meek-investor

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...