Insanitary Media Behavior

Sheryl Sandberg ideals are driving a dizzying expansion of facebook

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 04:43:00 +0000

Sheryl Sandberg turns 40 this summer and has more reason than most to feel conscious of the milestone. Her colleagues at Facebook, where she is chief operating officer, are all bright young techies, and her boss, Mark Zuckerberg, is only 25.

"I remember before the internet…," Sandberg says on a visit to the firm's modest London office in Soho Square. "When you say that in our headquarters, everyone kinda looks at you like, 'Did they have cars?'"

Not that Sandberg has lost any of the fire of youth: bright and vivacious, the former Google executive bubbles with the kind of evangelical enthusiasm you might expect from someone running what has become the world's leading social networking site, pulling away from rivals such as MySpace, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, and the AOL-owned Bebo.

And while she plays down any suggestions of triumphalism, she does not hold back when it comes to the Californian company's global ambitions. "I think we think we're trying to change the world and having some success with that," she says. "We have really big aspirations around making the world a more open and transparent place. We define our aspirations more in terms of that mission than in terms of the company aspirations."

The way Facebook is doing that may not be apparent to its British devotees, who generally use the site to upload photos and share news and banter with their friends and acquaintances.

But outside the narcissistic west, Facebook claims to be a 21st-century torchbearer for democratic values. Like its upstart rival Twitter, it played a role in giving vent to political dissent in Iran after June's disputed elections, and has faced intermittent jamming as a result.

Sandberg also points to examples closer to home of Facebook's power to connect people. She herself was contacted through the site by a long-lost college "little sister", who had no idea her former mentor was its chief operating officer. "Finding my 'little sister' to me was profound. That's the stuff we are really ambitious about."

Rise of Twitter

But Facebook is a business, not a philanthropic exercise, and it has been growing with dizzying speed since Zuckerberg launched it from his Harvard dorm room in 2004.

The site hit 200 million registered users in April, of whom 18 million are in Britain. When Sandberg arrived from Google in March 2008, it was half that and still behind MySpace. The latter has been faltering of late and has had to cut jobs as a result, while Bebo is struggling too, and Friends Reunited – sold by ITV this month for £25m – is practically moribund.

It all looks very encouraging for Facebook, and Sandberg is keen to point out that half of users come back to the site every day. "On consumer internet I have never seen or heard of anything like it."

But the world of social networking is still in its infancy and users can be fickle. The rise of Twitter, the sector's phenomenon of the moment, has posed a challenge. Rumour has it that Facebook tried to buy the upstart for $500m; whether or not that was the case, it last week succeeded in snapping up another potential rival when it paid $50m (£30m) for FriendFeed, a tiny Silicon Valley start-up. And who knows what might come along next year?

"We understand that we are not going to be the only property doing these things, and to the extent that there are properties like Twitter who are showing the world how important this is, we are happy to see that," Sandberg says. "What Twitter is doing is a very specific thing, which is short updates in real time, and so that's obviously very important, much as our status updates are very important to us."

Sandberg is unconvinced by the idea that social networking will conform to the "winner takes all" pattern that has seen Google, Amazon, YouTube and Wikipedia end up as dominant players in their respective areas.

"We think our growth is based on the fact that we provide the best product," she explains. "What you'll see from us is a real commitment to being a technology-led company.

"[We're] trying to put out the very best technology in the world, which enables people to share with all the privacy controls they want – I think we are by far the leader in that area worldwide – and as efficiently as possible. That doesn't mean there isn't room for other players and we won't see others, but we're happy that we think we have executed pretty well and we want to continue to do better."

She dismisses the idea that Facebook might be undercut by a similar product run, Wikipedia-style, on a not-for-profit basis. "Wikipedia is very inexpensive for two reasons. One, the technology's not doing the algorithmic stuff; you do a search and it's given you that search. And the second is that it's edited for free by the world ... The technology underlying Facebook is very expensive and more similar to Google-like technology than it is to Wikipedia."

Which brings the conversation to the thorny question of whether Facebook is able to convert its undeniably huge reach into sustainable profitability. Sandberg says the company has been profitable for six quarters before interest and tax, and is close to being cashflow profitable in 2010. Zuckerberg has also said that revenues will grow 70% this year – but no one outside the company knows the numbers. Some suggest revenues of $500m this year.

The recent investment of $200m by the Russian company Digital Sky Technologies – giving it a 2% stake and implying a total valuation of $10bn – should not be taken as a sign that Facebook needed any cash, Sandberg says. "You raise money when you can, not when you need it," she says, invoking a mantra she learned at Harvard Business School. "This just gives us a little bit more flexibility." Nor are there plans to go public "any time soon".

Microsoft also owns a 1.6% stake, for which it paid $240m in October 2007, but Facebook has resisted all moves to buy it out.

The company's business model is straightforward, says Sandberg: it's advertising. Although it is working on other revenue streams, such as allowing transactions involving the third-party applications on the site, advertising is sufficient to build revenues, she says. And to work, the ads have to be subtle. "This is not a property where we let advertisers walk up to users. This is a property where we invite advertisers to invite users to interact with them."

Article Courtesy : http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/20/facebook-ceo-sheryl-sandberg-interview

Back again after a break

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 04:42:00 +0000

Ahh... It feels good to be back again after a while..

From Chunk To Hunk.

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:41:00 +0000

Former overweight, fat guy David Smith has gone from chunk to hunk.

After losing a whopping 29 stone (403 pounds) and having more than 30lbs of excess skin removed.

The 31-year-old used to tip the scales at 45 stone - the same as a brown bear or a young bison - and was dangerously close to eating himself to death. He said that he used to weigh 630 pounds and that he was so fat that he had to be weighed at a local garage on scales normally used for cars and trucks’

David, from Phoenix, Arizona, befriended local radio DJ and fitness instructor Chris Powell in 2003, in the nick of time who coached him through a grueling two year long exercise regime. He has now started dating and is waiting for the right girl to come forward

Chris says that in June of 2003, he was contacted by a ‘Good Morning Arizona’ viewer asking for help. His name was David Smith. He weighed 630 pounds and was given only about 4 more years left to live. At first, Chris just wanted to sit down and talk to him. Chris knew that he could change his body, but he needed to see if David was ready to make the change in his lifestyle. Within 10 minutes of talking to David, Chris knew that he would devote the next couple years of his life to changing David.

Basically Chris came to understand that David was never given a chance in life and had no one to teach him or no one to believe in him. So he drove out to his house every other day for a year and a half to work with him.

For the first month they focused on nutrition…because once you understand nutrition, you understand how to control the body. Chris taught him food combinations, meal timing, and how to portion foods to maximize results. To make sure that his program was successful, it had to be enjoyable and easy, Chris gave him cheat days every other day to look forward to, and began the phases of The Carb Cycle Solution - first resetting his metabolism, then moving through the phases to maximize weight loss. Whenever his weight loss plateaued, they would simply reset his metabolism and cycle him through the phases again, until he reached his goal weight.

