Articles
Longer arguments on finance, governance, execution, and the organisational consequences of AI.
- (24) Mixture-of-Experts Models Fit the Shape of the Enterprise
Sparse models promise broad capacity at bounded compute, but corporate value depends on memory, explicit controls, and measured customisation.
- (23) How Datacenter Finance Turns Leases Into Bonds
A datacenter is financed several times before it becomes a bond. The sequence works because each stage removes a different risk.
- (22) Multi-Agent AI Systems Are an Architectural Bet Most Companies Are Not Ready to Make
MIT research finds 95% of enterprise AI pilots show no measurable P&L impact, the Bank of England has named AI a systemic financial-stability risk, and reliability math shows a 20-step agent workflow succeeds only 36% of the time. The evidence does not suggest caution; it demands it.
- (21) How to Brief an Agent: The Lost Art of Structured Delegation in Knowledge Work
Frontier models now perform within a narrow band of each other on reasoning benchmarks. The remaining quality gap in agentic AI is not in the models; it is in the human capacity to brief them properly.
- (20) Why AI Adoption Depends on Management
MIT, McKinsey, and BCG each find that only a small minority of firms generate material AI returns. Their advantage is organisational.
- (19) Beyond Retrieval: Recombination as Productivity Gain
Finding an old note saves time. Bringing several notes into a useful new relationship creates something that was not in the archive before.
- (18) Karpathy's LLM Wiki Solves the Maintenance Problem
The useful change in Karpathy’s LLM wiki is not retrieval. The agent maintains the synthesis so the archive can compound between sessions.
- (17) What Self-Hosted Agents Need to Become an Operating System
OpenClaw’s architecture supports the operating-system metaphor. Its isolation model, economics, and evidence base are not there yet.
- (16) AI Is Closing the Entry-Level Hiring Tap
The early labour-market effect is visible in fewer hires rather than mass layoffs. That saves cost now and weakens the future talent pipeline.
- (15) The One-Person Agent Team in Finance
For document-heavy and monitoring-intensive work, one experienced professional can supervise a small agent team—provided the verification layer is real.
- (14) Why Small Banks Struggle to Access SRT
More than 100 banks have issued SRT, protecting nearly €800 billion of loans. The market remains concentrated among large, repeat issuers.
- (13) Why ABF Is Taking More of Private Credit's Growth
Direct lending still holds the larger stock of assets. ABF is taking a disproportionate share of new growth through insurance capital and repeat origination.
- (12) Strategy Fails When the Operating System Contradicts It
A strategy loses force when the organisation’s incentives and decisions teach people that leadership’s words are not a reliable guide to action.
- (11) The Warehouse Trap for Fintech Lenders
A £200 million warehouse announcement says little about control. The decisive terms—eligibility, covenants, amortisation, and exit—sit deep in the contract.
- (10) Where the Agent Layer Captures Value
Cheaper models move the bottleneck upward: value sits in the layer that turns capability into supervised work across tools and systems.
- (9) In Distress, Collateral Data Becomes a Control Asset
Asset-based lenders may own the security interest while the borrower still controls the data that tells them what the collateral is.
- (8) A Practical Case for Shared Collateral Registries
A shared ledger can show that an identified asset was pledged twice. It cannot prove that the asset exists or that its data is accurate.
- (7) Why Boards Underprice Succession Risk
A succession plan is not the same as readiness. Markets discover the difference when a leadership break forces the issue.
- (6) The Governance Cost of Diversification
Diversification can create value, but every added business raises the burden on capital allocation, accountability, and management attention.
- (5) Return-to-Office Mandates Are About More Than Productivity
Blanket office mandates make more sense as governance decisions about control, bargaining power, and property exposure than as productivity policy.
- (4) Consumer Duty Is Becoming a Funding Discipline
Fair-value assessments, outcomes monitoring, and board attestations turn conduct governance into evidence that capital providers can underwrite.
- (3) Why Boards Overweight Strategy and Underweight Execution Risk
Strategy arrives as a paper and a decision. Execution risk builds between meetings, inside controls, systems, vendors, and unresolved dependencies.
- (2) What Venture Equity Actually Costs
Equity creates no monthly payment, which makes it easy to misprice. Its cost arrives later through ownership, control, and return expectations.
- (1) Europe's AI Sovereignty Depends on Its Capital Markets
Europe has the savings, research base, and ambition to build frontier AI. Its capital markets still struggle to fund the scale.