| The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing |
| Ian Bremmer and Preston Keat, Oxford University Press, 2009, 254 pages, £14.99. |
| At the present time when we are suffering from major financial and economic policy failures, it is well to be reminded that it is often political risk, rather than economic or financial, that causes companies major problems – or lies behind the ‘fat tail’ of risk distributions. Yet compared to the effort put into assessing economic or financial risk, many companies pay little attention to the proper assessment or mitigation of political risk. Political risk does not lend itself to easy quantification. It is often nebulous. Assessments are not always straightforward and need to be tailored to individual circumstances and countries. Frequently a political development has multiple causes with connections not always immediately obvious. There is sometimes a fatalistic feeling that problems are unpredictable so nothing can be done. Too much reliance may be placed on the knowledge of one or two local ‘experts’. And if investing in Country X is a major element of company strategy there is sometimes an all too human reluctance to consider what might go wrong. |
| The two authors of this engaging book – respectively the President and Director of Research at Eurasia Group, the Political Risk Consultancy – make a persuasive argument that while the assessment of political risk may not always be tractable, and while it is not always easy to foresee possible outcomes, there is, nevertheless, much that can, and should, be done. Companies can take steps to assess and monitor risk. It is often possible to assess the likelihood of political turmoil in a country even if it is less easy to see what form that turmoil will take. There are steps that can be taken to mitigate risk, sometimes even the more extreme forms. And political risk covers not just the extreme forms such as revolution, riots, terrorism or the overthrow of political regimes but also the more mundane risks of expropriation or nationalisation and adverse regulatory changes that can occur in the most stable of countries. |
| This is not a ‘how to do it’ book. It is an introduction to the subject. After discussing dealing with uncertainty in general, subsequent chapters look at geopolitics, at domestic instability (revolution, civil war, state failure), terrorism, expropriation and regulatory risk before discussing reporting and warning systems for a company and then concluding. In the course of this numerous historical events are examined – from the Cortés invasion of what is now Mexico (a rare example of something that would have been totally unpredictable to the people affected, the Aztecs) to 9/11; from the debt default of Philip II of Spain in 1575 to the Russian crisis of 1998; from the expropriation of spice trading by the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt in 1429 to Chavez’s current policies in Venezuela. The analysis of past and recent events, the warning signs that preceded them, their sometimes complex causes and the assessments of the extent to which they could or could not have been predicted, form a large part of the fascination of this book. |
| Perhaps some of the most important passages are those where it shows the difference that can be made if countries or companies have properly considered political risks and made appropriate plans. In the 1970s Kennecott Mining, fearing nationalisation of its copper interests in Chile, developed a strategy in which other parties, including the Chilean government, had stakes in the ventures, took out insurance and arranged financing through other foreign investors. The network of interests thus created enabled pressure to be put on the Chilean government so that while Kennecott lost the mine it was eventually compensated. After the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993, Morgan Stanley undertook a major review of its emergency planning for the site. On the day of 9/11 it ordered its employees in the South Tower to evacuate as soon as the North Tower was hit, its back-up sites for essential operations and management were up and running within an hour and a well-rehearsed communications plan and business continuity strategy limited losses. Some other companies were less well prepared and suffered more. Shell’s well-known scenario planning helped it to deal with the oil shocks of the 1970s despite initial management scepticism for the technique. |
| The authors are, as would be expected, knowledgeable and have a clear enthusiasm for their subject. Extensive notes testify to the quantity of research undertaken. Occasionally you may feel that their enthusiasm leads the text away from where it should logically go – but bear with it, the journey is entertaining and informative. This is an essential book for anyone with responsibilities for political risk in a company but it can be enjoyed by a much wider audience as well. |
| Jill Leyland |
|