As David lost weight, he began to turn his life around. No sooner he could fit into a car, he got his driver’s license, received his GED, and got his first job. He began working at a gym and studying to become a personal trainer to ‘pay it forward’ to help others in need. As he began spending more time at work, Chris needed to find a way to help him control his nutrition outside of the house. So he made a containerized system for him to carry, portion, and time his meals at work – and so the concept of the STAX Nutrition System was born.

Determined David managed to slim down to a healthy 16 stone thanks to the tough training but was left with unsightly flabby skin. That meant he had to endure four separate operations in just 12 months to remove all his previous bulk.

He also needed laser surgery on his eyes and some dental work to fix his teeth, which had destroyed by too much sweets and fizzy drinks.

Now the fatty turned fitty has got rid of his double chins, man boobs, and bursting gut and replaced them with bulging biceps, toned pecs and a flat stomach.

As a result, he has now become a FITNESS COACH himself and bagged himself his first girlfriend.

David says that he was written off by everyone, even myself, but all of a sudden he woke up from deep despair and realized that feeling sorry about his life wasn’t going to solve his problems. So, he decided to change his existence and started exercising.

Now he is a completely different person, not just physically but mentally too.

David Today

He has now lost 401 pounds in 26 months and all of that naturally.

The first few months were really hard, and the training was really tough. He had struggled to walk five feet without becoming out of breath. He slowly got better until the flab was literally falling off me. But then after working so hard to lose weight, he was left with all this excess skin which made me look ridiculous. He had to undergo four operations in a year to get rid of it all. It's not the nicest thing going under the knife but it was something that had to be done. Then, his teeth began to rot because of all the sugar from sweets and the fizzy drinks I consumed and so he had to have his teeth capped at the dentists.

He has been called a lot of things lately, but it has all been positive for the first time in his life. He has even actually overheard girls say that he is kind of cute a couple of times. His skin is now gone and he feels like his life is finally ready to begin. Now since he has started dating for the first time, people take his photo because they think that he is hot rather than comically obese.

He says that he might be the oldest person in the world to be a virgin, or never been on a date, or never had a first kiss. He knows his perfect woman is out there somewhere and he has done all this for her and for their children, and their children's children.

Fitness guru Chris Powell, who has appeared in the magazine Cosmo said that David was basically dead inside but now he is really living life and inspiring millions of people - it is indescribable. You will see what an incredibly wonderful person he is, how he overcame his obstacles…and why he is my best friend.

Chris is like a brother to me. He never gave up on me. He has not only saved my life, he has taught me a lot about this new world. We go out on the weekends, see movies, and get a bite to eat, or just hang out. Our friendship has blossomed out of something so barren, that it is incredible how it has happened. We are two unlikely best friends - its so funny how life works. He made me feel like a human even when the outside world thought not.

Not only has my life changed, but I’ve inspired others as well…and hopefully many more to follow. It has been amazing watching the events of a path in the road that I would have never chosen. Chris always says that David has changed his life more than he changed mine. Either way, we are going to be best friends forever.

Throughout the process, we became the best of friends. It is now our vision to educate, motivate, and inspire anyone and everyone that the human body is an amazing machine that can be transformed through nutrition and exercise.

Now he hopes to inspire children and adults in Britain that there is a way back from obesity.

Perspective on the Bailouts

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:45:00 +0000

So far, the bailouts are going to cost American taxpayers $ 4.6 trillion dollars. to put that number in perspective, here are the dollar amounts involved in a few other past expenditures:

Marshall Plan:
Cost: $12.7 billion,
Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion

Louisiana Purchase:
Cost: $15 million,
Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion

Race to the Moon:
Cost: $36.4 billion,
Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion

S&L Crisis:
Cost: $153 billion,
Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion

Korean War:
Cost: $54 billion,
Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion

The New Deal:
Cost: $32 billion (Est),
Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)

Invasion of Iraq:
Cost: $551 billion,
Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion

Vietnam War:
Cost: $111 billion,
Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion

NASA:
Cost: $416.7 billion,
Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion

Yep--$ 4.6 trillion is a lot of money.

Did Abramovich steal a £1.2 bn stake in oilfield?

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Chelsea's surprise defeat in Rome on Tuesday night may have disappointed Roman Abramovich but it may not preoccupy him for long. He has a match of a quite different kind on his mind. Lawyers in London are expected to decide this week whether to pursue a case against him on behalf of investors who have made a startling allegation. Abramovich, they say, effectively stole their £1.2 billion oilfield. The Russian billionaire has strenuously denied the allegation and many will find it an outlandish proposition.

At 42, Abramovich is one of the world's richest men with a fortune estimated at £15 billion and although there have been dark murmurings about how he managed to rise from street trading in Moscow to controlling one of Russia's biggest oil concerns, no one has ever proved he acted improperly. Now a long-running argument over ownership of a fabulously rich Siberian oilfield is reaching its endgame here in London. Abramovich has just won an important round in this fiercely-fought legal battle in the High Court but the Evening Standard has learned an appeal is being discussed.

If it goes ahead, it would plunge the Chelsea owner back into a legal maelstrom that has swirled around him for more than three years. At its heart is a claim that he and his company, Millhouse Capital, swindled investors - including more than 4,000 British shareholders - in a deal over a Russian oilfield described by one expert as "the pearl of western Siberia".

The Priobskoye field sits on a vast bog and can be worked only in winter when the ground freezes. It is more than 1,500 miles from Moscow and is one of the most hostile places on earth but in its southern part, wells are producing 150,000 barrels of oil a day. Half of these riches were owned by a British-based company, Sibir Energy, but according to its chief executive, Henry Cameron, they were stolen in what he described in a letter to shareholders as "barefaced corporate robbery".

Cameron is an Aberdeen lawyer who was dealing with the Russians when the Soviet fishing fleets came to Scotland in the Eighties. He switched to oil and, backed by British investors, headed a company that became Sibir. Part of its holding was a licence to drill for oil in Priobskoye. Sibir, through another company called Yugraneft, joined forces with Abramovich's oil giant, Sibneft, to exploit the Priobskoye field.

In his office in Mayfair, Cameron revealed how a venture he believed could make his investors rich turned into one of the oil industry's most bitter disputes. He speaks coolly, with all the detail of a complicated case at his command. But there is no disguising his anger.

Last week Mr Justice Christopher Clarke concluded in the High Court that the English courts were not the right place to decide the allegations against Abramovich. The billionaire was neither resident nor domiciled here, he said, adding that the case was about "the conduct of Russians, in Russia under Russian law". He dismissed Yugraneft's claims and said they were "an abuse of process".

Cameron is unrepentant. His team of lawyers is looking at grounds for an appeal and a decision is likely within the next few days. It will be watched closely by British companies who deal with Russia.

Some may wonder why, after this High Court setback, Cameron would seek to carry on fighting. The reason, he says, is that he believes a wrong was committed and he wants justice.

In his ruling, Mr Justice Christopher Clarke noted the Cameron camp's contention that "what has happened is nothing less than fraud on a grand scale". Cameron says trouble started soon after his company, Sibir, and Abramovich's Sibneft agreed their deal to exploit the Priobskoye field.

