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The Lastarria Group

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The Lastarria Private Equity project

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Page 1: The Lastarria Group
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table of contents

Overview 3

For Starters 3

Emerging Markets, Emerging Technologies 3

Private Equity is Broken 3

Lastarria’s Solution 4

Where We Operate 6

Our Economic Views 8

Team 10

Targeted Assets 16

Energy 16

Agriculture 18

Trends 18

Lastarria AgriSecurity 19

Mining & Natural Resources 20

Real Estate 20

Technology 20

The Dealbook 21

Compensation 21

Service Providers 22

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Overview

For StartersWe think finance is too pretentious, and we aim to change at least our little corner of it. Wealth creation and successful business operations are predicated on the basic principals of hard work, thrift, efficiency, constant innovation, and a generous dose of entrepreneurial true grit. Our humble approach to investing may not win us much recognition in many high finance trade journals, but we hope it earns us a good reputation with our financial partners.

Emerging Markets, Emerging Technologies

Lastarria operates as a “virtual private equity fund,” targeting quality investment opportunities primarily in Energy, Agriculture, Mining & Natural Resources, and Real Estate in Latin America. In addition, we work with a select number of technology innovators in our targeted industries to bring cutting edge research and tools to our portfolio projects.

Private Equity is BrokenInvesting outside of one’s home market can be intimidating, and with emerging market public equities trading at increasingly high valuations, the options for finding value are diminishing. Private equity has historically been the principal alternative to public markets, but with many funds managing legacy assets trying to meet high water marks established before the financial crisis, rolling over debt on old LBOs, and principally operating from offices in the US and Western Europe, traditional private equity is ill-equipped to deliver quality emerging markets assets to investors.

The reputation of the old private equity model has been irreparably damaged by the financial crisis, which exposed the grave misalignment of interests inherent in the 2 & 20 system, the lack of transparency in private equity fund structures, and the absurdity of bankers trying to manage portfolios of diverse operating companies.

Lastarria pursues a different approach to selecting, buying, managing, and exiting private equity assets.

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Lastarria’s Solution

1. We Don’t Manage a Fund

We don’t ask our investors to invest in a fund structure that we then control. We started to do this, thinking we could make improvements within the traditional model, but the more we talked to potential investors, the more we realized the acute need for a radically different approach. As a result, we bring our prospective investments to investors on a deal-by-deal basis, exposing each deal to the granular scrutiny and due diligence of many investors rather than three people who arbitrarily comprise an internal investment committee.

Call it “crowdsourcing” for investing. We think this approach will help us come up with a more comprehensive list of possible trouble spots before we place a single dollar of capital, aiding us in the ongoing management of the assets we purchase.

2. We Don’t Charge Annual Management Fees

Unlike many private equity managers, we are principally entrepreneurs, not bankers, and are accustomed to delaying compensation. By maintaining only a minimal internal infrastructure and by operating without junior level analysts and support staff, we do not face the same constraints as most private equity managers. This allows us to align our compensation with our investors’ success.

3. We Look for Stable Returns

By focusing on assets in energy, infrastructure, agriculture, natural resources, real estate, and other “real assets,” and by managing them frugally, we look to deliver strong returns to our investors year after year. We look for investments that will continue to yield profits for 10-20 years, not for a quick IPO.

4. We Want an Ongoing Dialogue With Investors

Our investors are full partners in everything we do, not inconveniences to be managed and kept at a distance. We believe in maintaining an ongoing dialogue that is more than just sending quarterly financial statements. Technology allows us to do this with extreme ease and we want to take full advantage of this.

5. We Know What Transparency Really Means

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Transparency has become something of a buzzword in both the financial industry and the regulatory community, but we aren’t sure many people understand what it really means. Transparency is more than just honest financial statements. In our opinion, transparency is:

- Jargon-free communication that doesn’t seek to hide the truth in clever rhetoric

- Simple investment structures that are readily understood and easy to explain- The humble willingness to own up to mistakes or problems as they occur. This

means that if a problem emerges, we will let our investors know and will try our best to solve it. Hiding or ignoring problems will only make them worse. Although it seems like obvious common sense to us, we have all watched as billions of dollars have been squandered by investment managers who betrayed this principle.

