meek-investor

Its time to change Andrew Lloyd Webber's famous song in Evita . There's no option, but to cry for Argentina. How else can you react to the awful move by Cristina Fernandez, Argentina's President, to nationalise YPF, two weeks ago ? YPF, Argentina's largest oil and gas company is 57% owned by Repsol, the Spanish oil giant. Ms Fernandez's grouse against Repsol is that it is not investing in increasing production in YPF. This is partly true, but the real reason why YPF is not expanding production is that her government has artificially kept petroleum product prices low . No company is going to invest for very little profit. So the good lady has decided to nationalise the company. No doubt, a pittance would be paid to Repsol, well below the market value of its shares in YPF. This is daylight robbery, of the kind Ramamritham (of Vodafone fame) would feel proud. Is this any way to treat your largest foreign investor ? Spain and the EU are up in arms and threatening a figh...

The Delhi government apparently feels that women are rather thick in the head. Considering that it is headed by a lady, we must now take this as a conclusive fact. I am reacting to the continued insistence of the government in making helmets for two wheeler riders compulsory for men , but optional for women.  This piece of news was too good to resist. Regular readers are familiar with this blogger's tendency to rib the fairer sex once in a while. Realisation has dawned that there has been some tardiness in this matter over the past many months. Time to rectify the situation. Sunday posts are an excuse for unbridled frivolity rather unbecoming of a "serious" business blog. So here goes. Why else must the government make the differentiation ? There is no evidence to suggest that Romeos are more likely to fall from two wheelers than Juliets. Yes, Romeo's concentration on the bike can easily, and often, be distracted by a passing Juliet, but that's equally true of Jul...

"Company X crushes estimates; Shares Soar" screams the headlines in Forbes ,  a respected business magazine. "Company X profits slip 35% as spending continues"  proclaims the equally loud headlines of The Wall Street Journal , a respectable business newspaper. Both refer to the same company - Amazon - and the same piece of news, the first quarter results of the company. Flummoxed ?? Read on. Can both headlines be right ?? Surely they can't.  Only in the rarified world of finance , especially the even more ionospheric world of stock markets can both statements be true. Yes. You see, company performance and movement of share prices is based on "expectations" and not on reality. Expectations of whom, you may ask ?  Of a unique sub species of the human race called homo sapiens analystensis (hereinafter referred to as HSA). Cut to business school. Some of the best brains in the land want to "go into finance" after they graduate. Their ambition is ...

GO BUSINESS!  IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY!  WE’RE GONNA PARTY!  LIKE IT’S THE BUSINESS’ BIRTHDAY! Hey Party People: While you were all busy filing your taxes at the last possible second, The Business, San Francisco’s longest running alternative comedy show and foam party, turned a distinguished THREE YEARS OLD on April 15th.  We’ve survived our terrible two’s (which were not terrible at all).  We’ve made it past the Sophomore Slump (which wasn’t very slumpy at all).  And as you know, three is a very lucky number that is very important to comedy.  So far this year has been the most fun and full collection of shows we’ve ever put on.  THE MAGIC IS WORKING ALREADY!  Please come out this Wednesday night and help celebrate with us and our party pals: Nato Green will be on hand and ready to party like it’s 2012.  Known as “The Fifth Businessman” (even though we now are six members strong, so technically he’d be “The Seventh Businessman”) Nato is back a...

The term pluralism is regularly used in critiques of media and in arguments for public intervention. It is employed so loosely, however, that it allows varied interpretations to be attached and this makes it highly challenging to turn general support for the concept into specific policy. Much of the lack of clarity is the consequence of indefiniteness of the term and because it is used as a proxy for more involved concepts. The term is derived from “plural”, an indistinct quantitative concept indicating the existence of more than a single thing and plurality itself merely indicates a state of being numerous. This alone allows the term plurality to be used in various ways when applied to media. For some it means a plurality of media outlets. This is indicated by having multiple types of media and multiple units of each media and the existence of a range of print, broadcast, satellite, and Internet content providers can represent pluralism. For other observers pluralism means plurality i...

Alas, George Orwell's prophecy has come true. Its 30 years late, but its now a reality. His book, 1984, I mean. For those unfamiliar with the aforesaid gentleman and book [having been born subsequently :) ], here's a helpful link as to what it is all about. The sudden realisation dawned on me through the innocuous act of installing the Ghostery plugin to my Firefox browser. I had innocently thought that something that would enhance my internet privacy would not be a bad thing. Little did I realise what a disaster it would lead to. You see, I had not realised how much the powers that be were interested in my colourless life. Within one second of installing the damn thing it showed me that Facebook and Twitter were monitoring my every click on the Net. Never mind that I don't use either of those.  I expected to see the usual culprits like Google Analytics and Double Click. But, pray, what on earth are Chitika, Open X, Crazy Egg, Tealium doing spying on me ..... . Now every ...