At first, Cameron says, everything seemed to go well. Then Sibir started talks to buy into Moscow's huge oil refinery, the only one in the city and considered one of the Russian oil industry's great prizes. Also bidding for the Moscow refinery was Abramovich's Sibneft, which had long sought control of this strategic asset.

This is the point in the story at which personalities appear to play a part. Sibir's biggest shareholder is Chalva Tchigirinsky, a construction tycoon who counted the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, among his friends. The mayor controlled the oil refinery through the large stake held by the City of Moscow.

Mr Luzhkov was no friend of Abramovich. Luzhkov once noted the hundreds of millions of pounds Abramovich was sinking into Chelsea Football Club and said: "He is spitting on Russia." His words stung Abramovich. He has invested heavily in Russian football. Charities in the country, especially those for Jewish causes, have benefited greatly from his wealth. He judged Luzhkov's rebuke unwarranted and unfair. Injury was added to this insult, it seemed, when Luzhkov teamed up with his friend Tchigirinsky to stop Abramovich's march on the Moscow refinery.

Mr Justice Clarke noted in his High Court judgment: "In April 2004 Mr Abramovich is said to have told Mr Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow, that the reason he had diluted Yugraneft's interest in Sibneft-Yugra was to repay Mr Tchigirinsky for his having blocked attempts by Sibneft in 2001 and 2002 to take over the Moscow oil refinery."

The reference to "diluted interest" is at the centre of the alleged scam. In September 2002, an extraordinary meeting of representatives in the partnership to drill for oil in the Priobskoye field took place in Moscow. Abramovich's Sibneft representative met an executive who had been given power of attorney to act for Yugraneft, David Davidovich. Davidovich was an adviser to Eugene Schvidler, Abramovich's closest aide. At the meeting it was decided to increase the shares in the Priobskoye partnership by bringing in three new companies, all registered offshore.

The effect of the new share distribution was to cut Yugraneft's holding from 50 per cent to five per cent. Another meeting was held a few months later. Again, Davidovich had power of attorney to act for Yugraneft. And again, Yugraneft's share of the Priobskoye venture was cut, this time to one per cent.

"We knew absolutely nothing about it," Cameron said. "People have said: 'How can something like that happen without your knowing?' Well, if you're not expecting it, why would you check? You don't check the deeds to your house to make sure you still own it."

Mr Justice Christopher Clarke disclosed in his judgement precisely how Cameron and his colleagues found out the half-share they thought they had in one of Russia's richest oilfield's was actually worth a mere one per cent.

"In December 2003," the judge said, "an employee of Ernst and Young, who were Sibneft's auditors, hinted to Mr Betsky of Sibir that the dilutions may have occurred and followed that up with an email of 6 December which suggested that he should check the ownership status of Sibneft-Yugra."

Sibir did check. What Cameron and his associates found led them to believe the company had been the victim of fraud. Sibir brought a case in the Russian courts but without success.

Cameron's people discovered their shareholding had ended up with companies registered in the British Virgin Islands. They took their argument there but again it failed. The courts decided they had no jurisdiction.

So where were the shares? Cameron says it is impossible to put a precise value on the holding without an extensive valuation but an estimate is around $2 billion, or £1.2 billion. That amount of stock cannot simply disappear. Nor did it. As the High Court case revealed, in its accounts issued in 2004, Abramovich's company, Sibneft, carried this note: "In December 2003 the company increased its share in Sibneft-Yugra up to 99 per cent for the nominal consideration." The offshore companies had been absorbed into Abramovich's oil empire.

The following year, 2005, Abramovich sold out to Gazprom, the state-backed Russian energy giant. He is believed to have received £5.5 billion for his assets, which, by then, included virtually all the Priobskoye shares. As Cameron says, his company's half-share of the oilfield is now owned by Gazprom and there is little hope of recovering it.

But if his lawyers can find a way to prove Abramovich took it improperly, he says, there may yet be a chance of claiming the value back from him. Certainly, Abramovich could afford it. One of the effects of the recent litigation was to prompt an inquiry into his wealth. It revealed that many of his companies are registered offshore, with ownership of Chelsea Football Club held by Chelsea Ltd, which is owned by Isherwood Investments, a Cypriot company, which in turn is owned by Taverham Holdings, registered in the British Virgin Islands.

The complex network of companies controlled by Abramovich holds most of his assets. The High Court case laid bare, for the first time, his vast fortune. The judge noted that his £30 million house in Knightsbridge represented just 0.5 per cent of his net worth. He has houses and property in Britain, France, Sardinia, the United States and St Barts in the Caribbean. He also has two ski chalets in Colorado, a French château and three homes in Russia. He uses two executive jets and chooses from a fleet of helicopters and cars. He also has "several yachts on which he spends a great deal of time", the High Court documents record.

But Abramovich does not spend much time in Britain. The judge said the Chelsea owner spent only 57 days here last year on visits mostly connected to football matches. This fact has proved a major stumbling block for Cameron's lawyers.

The ruling that Abramovich is not domiciled in Britain leaves them searching for a way to bring the Priobskoye oilfield case before a British court. So far, they haven't found one, but Henry Cameron is determined not to give up. "We are not done yet," he said.

Abramovich's spokesman, John Mann, declined to comment. "We'll let this ruling, and previous rulings on this case, speak for themselves," he said.

Article Courtesy:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23583545-details/Did+Abramovich+steal+a+£1.2+bn+stake+in+oilfield/article.do

Fiscally Vulnerable Countries - World Bank Report

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:59:00 +0000

A new World Bank report on Thursday named 28 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East facing financial strains due to high food and fuel costs and now from a cascading credit crisis.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the world should not forget the "human rescue" needed in developing countries as it focused on the spreading market crisis.

Among the "fiscally vulnerable" countries are Jordan, Cambodia, Lebanon, Jamaica, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Tajikistan, Madagascar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Malawi, Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Fiji, Haiti, Seychelles and Mauritania.

The Report, published ahead of weekend International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings of finance and development ministers, said many of these countries had little or no room to take on new debt to afford the higher prices.

"Currently these countries, on average, are set to receive no increase in project and program aid," Zoellick said.

The Report on financially-strained countries said policy actions to deal with higher food and energy prices were causing the fiscal pressures.As prices climbed, governments have tried to shield the poor by imposing fuel and food tax rate cuts, increasing subsidies and underpricing electricity from oil and gas.

Zoellick also noted that it was important that the world's industrial countries did not forget their promises of aid to the poorest countries.

Zoellick said the G7 industrial countries were "far behind" on the promises they made at a 2005 summit of world leaders at Gleneagles, Scotland, where they pledged to double aid to Africa by 2010.

"The poorest cannot be asked to pay the biggest price," Zoellick said. "For the poor, the costs of crisis can be life-long," he added.

Number seeking arrears advice soars

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:10:00 +0000

The number of people seeking help after falling behind with their mortgage has soared by more than 50% during the past year, figures have showed.