6. We Make Decisions On-the-Ground

Lastarria will not bring an investment opportunity to our financial partners if we do not have a solid on-the-ground framework for overseeing the investment. We have spent several years actively cultivating relationships with operating partners and affiliates in Latin America & the Caribbean and are confident in our ability to successfully oversee investments and exits in this region. Any future expansion into other markets will be preceded by a similar length of familiarization and experience.

We operate from our markets, not from an office in New York or London. We believe that the kind of deep relationships necessary to succeed in emerging markets can only be forged by living and working every day with the people who are key to our portfolio’s success, not by jet-setting to quarterly board meetings.

7. We Treat Others as Equals

Many people in finance behave as though there is no way to make money without treating other people with contempt and condescension. We think that mistaken belief is just a thinly veiled excuse for egotism and self-aggrandizement. We strive to treat everybody we interact with as equals, from senior executives to miners and farmers, recognizing that every person is intrinsically of value, regardless of their station in life, and that our common life depends upon each other’s toil.

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Arrogant, selfish people have no place in our organization, as principals, operating partners, service providers, or investors.

Where We Operate

For now we are 100% focused on Latin America & the Caribbean, with some activity is strategic technologies coming out of the United States that we believe support our long-term engagement in our principal operating markets.

Chile

Chile is our primary operating market and where most of our principals are based. We believe that Chile is the best gateway for investing in Latin America and is the benchmark against which the rest of the region’s development ought to be measured. Here are some facts that support our Chile thesis:

GDP: $239 Billion

GDP Growth: 7% (3rd Quarter - 2010)

Unemployment: 8.3% (September 2010)

Investment

Climate:

• #1 Destination for Private Equity & Venture Capital in Latin America (Source: LAVCA)

• #1 “Place to Do Business” in Latin America (Source: Forbes)

• Low corporate tax rate - 19%

Economic

Stability:

• 5th freest economy in the world, ahead of the US (Source: CATO)

• 4th lowest debt/GDP ration in the world (Source: World Bank)

• Highest GDP per capita in Latin America in purchasing power parity (Source: World Bank)

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Political Stability: • Most Peaceful Country in Latin America, measuring crime rates & foreign relations/military policy (Source:

Global Peace Index)

• #1 in Latin America for ethics and accountability in government

(Source: Transparency International)

• Lowest Corruption in Latin America (Source: Corruption Perceptions Index)

Panama, Costa Rica, and Uruguay after Chile are the safest, most stable markets in the region with abundant opportunities in our targeted industries. Because these countries are highly developed by regional standards, returns are likely to be more modest, but there is a substantially lower risk of loss, excellent protection of property rights, and generally free enterprise values that permeate this set of countries.

Peru, Colombia, Honduras and Guatemala have become mature handlers of their economic policies in recent years and are poised for dramatic growth similar to the growth Brazil has undergone in the past decade. Although these markets are a bit trickier to navigate than the countries previously discussed, we have partners on the ground with decades of experience in these markets who are well-equipped and prepared to oversee our efforts there.

Argentina and Ecuador are usually considered dangerous ground for foreign investors, but not altogether off-limits. In our targeted industries, we believe there are tremendous opportunities for careful engagement in these two countries, but we are committed to steering clear of controversial businesses, “strategic” resources, media, and other activities that might be more likely than others to run into political trouble.

Mexico is generally outside of our scope of operation and our network there is rather weak. This, combined with the ongoing violence and disruptions caused by the drug cartels, we do not intend to pursue investment opportunities in the Mexican market in the near-term.

