Beyond the Boom: Resilience, Agility and African Venture Capital

And today we privileged to have an illustrious panel with us here today. I will start with our lady, Yewande Odumosu is a managing partner at HoaQ Ventures, a venture capital fund investing in

early stage startups in Africa, she's also an angel investor at RaliCap VC a global community of Angel Investors focused on fintech startups in Africa and Latin America and at Google she

headed the digital skills Africa program impacting over a million young Africans.

To my right here is Asante Thabethe, he's a consultant at BCG and he's a specialist in matters climate and sustainability and was a co- member of the team that built BCG's perspectives on social impact finance and investing and is currently also an MBA candidate at INSEAD. To the

very far right is Dirk Holshausen; Dirk is a member of the Africa team at British International Investment (BII) where he is the coverage director for South Central Africa based in Victoria Falls,

- that's very scenic place. And last but not least we have Ido Sum, who is a partner TLcom Capital, TLcom Capital is one of the most active pan-African Venture Capital firms and he also holds an

MBA from Stanford GSP and well just to mention Dirk is also an Oxford alum; he was here taking his MBA 10 years ago - so we're very happy to have you all. To just start us off well

I think everyone loves stories and telling to you Ido you recently gave a talk at a TEDX event and the title of your talk was 'the world needs Africa' and you mentioned how you landed

in Nairobi as something year old grad and how your journey started from there so I would like you to just briefly share with with the audience today, how did you end up as a venture capitalist in Africa, What attracted you to this space? Thanks for the invite, I'm very

happy to be here. I guess in short I came from the entrepreneurial side of of things so I used to and and still love today to build things rather than just invest in them. I started

my career in Israel which is where I'm from in the early days of the tech boom and in the early 2000s, building a couple of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations at home and when we were graduating from University, a very close friend of mine and myself, we were looking

for something interesting to do and learning about the very fast growing Telcos in Africa in 2005/2006, we thought that maybe fast internet is something that could be of interest to the continent and with that we embarked on a journey to try and build one of these wireless

internet provider in East Africa, miserably failed with the rest of global economy in 08. I

couldn't fundraise any further and then decided that I need to learn how people raise money, because I never was able to crack how decisions about investing or not investing in us were taken, so decided to shift for a couple of years and try and do VC in Africa to discover that it wasn't a

thing, there was literally no one doing it in 2010 and had the luck of bumping into Maurizio who had run founded and ran TLcom at that point in time investing in Europe, a European VC.

He wanted to do something in Africa, wasn't too sure what it entails, I wanted to do the same and then we decided to explore it together so that was 13 years ago and we've been on that since.

Brilliant and Yewande, I would like to ask you the same question: you were an electrical and electronics engineer, you have worked with some of the biggest firms, Vodocom, you've worked with Google I think you've been a power plant engineer at some point in your life so

please just share with us, why VC, why not engineering? Why VC and why Africa?

Okay thank you for that as I was speaking I was like I had my answer but I was like how do I answer this. I think one was curiosity and second was young people, the most important

was impact; so curiosity led me from studying engineering to working in corporate so I worked in Vcom, I worked in Google but I was always curious and attracted to young people.

I was young myself and I was just looking for other young people to start in things. When

I was University I wanted to start like my first major startup then the [...] had just come and so I was neighbours with someone at university and he had introduced me to three different guys very small guys and we were supposed to start a company. I think at the

time you were supposed to split share or something; it fell apart and I remember the lawyer saying wait, take your time to find out and build something else later and so I was always curious about how companies have started but I didn't really have a formal entrepreneur in my family and so I mean the part was corporate. While I was in corporate, while I was in Vodacom I started

thinking about finding something to do. I just was restless. I think by then we had new companies; we had Paystack we had Flutterwave, we had Paga. I was living in a place called Yaba then and I remember saying what I'm just going to quit my job, I'm going to work with

these guys but I didn't at that point and for me I started thinking about how do companies really become big and then I think I took a gap here after Google. I was

working in this co-working space where there were like young entrepreneurs coming and I met a young entrepreneur and he was telling me about his startup, he was asking me for advice; obviously I'd worked in corporate so 90% of what he had asked me I already knew - governance, registration, legal, like almost everything - I was like how come you guys don't know this but then he knew about

