meek-investor

Business jargon is complex as it is. It is made even more unintelligible by meaningless acronyms. Think of how much drivel we spout every day in the office. Yesterday, my daughter was telling me of the classes she had in her primary school. She said one of her classes was VCOP. For the life of me I could not understand what on earth it was. She didn't either ! I finally discovered that it was "Vocabulary, Connectives, Openers and Punctuation". Oh ! She was having an English class ! This reminded me of my first day at work, all those years ago. I had graduated from business school and was starry eyed and ready to take on the world . I was supposed to be a finance "cat". I walk in , into a leading company and was shown the management accounting template of the company which read like this I gaped at it open mouthed. Here I was, reasonably intelligent, from a good business school and I couldn't understand a word. It was a most humbling experience. We do this al...

The Business returns this week with its full cast and a warm-up performance by San Francisco Regional Air Guitar Champion "The Awesome." Fresh and smart meets loud and sweaty tonight at 8pm.

The Satyam affair broke out in early Jan with Raju's famous letter . Since then, two parallel chain of events have happened - one handled brilliantly and one handled abysmally. When the news broke, the company was on the verge of immediate collapse. The government acted swiftly in naming an eminent Board to take over. These individuals demonstrated why they are of so eminent a stature. They immediately took control, kept the business going, reassured customers and employees, staved off an immediate crisis, held an auction, found a buyer (can you imagine how difficult a task that would have been) and did a deal in 3 months flat. There is now a reasonable future ahead for the company, its employees, its shareholders and its customers. By any yardstick this is a stupendous achievement. I haven't really heard, or read about, the plaudits they richly deserve. They deserve a medal. Messers Karnik, Parekh, Achutan and everybody else involved in saving the company - take a bow. The oth...

I read the news from General Motors yesterday, that they are discontinuing their Pontiac line from next year , with some sadness. I grew up in the days when what was good for GM, was good for America. The best selling business book was, of course, "On a clear day, you can see General Motors". Any aspiring MBA graduate could reel off the famous five of GM - Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac. Every Hollywood movie of those days had one these beauties as a star character. GM was, after all, the largest company in the world. Those days, mass communication was still at its infancy. The internet had not arrived. Doordarshan had just made its tentative steps in India (with such wonderfully stimulating programs such as Krishidarshan). Yet all of us had known a lot about GM, even without stepping outside India and only seeing Ambassadors on Indian roads. Pontiac is 83 years old. It was introduced when Alfred P Sloan was the legendary chairman of GM. Its heydays were...

Failure isn’t what it used to be. Bankrupt newspaper companies are following the lead of AIG and Lehman Brothers and rewarding executives with large bonuses. The Tribune Co. is trying to pay out $13 million in bonuses, the Journal Registers Co. is trying to pay $2 million, and Philadelphia Newspapers has already given hundreds of thousands in bonuses to its corporate officers. Company spokesmen say the bonuses make good business sense by rewarding good performance and keeping executives from leaving the companies. Both arguments are hollow. The first rationale rewards performance in running the companies into the ground and the retention rationale assumes other newspaper companies are hiring and would want to hire the tainted executives. The issue of bonuses has emerged because newspapers filing for bankruptcy are not liquidating, but using Chapter 11 to create reorganization plans that will allow them to change the terms of the debt and union contracts. They have to seek approval from...

One final poser and I'll move on from this topic. You discover something about a key supplier of yours that you didn't know before. He employs child labour. Would you 1) Stop buying from him even though it may affect your business 2) Report his employing child labour to the authorities, but continue to buy from him 3) Ignore this, saying its his business and none of yours If you work for a global company, you probably have no choice - NGOs will roast your company alive. (Remember Nike in China ?) But , assume you are in a small local company. What will you do ? Would your answer be different, if instead of discovering that he employs child labour, you discover one of the following - He is cheating on VAT (excise, sales tax, whatever) and evading them , or, - He is discriminating against women Would your answer be the same ?

Today's poser. You resign from your company and join another company. Your were happy with your previous employer and he treated you well - you are moving just because a better opportunity arose. In your new job, you need to hire four good lieutenants. You know that if you approached your four buddies in the old company, they would join you (for they loved working with you). But if those four left too, the business in the old company would be seriously affected. This is one of those cases where in different cultures, you'd get completely different first responses. In some cultures, this is not a dilemma at all - you'd just do it. In other cultures, this would be a complete no no. But, as I mused before, I believe these are deeply individual decisions based on one's values and beliefs. There is no "right" answer. Would you place the call to your buddies ?

Ethics are either black or white - there are no shades of grey in my view, as I posted before . But there are some situations in business life where ethically it seems OK, but morally its not so clear. In such a situation, an individual's value systems determine what's right or wrong and there is no one right way. Today's poser. Does it matter what business the company you work for, is in ? If your company is an IT company or a soap company or a telecom company or a steel company, there is no issue. But would you work for a cigarette company ? Would you work for a company that makes land mines ? Would you work for a company that buys "blood diamonds" from Africa ? Would you work for a logging company in the Amazon? Or, does it not matter what business your company is in, as long as what it does is legal and you do your job professionally ?

