meek-investor

What would you say to a job that was one of the riskier jobs in the world – the chances of being sacked is high, and its very unlikely that you would survive 10 years. Not appealing, is it ? Welcome to the job titled the CEO. In the UK, the FTSE 100 is the index that covers the top 100 listed companies. As the decade ended, only 16 of the CEOs who were there in 2000, were still there in 2010. Heading that list is an illustrious name, Sir Martin Sorrell, the Chief of WPP, the global advertising agency. 25 years as CEO; he was the founder of the agency and still its head. And there are a few legends – Sir Terry Leahy, the boss of Tesco, Sir John Rose, the chief of Rolls Royce and only one lady – Marjorie Scardino, the head of Pearsons. But otherwise, most CEOs who were there in 2000 have got the boot. The job of a Chief Executive, is obviously a crucial one in any company. The leader must stay for a reasonably long term, to be able to provide a meaningful direction for the company. Oft

It’s the end of the year and the holiday mood needs a light irreverent post. Its not a holiday around here, but since the rest of the world has caught holiday fever, we have “embraced” it as well. Airlines are notorious for doing fairly dumb things – I think the rarified air in which they fly does some things to the brain cells. I had blogged about Ryanair’s idea of charging to use the toilet s. But what All Nippon Airways (ANA) did in October takes the cake. In October they ran an experiment. This was apparently an idea to reduce carbon emissions. If you were to board an All Nippon Airways flight, this would be your experience. As you queued up to board the flight, you would be met by a pleasant airline lady in uniform. Sayonara. Would you please go to the loo before you board the plane ? Its just over there. I’ll show you the way !! In a brain dead piece of PR, ANA gave the following justification. The average human bladder capacity is apparently 15 oz. Apparently that totals to an

What’s it like being a foreigner ? An expat living outside his or her home country ? I am an expat myself- an Indian living in China. Many readers of this blog are expats themselves. Most of us are expats because our jobs, or the jobs of our spouses, took us away from our native land. The Economist has a beautiful article on “being foreign”. A superb and stimulating article I strongly recommend. My favourite “newspaper” is The Economist – the magazine calls itself a newspaper, in a quaint British tradition. OK, OK, I am nerdy; anybody who publicly admits to The Economist being his favourite magazine has to be the most “uncool” character in the world. The article is so good that I offer it for your reading pleasure with no comment. What is your take ? I’ll post my own view of being an expat later this week.

China is a very competitive country. It likes to make a competition of everything it can win ! So its not surprising that last week it unveiled the “fastest train in the world”. The train in question is the bullet train between Guangzhou and Wuhan. Guangzhou is where I live – the southern China city, known earlier as Canton and close to Hong Kong. You can be forgiven for not knowing anything about Wuhan. It’s a city in central China, mostly unknown to the rest of the world. Why is the fastest train in the world going there ? Well, its not going just there; the train is meant to be between Guangzhou and Beijing – Wuhan is about the midway point and this is the first phase of the line. The train claims an average speed of 350 kmph. The earlier train journey between Guangzhou and Wuhan took some 10 hours. Now it takes 3. This is all part of the massive investments in infrastructure that China is making. I had argued here that one of the obvious things India has to learn from China is the

It is customary at this time of the year to look back and reminisce about the year gone by. This year, its also the end of the decade – the “noughties” as they are curiously called. The media, traditional and new, is dominated by the recounting of events of the past decade –the horror of September 11, the tsunami, the Sichuan earthquake, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the wonder of the Beijing Olympics, the rise of China, the global financial crisis, and so on. But take a step back, and by far, the greatest event of the decade gone by has been the unbelievable development of the Internet. Just picture the dawn of the new millennium. Google had just been started and most people still did not know of that term. Blogging was virtually unknown – the word blog itself had just been coined in mid 1999. More recent phenomena such as Twitter, Facebook and the like were not even on the horizon. Even e mail was not ubiquitous. Dinosaurs like AOL and Alta Vista ruled the world. 10 years on and