software engineering, he knew about things that I wasn't really familiar with and then I wanted to invest in that startup but I didn't end up investing, and then years down the line I think in 2019 I ended up working in a venture backed startup called Nitho, they just I think

raised $30 million for both debt and equity and I think that was one of the best jobs I've ever had in my life or it was on the de side of things. We were deploying capital debts to companies, important problems, renewable energy, agriculture, and the thesis was to be able to

efficiently deploy capital using technology and things we learned and I really liked the job but then something was just pulling me away to the equity side of things because in debt you're working with the entrepreneurs but it's a different kind of relationship than being an equity investor. Being an equity investor is almost like you're on the same side, being a debt investor is

investor. Being an equity investor is almost like you're on the same side, being a debt investor is almost like you're on the other side of the table. And so I started angel investing, I started with Rally Cap I think I joined First Check, I joined Techstars Rising fund because I wanted some international

exposure, I joined HoaQ. So HoaQ had started a syndicate. HoaQ started by two young men in Stripe, Paystack they had been exposed to that .... I

enjoyed that and all through that I figured out what was missing which was I needed to be on the same side with entrepreneurs, I'd done a startup myself, we never raised money but we got acquired early and it was just that missing piece and so I started that's why curiosity led me there.

I think for me, VC had the biggest impact in what I wanted to do to be able to unlock potential for young Africans and to be able to like support them to grow that's how I ended up here.

There are beautiful stories, I hope some of the MBAs who are still explorers, I hope you're starting to see some of the paths that you can take. So let's just delve into the VC ecosystem in Africa. Last year the African Venture Capital ecosystem

experienced a notable contraction; Investments declined to to $3.5 billion across 547 deals and this was a fast decline in about 8 years and it was quite a huge decline - 46% drop

from the previous year - and this phenomenon just prompted a revaluation of of strategies for for startups for entrepreneurs and a question I would like to ask Ido first is what do you

think about this? You have been in this space for nearly two decades now you've seen the the ups and downs and last year was one huge down, would you say that the best days are behind us or is there hope for a rebound in 2024 and beyond? I don't

think we'll see a rebound in 2024 but that's not to say that the best days are behind us. I

guess we discovered something very new last year that life aren't linear up and to the right which is really shocking but for those of us who are slightly older than 25 it happened before. I don't want to shock anyone but it happened many times in

many industries over many hundreds of years, and we are seeing one of these. What actually

wasn't very sensible is what happened in the two years before that so I would argue that we are sort of back on on a more realistic trend line rather than the - you could call it in

many names - but unrealistic/stupid jump we had seen in 2021, 2022 which free money people that were really really pushed to invest because there was free money and you had to spend it doing very little work to justify those investments, and then everyone became entrepreneurs because it

was easier than any other job and the mixture of that wasn't healthy. So I don't think the best days are behind us; quite on the contrary I think that to me 23,24 will be the years of realism and realism is a very healthy thing, it really helps you remember what you're

trying to build and be very focused on what you're building so the needs are still there, the problems - if you want to call them like that - are still there to be solved; not all by technology by the way but definitely some they're the population is growing extremely fast,

it's the youngest continent on planet Earth, it's a potential next source of working people to the planet and so on and so forth, so lots of positives that are all still there, we shouldn't be too- I mean it's okay, the world didn't end and we will survive. Amazing.

That's really encouraging to hear a very optimistic view and that we are back to reality.

So just on the same note, Asante I'd like you to share a bit about something that we seeing in the private capital market space in Africa, and the interesting trend is that now fintech has been at the top of the charts.

Yewande, you mentioned some of the household names here, and we're now seeing a rise in climate financing, we're now seeing the numbers on ClimTech going up. Asante, what do you think are some of the factors behind this, how is the space shaping up? I know Ido didn't mention

that sometimes there's just too much money flowing in a certain direction and everyone just tries to ride the wave, what do you think about this space, climate financing also social finance where you have lots of expertise in, how is the landscape?

First of all I just want to say thank you all for having me, it's an honor to be here and speakers have been incredible, been truly inspired by the conversations I've had with them and the University students and faculty. I think to answer your question there's two main drivers behind it; the first one is that there's a strong innovation pipeline when it comes to cleantech

and climate tech in Africa, first of all the continent as a whole because the environment is a great place for clean tech and climtech; secondly clean tech and climate tech directly addresses key issues on the continent such as food security, water security, energy security. I

think the second driver is that it's fundamentally easier to raise capital for investment into clean tech and climate tech because there are a broad range of financial, economic and social benefits from it, it attracts a broad range of investors and a lot of the investors that Venture Capitalists are

getting their money from, the DFIs philanthropists and pension funds are mandated to allocate a certain portion of their investments to social impact in climate and sustainability so that just makes it easier to raise capital for those causes. Can I maybe just add two thoughts there?

