overlay and repatriation-tax drag, each sourced separately.
-
Discount rates revisited: physical climate exposure and what the conventional adjustment hides
Lifting the discount rate by a notional figure penalises the mean and is silent on the tail. The committee needs the probability of a multi-year shortfall, not a smoother exponential decay. Model the exposure on the cash flow.
-
A note on working capital in subscription-hardware businesses: the contribution-margin view
SaaS templates underweight inventory and supplier-terms drag; hardware templates miss the recurring software-margin uplift. We argue for treating the combined revenue line as a single contribution-margin structure, supported by an explicit working-capital module.
-
Layered scenario architecture: why single-variable sensitivity tables mislead committees
Tornado charts vary one input at a time. Real-world variables co-move: commodities and currencies, rates and refinancing. We argue for layered, internally coherent scenario sets that committees can interrogate as worldviews rather than parameter tables.
-
Reading a fund LPA: the clauses that drive the model
Six clauses in a limited-partnership agreement (waterfall, hurdle, catch-up, GP commitment, key-person, NAV facility) change the cash-flow model a GP can credibly run. A note on which clauses to extract first, what to model, and what to flag for legal before signing off the IC pack.
-
Net present value versus payback: when each is the right framing for an infrastructure investment committee
NPV is the textbook answer; payback is the boardroom heuristic. For capital-intensive infrastructure, each metric distorts in opposite directions. A note on why investment committees need both numbers, framed explicitly, with one paragraph reconciling them.
-
IFRS 16 revisited: when the standard actually changes the lease versus buy answer
Operating leases no longer sit off-balance-sheet, but the lease versus buy economic comparison has not been rewritten as thoroughly as management decks often suggest. A short note on where the standard moves the recommendation and where it does not.
Commission analysis on a specific question
Insights articles describe how we think. Engagements are how we work. We are willing to write privately on a question that matters to you.