Lawrence McDonald (www.lawrencegmcdonald.com), currently a Managing Director at Pangea Capital Management LP, was Vice-President in Distressed Debt and Convertible Securities Trading at Lehman Brothers between July 2004 and September 2008.

He ran an extremely successful joint venture between the firm's fixed income and equity divisions, generating over $80 m. profit during the four years.  Mr. McDonald has been a guest and contributor on CNBC, CNN, BBC World, Channel 4 News, Bloomberg TV, Fox TV, The New York Times, Business week and the Economist amongst others.

The book, written together with Patrick Robinson, hit the New York Times bestseller on the first week of publishing.

During lunch, Lawrence McDonald talked about post Lehman collapse, the consequences of the financial meltdown on the regulatory environment and the impact on investment today, and shared with the audience some of his behind the scenes knowledge.

MVCA had the pleasure to welcome two companies to present at their co-investment opportunities on 1 June: Mapjack International from Hong Kong and GRIDiant Corporation from U.S.

Mapjack is an internet media firm, a pioneer in High Definition Street View imagery primarily sold to online directory services. Its technology is comparable and competing with "Google Street View".

GRIDiant's mission is to bring real intelligence to the "Smart Grid" with a suite of software application products and services that optimizes the reliability, intelligence and performance of the electric distribution grid.

MVCA had the pleasure to welcome three parties on 18 May to discuss "Real Estate Investment in 2010".

Monte-Carlo Capital, Ian Sosso and Tim Murphy, his business partner from IP Global, very active out of Hong Kong ; IBUS, a Dutch real estate company and Dr. Collin Schmitz-Valckenberg, MVCA member, manager of a real estate fund.

MVCA members could enjoy a good overview of the real estate sector from three angles. 

MVCA welcomed managing director and founder of Emotional Assets Management and Research LLP (EAMR) on Tuesday 16 March.

Bernard Duffy believes that a convergence is taking place between the worlds of collecting and investing.  Emotional Assets is from Bernard's point of view a viable and mainstream asset class.

The focus of the presentation was on "how to devise asset allocation and wealth management strategies around emotional assets".