I think you're so right. I think climate finance the transformation has been amazing in our markets; five years ago at BII we did a lot of work in the renewable energy space but we didn't necessarily bucket it under climate finance but as we go forward at least a third of our investments will be in the climate finance space so this is a huge amount of capital that

we're going to see heading towards Africa. I think one more point on the climate piece that links to this narrative and changing the narrative that we've been talking about if you take a country like Zambia with a new administration and new governments, one of the new Ministries that the president created when he came into power was a Ministry of Green Economy so a Ministry

Of ME was the other Ministry but you also have a Ministry of Green Economy so there's a clear Focus from many of our countries. On this critical space and a market like Zambia they have 90% plus green energy Base load; there's many countries in the world that would dream of having 90% plus green energy base load so in some areas when you have a country like

Zambia going to a COP, they are leading the way in many areas of course there's a lot more finance, there's a lot more renewable energy, we need a lot more power on the continent but it's also important to think about the context and where each country is starting from. Thank you,

and I think you actually just preempted my my question to you is BII is one of the investors of course that has been active on the continent for a long time and you just mentioned that there is some optimism because Asanti has shared this insights around

climate financing and what's going on there and I'm just curious from your perspective as an impact investor, as a DFI BII, what are some of the emerging narratives and trends and what is really shaping your investment thesis at the moment and

and still giving you reason to invest and in the continent in VC? Sure, so BII has been investing in Africa for 75 years so it's seen the cycles, it's seen the ups and downs. I'm biased, I'm always optimistic about the continent, I believe in the medium term,

downs. I'm biased, I'm always optimistic about the continent, I believe in the medium term, I think we've got challenges in the short term but I'm always optimistic about about the future and I think if you're looking at places to work or to spend time there's nowhere more exciting

than Africa to be spending in the next period of your life of your careers. I think for us at BII I don't think capital is necessarily the constraint, I think it's sometimes the capital or matchmaking the right type of capital with the opportunities that we see.

I think the greatest development challenge on the continent is very simply jobs and I think we've talked about it a couple of times earlier yesterday. The continent is growing fast, our populations are growing quickly and our economies are not growing fast enough and I think we need to create a lot of jobs on the continent and for us as DFIs we invest through the private

sector so that is our channel so we need to constantly be asking ourselves how do we support jobs, how do we support business growth, and where can we create that growth?

I think that's where it's really important to constantly be innovative, we cannot stand still, I think there's a number of channels that we use to invest into these markets, we do a lot with the banks, we partner with the banks, the banks fund the growth of the private sector, we fund a lot of the private equity firms a lot of the VC funds - that's also a critical channel -

but again there's more to be done and I think there's a whole range of topics that we can discuss around local currency financing or how do we mobilize pension funds in our own market so that pension funds are actually investing in the real economy in our countries, we're not relying on capital coming from abroad to fund the growth of Africa. A lot of our pension funds have vast

sums of money, it's just not going into the real economy at the moment, we could talk about the type of investments that we're making whether it's debt or whether it's equity.

One of the challenges we've seen in private Equity over the last decades is exits, it's one thing making investments in Africa and helping companies grow but how you realize equity exits is something that we can talk to, it's tough I think constantly innovating and I

think Africa is one of those places where there is incredible opportunity and you can do so much that in many other markets in the world you're going to be constrained but I think there's huge opportunity on our continent. Thank you, I think we park the conversation on

on exits and come back to it because before you exit you've got to at least first make the investment and grow it and I'll turn to you here Yewande just to give us a view of what's happening with Angel Investors, with people who actually believe

in the ideas at a very early early stage. They always say some of the sources of financing for companies are family friends and fools and so just happy to hear about

what's happening at the very early stage. Yeah that's a great question. I think over the last 3 to 5 years I think we've had so many investments than before, especially so many early investments, we've had different syndicates, different Angel Investors like take more

steps in investing that resulted in like some wins and a lot of failures, but also a lot of learnings. I think a lot of Angel Investors have also learned what to do and what not to do and

learnings. I think a lot of Angel Investors have also learned what to do and what not to do and they're still learning, I think that in the history of our ecosystem on the continent I don't think we've had enough data points as we have right now on things that work and things that that will

not work. I think that in the past we struggled with adapting to things for the market.

not work. I think that in the past we struggled with adapting to things for the market.