Charity Citizens Advice said it had seen a 51% surge in people contacting it because they were in arrears on their mortgage or a secured loan during the three months to the end of September, compared with the same period last year.

There was also a 10% jump in people contacting it because they were unable to keep up with payments on their fuel bills.

Overall during the past 12 months, staff in bureaux in England and Wales have seen a 35% rise in people with mortgage and secured loan arrears problems, receiving 77,324 new enquiries since October last year.

But the charity said there had been a small reduction in the number of people contacting it because they were struggling with unsecured debts, such as credit, store and charge cards and unsecured loans

More details at :
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23570873-details/Number+seeking+arrears+advice+soars/article.do

London tycoons lose billions in meltdown

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:41:00 +0000

The financial meltdown has cost London's tycoons billions.

Their losses will have a massive impact on the city's economy, forcing hundreds of shops, bars, hotels and restaurants to close.

Steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal was the biggest single loser after seeing £20 billion wiped off the fortune that made him Britain's richest man.

UK property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz is facing losses of up to £1 billion after borrowing heavily from Icelandic bank Kaupthing. Dozens of wealthy Russian and east European oligarchs with properties in London have also suffered huge falls in their fortunes......

However, these are just paper losses for most, they have money to reinvest and the market will recover and they will be quids in again. Its a financial loss if anyone is forced to cash in now...and now is the time to buy...(I hope!)

More details at :
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23569740-details/Bonfire+of+the+billionaires+will+hurt+London/article.do

Chef Ramsay took KS&F out of the mix

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:28:00 +0000

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay was alongside the local councils and thousands of individuals who put their cash into an Icelandic bank account.

Gordon Ramsay Holdings, which runs the restaurant at Claridge's, Sloane Street, a string of gastropubs and Murano, has confirmed that until recently it banked with Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander [KSF], the UK offshoot of the Icelandic bank.

The firm said last night: "Gordon Ramsay Holdings would like to clarify that the company moved all of its corporate banking from Kaupthing Singer Friedlander [sic] to The Royal Bank of Scotland 10 weeks ago."

How the Bailout Is Like a Hedge Fund.

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 06:46:00 +0000

its funny, but The Wall Street bailout is alive again.

In an effort to make the $700 billion bailout palatable, the architects of the law have larded it up with all sorts of goodies, such as increasing the levels of deposit insurance, sparing some taxpayers the ravages of the Alternative Minimum Tax, and extending tax breaks for alternative energy. Henry Paulson's three-page sprig has sprouted into a 451-page Christmas tree. (The current version of the bill, in all its lengthy glory, can be seen here.)

What's most interesting about the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 is just how much it reads like a prospectus for a hedge fund. In the past, hedge funds—secretive pools of capital—were open only to qualified (read: rich) investors. But with the stroke of a pen, President Bush will soon make all American citizens investors in the world's biggest fund—and a democratic one at that. Taxpayers won't just be the investors. We'll own the management company, too. Best of all? For at least a few months, we'll have the former CEO of Goldman Sachs run our investment for a very small fee. Call it the "Universal Hedge Fund."

Hedge funds use leverage: That is, they borrow money to amplify their returns. The Universal Hedge Fund will use massive leverage, borrowing up to $750 billion, which it will use to buy up distressed assets. The Universal Fund might best be described as a multi-multistrategy fund. Its stated goals are to maximize returns to its investors while promoting general market stability and bolstering the crippled housing market.

The fund's bylaws give the manager (the treasury secretary) significant discretion. He can buy troubled mortgage-related instruments from finance companies (Section 3[9][a], Page 5). But he can also invest in "any other financial instrument that the Secretary, after consultation with the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, determines the purchase of which is necessary to promote financial market stability" (Section 3[9]B, Page 6). The manager then has the authority to manage the assets as he sees fit (Section 106[B], Page 22), collecting revenue streams, holding bonds to maturity, or flipping them for a quick profit (Section 106[c], Page 22). Like many of today's sharpest hedge funds, the Universal Fund will also have the ability to drive a harder bargain by demanding equity stakes, or new debt securities, from the institutions it is helping (Section 113[d], Page 35). It can also do what many of the big hedge funds, and so-called "funds of funds," do: bring in outside managers to run the investment (101[C][3], Page 8).

There are some important differences between the Universal Fund and its private sector peers. Hedge funds thrive on secrecy. The Universal Fund will operate with maximum transparency, disclosing all new sales and purchases on the Web within two days (Section 114[A], Page 39). Rather than send in all our money upfront, we hedge-fund investors will give the manager $250 billion to start with (Section 115[A][1], Page 40). And the proceeds won't be distributed via dividends or end-of-year partnership distributions. Rather, revenues and profits "shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt" (Section 106[d], Page 22).

The Bush administration's desire to turn all Americans into participants in the capital markets through the privatization of Social Security never got off the ground. But in the last months of its second term, it has managed to pull off something of a coup. Soon enough, we'll all collectively own various securities issued by lots of big companies. Too bad the Ownership Society is happening only because we became a Bad Debt Society.

Article Courtesy : http://www.slate.com/id/2201340

Rose relief as M&S is down but not out

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:23:00 +0000

Sir Stuart Rose earned some breathing space today, with a trading statement that suggests Marks & Spencer may be weathering the worst of the economic storm.

Although sales in the 13 weeks to 27 September fell 6.1%, this was slightly better than the City expected.

Sir Stuart said he is dealing with "unprecedented" conditions.

"Consumer confidence is fragile and the retail environment unpredictable."

Food sales are down 5.9% while general merchandise fell 6.4%. Full-year profits will tumble from the £1 billion recorded this year, perhaps by half, but Sir Stuart insists today's statement did not amount to a profits warning.

More details at :

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23562885-details/Rose+relief+as+M+S+is+down+but+not+out/article.do

Sir Ian Blair quits the Met

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:11:00 +0000

Boris Johnson has forced out Sir Ian Blair as head of the Met.

Britain's most senior police officer resigned tonight after a crisis meeting with the Mayor yesterday afternoon.

The Standard has learned that Mr Johnson, who took control of the Metropolitan Police Authority yesterday, told him he had reached "the end of the line" and should consider his options.

Events unfolded with dramatic speed today. Sir Ian told Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse this morning before informing Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. Sir Ian told her he had to go, because the Mayor had effectively said he could no longer work with him.

The Met Commissioner offered to walk out immediately - but Ms Smith asked him to stay for a few months. They agreed he would leave in early December, more than a year earlier than the expiry of his contract in February 2010.

Sir Ian, 55, is understood to have negotiated a big severance payment, and is entitled to a gold-plated pension after more than three decades of service as a police officer. He was on a salary of £240,813.

More details at :
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23562960-details/EXCLUSIVE%3A+Sir+Ian+Blair+quits+the+Met/article.do

Ireland includes UK banks in its £315bn deposit guarantee

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:09:00 +0000

The Irish government today changed the law to allow the offshoots of UK banks Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS in Ireland into its €400 billion (£315.5 billion) deposit-guarantee scheme.

