“Chief executive Charles Anderson said the level of qualification among the SovNet force varied from nothing more than high school exams through to a handful with university degrees.” Maria Slade, NZHerald That’s the CE from Sovereign, an insurance company, and he was referring to the need for their 4o0 financial advisers to become certified within …
Category Archives: Investing
Sky TV’s easy credit
Sky’s results came out this week – and while subscriber numbers grew the financial results were at the low end of expectations. I feel that their product is disappointing – with too much rugby translating into a general loss of passion for the game, and with an increasing awareness that in tough times paying money …
Making sure you make money from your business
These are notes from a whiteboard session that I led at BarCamp on Saturday. There were plenty of people in the room for the end of day session, and we had an excellent discussion. We were trying to answer the question of how to make sure to make money from your business, and so we …
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So you’ve got a good idea – now what?
I’ve been getting an increasing number of ideas over the transom over the last few weeks. It started before the radio interview last week, accelerated because of that, and tomorrow it seems I’m in the latest issue of Idealog. It’s really good to receive them, and I enjoy helping out and even starting some businesses. …
When to resign from a board
Over at the SEC is an excellent letter from Richard E Middlekauff – who just resigned from the board of Heelys, Inc – a shoe company. Here’s why: 1: The shareholders are not maximising their return after the company was in play. The Board, in my opinion, should seriously engage potential buyers of the Company, …
How Baupost’s goresight let them weather the storm
Notes from Seth Klarman’s speech at Columbia Business School is, interestingly, the most popular clicked-on link from here, coming from The Baupost Story post. So let’s do a round up of coverage, find some more reading on the Baupost story and see what we can learn about how Baupost’s approach pays off for investors during …
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Understanding our animal spirits
Prof Shiller (remember him from “Irrational Exuberance) has partnered with George A Akerlof in a strangely titled new book: Animal Spirits. I’m recommending it even before reading it. It’s basically about why we don’t behave as rational consumers when faced with economic choices. If you don’t want to wait, then there’s an excerpt from the …
Xero’s capital raising
Staggering. While I still believe that Xero’s IPO was expensive, I also believe in the business opportunity and how Xero is going about pursuing it. While the latest round of share issues at $0.90 is dillutive to the original $1.00 IPO, it is an excellent price nonetheless: The IPO was expensive – and that was …
The real estate market plunge
Alex Tarrant over at Interest.co.nz had a couple of, well, interesting posts on the housing market in NZ. There is a piece on the February housing statistics, which rose dramatically versus January, although the median price stayed down, and the number of days to sell was a record 62. Alex also looked at the REINZ …
Blame directors for failure, CEOs for success
Fairfax (Reuters) belatedly opines that Directorships are not a reward, but actual work. It’s an article based on US companies, but is applies to every jurisdiction. I absolutely agree – a directorship is a very serious obligation. I propose a simple philosophy Blame the Board of Directors for failed companies Credit the CEO and management …
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Finda and Yellow: they had already lost
Business listings is a winner take all game right? After all – why would you have more than one set of Yellow Pages in your house? So Yellow’s purchase of Finda is a great move. Right? Well not exactly. When was the last time you used Wises, Finda, Yellow Pages or UBD? My answer is …
What happened in 2008 (for Lance)
(Apologies for the “all about me” post. This sort of thing helps to motivate me for the year.) Early last year I posted a plan for 2008 – daring to call it a manifesto. I’d just turned down some very good corporate career options and dared to invest more time into smaller opportunities. How did …
Citibank and the $20 billion bailout
If you are going to spend $20 billion on bailing out a bank that has a market capitalization of about $20 billion, then surely you should end up owning the bank? Not so with Citibank. Indeed, if you owned equity in a company that had debts far great than assets, then wouldn’t you expect to …
Buffet’s biography Snowball
Warren Buffet’s recently released authorised biography Snowball is excellent. It is a larger book, but is extremely well written, and easy to read and a great book for these troubling economic times. You just know he is out in the market right now looking for bargains, which is why my latest strategy with my US …
Please don’t bail out GM
I have to agree with Greg Saunders, posting at Tom Tomorrow on this: “When it comes to bailing out the auto industry, count me in the “let them starve” camp. The auto industry has been outsourcing American jobs for 25 years now with little regard for the devastated communities they’ve left in their wake (seriously, …
Lance Wiggs 