So on one hand you build technology, a lot of young people are building and they think product first, technology first; they're not thinking about markets, they're not think about regulation, they're not thinking about stakeholders, they're not thinking about consumers, they're just thinking about apps and going there. And a lot of angels

had felt for some reason they would figure it out but that support to figure it out wasn't really there. So lot of Angel Investors are understanding that 'I can deploy capital well so if I can support these young entrepreneurs, provide them access, guide them, instil like governance concepts early on'.

There has to be like some governance with managing money, a lot of young entrepreneurs I think didn't deeply understand being custodians of capital, didn't really understand what the opportunity presented to them was; especially as Africans you're

expected to do more. I mean even if you're going to fail there's this expectation of failing forward, failing forward in a way that you have moved the needle even if you don't become a unicorn, even if you don't become like a successful venture you've been able to change things that can catalyze things for other people. So angels are still investing but

they're just requiring more conviction, they're requiring more structure, they're requiring more information before they do that investment. A lot of structures are also being put in place to support founders, to support early teams in being able to be sustainable until

like late stage; for us we try to collaborate and do more with latest state investors to be able to like align better and help teams be more investment worthy at growth stage, we're doing more of that now. I think also personally most of us here

will probably be more accessible to young people to be able to answer questions, I think people just assume that young people know. Unfortunately they don't know; some of them have never worked in corporate, some of them don't really understand the fundamentals when you say business

when like if you worked in the between and 2000 and 2015, you probably would be familiar with a lot of like governance corporates but if from 2015 till now a lot of young people didn't have access to those things and they aren't really guided or they weren't

really guided the way because people just assumed that 'oh if I give you $2 million you're not just going to do something stupid with it', so angels are still investing it's just slower people are just expecting more, people are doing more due diligence, people are getting more referrals, luckily for for the continent a lot of business school people, a lot of operators

a lot of people that work in corporate are also taking that courage to start something so I think that's brilliant as well. And there's a lot of like I said, there's a lot of insight, a lot of information that people can now leverage to see what's working what's not working. So it's positive still. Yes it's it's a very positive perspective, it's

working. So it's positive still. Yes it's it's a very positive perspective, it's really encouraging to see that you're working on handholding these entrepreneurs and getting them to a stage where now Ido can can take on them. I'll just come back to

the conversation because Dirk, you're sitting on the LP side; you're an investor, you're looking to give some money, and we've given him money well you glad that it's not hypothetical at all so but we had this conversation earlier

and the the question of exits always always comes into into play and of course you want to have a view of when you can get a return, when you can get money back, what type of return that will be, so what is really the challenge around exits, is it that we have a rigid

structure when it comes to funds and maybe we need something more practical for Africa, what do you think is is is the biggest challenge here and what can be done about it?

Maybe I'll start with Dirk and then Ido next. I think at least when we talk about private equity and private equity fund structures in many ways we're stuck in the past, in 1980s US investing mindset, we still use a 2 and 20 private

equity model and and I think we need to move forward, a lot of the continent needs patient capital, it needs long-term capital and I think the current structures that we use are not always fit for purpose and I think a lot of that rests with the LPS, with the investors. If

you speak to the fund managers or the GPs who are raising funds they often would love to have longer term structures or evergreen vehicles or permanent permanent vehicles but they just know that fundraising is a slog and it's easier to kind of go what people have known for the last 10,20,30

years because that's the faster path to raising capital. We are starting to see that changing, I mean at at BII we've just built a new permanent capital vehicle, we've just launched the first of these companies in Ghana I'm busy replicating that now in Zambia and these are new investment companies that are set up at a country level that are there to last 50 years

plus so this is evergreen funding that can help grow businesses over decades not over a limited life fund structure, that's such an artificial time period, there's lots of good things that come with that limited life fund it does put pressure and cadence on the teams to deliver

but I think there I think we need to be more innovative about how we fund the growth of the continent. Ido, what do you think would you love evergreen fund? Generally

speaking I think that there's definitely room for considering different models with that, we are still at the phase where the proof is on us, the burden to prove is on us, we're still playing realistically in a world with an extremely limited interest from the world in what we do.