The scheme, which guarantees 100% of savings and deposits held in six Irish banks and building societies, was signed into law by President Mary McAleese today.

But it is receiving growing criticism from European politicians, who say Ireland has acted unilaterally.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said during the late-night debate on the bill that the scheme may no longer be limited just to the six Irish institutions.

This followed two calls from UK Chancellor Alastair Darling yesterday and intense lobbying in Dublin and Brussels from other banks which have sizeable branch networks in Ireland.

The largest is Ulster Bank, a subsidiary of NatWest owner Royal Bank of Scotland. It has 132 branches in Ireland and is said to account for 20% of retail savings there.

National Irish Bank, owned by Danske Bank, has 59 branches in Ireland. Halifax Ireland was set up two years ago as a rebranding of Bank of Scotland's 25 branches in the Republic of Ireland.

A spokeswoman for RBS said: "We will be admitted into the scheme as soon as practicable."

The bill was altered this morning to allow other banks to be included by a simple ministerial order. HBOS and RBS had asked to be included in the guarantee.

It was not immediately clear if HBOS had been invited to join the guarantee scheme.

Mark Duffy, head of HBOS operations in Ireland, said: "It is important that there continues to be a level playing field so that customers enjoy equal choice from all Irish banks."

Financial advisers have reported a surge in interest from UK savers in the past two days, wanting to know if they should shift deposits to Irish banks.

But their enthusiasm has been tempered by a revelation that the Irish government's move was prompted by the potential collapse of at least one, if not two, Irish banks.

Rowling banks £170m in year: Forbes

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:05:00 +0000

JK Rowling is the world's best paid author, banking more than £170 million in the last year, the US business magazine Forbes has said.

Rowling, who wrote the first of her best-selling books about boy wizard Harry Potter while an impoverished single mother, earned 300 million US dollars (£170m) over the past year.

The 43-year-old billionaire author's income was six times that of second-placed James Patterson, who wrote Along Came a Spider.

Last month, Rowling donated £1 million to the Labour Party ahead of its annual conference, indicating that her gift was motivated by Labour's record on child poverty and Tory leader David Cameron's offer of tax breaks to married couples.

A Forbes spokesman said: "It was wizardry that transformed JK Rowling from a destitute single mother on welfare into a bestselling billionaire."

The magazine described her work as "a children's literary sensation" and a "publishing hit".

It went on: "Once a single mother on welfare, Rowling can now claim best-selling billionaire status thanks to her Harry Potter franchise.

"Over on the big screen, her Potter franchise has already generated 4.5 billion dollars (£2.6bn) at the worldwide box office - and she still has three more flicks to come."

Last month, she won a New York legal battle and succeeded in blocking publication of a Potter encyclopaedia which she described as "wholesale theft" of her work.

She also said it had forced her to stop work on a new novel because the lawsuit had "decimated my creative work".

Bond film to hit Indian theatres before it reaches US

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:57:00 +0000

Breaking away from tradition, the new film on the charming and suave secret service agent James Bond -- "Quantum of Solace" -- will hit the silver screens in India a week ahead of the trip it makes to the US.

The film will be released in India on November 7, a week before it premiers in US. It will hit the UK theaters on October 31. A sequel to the last Bond flick "Casino Royale", "Quantum of Solace", will see Daniel Craig returning to his latest mission and picking up threads from his last adventure to begin a new journey as the elusive British Agent 007.

The film will also be released India in three other languages -- Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. "James Bond has a huge equity in this country and Bond films have always been a hit here. November 7 will see the biggest roll out for any Hollywood film in India as we would like to give our audiences the thrill of seeing 'Quantum of Solace' even before US does.

More details at :
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/009200810030381.htm

Indian food: new crush of Japanese

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:55:00 +0000

Tokyo (PTI): In Japan, India is virtually synonymous with 'curry'. Indian food has now got the Japanese hooked and is gradually replacing Chinese and Thai, their other favourites, with hundreds of restaurants mushrooming across its islands and an unprecedented rise in food imports from the country.

In fact, the Japanese are so fascinated with the 'Indian' food that even restaurants owned by Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans display the Indian tricolour and add the prefix 'Indian' to the names of the eateries.

So you have restaurant chains like the Siddique's 'Indian Pakistani', which has over 20 outlets and 'Indian Sri Lankan'.

"The Japanese identify 'Indian' with good and delicious food. If a restaurant serving any South Asian fare does not have the Indian tag, the Japanese will not go to it," says Mohammad Sageer, a chef working for Potahar who came from Islamabad Pakistan eight years ago.

There are others like the Maharaja which has 25 restaurants, Khana (3), Sapla (1), Great India, Bombay, Ali Baba, Jantar Mantar and Agra.

There is also a restaurant named 'Gandhi' in Washington Hotel in Shinzuku that was set up 25 years ago by a Japanese.

Potahar, in Shinzuku, Tokyo, is owned by a Pakistani but the Indian flag hangs outside.

A small eatery with hardly a sitting place for a dozen people, it caters to over 100 people, mostly Japanese, who queue up for "curry and nan" in just two hours during lunch time.

Dell's customers snubbing green initiative

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:54:00 +0000

Dell is still finding it an uphill struggle to persuade its customers to take part in its "Plant a Tree for Me" scheme. Under this plan, customers can choose to spend an extra $2 per notebook or $6 per desktop to offset its estimated carbon emissions for the next three years.

Only 300,000 customers opted to pay the levy during Dell's last financial year, which ended in February, said Tod Arbogast, the company's director of sustainable business. Though he declined to enumerate it, that amounts to between $300,000 and $900,000 of voluntary spending by customers - compared to Dell's revenues of $61.1bn and net profits of $2.97bn. As a percentage of customers, it remains well below the 1% mark.

More details at :
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/008200810030381.htm

Hookah, chillum smoking more toxic than cigarette: Study

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:52:00 +0000

Traditional hookah and chillum are more injurious to health than cigarette, a study has said.

The study underlines that the old mode of smoking is much more harmful than cigarette smoke as carbon monoxide (CO) level is higher in it, the study conducted by a group of pulmonary doctors of the SMS Hospital Medical College and the Asthma Bhawan here said.

More details -
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/099200810030381.htm

Quovadis ?

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:22:00 +0000

It appears that the voters voted against the bailout

Now where to go ?

"There's a real sense of frustration. People see their tax dollars spent bailing out financial institutions, and they themselves are not doing well,"

There were also a lot of eyes rolling on this bailout. We're heard this kind of thing before"

Senior members blasted Bush's economic policies and lashed out at "a right wing ideology of anything goes, no supervision, no discipline, no regulation."

Personally, I believe the engine of this whole change is the market and all of the major investment banks have large positions in fossil fuels - in fact, Forbes recently claimed that if those banks were forced to liquidate their positions in fossil fuels, prices would drop to as low as $50-$75 a barrel - and that's what the current bailout is intended to avoid.

