World Bank President Zoellick:
Tsing
Capital - Doing Well and Doing Good
On May 14th 2012 at IFC’s 14th Annual Global Private Equity Conference, World Bank President Robert Zoellick gave Tsing Capital a glowing mention in his keynote speech. Tsing Capital was described as a great success story that “shows how commercial concerns linked to environmental and social standards offer win-win opportunities; it demonstrates how private equity can be a powerful driver of growth and change”.
Robert B. Zoellick, Former President of World Bank
It’s a great pleasure to join you today for IFC’s 14th Annual Global
Private Equity Conference in association with the Emerging Markets Private
Equity Association, or EMPEA.
The story of this conference is emblematic of how the world economy has
changed: Fourteen years ago, a small group met in the basement of IFC to
discuss the prospect of private equity in developing countries.
Today, there are more than 800 people here, from nearly 60 countries:
institutional investors; public and pension funds; private investors;
endowments and family offices; senior investment professionals; chief
investment officers, and directors from leading fund managers around the world,
as well as representatives from development institutions and government
agencies.
Plenary sessions and roundtable discussions cover a range of issues over three
days – the global economic outlook and regulatory trends, of course – but also
non-financial risks, infrastructure, SMEs, mezzanine…and intriguing markets
beyond the BRICs to Turkey, Palestine, Africa, and frontier markets.
The success of this conference is in large part because of the enormous
potential of emerging markets: over the past five years, developing countries
have provided two-thirds of global growth.
This conference also reflects the terrific partnership between Lars Thunell and
the Private Equity Funds group at IFC, and Sarah Alexander and her team at
EMPEA. Together, they’ve made this conference one of the leading global
forums for private equity. So I want to thank them for their hard work
and their leadership.
I also want to thank an impressive set of participants: sponsors; panelists;
speakers –and all of you.
Yet I want to add a special word of thanks for Lars.
When I came to the Bank in July 2007, it was a time of trouble.
Frankly, meeting Lars was like having a breath of fresh air: He was steady,
sensible, constructive – clearly an excellent executive, committed to the
private sector’s role in development, and doing interesting things.
Together, we came up with some innovative ventures both to help developing
countries during tough times, and to move IFC even closer to the cutting edge
of private sector development in these exciting markets.
He always offered good counsel, fine judgment, common sense, and friendship –
for which I’m grateful.
Keeping the Focus on Growth and Structural Reform
Last month, at the Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group and IMF
shareholders, much of the focus was – understandably – on macroeconomic
stability.
This attention to the macroeconomic picture is necessary – but it’s not
sufficient. Extraordinary monetary policies buy time – but they don’t
solve the fundamental problems.
As my friend, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Tharman of Singapore
said at our Spring Meetings, investors will accept short-term costs if they
perceive good returns over time. All countries – developed and developing
– need to focus on the structural reforms – the microeconomic policies – that
will drive future growth.
Structural changes are essential to enhance productivity, competition, and
innovation for developed and developing countries – whether it’s so that Europe
can restore its economic performance, or China can avoid the so-called “middle
income trap” and meet its challenges in the coming decades. Structural
reforms are important for the United States, too.
In practical terms – and for investors like you – what does structural reform
mean?
It means strengthening the fundamentals of productive supply-side growth in all
sectors – agriculture, manufacturing, services.
It means investing in infrastructure – especially through public private
partnerships.
It means private sector development – the engine of innovation and job growth:
markets; investment; small and medium-sized businesses; as well as focusing on
jobs training and skills.
It means expanding markets – through both the hardware and software of trade:
regional integration; ports and infrastructure; lowering the costs of formal,
informal, or logistics barriers.
At the same time, structural reform means investing in green growth and energy
efficiency – because “growing dirty, cleaning up later” is not a viable
option. Environmental degradation cannot be the price for short-term
growth.
Structural reform also means investing in human capital:
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Efficient and affordable safety nets
– because only 1 out of every 5 people in the poorest countries has any form of
social protection;
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Basic financial services – because
more than half the world’s poor, almost 2.4 billion people, are “unbanked”;
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Basic nutrition and health – because
without these essentials, people cannot begin to achieve their potential; and
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Quality education, connected to
training, which leads to better jobs, more innovation, and greater gains for
all.
Investing in people means tapping the energies and genius of all: young
people, the elderly, and not least girls and women – an under-realized source
of growth everywhere.
Importance of Partnerships
You can play an important role in making all this happen.
