Strategic Capital

Like many people in the Australian business community, a number of us at GCI start our day with the Australian Financial Review (AFR). Last Friday, these words in an article by James Thomson caught our attention: “but in an uncertain world, the question of what is fair value looms large”. In this piece, Thomson was highlighting the widening “valuation gap” between purchaser and vendor expectations in the current market. At GCI, this is a question we continually ask ourselves as we fund acquisitions of both businesses and assets, and work with companies to restructure their balance sheets – so how do we […]

Recent months have seen an increase in speculation as to whether we are seeing the first signs of distress appear in corporate Australia. Whilst the construction industry has laid bare its woes with the collapse of construction giant ProBuild and others, the cracks are appearing in several sectors, particularly where price increases cannot be passed on to the end customer.  We are reminded of the 2010 movie “Margin Call“, which portrays an unnamed US investment bank heavily invested in collateralised debt obligations (CDOs).  The bank’s chairman, played by Jeremy Irons, speaking to his assembled lieutenants in the middle of the […]