Goldman Sachs also has huge holdings in fossil fuels, and the recent $5 billion Buffet injection should be viewed in the light of Buffet's extensive energy investments - PetroChina, ConocoPhillips, and Mid-American and Constellation Energy.

In other words, if only energy could be harnessed to take the place of oil . . .

If the US can come to an agreement with Saudi Arabia or a middle eastern consortium, who can easily fund a part of the bail-out with a guarantee that they would maintain the price-level [so that it doesn't fall], in addition to a commitment to purchasing oil for the next ten years

Of course a part of the oil costs can be offloaded to the "taxpayer"

Obviously there's more to it

Speaking as an Indian - The US can just get used to the Third World conditions - In other words the IMF proposes an austerity package for the U.S. as a precondition on a World Bank loan rescue package. Obviously their first demand would be that the US privatize Social Security and halt about 70% funding for public education. How is that for change?

That said, I used to work in a financial company that got influenced by the 'green committee' - trying to change the way we do business in an environmentally intelligent way. Infact the people involved who are mostly middle class people have basically no urgency or real understanding of what the hell is going on. They treat it like an irritating fad, and easily take 'no' as an answer when trying to change the way the company operates, or more so as they operate.

It is apparent how interconnected we have become. In other words, the pollution in India's Ganges River could have a direct impact on the quality of life in New York. Every coal factory that China builds, competes for resources with an Indonesian child. And to top it all, every time a woman in Southern California switched on her air conditioner, its effect travels to the Brazilian slums.

In short there is no way we can regulate our way out of this problem, but only innovate. This in turn requires legislation and rules.

But are we prepared for that ?

Foreign Nations Pledge Support, but Not Financing

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:17:00 +0000

The United States, having expanded its proposed rescue of the financial sector to include foreign banks, has not yet found any other country willing to join the landmark bailout.

The Treasury Department still hopes to marshal a worldwide effort to cleanse the balance sheets of banks. But Europe and Japan have signaled that they are not ready to mount a rescue of the kind being debated here.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. continues to solicit support from foreign governments. His department plans to prod them by giving preference to banks from countries that show a willingness to help the American effort, a senior administration official said Monday.

“We expect other countries to do their part, but we’re not insisting their programs be exactly like ours,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We’re certainly not prepared to put ourselves in a position where there’s a free-rider problem.”

Given that the mortgage collapse began here and that most of the distressed debt is held by American banks, specialists said it was not clear that the United States had much leverage in forcing others to take part.

“There’s a view in Europe that this is a U.S.-made problem, and that it should be solved in the U.S.,” said Charles H. Dallara, the managing director of the Institute for International Finance, a group of more than 300 global banks.

Several banks raised concerns after a draft of the rescue plan limited eligibility for selling mortgage-related loans to the Treasury to banks with headquarters in the United States. The language was changed a day later to include foreign banks with significant American operations.

The change did not reflect lobbying pressure, officials said, but Mr. Paulson’s judgment that helping all banks with contacts to American consumers would better stabilize financial markets.

It did not, however, build support for a bailout in Europe, a day after finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 7 industrialized countries discussed the proposal in a conference call.

While the group pledged in a statement to “enhance international cooperation,” it affirmed that the countries were free to go their own way in responding to the crisis. “None of the other six G-7 members will adopt a similar program to the U.S.,” the German finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, said.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, criticized the United States and Britain for opposing German attempts to put greater regulation, or at least reviews, of the financial sector on the international agenda last year, when she was leading the Group of 7.

“Everyone who produces a real product knows what it looks like and what standards it is up to,” Mrs. Merkel said, while traveling in Austria. “One also needs to know with a financial product what’s involved. Otherwise, these sorts of things happen that we then all have to pay for.”

In fact, Germany and Britain have already bailed out some banks that got into trouble because of deteriorating mortgage-related loans, though on a scale much smaller than the proposed American plan.

British officials made clear that they would not create a government fund to buy bad assets, although Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the Exchequer, did promise new rules.

“We are putting in place both here in the U.K. and internationally the tougher financial regulation no one can doubt we need,” Mr. Darling told the governing Labor Party’s annual conference in Manchester. “I will continue to do whatever it takes to maintain financial stability.”

Some economists said Europeans would be forced to take more sweeping action. “Germany has more toxic exposure than any other country,” said Adam S. Posen, the deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “The only one that may stay out of this is France.”

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who holds the rotating European Union presidency, has on many occasions complained about the structure of global economic regulation.

On Monday, Christian de Boissieu, chairman of the French prime minister’s council of economic analysis, said: “The U.S. must take charge of the budgetary costs of the crisis. I’m all for trans-Atlantic solidarity, but this doesn’t include financing the bailout.”

The Japanese finance minister, Bunmei Ibuki, said after the Group of 7 statement that he saw no need for Japan to set up an American-style rescue scheme to help its own banks rid themselves of bad assets, Reuters reported.

Apart from a lack of sympathy for a crisis they view as made in America, European governments are also constrained by rules within the 27-nation European Union that limit budget deficits and public debt.

“Europe won’t do anything because they haven’t got the room for maneuver,” said Jeremy Batstone-Carr, an equity strategist with Charles Stanley in London. “They ran themselves into a cul-de-sac.”

A study by the Federal Reserve in August concluded that losses of foreigners holding mortgage-backed securities could be as low as $75 billion, though paper losses would be higher before the market stabilizes.

The Association of German Banks hinted that it would oppose the bailout plan if it gave American rivals a sudden advantage.

“We need to assure that disadvantages for foreign institutions do not arise from the U.S. program,” Manfred Weber, the general manager of the association, said. “It was, after all, American products that created the crisis and that created the contagion effects.”

A spokesman for the association, Heiner Herkenhoff, said the group was still studying the details of the plan, such as they were available, but that it should define eligibility through the nationality of the product. If the mortgage-linked security in question was from the United States, he said, it should be eligible to be purchased, no matter which bank held it.

That appears to conflict with the plan to limit eligibility to foreign banks with significant American operations. Such a rule would include major banks like Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, but many of Germany’s smaller banks did not meet that criterion, Mr. Herkenhoff said.

Article Courtesy - NYTimes - Mark Landler, Carter Dougherty and Matthew Saltmarsh
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/23global.html?ref=todayspaper

Bank offers £40bn funds to ease the pain

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 03:48:00 +0000

The Bank of England waded back into the money markets today, offering banks £40 billion of longer-term funds to try to ease the lending crisis.

Banks have all but stopped lending to each other because of their fears about each other's solvency. The stalemate over US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's $700 billion bailout has worsened an already appalling situation for banks attempting to borrow.

As funding levels have dried up, the interest rates the banks are charging each other have skyrocketed in a trend that will eventually lead to more expensive mortgages and other loans.

The Bank pumped the extra £40 billion into the market for repayment on 15 January, and said it would accept a wider range of assets, including mortgage securities, as collateral. A second auction will be held on 7 October, maturing on 22 January.

The Bank has recently been lending on a short-term basis, but this has proved inadequate for banks attempting to rebuild their lending volumes. Investec economist Philip Shaw said: “This is a huge step forward and reflects the fact that credit markets have almost totally seized up over the last week and a half.”