Brazil may be the economic giant of Latin America, but with the linguistic and cultural differences from the region’s other markets, we do not plan to make near-term or medium-term investments in Brazil, though we think an integrated Brazil

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strategy will be essential for the success of our portfolio investments in the other countries nearby and consequently we maintain an active and ever-growing network of contacts and relationships there.

Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Paraguay are, because of their political risk profile, completely off-limits for our activities. We do not believe there are viable long-term or short-term opportunities in these markets that would not be riddled by difficulties stemming from the governments of these countries and we have no intention of investing there until new governments are in place.

Our Economic Views

Lastarria’s team understands the importance of sound macroeconomic thinking to investment decision-making. In general we are mostly adherents to the economic theories of Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. In our view, Hayek’s thesis about the decentralized nature of information applies not only to governments, but to firms as well, and as technology makes highly decentralized decision-making even more feasible, we believe competition in the market place will favor those who do not have rigid hierarchies and impregnable corporate bureaucracies.

Furthermore, we acknowledge the unparalleled importance of demographics in the long-term movements of markets and asset valuations. Demographics drive the vast majority of economics and finance, and understanding these trajectories is vital to making sound investment decisions. The trends we believe are occurring currently are:

1. Rapid increase in the size of the global middle class (Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America), driving up demand for agricultural goods, energy, raw materials, and “experience economy” goods & services, which tend to be heavily reliant on real estate.

2. The aging of Japan and Western Europe, diminishing the workforces in those countries, causing debt deflation, and necessarily reducing their own political and economic influence.

3. Substantive political discontent in the United States, coupled with the continuation of expansionary monetary policy (and thereby the Dollar’s reserve status) is diminishing the ability of the United States to influence foreign business environments, meaning the domestic institutions of emerging markets are even

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more important in the calculation of political risk, as the US’s clout abroad makes it more difficult to effect desirable outcomes through traditional “soft power” channels.

4. Geopolitics are moving toward a world of multi-polarity, making it a requirement that investment management teams are comprised of diverse members from different parts of the world.

5. Latin America, the Islamic World, and Asia (except Japan & China) are the only regions of the world that have stable birth rates and neither an abundant youth population (Africa) nor an overly gray population (Japan, Western Europe, and the non-Hispanic US). China’s One-Child Policy has created not only a gender imbalance, but an age imbalance as well, whose long-term political and economic implications remain unclear.

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TeamSkinner Layne, Founder & Chairman

Mr Layne is the Founder and Chairman of the Lastarria Group. He moved to Santiago, Chile in 2008 to lay the groundwork for Lastarria, and has spent that time building the relationships and first-hand knowledge of the Chilean & Latin American markets.

Prior to founding Lastarria, Mr Layne served as President of Blue Star Equities, Inc., a Dallas-based corporate financial consultancy and capital markets advisory firm. At Blue Star, he was responsible for advising clients on corporate governance and capital structure in advance of planned capital expansion and going public transactions, managing the documentation process between the companies' principals and securities counsel.

Mr Layne has also served as a senior consultant with Hinchcliffe & Co. (2007-2008), the world’s leading Web 2.0 consultancy. He has advised numerous technology strategies ranging from start-up to NASDAQ-traded clients. While at Hinchcliffe & Co. he principally advised clients on internal processes and strategies utilizing best practices in Enterprise Web 2.0 technologies, and assisted in drafting white papers for clients providing such technology in the Enterprise space.

Mr Layne co-founded Nexplore Corp., a technology company, in 2005 based in Dallas that went on to become publicly traded, and at its peak had a market capitalization in excess of US$100 Million. Mr Layne served as Chief Strategy Officer and as a director of the company during its going public transaction and thereafter, gaining first-hand experience with Sarbanes-Oxley and public company corporate governance. He was additionally responsible for liaising between the engineering staff and patent counsel on the construction and maintenance of the company's intellectual property portfolio.