It is obvious that both the offline and online news providers are in the midst of substantial transformation and that the traditional means of funding operations are no longer as viable as in the past. This is disturbing to the industry because it has enjoyed several decades of unusual financially wealth and few in the organizations know how to find and generate new sources of revenue. The financial uncertainty facing the industry is not unusual, however. We tend to forget that news has historically been unable to pay for itself and was subsidized by other activities. In the past newspapers and other news organizations engaged in a far larger range of commercial activities than then they do today and publishers had to be highly entrepreneurial and seek income from a wide variety of sources in order to survive. The initial gathering and distribution of news was paid for by emperors, monarchs, and other rulers who needed information for state purposes. Later, wealthy international mercha

Today is Christmas day – virtually everywhere in the world, today is a holiday. And here I am , at my desk, pretending to be working. For its not a holiday in atheist China. Despite the best efforts of companies to tempt the Chinese into “Christmas shopping”, the day remains stubbornly irrelevant here. I have a stream of people walking up to my desk today. They are all asking me to approve carrying forward their leave entitlements which they have not used up. Everybody knows that they will not use them up next year as well and will ask to carry it over again. This charade goes on every year. Much as I rail against them for not planning their leave properly, its not going to change. For the Chinese (and Indians) don’t like to go on holiday. They like to work. Contrast this with Europe. In August, most of Europe, at least France, completely shuts down. And between Christmas and New Year, not a soul is seen anywhere near the office. So here we are, working in a global business, where the

The US healthcare bill that is doing the final rounds in the Senate today is a landmark piece of legislation, if passed. It has aroused intense emotions and divided America. But an obscure part of the bill, buried in the thousands of pages of legalese is illustrative of the way lobby and pressure groups have come to influence economic policy. In the first draft of the bill, a tax was proposed on cosmetic procedures like Botox injections, breast implants, tummy tucks, etc. Part of the ingenuous ways of raising revenue to fund the massive healthcare costs. Inevitably, this tax proposal has come to be called as Bo-tax. Now the medical industry lobbied like crazy to get Bo-tax reversed. And they succeeded , at least in the latest draft doing the rounds. No comment on what persuasive powers they used. However the government cannot forego any revenue at all, considering the huge costs the health care bill is likely to result in. They have therefore replaced the Bo-tax by a tax on tanning sal

Conventional wisdom has been that a sovereign guarantee is the best form of security you can have when you lend money. You can be pretty much sure that your money is safe if you buy government debt. Doesn’t matter which government, if you leave aside rogue states like North Korea or Myanmar. Conventional wisdom that is. That was before the financial crisis. As the crisis spread, Iceland was the first country to go virtually bankrupt. When that happened, it was viewed as an isolated instance of an insignificant country that didn’t matter. Then came Dubai. Well technically, not Dubai the Emirate, but Dubai World, the company. But then in that part of the world, it’s the same thing. Didn’t people see it coming ? – virtually anybody who’s been to Dubai would know that it was a place gone financially crazy. Of course, everybody knew that. But then everybody expected that Abu Dhabi, the oil rich emirate would always stand by Dubai. That was the mistake. The really startling thing about the

An important contemporary development is the shift of media market definitions from traditional platform-based definitions to functional definitions. This is occurring because media product platform definitions are losing their specificity and uniqueness due to digitalization and cross-platform distribution developments. Newspapers are becoming news providers, delivering news and information via print, online, mobile, and other platforms; broadcasters are moving off the radio spectrum, exploiting not only other streaming and video-on-demand opportunities, but also text-based communication on web and mobile platforms. Although functional definitions clarify what companies actually do, they obscure wide differences in audiences, business relations, and revenue sources on the different platforms and give some the mistaken impression that a functionally defined operation can be successful operating the same way across the different platform environments. The functional definition is also c

There is a growing chorus for governments to help established media transform themselves in the digital age. From the U.S. to the Netherlands, from the U.K. to France, governments are being asked to help both print and broadcast media innovate their products and services to help make them sustainable. State support for innovation is not a new concept. Support of cooperate research initiatives involving the state, higher education institutions, and industries has been part of national science and industrial policies for many decades. There has been significant state support for innovation of agriculture/food products, electronics, advanced military equipment, information technology, and biomedical technology and products. State support tends to work best in developing new technologies and industries and tends to focus support on advanced basic scholarly research through science and research funding organizations, creation and support for research parks and industrial development zones f

