Judith Aidoo (Investing in Africa)

Judith Aidoo [on the left] with a friend

Judith Aidoo is a private investor, and Chief Executive of both Caswell Communications, Inc., a radio broadcast company based in Charleston, SC (the 85th largest city in the US), and The Aidoo Group Ltd., a Wall Street based merchant bank founded in 1991, and its African regional affiliate, Capital Alliance Company Ltd., with representative offices in Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa. She began her career as an investment banker in 1987 with Goldman, Sachs & Co., where she specialized in structured finance and asset securitization. Upon leaving Goldman, she started her own firm to both advise and invest in technology; telecommunications and media; real estate; and financial services. Her clients have included sovereign governments, global corporations and large institutional investors.

For one commercial bank, Ms. Aidoo developed and managed an innovative securitization program that raised $500 million to refinance dollar-denominated trade loans of large exporters in 22 African countries. This deal was historic in its structure and it received the highest possible short-term credit rating from Standard & Poor's (A1+) and Fitch Investor Service (F1+). More recently, Judith was responsible for identifying and executing mergers and acquisitions in certain emerging markets for Titan Wireless, Inc., a subsidiary of Titan Corporation, the NYSE listed technology company (ticker: TTN).

Ms. Aidoo has been honored for her business accomplishments as a former board member of WNYC, the City of New York's public radio station group chaired by Mrs. Billie Tisch; a member of President Clinton's Transition Team, responsible for covering the Federal Reserve System of the US, and as a member of his U.S. Trade Advisory Committee chaired by the US Trade Representative at the time, Ms. Charlene Barshefsky; a member of the US-South Africa Business Development Committee co-chaired by the US Secretary of Commerce; and was nominated to be a member of the 2001 class of Henry Crown Fellows at the Aspen Institute.

Ms. Aidoo is currently a member of the Dean of Rutgers College Advisory Board, and an investor and board member of Capital Alliance Co., a merchant bank and member of the Ghana Stock Exchange, with representative offices throughout sub-Saharan Africa; Caswell Communications, Inc., the operator of WPAL-FM (100.9 FM) and joint operator of WZJY (1480 AM) in Charleston, SC; and the Africa Financing Review, of which she is the publisher. Judith graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with high honors from Rutgers College in 1984 and from Harvard Law School in 1987. She has been a television contributor for MSNBC and CNN, and has been featured and quoted in major business publications on investment matters including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Financial Times and Black Enterprise. She also taught a summer course on investing in emerging markets at the International Business Institute at the University of Vermont. [Credit: http://www.saybl.com/speakers.html]