From 2001-2004, Mr Layne served as a senior strategist and advisor to the campaigns of U.S. Senator John Boozman, where in addition to development of grassroots campaigning strategy and the creation of the campaign's position papers, he was actively involved in the fundraising process and as a speechwriter for the candidate. From 2000-2001, Mr Layne served on the State Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Arkansas.

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Mr Layne received his undergraduate education at the University of Arkansas, where as a Chancellor’s Scholar, he triple-majored in Economics, Political Science and Philosophy.

Mr Layne was recently published in Collateral Damage: Global Crash Phase Two, where he wrote alongside Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz, Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson, and former Bank of England Deputy Governor Andrew Large about the 2008 financial crisis and its implications for the future of the global economy.

Diego Belmonte, Managing Principal - Energy

Diego Belmonte serves as a Managing Principal of Lastarria and oversees Lastarria’s energy portfolio. Prior to joining Lastarria, Mr Belmonte was President of Esound Energy, an integrated sustainable investment and boutique consulting company dedicated to capitalizing on the economic, social and ecological potential of renewable energy technologies. With more than 15 years of experience in the Environmental and infrastructure sectors, Mr. Belmonte has structured, managed and closed over $2 billion in renewable energy and infrastructure projects worldwide. Esound grew out of Mr. Belmonte’s background and experience developing renewable energy projects at the intersection of the public and private sectors across the United States, Europe and other emerging international energy markets.

Prior to founding Esound, Mr Belmonte was President and CEO of Fotowatio USA, Inc., the US subsidiary of Fotowatio, one of the leading Spanish promoters of Renewable Energy and a global operator specializing in the generation of solar energy. During Mr Belmonte’s tenure as CEO, Fotowatio USA was purchased by General Electric for €400 Million.

Mr Belmonte spent 10 years of his career with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a multilateral development bank based in Washington DC focused on economic and infrastructure development in Latin America and the Caribbean. At the IDB, he worked worldwide on the financial and technical design, and construction, of public and private renewable energy projects. He has pioneered project structures for sustainable development projects in emerging markets and has been at the forefront of the collaboration between public and private entities for the development and construction of large-scale infrastructure projects.

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Mr Belmonte holds a Master's in Science degree in Environmental Engineering and holds a bachelor degree B.S. Environmental Sciences from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Antonio Manno, Managing Principal & Chief Marketing Officer

Mr Manno has been part of the Lastarria Group since its founding, and has since begin splitting his time between Rome and Santiago, developing Lastarria’s European marketing strategy. Prior to joining Lastarria, Mr Manno spent 5 years in Estonia serving as CEO of Klemmer Invest OU, an investment consultancy company involved in studying and opening the Baltic market for the Italian enterprises.

Prior to founding Klemmer, Mr Manno was started one of the first Internet Service Providers in Italy, founding the first internet service provider in the southern region at the end of 1994. Subsequently, he founded “bid.it Spa” the first auction online company in Italy in the 1999, his company was one the biggest internet company of the new economy era in the Italian market, and was valued at €200 million at its peak.

Previously, Mr Manno was the production manager of the Snia Bpd, the then chemical conglomerate company of the FIAT Group, and served as chief production manager of Fapack Spa, a plastic film manufacturing company. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Bari Polythecnic University in Bari, Italy.

George H. Cadena III, Chief Technology Officer

Located full-time in Chile, Mr Cadena joins Lastarria’s senior management team as CTO with an impressive record in academia, technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and engineering consulting. Prior to Lastarria, Mr Cadena was leading engineering implementation at Aeterna Sol, a solar technology start-up focused on delivering artificial intelligence to dual-axis tracking systems for photovoltaic solar panels. Through Aeterna Sol, Mr Cadena was in the first group of foreign entrepreneurs invited to Santiago, Chile under the Chilean government’s “Start-Up Chile” program, and through the program Mr Cadena developed extensive relationships in Chile’s mining & energy industries.