Countries need private equity more than ever to push forward the structural
agenda. But to be most effective, the right partnerships are critical –
to seize opportunities, open up new markets, share market knowledge and
learning.
We’ve seen this at the World Bank Group with IFC’s Asset Management Company, or
AMC, which Lars and I created in 2010 to supplement IFC’s traditional model of
raising money in bond markets and then investing it. The idea was for the
AMC to tap sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and other institutional
investors that are looking to increase their exposure to emerging markets, and
that are interested in accessing IFC’s transaction pipeline, investment
approach, and track record of superior returns.
Now ably led by Gavin Wilson and a fine team, the AMC considers investments in
spaces where IFC-supported private equity fund managers are not active, either
because of the size of the investment or the riskiness of the sector. As
the AMC makes profitable returns for its institutional investors, these
investors are likely to feel more comfortable investing in smaller private
equity funds and frontier markets.
The AMC now totals over $4 billion – almost $3 billion of which had little
previous exposure to Africa and other less recognized emerging markets.
Building on the success of its $1 billion African, Latin American, and
Caribbean Fund, last year, the AMC established an African Capitalization Fund
that invests in commercial banking institutions in northern and Sub-Saharan
Africa. This Fund has already made investments in Ghana and Malawi.
AMC offers a great model for a win-win partnership between capital, experience,
and expertise.
When I asked one pension fund manager what attracted him to AMC, he told me: We
now know developed markets are risky, too; we see growth potential in
developing markets – but we don’t know where to invest. IFC does.
And we can learn through this partnership.
Opportunities: Doing Well and Doing Good
We have seen the positive impact private equity can have.
IFC has private equity investments of about $3 billion across 180 funds in
emerging markets. We estimate that these investments alone have helped
create about 300,000 new jobs over the last 10 years, many of them for women.
We see much more potential for the future.
Private equity also increases the wealth – the savings – of pension funds and
other institutional investors who assist many millions of savers, small and
big.
Increasingly, institutional investors want their investment capital not only to
do well, but to do good. Private equity can help companies grow, hire
more workers, raise productivity. But at the same time, private equity
can also be a powerful driver of change: raising standards; fostering growth;
promoting new opportunities for businesses and individuals; helping to overcome
poverty; bringing hope.
Let me give you some examples.
China Environment Fund
Tsing Capital’s China Environment Fund: Founded by Don Ye in 2000 to
focus on clean tech investments, the Fund adopted a triple bottom line,
balancing social, environmental, and financial returns.
At first, portfolio companies were resistant to the Fund’s focus and
approach. After all, government regulations were weak. Investors
would say, “We give you the money, and you give us a return. Why are you
talking to us about welfare, child labor, the environment, and
insurance?” Deal flow was slow for the first fund: it only raised $13
million from socially responsible investors.
Now, Tsing Capital’s investors are telling a different story. The
company has become a market leader, generating three digit financial
returns. The latest China Environmental Fund, in which IFC invested $20
million, had a target size of $350 million.
What’s the secret of Tsing Capital’s success? Certainly persistence on
the part of Don and his team. But they also chose the right partners.
From the outset, Tsing Capital performed social and environmental risk
screening on companies during due diligence before it invested. The
company checked standards against national laws and regulations, but they also
made thorough use of IFC’s performance standards which provide guidance on how
to identify – and avoid – risks and impacts.
If Tsing Capital identified any excluded activity – potential deals were
dropped. If they found risks, they were corrected. Tsing
Capital worked hand-in-hand with companies to improve corporate governance and
upgrade management capability and strategies.
Their hard work has paid off. Today, Tsing Capital is raising
environmental and social standards across the industry, and transmitting those
standards into multiple start-up companies. It has twice been honored as
a corporate citizen in China, and Don Ye has been recognized by Business Week
as one of China’s 40 most powerful people – alongside President Hu Jintao and
Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets!
It’s a great success story. It shows how commercial concerns linked to
environmental and social standards offer win-win opportunities. It
demonstrates how private equity can be a powerful driver of growth and change.
Pragati India Fund
One of IFC’s recent investments, the Pragati India Fund, offers another
good example of doing well and doing good.
The fund is a pioneering investment vehicle that will focus on economically
under-developed states in India. These are areas where it has
traditionally been a challenge to attract private investments – but where the
changing political, social, and economic development dynamics offer new
opportunities that are largely untapped. Sixty percent of Pragati’s
investments target the country’s 8 poorest states.