An HSBC spokesman said: “It is what the market was looking for. It shows the Bank of England is willing to listen.”

But others said the move did not address the fundamental issue — banks' reluctance to lend to each other. Only a successful outcome to the bailout negotiations in Washington could solve that, they added. While the cost of borrowing in dollars for three months today stayed near its highest since January, the London interbank offered rate, Libor, fell half a basis point to 3.76% after the Bank's action.

The Bank of England's announcement came as central banks again launched co-ordinated actions to offer dollars on a one-week basis to help break the lending deadlock. The European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of England pumped in $74 billion of money maturing in one week. That followed intervention by Japan, Australia and South Korea.

Analysts said the logjam in the money markets was particularly intense as the calendar quarter came to a close. Share prices gyrated tonight as the stress grew,. The FTSE 100 index fell 96.95 to 5100.07 and the Dow 60.8 at 10,961.3.

Warren Buffett and the only banker he trusts

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 03:28:00 +0000

AT midday on Tuesday this week, Byron Trott, a banker in Chicago, picked up the phone and speed-dialled a number in Nebraska. A flurry of other calls followed. Within hours, Trott's employer, Goldman Sachs, announced it had secured a $5 billion injection from Warren Buffett, America's richest man.

In the deal, Buffett also received the right to buy $5 billion worth of Goldman shares at $115 per share. Last night, they closed at $133, giving him a paper profit of $900 million.

But against the indecision over the rescue plan to bail out the banks, raging turmoil in the markets, shortage of credit and collapse of Lehman, Goldman's one-time rival, the securing of the support of Buffett, the legendary stock-picker from Omaha, worth an estimated $62 billion, is a spectacular coup.

Wall Street and the City are agog at the move. Other banks have struggled to find partners. They have had to extend begging bowls to sovereign wealth funds and other potential investors. Some have failed completely. But Goldman, super cool Goldman, got Buffett.

That's one way of looking at it. The other is that Goldman was desperate, fearful it didn't have the scale to survive on its own, worried its long-cherished independence was going to disappear. It had already been forced to ask the US government to treat it as a bank taking people's deposits rather than as a pure securities firm, thus giving it federal protection if needed.

The ending of that 139-year special status was a bitter pill but it wasn't enough: the once all-powerful Goldman was humbled. It needed help.
Buffett, who loves to play up his folksy image, says he had his feet up on his desk and was drinking Cherry Coke and eating mixed nuts when he got the emergency call. The truth is, he probably was.

He was told to name his price, to say what he would like to invest in Goldman and the bank would see what it could do. Buffett had received other such pleas in the past few hectic weeks but this was the one he wanted. He had been waiting nearly all his life for this moment.

Now 78, Buffett has built his entire reputation on being the hometown champion of Main Street USA, railing against the slick excesses of Wall Street, worshipped by his shareholders, many of whom followed him in the early days and have become multi-millionaires on the back of his success. But as Berkshire Hathaway, his holding company, has grown into a $200 billion empire, it has not done so on the back on banks.

Buffett, to put it mildly, can't stand them. In 1987, he became the biggest investor in Salomon Brothers, then a hot-shot investment bank, famous for its aggressive bond-trading. When it ran into trouble, he had to step in and run the whole show — something he hated. He couldn't believe what he found, couldn't understand how the bank could be so lax with other people's money: “Rather strange, frankly, to me, to think of having a business that employs close to $4 billion of equity capital and not knowing exactly who is using what.”

He railed against its bonus culture. He cut $100 million from the bank's bonus pool. In the end, he gave up, handing over control to Bob Denham, a lawyer who subsequently sold the business. Buffett's verdict? “Far from fun.”

Yet the man who pays himself $100,000 a year, named his corporate jet The Indefensible because he has attacked other bosses for indulging in private planes and still lives in the same house in Omaha he bought for $31,500 in 1958 is coming to the aid of the bank with the biggest name on Wall Street, which pays colossal bonuses: Goldman Sachs.

Not surprisingly, the bank's chief executive Lloyd Blankfein is hailing his arrival as a triumph, boasting that “arguably the world's most admired and successful investor” has chosen their company.

Buffett's presence, said a spokesman, will add to the bank's “fire power and flexibility”. He said it was an “insurance policy for if conditions get very bleak”. At the same time, he stressed, it enabled Goldman to pick off bargains, if it chooses, from the package being constructed by US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson (himself a former head of Goldman). “The Paulson plan presents major opportunities for us,” he said. “We will be interested in seeing what distressed assets are available.”

In Omaha, Buffett's thoughts could go back to his childhood and the person he adored more than anyone, the man he called his “best friend”, his late father, Howard, a stockbroker.

The biggest event in the early lives of the Buffett children came when they reached the age of 10. Then Buffett Senior would take them from the east from the Plains to show them the majesty and power of New York. In 1940, father and son boarded the night train from Omaha. Leila, Warren's mother, waved them off. He was holding a stamp album and one of the places he wanted to see was the Scott Stamp and Coin Company in Manhattan. They were to go to a baseball game and a toy train display. The youngster (aged just 10, don't forget) was also keen to visit the New York Stock Exchange.

Howard also took the opportunity to do some serious networking. He went to see Goldman Sachs. “That's when I met Sidney Weinberg, who was the most famous man on Wall Street,” Buffett tells Alice Schroder in his forthcoming authorised biography, The Snowball.

“My dad had never met him. He had this little tiny firm out here in Omaha. But Mr Weinberg let us in, maybe because a little kid was along or something. We talked for about 30 minutes.”

As the senior partner of Goldman, Weinberg had a grand office that left the boy from the Mid-West speechless. As they left, Weinberg asked him: “What stock do you like, Warren?” Recalls Buffett. “He'd forgotten it all the next day but I remembered it for ever.” What particularly impressed him, said Buffett, was that “he talked to me as if I was a grown-up”.

Fifteen years later, and Buffett was back on Wall Street, as a young stockbroker with the firm of Graham-Newman. “Gus Levy (who later ran Goldman in the 1970s) was a good friend of mine when I worked in Wall Street. In 1955, we only had four wires to Wall Street firms and one of them was to Goldman Sachs and Gus was on the other end of the phone.”

While Buffett remained friendly with Goldman, he maintained a deep disdain of bankers, preferring to remain in Omaha as he grew Berkshire Hathaway and rely upon his own team of advisers. He likes to choose his own deals and hates having to go through bankers and paying their fees. When he did spend time inside a bank, at Salomon, his cynicism was reinforced.

It took a banker not unlike him in many respects to break down his resistance. Now 49, Byron Trott was also born in the small-town Mid-West, near St Louis, Missouri. “There was no local place for kids to buy clothes other than Wrangler jeans or overalls,” said Trott. So as a teenager he persuaded his father to sign for a $30,000 loan to launch his own clothing shop for teenagers (in his teens, Buffett and a friend bought a used pinball machine that they rented to a barber's shop and they expanded to six more).