Prior to Aeterna, Mr Cadena was a Senior Associate at Exponent, one of the leading global engineering consultancies, where he worked in the Electrical &

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Semiconductors Practice. During his time with Exponent, Mr Cadena worked on an eighteen month engagement with the United States Army, where he helped develop a ground penetrating radar system that implemented image processing algorithms to automatically detect land mines. After completing the system design, he was deployed to Afghanistan with the new technology and was responsible for assisting Army personnel in the implementation of the technology, training operators, responding to system failures, and creating ad hoc solutions for difficulties encountered in the hostile conditions of the technology’s operating environment. His performance and leadership was essential to the project’s success, which led to several multi-million dollar contracts and the acceptance of the system by the Joint IED Defeat Organization to develop Version 2.0. The system was also accepted and implemented by the militaries of multiple countries.

Mr Cadena holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. During his studies, he was a recipient of the Bell Labs Graduate Research Fellowship, the AT&T Labs Graduate Research Fellowship, the Betty & Gordon Moore Minority Fellowship, and received Georgia Tech’s award for most outstanding undergraduate research.

Oscar M. Salgado, Chief Agricultural Engineer

Mr Salgado brings 25 years of experience in agriculture/agribusiness engineering, consulting, and management to the Lastarria team. Prior to joining Lastarria, Mr Salgado served as the Procurement and Technical Manager for South America, North Africa/Middle East, and India at Origin Fruit Direct and is a partner in Agrisur Ltda., an agribusiness consulting firm. He additionally served as a consultant for AGS/ProKambium.

Previously, Mr Salgado was the Marketing & Procurement Manager at Dofad/Dotra in Egypt, and was a partner in YTIngeneria, where he was the Marketing Manager and oversaw the design and manufacture of high-tech agricultural devices. Prior to that, he was the Deputy Executive Director for Agricultural Services at the Horticultural Export Improvement Association, a project financed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Egypt.

Mr Salgado has consulted for a number of major agribusiness companies, including GESEX Ltda, Chilgrapes Ltda, PROEM Ltda, PANPACIFIC Ltda, Proquivi Ltda, Mooigezicht Estate, Seven Seas Pty, and the Brazil Table Grape Project. He also served for three years as the Agricultural Operational Manager for

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Del Monte Fresh Produce in South Africa. Mr Salgado began his career overseeing table grape and other fresh fruit operations at one of Chile’s largest agribusiness companies, UTC S.A. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Science and a Graduate Degree in Agricultural Engineering from the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaiso, Chile and an International MBA with a dissertation in Environmental Engineering from the Anglia Business School and Silsoe Research Institute in the United Kingdom.

David V. Thomas OBE, Independent Director

Mr Thomas joins Lastarria as an independent, non-executive director, after a more than 30 year career at Lloyds TSB. From 1990-1992, Mr Thomas served as Chief executive of the French corporate banking, private banking, and asset management subsidiaries of Lloyds Bank Group as head of Lloyds Bank SA, France. From 1992-2000 he served as chief executive of the Lloyds TSB group of companies in Brazil, where he was responsible for transforming underperforming personal and commercial banking business, establishing Lloyds Asset Management SA which grew to £1.5 billion in assets under management in 5 years. Additionally, he managed the Lloyds operation through the critical period of monetary reform in 1994 that ended in hyper-inflation in Brazil.

From 2000-2007, Mr. Thomas served as International Banking Director of Lloyds in London, where he served as a member of the executive committee of the International division of the bank, which has operations in 20 countries. He chaired the Assets and Liabilities Committee and was a member of the Group Country Risk Panel. From 2000-2003 in this position he led the bank’s Latin American operations, with more than 4,500 staff in nine countries and revenues exceeding £250 million. Mr. Thomas steered the group through the financial crisis in Argentina in the early 2000s, and managed the complex and financially successful strategic exit from the region.