Even in our boom year we were sub 1% of global VC allocation and we are scratching soort of we're closer to 0.5 I think this year so we have a very simple job description, it's 'take

a dollar and get back three' in round terms, the rest is noise.

We're not saving the world, we're not making it a better place, we need to take a dollar and give back $3 the rest comes after that, that is the job description and until we're unable to show that we can do it systematically these discussions are very very challenging. To Dirk's point

we need to raise capital from people who have enough interest, enough capital, enough resources and so on. Right now we are still sitting as an industry probably on about 2/3 plus DFI contribution, DFIs are fantastic on many fronts, innovation typically is not one of them - or

speed it's not innovation - very innovative but not not necessarily very quick and while some are extremely open and I think it's super exciting to hear some are not yet there.

Let me put it this way and we need to manage a wide base of LPs so I think we need longer fund terms the world is moving to 12 to 15 year funds - not in Africa, in Israel, in the US, in Europe - so I think we will need to migrate towards that there is a realism into this industry

that takes 12 years to build a company assuming you don't invest in everything on day one but you also invest in year three and four these are the horizons you're looking at but between where we are to completely reformulating structure there is some time. I think we will need to inject local

debt structures into some of the funds because we are using very expensive FX equity to fund working capital in local currency which is really really hard to overcome especially in such devaluating markets so this is something that some of us managers will need to implement. There's

some few innovations I think in the way before we jump into completely different fund structures but with time yes we will need to migrate a little bit. I think, I mean can I just add on the FX points? I think the FX piece is critical for our markets because the international investors

FX points? I think the FX piece is critical for our markets because the international investors are looking for dollar returns so a fund manager can work incredibly hard for 10 years, build some great businesses, the FX moves against you and you're the wrong side of the return hurdle, and I think that goes back to needing to unlock local pools of capital in our markets because a

pension fund is targeting inflation plus a margin so that's that's what they need to do that is that is their job and so I think how we think about unlocking and mobilizing local pools of capital to actually invest into our own economies is critically important for this next phase of growth and the DFIs and other international investors can help catalyze and

can bring the experience and the and the skill set but I think we need to see a lot more on the local capital bases actually coming into the markets. Great that's a wonderful perspective, still on the same point, well switching a bit to just look deeper at the regulations

space Asante - of course a previous speaker just mentioned really reiterated the need to engage work with government regulators - what do you think are some headwinds or some tailwinds that we have in that space in the regulatory environment, in the policy

environment because we've had a bit about currency there but do we have anything positive going on the regulation side and or on the policy side and what does it mean for venture capital?

From the regulatory perspective I'll do it from a climate lens because there's a lot going on in that space. First of all, I think the question is very difficult just because Africa is still very fragmented and we've got 54 different countries with different cultures, different policies and regulations, so any regulation that would create some uniformity

from there, I think would make it easier to scale businesses within Africa in different countries which would make it more attractive to invest fundamentally but on a broader scale especially in climate, I think the implementation of Article Six of the Paris Agreement in particular would

have a big impact on the funds flowing into Africa - and basically Article Six of the Paris Agreement would create a global carbon credits markets where countries can voluntarily trade credits between each other - and because developing carbon credits in Africa would be so much cheaper than doing it in Europe for example there would be a lot of capital flowing into Africa to develop

those projects. On the African side though I think every country would have the

those projects. On the African side though I think every country would have the mandate to decide whether or not they want to participate, and if a country decides they don't want to participate down the line the uncertainty around whether or not they will will deter investors from actually putting the capital in there so I think the developments of that

over the next few years will really shape the investment into climate tech in particular. Wow well

that's really quite quite insightful. Sorry, I just wanted just to add and even things as small as border requirements like entering into the country I think the previous speaker spoke about just being able to go there and see. For example the Rwanda government last year said they're scrapping the visa requirements and his visa on arrival

and you could see the inflow of people like you can see the inflow of people, I myself so little things like that really carry weight, I went to Rwanda myself I think I was one of the first people to try that and I was so happy and then obviously the lot of investors that went Rwanda is like booming. I also went to Uganda I think they thinking of adopting that,

