Hilt Tatum IV is the founder, CEO, and president of iPoint Capital Partners, a Panama-based investment firm active in markets throughout Europe, Asia, South and Central America, and the Caribbean. Hilt Tatum IV directs the firm’s investments in the group private equity and venture capital spheres, focusing on a wide range of sectors including global real estate.

According to a report compiled by commercial real estate firm CBRE, the global real estate market is poised to receive a huge influx of investments in 2016. The 2016 edition of the company’s annual Global Investor Intentions Survey reveals that investors around the world plan to deploy approximately $1.16 trillion in real estate investments over the coming year. This would reflect a year-over-year capital flow increase ranging between 3 and 6 percent. Survey responses suggest that 30 percent of these property investments will occur in the office sector. Commercial retail comprises the second-most favored asset type, and industrial and logistics tied with multifamily properties for third place.

CBRE surveyed 1,250 of the world’s leading property investors to compile their 2016 projections. Of these respondents, 82 percent indicated that their real estate investment activity would either increase or stay the same compared to 2015. This is down slightly from 2015, when 86 percent of respondents planned to increase or stabilize their real estate investments, and from 2014, when 93 percent showed the same optimism. Rather than implying a change in the performance of the real estate market, this small decline likely reflects growing investor caution regarding pricing, interest rates, and equity volatility.

As president and CEO of iPoint Capital Partners in Panama City, Hilt Tatum IV closely follows economic trends in Panama. Hilt Tatum IV has served in this position for more than eight years, during which time he has established a presence for the group across Central and South America as well as in Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean.

As the expansion of the Panama canal continues, authorities have begun to speculate that the country's economy may expand by up to 7 percent each year for the coming five years. Experts attribute this growth largely to the influx of trading companies from North America, Europe, and Asia, who see the larger capacity for the canal as an opportunity to establish new trade routes. The newly expanded canal, doubled in capacity, will be able to carry vessels of up to 13,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU's), as compared to its current capacity for 5,000 TEU vessels.

Along with its anticipated availability for larger loads, the expansion of the canal also has already made Panama the fastest-growing economy in Latin America. Thus far, the financial services and real estate sectors have driven much of this growth, but experts anticipate a surge in the logistics industry when the new canal locks become operational in 2016. Construction, mining, and quarrying have expanded by more than 11 percent in the second quarter of 2014, while fishing grew by an unexpectedly high 50 percent. Predictions for late 2014 data and upcoming 2015 activity currently hover around 6.5 percent.

A co-founder of the Panama City, Panama, private equity, venture capital, and asset management firm iPoint Capital Partners, Hilt Tatum IV serves the investment group as president and CEO. Outside of his professional responsibilities, Hilt Tatum IV supports nonprofit aid organizations that provide relief to those in need in Panama and other countries in the region. Thanks to the generous contributions of donors like Hilt Tatum, the American Red Cross is able to assist those in Panama and other Latin American and Caribbean nations through disaster risk-reduction projects and the Resilience in the Americas (RITA) program.

Working with local Red Cross affiliates in Panama, Colombia, Paraguay, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and El Salvador, the American Red Cross began Latin America-based disaster risk-reduction initiatives in 2011 to safeguard local communities that are inadequately equipped to contend with natural disasters that regularly strike the region. With the goal of impacting more than 176,300 people in at-risk areas throughout the six countries, the American Red Cross has developed community-based education programs and has trained local Red Cross staff and volunteers to teach residents disaster-preparedness best practices, including earthquake survival methods, basic first-aid, and the importance of keeping an emergency response kit in the home. The American Red Cross has also supported infrastructural improvements, such as the installation of public address or very high frequency radio systems that can save lives by alerting citizens of an imminent disaster, allowing them to evacuate before it arrives.

RITA is a pilot program launched by the American Red Cross in 10 Latin American and Caribbean countries, including Panama, Guyana, Belize, the Bahamas, and Nicaragua. It is intended to benefit 3,500 people and enhance the resilience of 126 communities across these nations through a risk assessment process wherein community members themselves will identify locally available means they can develop to address pressing needs and secure against vulnerabilities. From the results of this pilot, the American Red Cross and local affiliates hope to develop tools and training manuals to model community resilience programs that can be applied in other areas of the world.