Global Zero – Tools

Companies and investors are faced with continued ESG and sustainability challenges as reporting and compliance becomes more complex, new standards for public and private companies arise across jurisdictions, and the need for execution expertise becomes more critical and high stakes. Fortunately a thriving start-up sector of SaaS platforms and tools is providing enterprises with cutting […]

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Global Scarring: Investment RoundUp

Global investors are facing a widely varied post-Covid recovery with the IMF forecasting per capita income losses in emerging markets (ex-China) of -6.1% between 2000-2024, and potentially greater “scarring” over the medium term. There are a range of fiscal, humanitarian and social issues to consider and debate. I’ll pick one: the impact of an estimated […]

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China’s massive skills gap

China may have created the most impressive advance of educational attainment in history but it also suffers from a growing skills gap.  In fact, China has one of the least educated workforces in the world as measured by the proportion of its labor force with a high school and college degree.  The evidence piles up in […]

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Taking SPACs to School

Publicly-listed education companies often sit uncomfortably between the demands of financial stakeholders on one side and commercial challenges of working with school systems, parents, government regulators and students on the other. Perhaps this is why education investment bankers are paid to be optimistic. Consider the recent flurry of announcements for the creation of education SPACs–or […]

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M&A: Coronavirus and Cross-Border Investment

Cross-border M&A activity is accelerating across a range of workforce and education segments, from education and training to career navigation, job search, workforce alignment, AI matching and productivity. This will not be a shock to many observers, although simply transacting across borders can require quarantine for 14 days or conducting endless due diligence meetings via […]

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Keynote at US-Sino Online Higher Education Conference: Shanghai, 2018

I was honored to keynote the US-Sino Online Higher Education Forum at Shanghai Jiao Tong University(上海交通大学)which took place on June 1, 2018.  My talk was focused on the next phase of collaboration between US and Chinese universities.  I have consistently thought that education remains a critical aspect of Sino-US relations and that the ability of […]

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