Since 2007 the format and content of investment-auto-motive's web-log has sought to evolve, altering periodically in length and structure so as to provide different perspectives and interpretations of current affairs and specific cases within the automotive investment realm.
Ranging from the delivery of insightful analysis regards the shifting patterns of commercialism, business ownership and strategic interests within the sector itself and complementary 'feed-in' sectors.
Spanning organic enterprise growth, M&A and strategic bloc-buy-ins, to independent analysis of specific companies, the synergistic company portfolios held by asset keen investment holding companies, the market and commercial dynamics of various global-wide geographic regions, and the identification of the near, medium and long-term investment opportunities to be had for hedge funds seeking short-term plays, institutional investors reviewing their stock and bond interests and indeed private equity seeking macro-trend aligned new interests when building new portfolios.
[NB The latter was yesterday exemplified by investment-auto-motives' prompting for PE to review the full market and investment potential of the UK camping sector, with specific long-term interest in the potential for eco-technology transfer between the auto-camping fringes, leisure parks and into mainstream building habitation. The prompt was for involvement by a high profile figure, Deborah Meaden of 'Dragon's Den' TV programme the most obvious choice given her leisure park involvement.
Interestingly, yesterday (06.01.2012) the FT's front page reported that fellow “Dragon” Peter Jones – amongst other bidders - has taken an interest in the 'pre-pack' administration of Blacks Leisure, the outdoor-leisure orientated company, which over-exposed itself to high street clothing retail.
As noted, unlike competitor bidders, Jones has no similar retail store group into which Blacks can be naturally integrated, thus it is hoped that if successful he is able to 'reverse integrate' Blacks Leisure into other areas of the camping based mini-economy].
However, the prime intent of this post is to state that the future web-log posts throughout 2012 will take a different tack to those preceding. 2010 and 2011 presented what by web-log standards were 'heavyweight' dissections of trends (macro and micro), regional or sector-specific vehicle markets and the players therein; both within the sector and those investor parties that seek value and growth extraction from the sector worldwide.
The investment-auto-motive posts of 2012 will still seek to have a similar breadth and depth, across the world and across the myriad of sub-sectors; but instead such heavyweight dissection – often running to thousands of words, which to the reader is time-consuming - the 2012 aim will be to provide comment which is lighter, viewed as more easily accessible, though by typical web-log standards maintains much needed gravitas regards subject understanding, opinion forming and conclusion.
Critically as stated previously, investment-auto-motives will continue to meld the 'micro' aspects of automotive investment with the 'macro', so as to concentrate the 3 vital aspects of sector and company fundamentals, regional and global capital market dynamics and investor sentiment conditions.
Even though 2012 appears fragile for much of the world there will undoubtedly be success stories therein. The investment ethos remains: to ascertain, track and measure those rising opportunities.
