Gerry Sweeney FEb 0509

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It is an honor to be associated with the GIC and the CFA Society of Philadelphia. Also, it is an honor and a pleasure to be associated with the panelists. Every time I turn around on Bloomberg T.V., I see Sean Egan discussing small, inconsequential companies like GE and Moody’s ratings of the companies. So, he is taking on some rather large questions and thinking outside the box and questioning some standards which our industry probably needs in these times. Also, Mr. Friedman—I have been reading his material for quite a long time. It certainly provides a better understanding of the subtle and not so subtle geopolitical moves that we see throughout the world and really sheds some light on material that you do not necessarily see in the general media. So, I would definitely recommend checking out his book which I have not read, but I definitely look at his website. I am going talk a little about Aqua Terra Asset Management. We are an institutional investment firm that invests in public equities of companies with exposure to the global water complex, some other natural resources, and ancillary environmental companies. We manage money for high net worth individuals and institutions, generally through a separately managed account process. Aqua Terra is a subsidiary of Boenning & Scattergood. Boenning is a 94 year old broker/dealer investment bank, headquartered in West Conshohocken. It has around 175 employees. We have a lot of exposure to the water process. We have an investment banking group that specializes in it, and we have some equity research in sales, on the sales side that specializes in it. It is a very risky birth place. We have been around a long time. As our CEO and chairman, Harold Scattergood, said recently: we made money in 2008, we are going to make money in 2009, and we are going to be here for another 94 years, managing of risk and what we view as a risk as our clients and performing a good service for them. If we provide that service, we will be around for a long time. What I am going to do is start off with painting a rather broad brush of what I deem as the water cycle in the investment process and then get into a little more bit more detail of some opportunities further on in the presentation. At the top level, water is a closed-loop system. There is no more, no less water than a billion years ago. It is just being recycled through the hydrological system. Either it is in the ground, in ground water, streams, rivers, vapor, rain—and of all this water, this represents less than 1 percent of all the water on the globe. About 3 percent of the world’s water is fresh, but the majority is locked in polarized caps. The paradox of water is that even though there is a lot of it, there is a very finite amount of fresh water available for consumption. This makes it a classic commodity—it is finite, it is unequal allocation, it is everywhere you do not need it be, and you are moving to places where it is not. Southwest United States is an example—one river feeds seven states. It is a huge issue in terms of water quality and the amount of water available. Above all else, it is a quality and quantity


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