The word business is nowadays accompanied by a metaphorical holding of the nose. Post the financial crisis, businessmen would probably rank just above bankers and below more traditional last placers like real estate agents, in the list of reputable professions. Readers of this blog would know that the author is a staunch defender of business and advocates the view that the profession is unfairly maligned. An earlier post had touched on this subject. It was gratifying to read The Economist’s Schumpeter column, The Silence of Mammon , which argues that business people should stand up for themselves. The article recounts the two arguments it says proponents have put forth in defence of business – that many firms are devoted to good works and that businessmen have done more than any other institution to advance prosperity. It opines that these are not enough and puts forth three more arguments to counter the critics of business who have dominated the discussion on corporate morality –

Hello Show Attenders, Following a spectacular Holiday Spectacular show with THREE guests (Louis Katz, Amy Dresner and Chris Thayer), The Business will be dark for the Christmas holiday week. However, we will be back for a big New Years Eve Eve show on Wed Dec 30th 2009. No secrets revealed yet, but plans are in the works for some knockout guests. ...and as Jan crests on the horizon, The Business is proud to ba a part of SF Sketchfest 2010 on both Thur Jan 21st and Friday Jan 22nd. Still at the Dark Room, but joined by new guests and other great sketch groups. Check www.sfsketchfest.com for more details. These will be the only Business shows until February, so come by and get your Biz Fix. THANKS FOR ALL THE SUPPORT IN 2009! Sincerely, The Businessmen

This week has been the low point in my infancy in the blogging world. A combination of traveling, ridiculous working hours and the difficulty of actually getting access to the internet when traveling overseas without paying up a complete fortune, has made this a barren week. No posts at all and unforgivable delays in responding to comments. Sorry. There are, of course, periods in business life, which are like this. Low points. Much more serious than a blogging setback. When nothing seems to be going right. When self doubts creep in. When your boss rubs it in, instead of being supportive. Hence a post which might help in a small way, if you face such a situation. Firstly , everybody goes through this, many times in a career. Even Jack Welch. Steve Jobs was once sacked from Apple ! The more successful guys have perhaps gone through it more often. So, if its of any comfort, we are in elite company. Secondly, its only a job. This is often the most difficult of concepts to digest. ITS ONLY

You may have followed the travails of our city bred yuppie here and here . He survived the attentions of the peacock. He managed to escape being hitched. He got over the close association with bovine sex life. He even learnt to ignore the ever present gun. But , at last,  the time came for him to leave the village and go back to the city – back to normal business, back to the life he was used to. The parting was really tough. There wasn’t a dry eye on the day of his departure. The hosts openly wept. They, and he, knew that they would never see each other again. For two months they had shared the same roof. Eaten the same food. They came from different worlds and yet had started to appreciate the other. It was now time to go their separate ways. But for both, their lives would never be the same again. He got his bags together. Said goodbye to the teary family gathered on the porch. There was mutual assurance that they would write to each other – on inland letters as was the norm then.

Why is the Government of India so fixated about small scale ? For some reason, the thinking seems to be that small scale is ethically more acceptable than large scale. This is nonsense – both economically and morally. I am reacting to the news that the government is considering stipulating that public sector enterprises would be required to source 20% of their purchases from micro, small and medium enterprises. Never mind that such public enterprises have to compete on the open market against enterprises with no such restrictions. Never mind that public enterprises, funded with taxpayers money are supposed to be economic engines – not means of implementing a warped sense of social justice. Small enterprises need no special support. Just as in every other facet of industry, there are the good and bad among them. The good don’t need any handouts. The bad deserve to die. In some areas, scale is an advantage and small scale, by definition is suboptimal. As a consumer, I have no desire to

The house of the Tatas has been synonymous with values which are unique in the annals of business history. This post is about why they more than deserve their illustrious reputation. This is from an e mail doing the rounds – these are apparently notes taken by Dilip Ranjekar , CEO of the Azim Premji Foundation. I haven’t requested permission from Dilip, or the persons who forwarded me this mail, to post this, but I am sure none would mind me spreading a story that ought to be told and will bring a lump to your throat. Here it is Last evening, I had a dinner meeting with HNS in Goa He narrated the 26th November 2008 terror attack on Taj Mumbai and there were some important points. Terrorist entry 1. They entered from the Leopold Colaba hotel entrance and also from the northern entrance - spraying indiscriminate bullets on the Taj security personnel and guests in general. 2. Though Taj had a reasonable security - they were surely not equipped to deal with terrorists who were spraying 6