IFC is investing up to $20 million in the new fund. The idea is to help
Pragati provide growth capital to start-ups outside of major urban centers –
adapting successful business concepts to small- and medium-sized enterprises in
low-income states and rural regions. In India, small- and medium-sized
businesses typically receive only 5 percent of all private equity capital,
forcing them to rely on high-cost informal borrowing. The Pragati Fund is
designed to fill that funding gap and support the development of India’s
financial infrastructure.
As a co-investor, IFC can help increase the impact of the project – bringing
not only capital but management expertise, which can help strengthen operations
as well as environmental and social governance.
Just last month, Pragati India Fund made its first investment – in Jash
Engineering Limited, a manufacturer of customized engineering goods for the
water and waste water infrastructure sector. Jash is now expanding into
manufacturing equipment for water treatment plants, and even generating clean power
from residual water of the plants. The company is looking to move into
municipalities across India.
With India’s government pushing for world class water treatment facilities,
investing in a company like Jash offers real opportunities – to help these
enterprises access finance, create jobs, promote inclusive growth, and
contribute to cleaner, healthier water and energy for hundreds of thousands.
Supporting the Poorest
I hope more fund managers and investors will look for these types of
opportunities – and look for them beyond BRICs and within frontier regions.
IFC is increasingly shifting its focus in this direction. Since 2007,
over half the funds supported by IFC have been in the poorest countries
supported by the World Bank’s International Development Association, or
IDA. IFC's equity returns over the last 10 years in low-income countries,
compared with IFC as a whole, provide a compelling case for investment.
Africa has been IFC's top performing region over the last 10 years, with a real
rate of return of 25 percent compared to 18 percent for IFC worldwide.
Sub-Saharan Africa is also the region where IFC’s investments in private equity
funds have grown the most, and where we have more private equity partners – a
total of 38 – than anywhere else. In FY11, IFC committed new investments
in 5 funds in Africa, and so far in FY12 we’ve invested $70 million in 3 funds.
We already have plans for 2 or 3 more funds this fiscal year – including 8
Miles Fund, a pan-African private equity fund backed by Bob Geldof.
8 Miles plans to make investments in growth areas across Africa such as
agribusiness, consumer and retail health, telecommunications, banking and
financial services. The target fund size is $450 million, with $15 to $40
million investments in 10 to 12 African companies with above-average potential
for revenue growth and job creation. Investors partnering with IFC
include the United Kingdom’s CDC, the African Development Bank, and Vital
Capital Fund. J.P. Morgan will provide fund administration services.
Private equity is already changing the face of Africa – and funds such as 8
Miles recognize that there’s huge potential to do more. The fund’s name
refers to the fact that, at their nearest points, Africa and Europe are only
eight miles apart.
For much of Africa, however, the distance is far greater. Countries
dealing with fragility and a history of conflict are home to the world’s
poorest – the Bottom Billion, as Paul Collier pointed out in his 2007 book,
though today, it’s more on the order of 1.5 billion.
In 2010, the World Bank focused on these countries in our World Development
Report on Conflict, Development, and Security. One of the conclusions of
that report was that private sector development is a key factor in infrastructure
and logistics, local banking, service delivery, and job creation – to show
early results as well as longer-term growth. Access to capital and
finance is vital for putting these countries on the path to economic
stability. But, of course, most fund managers aren’t ready to provide the
risk capital and strategic advice that private equity provides.
That’s why IFC conceived of SME Ventures, an initiative to support local
private equity fund managers and raise equity and advisory services funds in
low income – and particularly post-conflict – countries. Today, we’re
putting private equity to work is some of the most underdeveloped areas of the
world.
Take Central Africa – a region rich in minerals, but with a history of
fragility and instability. Private equity groups have traditionally
focused on larger investments in the extractive industries. Yet it’s
small- and medium-sized businesses that create the most jobs in any economy.
So two years ago, IFC committed up to $12.5 million to the Central Africa SME
Fund. Managed by XSML, a Dutch SME fund manager, and Cenainvest, its
partner based in Cameroon, the fund aims to mobilize a total of$25 million from
other development finance institutions and the private sector. With
offices and a team on the ground in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and
the Central African Republic, the fund’s focus is on making investments and
providing advisory services to the local business community, to help African
entrepreneurs build sustainable businesses that create jobs and income.
The funds’ first investments in the DRC have been in a healthcare clinic,
including new medical training for staff; a call center; and a food processing
company for baby cereal, where the fund is also helping improve the company’s
financial management and developing audited financial statements. In the
Central African Republic, the fund is preparing to invest in an internet
service provider.