The high hopes that News Corp. had for MySpace when it paid $580 million in for the social networking site in 2005 have never been realized and appear more elusive than ever. Consequently, MySpace co-founders Chris DeWolfe (who is CEO) and Tom Anderson (who is President) are being pushed out of their management roles in major shakeup of the company's leadership. The move is signals News Corp’s concern over the site’s declining market share and poor returns. In the past three years Facebook has surpassed MySpace in total number of users worldwide, but MySpace has managed to remain the largest site in the U.S. and has 130 million users globally. In 2008 the company had estimated advertising revues of $585 million, with the bulk coming from its ad-sharing deal with Google. But it will take a long, long time for News Corp. to recoup its investment at that pace. That revenue problem is compounded because Google has been unhappy with its MySpace deal and is unlikely to continue it at pre...

Ethics are either black or white - there are no shades of grey in my view, as I posted before . But there are some situations in business life where ethically it seems OK, but morally its not so clear. In such a situation, an individual's value systems determine what's right or wrong and there is no one right way. I intend to post a few dilemma's over the next few days. I have no answers for any of them - each of you readers will have your own "right" way. Here's the first of the them. You've worked in a company for 10 years. You've wanted a key job, but are not getting it. Your company's direct competitor is offering you that position. Remember its your direct competitor, whom you have spent the last 10 years of your life fighting. Would you take it ?

When the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased publication in mid-March it continued www.seattlepi.com as a web-only publication. It employs 20 persons, making it one of the largest online staffs of any local Internet news organization. Although it has a much smaller staff than the print edition did, the site continues to cover local news and sports, provides national and international feeds, and features local bloggers. In many ways it is what many observers have called the future of post-print journalism. It is well recognized that print is an expensive way to convey news, information, and commentary so observers argue that the Internet is the answer for community informational needs because the public is increasingly getting their news there anyway. It is still early days for forming a definitive view of how dropping print may affect online demand, but the P-I’s situation gives a unique opportunity to observe effects. In February—before the print edition closed—the website had 1.8 milli...

Chris Jarvis has made a superb post in his blog Realizing your Worth on "Trust : Why businesses lost it and how to win it back." He quotes Charles Handy , an Irish philosopher specializing in organizational management who wrote in his book ‘What’s a Business For’ in 2002 this prescient paragraph: The markets will empty and share prices will collapse, as ordinary people find other places to put their money--into their houses, maybe, or under their beds. The great virtue of capitalism, that it provides a way for the savings of society to be used for the creation of wealth--will have been eroded. So we will be left to rely increasingly on governments for the creation of our wealth, something that they have always been conspicuously bad at doing.....Trust is fragile. Like a piece of china, once cracked it is never quite the same. And people's trust in business, and those who lead it, is today cracking." Click here to read this superb post.

Sean Keane returns to The Business. Please come witness this amazing spectacle of mother natures richest pageantry, and BYOB.

Sean Keane will not be with us on April 15th, but in his place will be: Special guest for April 15: NATO GREEN! Nato Green continues the great tradition of smart, biting, Jewish comedians like Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Joe Lieberman. Nato is the mastermind of Iron Comic, Laugh Out the Vote, Laughing Liberally Local 415, and the New Jew Revue. He's appeared in the Progressive Reading Series and SF Sketchfest 2008.

The greatest crisis, in my view, of 2008 was not the financial crisis. It was the food crisis that hit the world in the early part of the year. Global food prices rose by 75% as compared to 2000. Food riots broke out in many countries. About 73 million people, in 78 countries, who depend on food aid from the United Nations have had their rations cut. The crisis got diffused, because other events overtook it and food prices fell back. But unlike the financial crisis, there is no solution in sight and its going to come back with a vengeance next year, or the year after, with certainty. The problem is deep. A combination of high oil prices, climate change (both in terms of global warming and in terms of diversion of land for growing corn for fuel) and shrinking land for agriculture affects the supply of food. On the other hand global demand is expected to double by 2030 as population increases and economic development increases the demand for nutrition. End result is that food prices will...

Increasing competition among cable, satellite, and broadband suppliers, combined with slower growth in consumer uptake because the industries have reached maturity, is leading to aggressive marketing efforts to wrestle market share from other companies. If the leading companies followed classic marketing strategies, they would be offering consumers better arrays of networks and services, better customer service, and/or better prices in efforts to attract more customers. Instead, many of the largest competitors have been engaging in acts that harm customers and consumers by using illegal and deceptive marketing practices and strategies designed to unwittingly wring greater revenue from their customers. Although the companies apparently think there are benefits in behaving badly, their marketing practices are increasingly getting them into trouble. Aggressive telemarketing—which has always offended consumers—has landed a number of leading firms in hot water. Comcast and Direct TV have ju...

Humans are social and tribal animals and we have always collectively contemplated the meaning and potential responses to issues and events. In the past tribes gathered around fires and villagers gathered in taverns, cafes, and community halls to consider contemporary developments. Individual engagement and participation in discussion were the norm, with some reliance on leaders and those who held the history and wisdom of the community. Lifestyle changes in the 19th and 20th century society created mass society and reduced time and opportunities for collective contemplation. It was replaced by a form of representative contemplation and a greater reliance on expert and professional commentators. The effect was primarily to produce communications telling members of communities what to think and do. Contemporary communication technologies are dramatically altering that situation and supporting a return to collective contemplation. While not producing face-to-face discussion, blogs and tec...