Mr. Thomas currently serves as a Director of several companies and funds, including UBA Capital Europe as well as serving as Chairman of three Luxembourg-registered funds sponsored by Lloyds TSB. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Brazilian Chamber of Commerce in Great Britain, a member of the Board of Governors of the English-Speaking Union, and as Chairman of the Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Council.

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Ron Resnick, Independent Director

Mr Resnick joins Lastarria as an independent, non-executive director, after an extensive financial and legal career including as Managing Partner and the Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel of Highbridge Capital Management, an international alternative investment firm with over $21 billion in assets under management.

At Highbridge, Mr Resnick was responsible for all hedge fund, investment adviser and broker-dealer legal and regulatory matters, including those arising from convertible bond arbitrage, event-driven/relative value investing, risk arbitrage, PIPEs, private lending, distressed and special situation investments, options and commodities transactions, total return swaps and credit default swaps. He also handled, responded to and resolved all regulatory investigations, audits, examinations and inquiries. Mr Resnick also hired all legal, regulatory and compliance personnel for Highbridge’s offices worldwide.

At Highbridge Mr Resnick organized and launched over twenty private hedge funds and three registered investment advisers; was the original project manager for the industry’s first open-end mutual fund trading a proprietary hedge fund market-neutral statistical arbitrage strategy; structured Highbridge’s nascent portable alpha funds; and played a key role in negotiating the sale of Highbridge to JPMorgan Asset Management Holdings, Inc. in December 2004.

Mr Resnick has advised on, among other matters, private placements, the QIB and Rule 144 provisions of the Securities Act of 1933, the disclosure and reporting provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including Section 13 and Section 16; the Investment Company Act of 1940; the Investment Advisers Act of 1940; the Commodity Exchange Act of 1974; and the regulations and rules of the NASD, the NFA, the U.K. Financial Services Authority, the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority, the H.K. Securities and Futures Commission and The Irish Stock Exchange.

Prior to joining Highbridge, Mr Resnick was an Associate in the Commodities, Futures and Options Group at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Mr Resnick received a JD from The University of Chicago Law School in 1988.

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Targeted Assets

Energy

Lastarria is actively sourcing and vetting investment opportunities in both traditional and renewable energy, especially in the power generation in Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Central America. The rapid economic growth of these markets has put substantial strain on the electricity grids powering them and urgent investment is needed to support continued growth.

We target turnkey pre-construction energy projects, post-construction projects, and in limited cases, greenfield developments with particularly attractive features. In any energy project we pay particular attention to:

- Off-taking agreements / Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) or Unique Spot Market Arrangements in limited cases

- Securing an experienced EPC and O&M provider

- Substation/Interconnection Point distance from the project

- Identifying the technology best suited for the particular site

- Minimizing construction timeframes and contingency planning

- Independently verifying engineering plans, measurements, and other data that underpin key assumptions of the project

- With renewable energy projects, we are currently working with several established players in the European carbon credit market (CERs) to maximize the returns from each project

Given current demand for energy, especially in Chile, we look for projects that can be quickly brought to market in hybrid PPA/Spot Rate scenarios that guarantee investors a base return while taking advantage of the tremendous short-term potential upside in the spot market.

Within the energy sector, we have developed relationships with two principal providers of independent technical services:

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KEMA www.kema.com

A global, leading authority in energy consulting and testing & certification, active throughout the entire energy value-chain – in a world of increasing demand for energy, KEMA has a major role to play in ensuring the availability, reliability, sustainability and profitability of energy and related products and processes. KEMA combines unique expertise and facilities, in order to add value to our customers in the field of risk, performance and quality management.

With more than 1,600 people and offices and representatives in more than  20 countries around the globe, we are committed to offering reliable, sustainable and practical solutions. We understand and recognize the technical consequences of a business decision, as well as the business consequences of a technical decision.

Natural Power www.naturalpower.com

The Natural Power Group is an independent renewable energy consultancy with over 14 years of experience. They provide practical consulting, management services, and product innovations across the wind, marine, biomass, and solar sectors.