He captained his school's football, baseball and basketball teams and went to the University of Chicago. There, he started another business, selling sportswear to the students. After graduating, he became a broker, working for Goldman in St Louis and then as an investment banker in Chicago.

He was made partner in 1994 and was one of those lucky enough to be a partner at the time of the bank's flotation in 1999, when the average payout was $64 million each and some partners received in excess of $100 million. In 2002, he used some of his money to buy a three-acre site in the Chicago lakeside suburb of Winnetka where he built a 27,596 square feet compound, complete with main house, coach house, boathouse and pool house.

Since 1996, Trott has headed the bank's 13-state Mid-Western division, handling takeovers and fund-raisings for corporate clients such as agriculture giant Monsanto, Hallmark greeting cards, FTD floral deliveries and NuVox telecommunications. A workaholic, he puts in 18-20 hour days and is usually flitting between boardrooms across the vast region. “I'd rather have him as my investment banker than my spouse,” said one client, “he works too hard.”

Another said: “Byron is not your typical investment banker. He is a facilitator of good ideas, whereas most investment bankers are just out to motivate you, to get you excited about a product that they are going to market where the investment banker gets a huge fee.”

Trott made it his business to go after Berkshire Hathaway and its redoubtable leader. Buffett came round to Trott's drive and energy and allowed him to advise him. Three acquisitions followed: kitchenware company The Pampered Chef, child clothing retailer Garan and groceries distributor McLane.

This last, from supermarket group Wal-Mart, earned high and, given Trott's job, extremely rare, praise from Buffett. In his letter to shareholders in 2003, he singled out the banker for special mention: “He understands Berkshire far better than any investment banker with whom we have talked and — it hurts me to say this — earns his fee. I'm looking forward to deal number four (as I'm sure is he).”

That, from Buffett, was the ultimate accolade. In 2007, he delivered Buffett the $4.5 billion purchase of Marmon Holdings from Chicago's super-wealthy Pritzker family. He's been described as “the only banker Buffett likes” and has even been tipped as his possible successor at Berkshire Hathaway. In his 2008 newsletter, Buffett says: “Byron Trott of Goldman Sachs — whose praises I sang in the 2003 report — facilitated the Marmon transaction. Byron is the rare investment banker who puts himself in his client's shoes.” He adds: “Charlie and I trust him completely,” a reference to Berkshire vice chairman Charlie Munger.

This week's buy reflects Buffett's regard for Trott and his bank. But Buffett isn't in this for charity. “He's effectively lending $5 billion to them which is nothing to him at 10 per cent,” said one ex-Goldman banker. “His money is safe, unless they go bust, which they won't. In addition, he's got an option over another $5 billion which makes him $50 million every time the stock goes up $1. He's f *****g them. It's brilliant.

“It's the same as you lending me $100 at 10 per cent interest on the loan and me giving you options over $100 worth of shares at a discount to the current market price. It's a fantastic piece of business for Buffett.”

There are two sides to every transaction of course. Goldman can claim, rightly, it has managed in the middle of a financial maelstrom to attract the best investor of his generation, one of the greatest ever, on board. Buffett can say that just this once, he is pitching into a bank because it was too good an opportunity to miss.
They're both right. His “best friend”, his father Howard, would be thrilled.

JJB dives into red as retailers go reeling

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 04:12:00 +0000

JJB Sports has tumbled to a dramatic loss amid what it described as the worst retail recession it has ever seen.

The sports gear and health clubs group today said it made a loss of £8.4 million in the last six months against a profit of £8.7 million a year ago.

It scrapped the interim dividend, and offered a gloomy outlook for the future.

The shares crashed 32p to 72p as investors digested the news.

The numbers will raise deep concerns in the City about how JJB's nearest rival, Mike Ashley's Sports Direct empire, is faring. Sports Direct shares fell 5p to 581/2p.

Sales at JJB were down 5.6% in the 26 weeks to 27 July, partly because England football fans bought fewer shirts in light of the team's failure to qualify for this summer's Euro Championships.

Losses at two recent acquisitions — the Original Shoe Company and Qube — were the main reason for the slide.

Chairman Roger Lane-Smith said: “My board colleague David Jones, formerly chairman and chief executive of Next, has described the current climate as the worst retail recession I have ever known'.

David's statement is borne out by our trading results.

“Looking ahead, we remain very cautious about the outlook for retail given the background of a weakening consumer economy.”

Chief executive Chris Ronnie has faced talk he intends to lead a buyout of the company, taking it off the stock market. He had no comment on this today.

JJB shut 72 lossmaking stores earlier this year at a cost of 800 jobs.

Sales at the fitness clubs arm grew 7.5% to £35.6 million as it expanded from 43 clubs to 50. JJB claims further growth will come from this arm.

Dresdner Kleinwort said in a note to clients that it finds it hard to push the shares, adding: “The shares are not cheap, but we wait to see how Chris Ronnie's strategy has advanced before we change our neutral view.”

JJB said it cut the interim divi, 3p last year, to retain the “financial flexibility” it needs to support development plans.

The Dumbest Bank ?

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:14:00 +0000

The German government has reacted with fury to an admission by federal bank KfW that it passed €300 million (£237 million) to Lehman Brothers only hours before it went under.

A KfW spokesman said the money was part of a swap arrangement, and there had been a “technical” error. German papers are describing KfW as “Germany's dumbest bank”. Two senior managers were today suspended over the fiasco.

Critics said a prudent bank would have held on to the money, knowing from news reports that Lehman was broke. Swaps are often programmed in advance into computers so they happen without human intervention.

The finance ministry in Berlin said the remittance was “infuriating”.

Set up in 1948, KfW is the federal government's in-house bank, lending to homeowners and industry. It is already reeling after a subsidiary, IKB, lost billions of euros last year and had to be bailed out.

Courtesy :
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23557626-details/Dumbest+bank+in+Lehman+deal/article.do

Market uncertainty adds to bid — BHP

lazywriter2@yahoo.co.uk (lazywriter) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:03:00 +0000

Marius Kloppers, the chief executive of mining giant BHP Billiton, says his hostile $111 billion (£60.93 billion) bid for Rio Tinto is more attractive amid the current “uncertainty” in global financial markets.

“We view this transaction, if anything, as more attractive under these slightly more uncertain circumstances,” Kloppers said in Australia.
“It's a deal for all seasons. In difficult times like this, people value cost savings, synergies and cashflow benefits.”

Rio's shares this week traded at a record discount to BHP's takeover bid, signalling concern among investors that the world's largest mining acquisition may fail. It already faces formidable regulatory hurdles, with Brussels taking a closer look at the deal.

“The way the Rio Tinto share has traded compared to ours underscores our point quite well,” Kloppers said.

“We find it very difficult to see, at that 45% premium uplift we have offered Rio Tinto shareholders, that they can do that on a standalone basis.”

Kloppers said global demand for BHP resources was still “very, very robust”.

Article Courtesy :
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23557637-details/Market+uncertainty+adds+to+bid+BHP/article.do