The Central Africa SME Fund is also looking ahead. So, for example, it’s
conducting a market study on fresh fruits for a fruit producer in Kinshasa, and
helping prepare a business plan and financial projections for a cassava mill
run by smallholders.
Through the SME Ventures initiative, IFC has also committed equity to funds for
Liberia and Sierra Leone; Bangladesh; Nepal; and we are currently working on a
fund for Bhutan.
And just last month, IFC made its first private equity investment in Haiti.
When Haiti was hit by a major earthquake in 2010, we knew that the Bank Group’s
support to help the country recover, rebuild, and break its dependence on aid
must include bringing in the private sector.
IFC has already committed five investments and significantly scaled up its
advisory operations in Haiti. These projects are helping create 5,000 new
jobs – as well as safeguard 5,000 existing jobs.
Now, IFC is committing up to $10 million to the Leopard Capital Haiti Fund to
support small and medium-sized businesses.
With a team already on the ground in Port-au-Prince, the fund is raising $75
million in equity to invest in four main sectors: renewable energy; low- and
medium-income housing; agribusiness; and hospitality. It’s also raising
$4 million in donor money to provide technical and managerial assistance to
companies that were thriving before the earthquake, but now want to upgrade
their operational capacity and grow. At the same time, this Haiti Fund
will work with its portfolio companies to enhance corporate governance, and
environmental and social standards and practices.
It’s an exciting new partnership for IFC. Our Private Equity Funds team
has already catalyzed an additional $10 million from investors – and will
continue to support the Leopard Capital team in raising more.
We hope this will encourage more investors to invest in Haiti’s potential.
Importance of Openness
Over the past five years, I’ve seen this private equity conference grow in
size, scale, and quality. I’ve also seen, from my discussion with our
clients in developing countries around the world, just how important they
consider the capital and expertise that private equity brings in helping their
countries grow and raise standards.
Yet the role of private equity has come under increasing scrutiny and political
focus in the developed world – not least here in the United States. For
some, the very term is synonymous with corporate raiders, asset strippers, and
secretive back room deals.
The private equity industry needs to respond to the demand for higher standards
of openness, transparency, and integrity. Private Equity should be
a major part of the new investment climate in emerging markets. It
should increase overall investor confidence.
I recognize that some investment professionals aren’t used to being in the
public eye. But you are now. And transparency is the best antidote
to conspiracy theories.
At the World Bank Group, we can see the transformative power of
openness. Our new information and knowledge-sharing
initiatives may turn out to be the most important legacy of my tenure at the
Bank Group.
Our Access to Information policy releases to the public vast numbers of
documents about the Bank’s projects, analytic and advisory activities, and
proceedings of the Board. It’s now viewed as the “gold standard” for
financial institutions.
Our Open Data initiative has unlocked our world-class knowledge and development
data. We now provide free access to more than 7,000 indicators, including
GDP data and development statistics, meaning that anyone – from a PhD student,
to an NGO, to a farmer, or even a private equity investor – can download our
data, analyze it, and come up with solutions.
Our Mapping for Results website shares geo-spatial information on more than
2,500 Bank-funded projects.
Now we are beginning to work with communities to map their own infrastructure –
clinics, wells and schools. The next step is to allow people to use
hand-held devices to let the Bank know, from wherever there are in the world,
what is really going on with our projects and investments.
These initiatives are making the World Bank Group more open, transparent, and
accountable; helping us fight corruption and build better governance; and
getting us ready for a new era of democratized development.
The investment community can benefit from greater openness as well.
Conclusion
I have always enjoyed taking part in this conference. I have spoken
at it every year during my time at the World Bank Group.
I wanted to come here again, for the fifth time, because I am convinced that
private equity investments can be one of the most powerful and important agents
of change for developing countries: boosting local economies and creating jobs;
improving governance and sustainability standards in private industry and
capital markets; transforming thinking about growth; reducing poverty and
creating hope.
That Change agenda is the core of our mission at the World Bank Group.
It’s what we strive to do every day. It’s why private equity – and this
conference – is important to me.
The success of this event demonstrates that I’m by no means alone in this
conviction.
So I want to thank you again for joining us today. I hope your time at
this conference opens new insights and creates new partnerships for all of you
– and for the World Bank Group.
But most of all, I hope that it affirms your commitment to doing well and doing
good – to using the power of private equity to support people in developing
markets who want to create, build, and seize new opportunities.
That can be a lasting legacy for all of us.
Thank you.