Business Principles

The company does not act on every opportunity available to it. A project or a loan is assessed against what is already owned and already committed. When the terms required to make something work are not available, the answer is no, and it does not become yes later in the process.

Positions are sized on the assumption that conditions will not always be favorable. Contingency is held. Concentration is reviewed. Insurance is confirmed rather than assumed. Most of the risk work is attention to ordinary things: cost overruns, delay, a gap in coverage, a document that was never quite finished, a property left too long without attention.

Assets are held with the expectation of keeping them. Maintenance is scheduled and funded. It is not deferred to a later owner, and the condition of a property is documented. Records and documentation get the same treatment.

Where a working relationship with counsel, accountants, a contractor or a service provider holds up, it is kept and not re-tendered on price each time. Terms agreed are met, including the inconvenient ones.

Responsibility for each activity sits with the entity that carries it on. Operating entities are expected to report a problem when it appears, not at the next scheduled report.

Information about counterparties, transactions, borrowers, tenants and properties is treated as confidential and is not discussed outside the matter it belongs to. The same standard applies to information others provide to Lanterna.

Confidentiality is not a reason to withhold information the company is obliged to provide.