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that ' s why I shied away from other forms of investing in other parts of my career . My initial career was sitting in front of screen looking at two numbers , reshuffling the pack , going home and hoping that the number wasn ’ t red at the end of the day ,” he says .
Now almost two decades old , Life Pure Water is carbon neutral , only uses recycled plastics , has an organic only catchment area , doesn ’ t export , and gives away 10 times the amount of water that it sells to the third world . However , when asked about the motives behind Life Pure Water , Papanichola is reluctant to call the firm charitable , instead insisting that the success of the charitable causes lies in its commercial performance . Something he ’ s
“ I cut my teeth in investment trust arbitrage and fund reconstructions .”
taken forward into his current role at Bluebell Capital Partners .
“ The idea of Life Water is not to be a solely charitable vehicle , but actually quite the opposite . The idea is that ethical companies can be responsible but they can also be commercial . The nature of the commercial side of that business is actually complementary to the charitable side . The more money the business makes , the more money the charity makes ,” he explains .
Papanichola then re-joined the industry in 2007 for a brief stint on Barclays ’ proprietary trading desk before serving in a series of head of trading roles at hedge funds Perry Capital , Centaurus Capital and P Squared Asset Management .
Bluebell Capital Partners It was in 2019 that Papanichola found Bluebell Capital Partners , a start-up hedge fund focused on activist investment tucked away in the back streets behind Sloane Square . The firm has run interventional campaigns involving the likes of Lufthansa , Hugo Boss , Mediobanca , Vestas , Danone , GlaxoSmithKline , Glencore , Saint-Gobain , Solvay , Richemont , BlackRock , Bayer and Worldline . And those are just the public ones .
Set up by industry stalwarts Giuseppe Bivona , and Marco Taricco , Bluebell Capital Partners
“ The core foundation of trading isn ' t about buying and selling .”
40 // TheTRADE // Q1 2024