This week marks the twenty fifth anniversary of the worst industrial disaster in history – the leak of the deadly methyl isocyanate from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. Thousands of people died and the horrors have been well documented. This post focuses on one notable aspect of what happened after the disaster. Or rather what didn’t happen. Nobody has yet been prosecuted in a court of law for the accident. That’s right. After 25 years, there has not been a single criminal prosecution. There is little doubt that safety systems in the plant were poorly designed, bypassed in actual operation and there was criminal negligence on safety. Those of us who have worked in factories know how elaborate safety systems are when handling extremely dangerous chemicals like methyl isocyanate. And yet multiple safety systems seem to have been routinely bypassed. Just glance at the Wikipedia article on the accident that details the number of safety systems that were reported to have been non operat

Meet Sadashiv Chandrakanth Khodke. His life was turned upside down, exactly one year ago, when the despicable scum called terrorists attacked Mumbai. I heard his tale on a BBC podcast and it touched me – and it’s the subject of this Sunday’s non business post. Sadashiv was a waiter in a restaurant, holding a steady job. His misfortune was that he was in VT station at exactly the wrong time. He was injured in the shooting and his life turned in an instant. He was taken to a hospital and operated upon to remove shrapnel lodged in his chest. The operation was successful, but he had to spend a long time in hospital and then in recuperation. It is usual to blame the government for apathy when it comes to disaster victims. I actually think this is often a completely erroneous accusation. The government does do a lot – many a time its just that the scale of the tragedy is simply too big. In Sadashiv’s case, they did all they could. They didn’t charge him for the treatment. Even when he was i

The media loves to makes lists – the richest people in the world, the biggest companies in the world and so on. Forbes has compiled a rather unusual list – the 10 most outrageous CEOs of 2009 . Bernie Madoff would have been a slam dunk for the winner – but his place in the sun was last year – so he’s disqualified. This year’s list is full of people who have been charged or indicted of fraud. Robert Moran sentenced for tax fraud at No 10, David Rubin indicted for fraud at No 9, Allen Stanford accused of misappropriation at No 8, Danny Pang accused of running a Ponzi Scheme at No 7, Thomas Peters on trial for fraud at No 5, Ramalinga Raju, in jail at No 4 and Raj Rajaratnam charged with insider trading at No 3. Sandwiched between them are Ed Libby of AIG at No 5, for the retention bonuses he decided to pay the executives of the financial products divisions who brought ruin to the company in the first place and John Thain of Merill Lynch at No 3 who pushed through bonuses before the tak

In the blue corner is Rupert Murdoch, the media tycoon – Chairman of Newscorp, owner of The Times and the Sun in the UK and New York Times in the US, and the TV Channels Sky, Star and Fox News. In the red corner is Google – the titan of the on line world. The bout has begun. In question is the issue of on line news – who owns it, who pays whom for it, etc etc. Now we are perfectly willing to pay a few rupees, or cents or yuan for a newspaper, but are absolutely not prepared to pay a penny for the same newspaper on line. Confess it – you haven’t read the newspaper today. Instead you browsed on line. I did too – at least my excuse is that the single English newspaper, where I live, is not worth reading! What’s yours ? Murdoch says Google and such other news aggregators are freely linking to news content that his newspapers create and then get advertising revenue for it and to rub salt into the wounds, charge the papers for sending readers to it. They have news pages which attract readers

One of the greatest of days in Indian sport , to me THE greatest day in Indian sport, was the day in March , long ago, when India lifted the hockey World Cup in Kuala Lumpur. India beat Pakistan in the final to win the World Cup for the first, and alas thus far the only, time. The greatest day was actually not the final win. By the day of the final, it seemed pre ordained that India would win. The day came on the semi finals, just a day earlier. India played Malaysia on their home soil It was on a rain sodden pitch early in the morning (those days they played hockey on natural turf). It was a classic, which will remain in the memory of every Indian sports fan who was around then. There was no TV , of course, so glued to the transistor radio, listening to Melville D’Mello and Jasdev Singh, we followed the match. The Indian team was an all star team captained by the immortal Ajitpal Singh. I can still get the full team more or less right – Leslie Fernandez in goal, Surjit Singh and Mich

