Accountable Finance

Progress continues apace, a stock index of the Colombo Stock Exchange in Sri Lanka now has a short article and list of its stocks: The Milanka Price Index. I also put up a list at the Bahrain Stock Exchange and continue to add information to the list at "Companies listed on the JSE". The JSE has the most puzzling names of all stock exchanges; what do the Matodzi Group, Mvelaphanda Group, the Messina Group do? It is a simple matter to look up the companies or their listings at the Wright Report and fill in some information, such as "holding company; agriculture, automotive, financial services" to give a solid look at what the company is. Other stock exchanges have names like "Cairo Amman Bank" and "Bahrain National Insurance Company".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milanka_Price_Index

In thinking about choices in African stock markets, the obviously risky choice, the squeaky wheel, is represented by Sudatel, which is "Sudan Telecommunications" and is listed at the Bahrain Stock Exchange. "I can't believe you gave them money! Do you know what is happening there?" All I know if I was a telecom executive building optics cables to Ethiopia and across the Red Sea to Mecca, I would need money to hurry up and get the job done.

No matter how nice democrats and their voters are, this is a spot where they always fail first, in getting money to the people who are building the country out of trouble. It's the same thing as with the UK and Myanmar. It's like the Family Feud with those two.

So Sudatel looks nice, and I should marshall some figures to give some body to the conversation, and to obviate the concept of Unaccountability here at Accountable Finance. If your heart can stand it; there are plenty of other companies that look nice and have less impact on one's son or daughter getting into Berkeley or Bennington.

It is quite a dicey game of public relations. If one wanted to support executives who are struggling against apartheid in the 1980s, one had to know when to go with the stock ownership embargo that actually helped to dislodge the "Naked Power" that existed before Nelson Mandela took office. It was difficult, and if one is sitting there doing one's job one has to know when to move it along.

Zimbabwe seems like an incredibly difficult place to be a middle manager, but of course like all other places in Africa, the more I read about it at company sites, the more I love it. All the companies in blue at the Wikipedia's "Zimbabwe Industrial Index", a page I more or less have authored and am familiar with, all those companies exude a healthy glow when one reads the material; a positive vibration, a solid sense of confidence, an exciting investment future. Zimbabwe has CNN problems which seem mildly intractable; one looks beyond the impolite foreign correspondence and finds a lot of value. I have the habit of playing to people's fortes; Africa's fortes are not always apparent on BBC, NPR or CNN. From watching Euro-American news, one is thinking that one is about to meet a Bob Marley on the internet; it is always a Deval Patrick, a Condoleeza Rice, a Doctor Huxtable, a Steve Harris from The Practice and an Earvin "Magic" Johnson that one sees instead.

Well, Sudatel in Sudan looks like a great company, building fiber networks, talking on the phone with France Telecom every day, winning the Mauritanian "second carrier" cell phone franchise. With so much hell breaking loose 600 kilometers to the Southwest of the capital, one asks oneself "What would I do?", and "Keep working" is usually the answer. Politics can definitely be so tragic.

The well-established brokers in Bahrain, who manage Europe and America desks, are on the other end of the phone, in case one isn't really feeling timid.

I think it's time to start using the on-line accounting textbooks and start analyzing some of these companies. It's the least I could do as a financial advisor and my math skills are starting to go to seed at Poker Room and Full Tilt.


It is some riddle to figure what the designers of this logo were creating.