Saturday, May 3, 2014

Arctic's PEUture


The Sydney Morning Herald reported:

Hugh Short wants you to invest in an emerging economy with few people, fewer buildings, and which is melting at the fastest pace in millennia.

He's talking about the Arctic, which Scott Minerd, the chief investment officer of Guggenheim Partners LLC, calls "not just the best opportunity of our generation, but of the last 12,000 years." Short, a native ofAlaska, said Pt Capital LLC, which he co-founded last year, is the first and only US private-equity firm dedicated to investing in the Arctic.

Short, 41, is attempting to raise $US250 million for the firm's first fund by year-end. 
Guggenheim Partners may join Short's PEU:

"Unlike most of the planet, the Arctic still contains uncharted mysteries,"  Minerd, whose firm is considering investing with Pt Capital, said in an e-mailed response to questions. "With a great deal of the development still in the planning stages, few investors are fully aware of just how great the opportunities are."
One heavy hitter has long preached the Arctic opportunity, Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein.  Rubenstein regularly speaks to Alaskans about investment opportunities.  It doesn't hurt that his wife owns Alaska's biggest newspaper

Bloomberg, the originator of the Herald piece, did it's best to offer a Carlyle dodge with this quote:

"It is such a frontier place," Marcel van Poecke, managing director of Carlyle International Energy Partners, said in an interview at a conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, on April 2. "That is for the big oil companies."
The Carlyle Group is already in Alaska and wants to do more.  A co-founder's spouse is in a unique position to influence public opinion on Carlyle's behalf.  That's what Bloomberg missed in order to get their next Rubenstein interview.

Update 8-15-19:  It turns out daughter Gabrielle Rubenstein is also a co-founder of Pt Capital in 2013.  Add another layer of conflict for when Rogoff was publisher