Of all the markets in the markets in the world, one of the most nonsensically regulated is the air travel market. Countries are still clinging on to the antiquated notion that somehow national interests are involved in the aviation sector and “national airlines”, however dinosaur like they may be, must be propped up. This post is prompted by the news that Germany has asked Emirates to raise its business class fares for flights out of Germany. Emirates, faced with big fines, has been forced to raise its rates by some 20%. Airlines flying in and out of Germany are policed by the unfortunately named Federal Office for Goods Transport. This august body has written to Emirates saying it was “not allowed to engage in price leadership" on routes out of Germany to non-EU countries. Apparently it was acting under a law used in cases where "public transport interests are being permanently damaged". Apparently European carriers can indulge in “price leadership”. Only non EU airli

This seems to be the season for whispering sweet nothings. K and C are engaged in a very public courtship as I blogged here – its progressing at such a snail’s pace that its probably more exciting to watch grass grow. K has threatened to abduct and carry away C, and C is saying “bah” as women are wont to do ! But there’s another rumour doing the rounds. Yesterday curious things happened with Colgate Palmolive’s share price. The speculation is that Reckitt Benckiser (makers of Dettol) and Colgate Palmolive (makers of, well, Colgate) are looking coyly at each other. It appears that Reckitt is sending strong signal that he/she is ready to marry. What is not clear is who the target of its affection is. Is it Colgate, or is it SSL (makers of Scholl and Durex) ? If its Colgate, then its not clear who is the bride and who is the groom. For they are both roughly equal. It's supposed to be a marriage of equals. But then women’s lib has not yet reached the corporate world where the traditi

“Remove baby before folding the stroller “ is a famous example of the American legal system gone crazy. It remained an object of mirth until it became all too real last week. For, Maclaren, a small privately held maker of baby strollers was faced with a massive crisis on a similar sort of a problem. Maclaren’s strollers are actually of a reasonably high safety standard. However it appears that when the stroller is being unfolded, if a child sticks a finger into the hinge, its likely to chop off the finger tip. This is not a state secret that normal human beings are unaware of. Any parent, however dumb, is well aware that if a child sticks its finger into a hinge, it will get hurt. However there was no warning on Maclaren strollers that children must be kept away when opening it. And the product is "unsafe". So the company is responsible. There were 12 instances of such an event happening. The company is now recalling 1 million strollers sold in the US – or atleast providing r

Our city bred yuppie has settled down into the village, mastered the art of managing without plumbing and has been proposed to. If you’ve missed this story of a couple of weeks ago, click here . Statutory warning : This is a X rated post. Youngish readers and those with sensitive feelings please leave now !! Of course the company has not put him here to bask in the adulation of the village belles. He’s supposed to do some work. Like organising a cattle camp. My good friend Aashish, who comments often in this blog, observed that I seem to have a peculiar fascination for matters bovine – considering the number of times this venerable creature has appeared in what is ostensibly a business blog. I must confess that I hadn’t thought about it, and now that he has said it, am guilty as charged ! Now, in this part of the country, the buffalo is the family’s most prized possession. Therefore the cattle camp is the most important "village development” exercise that he can undertake. What o

Yesterday was 9/11, written in the British way. It is as momentous a day as its American equivalent is tragic. For it was on this day, 20 years ago, that the Berlin wall collapsed. And Europe would never be the same again. A trillion words are being written about the event and the celebration and the hoopla surrounding it. This blog is loath to add to that total, and in any case is not a political forum. Instead we will touch upon one of the most interesting aspects of the reunification at that time, the currency unification. The word German reunification is actually a politically correct, but not factual, term – in reality it was an acquisition of East Germany by West Germany. When German reunification happened, the black market rate between the mighty Deutsche Mark and the Ostmark (East German Mark) was 1 to 5. The Ostmark would be abolished and instead the Deutshe Mark would be the currency of the new Germany. But then, at what rate do you convert the existing Ostmarks of East Ge

This weekend's irreverent post is a guest post in le embrouille blogueur's blog. I am flirting with deep danger by continuing to needle the fair ladies, but then, this Sunday is that sort of a Sunday. Ladies - this is all just for some idle fun ; don't take anything seriously ! Click here to read this post.