Employing over 220 people worldwide, Natural Power has worked on more than 25GW of client projects across Europe and the Americas, whilst also providing extensive due diligence services on portfolios and projects on behalf of major lenders, investors and financial institutions. The group includes offshore experts SeaRoc, Turkish based consultancy re-consult and has a number of strategic relationships and framework agreements with other parties. Natural Power’s offices and local expertise can be found across multiple sites in the UK, France, Chile, Canada and the US. The range and depth of their echnical and project skills, tools and experience, both onshore and offshore, is unique within renewable energy consulting.

Natural Power is a pioneer in bringing new technologies, methodologies and best practices to the forefront of the industry in order to tackle clients' most complex and challenging issues. Their project management experience allows them to be both truly practical and innovative consultants.

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Agriculture

Lastarria is currently targeting agriculture assets that include fallow farmland, productive farmland, aquaculture operations, and value-add agribusiness processing operations. There are currently several trends that make agriculture investing one of the safest categories of assets in the world.

Trends

1. The emerging global middle class is characterized by more than 500 million people coming out of poverty in the last 20 years, meaning a rapid increase in demand for non-staple foods. The next 20 years will witness at least as much growth in the global middle class if not more.

2. Overall population growth will continue to put substantial pressure on staple food crops. By 2050 the world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion, up from 6.8 billion today.

3. Expansionary monetary policy in the United States is causing global inflationary pressures in food and other commodities.

4. The Middle East & North Africa cannot domestically cultivate sufficient quantities of agricultural products and actively seeking arable land in foreign markets to bolster their food security, which is considered an increasingly important part of maintaining political stability.

5. Soil is eroding worldwide at catastrophic rates due to industrialized farming practices. Some key statistics to consider:

- 75 billion tonnes of soil is lost annually (Source: Carbon Farming Conference)

- 80% of the world’s farming land is moderately or severely eroded (Same Source)

- In China, soil is being lost 57 times faster than it can be replaced through natural processes; in Europe 17 times; in America 10 times(Source: University of Sydney)

- If current trends continue, the world’s stock of fertile soil will be exhausted in 60 years(Same Source)

6. Skyrocketing oil prices and the approach toward Peak Oil expose the long-kept secret of the Energy-Agriculture ponzi scheme that predicated the geometric

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increase in food production during the second half of the 20th Century. Massive inputs of fossil fuels into industrialized farming, both for energy and for fertilizer, are the primary reason for the relative abundance of food in the past 50 years. As the new economic equation makes this less sustainable, agricultural production will begin to falter.

7. Legal mandates and energy prices in general have driven the replacement of food-producing land with crops utilized in the production of biofuels. Even so-called 2nd generation biofuels that are derived from non-food plants compete with food by occupying agricultural land that would have otherwise produced food.

Lastarria AgriSecurity

For these reasons, Lastarria’s efforts in agriculture are pursued under the banner of what we call “AgriSecurity,” bringing innovative thinking and management to agricultural assets, focusing on long-term sustainability and productivity, and seeking to be unique in our approach to this asset class. Lastarria’s AgriSecurity efforts are characterized by:

1. Deployment of Permaculture practices to ensure sustainability, prevent soil erosion, enhance productivity, and diminish the need for artificial fertilizers.

2. Use of Biochar or “Terra Preta” to increase soil fertility while simultaneously sequestering carbon from the atmosphere and substantially increasing profit margins selling carbon credits to the European Carbon Credit market.

3. Reduction of energy inputs into farming, focusing on highly skilled “artisan” farm labor to create more predictable cost structures and help decrease unemployment.

4. Contribution to and utilization of “Open Ecology” tools and machinery, reducing not only the cost of machinery, but increasing the ability of labor to replace parts and minimize downtime, as well as creating independence from price fluctuations in the industrial market for capital goods that tends to respond to commodity prices.

5. Creation of resilient communities based around our farming operations to ensure long-term sustainability and reduce external shocks to our productive capabilities.