I think Kenya is trying to improve theirs but ... so even

things like that help have people on ground - come visit, come discuss, come collaborate - and then on the higher level there are all the incentives like what he said so I just wanted to mention that sure. Yewande, I think it would be it will be injustice

for us not to talk about this - especially this weekend having just celebrated International Women's Day and of course Mother's Day tomorrow - so just focusing on the gender finance gap that we have in Venture Capital, we know this is not is not really an African problem we heard

from a speaker yesterday that even in the UK probably was it 0.6 or 0.06 of of capital actually goes to female founders, I think black female founders was very very low figure, very sad figure, what do you think can be done in in this space or what has worked

well and what do we still need to do to make sure that we're bridging the the gap when it comes to financing? I think that's one area that's still very very very very challenging. I think

to financing? I think that's one area that's still very very very very challenging. I think

a lot of people male and female are really working hard to catalyze the increase of investment in female Founders or female teams. I think what has

helped so far is just providing access, access to networks and to the funding but I also believe that because it's really deeply rooted and there are different layers of support that is required, I think being able to identify the different layers,

get more women into different levels and just not say it but actually support is very very important. I think it has improved. For example, like I said there are now

important. I think it has improved. For example, like I said there are now like female funds or female first funds like First Check is doing something with TLcom and obviously if you don't want to speak about that but I think it's still very challenging. I

don't think we have like a one fit or answer for that but I think that just providing more support more investment, helping women become more investment-ready like being specifically going out of your way to do that. I know that the big corporates do it but

I think they're doing it more, so for example there's a Google for startup women in AI and I'm privileged to be able to mentor in that very soon and just being deliberate about still supporting women you cannot over invest in women when the numbers are showing that they're underinvested so just doing more in that direction is very important. Amazing so

we really have touched on on many topics and I would have led to go just deeper into into each of those and just unpack them a little a little more but I guess we'll be able to do that during during the coffee break just speak to the to the speakers and just go,

they've really shared a lot and and we can generally like unpack that further. I'll just

have to take some questions from the audience now, a question here around or funding model I think Ido already mentioned the structures that need to change and there's a question from Maro

who asks how how have you been able to navigate the balance between impact investment and financial return for capital provided in foreign currency have you experienced challenges in financial returns and how do you navigate this? maybe DC you probably would like to respond to

this one I know we we spoke about it a bit but yeah yeah yeah I mean how do you balance between impact and financial return so for the DFI every investment we make we look at through two lenses so the first lens is an impact lens so there needs to be an impact thesis behind everything we doing whether that's adding gigawatts to the grid, whether it's creating jobs, whether

it's boosting gender equality in the markets, whether it's focused on climate, food security but there needs to be an impact thesis first and then alongside that we need to see commercial returns so if we're going to see this become sustainable that dollar that you invest that you talks about you need to make sure that you can get back that dollar so that you can keep recycling it so that

you can keep doing this so those those two lenses go alongside each other and it's critical to think of both of them there's a question here from on ClimTech it says ClimTech has accounted for a large portion of total debt funding to startups in Africa generally how do you see this trend

affecting the sector in future. What else do you see in the future in this space? ClimTech is growing,

do you see any other trends in the future? So let me know if I don't actually answer the question but I think going forward there's two big opportunities in climtech. I think the first is just data it's as venture capitalists try to reduce risks because the interest rates are going

up the importance of actually being able to track and have data for example for like crop yields for smallholder farmers and Agritech and so on will really enable them to make the decisions for investments and then secondly I think there's a massive opportunity in energy. I'm a little

bit biased with this one but I think energy has direct and indirect financial benefits which will drive investment to the sector. From a direct perspective there's a clear energy under supply in Africa which means that there's a relatively large inelastic demand and to the point

yesterday if because of under supply if you can generate energy and do it well you will make money in Africa. And then the indirect benefits, having the energy in Africa will allow a businesses to

in Africa. And then the indirect benefits, having the energy in Africa will allow a businesses to stay operational which drives economic growth which reduces Africa's risk profile which then drives in more capital and the returns required will be lower because the risk's lower which

makes it a lot easier to actually put your dollar into into the market. Great ladies

and gentlemen we will close at that point I'm conscious that I'm standing between you and a very well deserved coffee break so please give a round of applause to our wonderful panelists thank you very much