If you are in India and wanted to buy a Windows 7 box, you could not do it legally. Never mind that Windows 7 was released globally about 2 weeks ago. Never mind that much of Windows 7 development happened in India. Why ? Because the babus (pedantic officer) at Customs wanted to tax the stuff twice !! This is an example of the nonsensical complexity that abounds in India’s taxation law and the missionary zeal with which the babu wants to implement them – methinks the ultimate frustrated guy is the Indian babu and his only source of pleasure in life is from creating and implementing mind boggling complexity. Take the Windows 7 situation. The product is the standard software box with a CD and a manual in it. Because it’s a box, it’s a physical product. Therefore customs duty on the “product” is to be levied. Then the box contains a CD which gives you a license to use the software. Giving the license to use is a “service”. So they want to again charge service tax on the same box. Tax the

Rapidly evolving technologies and market adjustments have thrust media into states of nearly perpetual alteration that require agile and swift responses to gain benefits and defend the firm from outside forces. Managers who have been used to stable environments and well conceived plans are often reticent to move to seize opportunities with quick and decisive action based on incomplete information and knowledge. The turbulent contemporary environment, however, require leaders to rapidly evaluate the potential of new communication opportunities and to take risks in a highly uncertain setting. This is disturbing to managers who are used to employing well developed and elegant strategies that require significant investment and commitment. Declining to test opportunities until a clear roadmap is produced, however, takes away flexibility and the ability to rapidly change with contemporary developments. While preserving the core activities of media businesses, managers need to simultaneously

Politicians should, in general, not meddle in business. A great illustration of this danger is the mess brewing in General Motors Europe. Facts of the case are as follows. When GM was entering bankruptcy last year, the fate of GM Europe was in serious doubt. In any case GM Europe had too much of manufacturing capacity in Germany, the UK , Spain and Belgium. Even under normal circumstances a big restructuring was inevitable. Now there was serious threat of complete closure. In waded the politicians. No less than the redoubtable Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany. She was coming up for an election. In Germany, auto workers are next only to God. No way was she allowing job losses amongst auto workers in Germany. So she forced an auction, put together a curious alliance of a Canadian spare parts manufacturer (Magna) and a Russian bank (Sberbank) to buy GM Europe. She then offered them $6.6 bn (yes 6.6 billion) and they had to commit no closures and job losses in Germany. Unsaid, but obvi

China places an enormous value on education – both the society and the government are, rightly, obsessed with it. As a nation it has done a fantastic job of educating huge chunks of its population and providing them with job opportunities. But it’s a massive task and sometimes education and jobs are not always in tandem. This was brought out to me in vivid detail when I read the book review of Ants (Yizu) , a book in Chinese by Lian Si, a post doctoral student in Beijing. Considering the scale of the task, China has been immensely successful in educating its population. In fact, so successful, that it has become a problem. In 2009, China produced more than 6 million college graduates. That gives it the headache of creating 6 million additional jobs every year. Not factory worker jobs, but skilled jobs befitting university graduates. How on earth do you add 6 million jobs year after year ? Just for appreciating the scale, the entire outsourcing industry in India, an undoubted success st

Since the beginning of the year, the prices of all sorts of risky assets – shares, oil, etc have increased by fantastic proportions. Take equity. In virtually any market in the world, you would have made returns of 50% plus, even if you are an idiot. Did somebody say we were in the midst of a huge crisis ? Here was massive money to be made, by just being there. Sounds too good to be true ?? As the old saying goes, when something is too good to be true, it usually is. I read a very interesting article by Nouriel Roubini , the highly respected Professor from New York’s Stern School of Business, in today’s Financial Times. Its somewhat technical, although very readable. I commend even a layman to read this. At the risk of extreme oversimplification, I will paraphrase his argument as follows - Interest rates are extremely low and will be maintained at very low levels by the US Fed to stimulate the economy - The dollar is falling. Because it is falling, everybody is short selling the doll