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Mining & Natural Resources

Lastarria is actively engaged in sourcing and vetting numerous natural resources projects in Latin America, particularly in Chile and Peru. We believe in the long-term growth in the market for silver, gold, copper, iron ore, and rare earth minerals and have developed relationships with leading independent mining operators to oversee the exploitation of the assets Lastarria acquires in the region.

Real Estate

Developing economies encounter numerous growing pains during their ascent, many of which are associated with rapidly changing consumer preferences. With the emergence of a stronger middle class, the types of product offerings demanded by consumers evolves with increased purchasing power. Residential and commercial real estate have “legacy” issues, where old properties no longer sufficiently serve the needs of consumers. Furthermore traditional real estate developers in emerging markets often fail to see the underlying demand shift of new consumer preferences, mistakenly thinking that consumers simply demand more of what they have been buying rather than demanding something new altogether.

Lastarria’s approach within this context is to make selective investments in residential and commercial real estate with unique value propositions, offering more modern options for consumers that are ahead of the curve rather than behind it. Specifically, we see tremendous potential for the re-development of certain “comunas” within Santiago, the further development of the tourist town of La Serena, Puerto Varas/Puerto Montt in Southern Chile, and the outlying areas of the costal twin cities Valparaiso & Viña del Mar.

Technology

New technology is an essential component of an broad-based investment strategy, and Lastarria seeks to implement the latest technologies across our investment portfolio as yet another way to set ourselves apart from our competitors in the region. This means that we will also engage with selective technology developers to assist with their own capital needs, whose technology we believe adds strategic value to our other operations.

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The DealbookLastarria’s marketing approach with investors is direct and straight-forward. We will develop 1-page summaries for each of our deals which will be collected into an ever-changing “Dealbook” that we will share with each of our investors. If there is serious interest in one or more deals, we will work through the due diligence process with our investors until they are comfortable with the decision to close, and then we will take the lead in the oversight and administration of the deals while always involving investors as much or as little as they desire.

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Service ProvidersBaker Botts - U.S. & International Legal Counsel www.bakerbotts.comBaker Botts is a full-service, leading international law firm with a more than 170 year history and offices around the world. The firm is an international leader in the energy & natural resources sector, both for oil & gas and alternative energy. Who’s Who Legal designated Baker Botts as the Law Firm of the Year for Oil and Gas for five out of the last six years, and the firm has consistently earned numerous other awards, such as Energy Projects Law Firm of the Year by Chambers USA and Deal of the Year by Project Finance & Energy Risk.

Ogier - Cayman Legal Counsel www.ogier.comOgier is one of the largest offshore law firms in the world and is consistently recognized for excellence by a number of international organizations, including 2010 Offshore Law Firm of the Year by Chambers Europe, 2010 Channel Islands Law Firm of the Year by PLC Which Lawyer?, 2009 Deal of the Year by Asian-Counsel, 2009 Offshore Law Firm of the Year by The British Legal Awards, 2009 Top Offshore Law Firm by Alpha Awards, Overall Private Funds Law Firm of the Year by ACQ Global Awards, International Law Firm of the Year by Citywealth Magic Circle Awards, and numerous others.

Barros & Errazuriz Abogados - Chilean Legal Counsel www.bye.clBarros & Errazuriz is one of the leading corporate law firms in Chile and has represented the interests of numerous foreign investment funds in the country.

Butterfield Fulcrum Group - Third Party Administrator www.bfgl.comButterfield Fulcrum is a top 5 independent administrator with 20 years of experience servicing the alternative investment industry. Headquartered in Bermuda, they have offices in nine countries and service over 800 funds and have over US$70 Billion in assets under administration.

KPMG - External Auditors www.kpmg.kyKPMG in the Cayman Islands is one of the leading professional services firms in the jurisdiction with over 200 employees from 25 countries and 12 partners delivering audit, tax, and advisory services to clients worldwide.