Miranda Partners and Lantern Comitas announce joint venture

Miranda Partners and Lantern Comitas, leading Latin American and African strategic consultancies, are delighted to announce a Joint Venture spanning Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, Digital Media, Research, and ESG in Latin America and Africa. The new entity, Miranda Lantern, will focus on supporting multinationals operating on both continents: Latin American companies investing in Africa, and African businesses entering Latin America.

Miranda Partners, based in Mexico City, has quickly become a leader in consulting to Mexico-focused companies on communication and research since its founding four years ago and is now expanding into the rest of Latin America. It currently has about 50 clients, most of whom are listed as Mexican and Latin American companies, multinationals, and investment funds. Miranda Partners recently opened an office in Colombia, where it already works with a handful of new clients, mainly Tech startups.

Lantern Comitas is based in London and Nairobi and offers a wide range of services, including media relations,  strategic communications, government relations, ESG consulting, and more. It serves the private sector, international corporations and NGOs in various sectors in Africa, the UK, and the US, and its consultants and associates have decades of experience serving enterprises that operate in Africa or are African owned.

Lantern was founded in 2020 by Aidan Hartley and Ben Chalmers Rudd. Kenya-born Aidan is a bestselling author and journalist with a 33-year career spanning five continents working for Reuters, the Financial Times, British television and other media. Ben has been a producer at ITV News, Chief Speech writer at the UK Ministry of Defense, Senior Policy Advisor in the UK Government Cabinet Office, and a communications leader at Barclays Bank, Experian, and a number of technology companies. Joining them as Senior Consultants are Terryanne Chebet, who has over 15 years of experience as a financial news anchor, business news editor, and TV host of leading business TV shows in Africa covering finance and Jackeline Walumbe, a former journalist at the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation and the Presidential Press Service.

Miranda Partners was founded by Damian Fraser, former UBS Mexico Country Head, a former FT Mexico journalist, and a resident of Mexico for the past 30 years. Other partners include Marimar Torreblanca, former Senior Equity Analyst at UBS and head of Miranda ESG; Martin Lara, head of Miranda Global Research; Ana Maria Ybarra, a partner in Miranda Investor Relations, among others. 

Aidan commented "We are pleased to be joining forces with Miranda Partners in cross regional African-Latin American business," said Aidan. "In many ways, Africa is following in Latin America's footsteps in its development, and we see  opportunities for collaboration across sectors, including mining, fintech, agribusiness, B2B and consumer sectors, where both regions are critical to the aspirations of global companies."

"We believe that locally-led Strategic Consulting firms like Miranda and Lantern Comitas can often best serve clients operating in their respective regions, offering deep local insights and knowledge, combined with international know-how. We tremendously admire the Africa-based team Lantern Comitas has put together, which is why we chose them as our partner in Africa." said Damian Fraser of Miranda Partners.