In the last post, I asked a rhetorical question - What would you do with a billion dollars ? Well, I read in the Economic Times today, that it was all too real a question to two people. They were faced with precisely this problem. Read here , what they actually did. I found this a moving piece and would strongly commend reading it.

This week, The Business regulars are stuffing your enchiladas with baguettes as we welcome a bill of guests that would have Napoleon III plieing in his grave hard enough to knock off the sugar skulls. Clara Bijl is visiting us from The City of Angels, but was born in T he City of Light. PARIS, FRANCE. She was raised in the Alps, attended schools in Germany, Switzerland, and South Carolina; then one day, she moved to The City that Never Sleeps to begin a career in stand-up comedy. Performing all around the Big Apple and the rest of the country, she became a prolific writer of cutting, witty, internationally flavored comedy. She will truffle your butter. Frankie Quinones is a rising star to search for and catch. He is a founding member of For The People Comedy, is a collective of artists who share a common goal of producing colorful events fueled by positivity and laughter. Always maintaining a diverse lineup to represent San Francisco culture through high energy sh...

You have a billion dollars burning a hole in your pocket ( Gils , Zeno , and a few others have that problem !). Take your pick. What would you buy ? 800 patents, dating back to the early days of the Internet. Or a red hot new internet rage that everybody is talking about but which has no revenues. Or boring old Yellow Pages. What would you take ? These are three transactions that actually happened in the last couple of weeks for about $1 bn.  Microsoft bought the 800 patents from AOL for $1.1 bn. The patent world has become completely crazy for tech companies in the last few years. Everybody is suing everybody else for patent infringement. Some 800 plus patents are given simply for what goes into a mobile phone. Its impossible these days to launch anything without infringing on somebody's patent.The US patent office has gone crazy as I wrote about here - Patents have now become innovation stifling rather than innovation building. Anyway Microsoft believes its better to pay $1.1 bn...

Not for nothing is Archbishop Desmond Tutu widely known as "South Africa's moral conscience". The Nobel Peace Prize Winner in 1984, Archbishop Tutu was one of the leaders of the anti apartheid struggle in South Africa. He headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the fall of apartheid which so enabled South Africa to move on from the past and not start a war of vengeance. He speaks often in defence of moral positions.  So when he wrote a piece in the Financial Times , I sat up and read. He argues in his piece that you don't have to lead a life of austerity to be moral or spiritual. Being wealthy is not a crime (its often made out to be by those who claim to speak for the poor). "It is fine to make a living; we are meant to enjoy abundant lives. The conflict comes when we separate ethics and economic progress and when we equate the latter with happiness", he says. There's a beautiful statement in his piece.  "Shareholder responsibility is...

This week our guests help us soar like we’ve never soared before. Business regulars Sean Kean, Alex Koll, Chris Garcia, Caitlin Gill and Chris Thayer (Bucky Sinister can’t be with us, though he’s still a proud eagle dreamer) welcome two of the finest comedians to come out of America since the birth of our Nation (by caesarean). Matt Leib’s parents named him after the famous beef of Mattlieb, Japan, which they saw on a restaurant menu. He and former-teammate Shaquille O'Neal (actually, just him) led the Lakers to three consecutive NBA championships from 2000 to 2002. In 2003, he made headlines when he was accused of sexual assault at a ski resort in Eagle, Colorado by hotel employee Katelyn Faber. He admitted an adulterous sexual encounter with the accuser, but denies the sexual assault allegation. In September 2004, prosecutors dropped the case after Faber informed them that she was unwilling to testify. (I asked Matt if Shaq is as friendly in real life as he s...

Immortal words from an immortal movie. If you don't know where this quotation is from, click here (excusable because this was before you were born) I am however writing about more prosaic things. Like the American nomination of Jim Yong Kim for the Presidency of the World Bank. Readers of this blog may recall that I had railed about the practice of nominating an American for the head of the World Bank and an European for the Head of the IMF here . The IMF vacancy came rather suddenly after the antics of Dominique Strauss Kahn. After some pious sermonising about how it wasn't an European stitch up, the post went to Christine Lagarde, another French person ! Now there is a vacancy coming at the top of the World Bank as Robert Zoellick is completing his term. The Americans are now wanting to stitch this up. But its the American they have nominated which is raising eyebrows. Kim who ?? Jim Yong Kim is an eminent American, no doubt. But he is an anthropologist and physician by prof...