Why Africa Must Fund Its Own Energy Future — Dr Herta von Stiegel

Herta, just tell me a little bit about your

journey into the investment industry.

This is a question I like to ask each of my guests.

I'm kind of curious to hear where have you been prior to Audio Capital? Of course.

I wanted to be a lawyer from the time I was two feet tall.

And that's a whole other story for a different podcast.

So I trained as a

lawyer

in the States.

I'm a member of the Michigan and New York bars and just enjoyed the practice of law in mergers and acquisitions and international tax and decided that I wanted to have more control over my life.

And

so In New York, I moved from a reputable law firm to Citibank, initially a senior tax counsel for Europe and global markets.

And then I really wanted to run a business and have proper P&L exposure and so forth.

So I transferred from my role as tax counsel to actually running the financial business.

structuring business, structured finance business.

So over the years, during my 17 years in banking, I've had leading roles at Citibank, J.P. Morgan, AIG in London and New York, and always focused on what else can we add to the equation.

If someone else is doing a great job, let them get on with it.

But

where are the niches in the market? Where are the openings, if you will? And how can we capitalize on those? So really in London at AIG, for example, I was leading a structured finance business for corporates, for the likes of Diageo, AstraZeneca, Galexo, SmithKline, et cetera, and really built a substantial, substantial book at AIG.

So that is really how I ended up in AIG.

in finance and investment banking and very much enjoyed it.

I had a great run during my investment banking days.

Yeah, fantastic.