All writing.
Occasional notes on sovereign debt, commodities, defence and trade finance. Filed from London, written for principals.
04 MAY 2026Defence & Strategic IndustriesThe arithmetic of a 155mm round: from cotton field to artillery shell
European propellant capacity does not scale linearly with shell capacity. Anyone proposing to fund the latter without budgeting for the former is asking the bank to lend against an assumption that has already failed once.
Note 02→
15 APR 2026Trade Finance & ReceivablesThe correspondent banking retreat from Africa
Western banks have been withdrawing from African correspondent relationships for fifteen years. The retreat is now functionally complete in most mid-tier markets, and the architecture that replaced it is a patchwork.
Note 03→
18 MAR 2026CommoditiesCredit-wrapped distribution: a primer for African corporate flows
How credit insurance and balance-sheet partners convert corporate-credit-risk receivables into bankable assets, and the structural choices that decide whether a transaction prints.
Note 04→
30 MAR 2026Trade Finance & ReceivablesThe ECOWAS4 trade finance gap, country by country
The IFC's 2022 West Africa Trade Finance Report quantified the gap for the four largest ECOWAS economies. Read alongside subsequent AfDB and country-level data, it remains the most precise picture of where the work needs to be done.
Note 05→
22 MAR 2026Trade Finance & ReceivablesThe EU-Africa trade corridor: €370bn of flow, $81bn of unmet finance
The EU is Africa's largest trading partner; the bilateral merchandise relationship is large enough that the unfinanced share of it is one of the largest structural finance gaps anywhere in emerging markets.
Note 06→
29 APR 2026Defence & Strategic IndustriesProgramme financing for the EU defence industrial base: what banks need to lend
Europe has committed to scaling its defence industrial base. Roughly half the capital required has to come from private banks. The structural reasons that has not yet happened are well understood; the practical fixes are starting to be.
Note 07→
08 APR 2026Trade Finance & ReceivablesEURC and the CFA franc zone: a euro-pegged settlement rail for Francophone Africa
EURC volumes grew roughly two orders of magnitude in twelve months. The growth is not retail. The most plausible reading is that the CFA-EUR peg makes EURC structurally fit-for-purpose for Francophone African trade settlement, and that institutional users have noticed.
Note 08→
10 MAY 2026Defence & Strategic IndustriesEurope's cotton-linter problem and the 155mm production target
European ammunition output is bottlenecked upstream by a single raw material that the public conversation has barely registered. The Chinese deliveries paused once already. Anyone planning to scale 155mm output without solving the linter question is planning on faith.
Note 09→
22 APR 2026Defence & Strategic IndustriesNSPA, the ammunition support partnership, and the path from concept to bankable project
NATO has the procurement vehicle in place. What converts a strategic concept into a project a bank will fund is a specific sequence of commitments; the gap between the two is where most defence industrial-base ideas die.
Note 10→
02 MAY 2026Trade Finance & ReceivablesStablecoins as African trade infrastructure: B2B, not retail
Sub-Saharan Africa received over $205 billion in on-chain value in the twelve months to June 2025. Stablecoins were 43 per cent of it. Most of the published commentary still treats this as a retail-crypto phenomenon. It is not.
Note 11→
07 MAY 2026Trade Finance & ReceivablesWhy African trade finance is broken
The headline number is well-known: the African Development Bank estimates the continent's trade finance gap at $81.8 billion a year. The structural causes are less well-known, and they are not a single failure but four reinforcing ones.
Note 12→
01 — Sovereign DebtSovereign Debt Advisory
Issuance, liability management and restructuring for sovereigns.
View practice→
02 — CommoditiesOrigination & Offtake
Credit-wrapped distribution across hydrocarbons, softs and industrial materials.
View practice→
03 — DefenceDefence & Strategic Industries
Procurement and programme financing for sovereign and dual-use mandates.
View practice→
04 — Trade FinanceTrade Finance & Receivables
Documentary, structured and ECA-backed structures for emerging-market flows.
View practice→