meek-investor

All rise and applaud the magnificent Kim Yu-Na. Kim who ? You could be forgiven for asking that if you aren’t into winter sports. But if you have been following the Vancouver Winter Olympics, you cannot , but be mesmerized by the story of the wonderful Kim. Kim Yu-Na is arguably the most famous athlete in South Korea. All of 19 years old, she’s dubbed “Queen Yu-Na” and is a superstar in her country. She was the overwhelming favourite to win the women's figure skating event in the Olympics. A nation’s hopes was riding on her shoulders – South Korea had never won anything in the Winter Olympics apart from speedskating. They are having a great Olympics, winning well beyond their expectations, and their Queen was their brightest hope. But her long time rival Mao Asada of Japan was a formidable threat. And the emotions and the crowd were with Joannie Rochette, the Canadian, who lost her mother only a couple of days before. This is an event where America has traditionally dominated – n...

I was sorting through some of my father’s belonging recently and came across the 1941 souvenir edition of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (Jan 8, 1941), “The March of Hawaii.” Its lead story was the reorganization and strengthening of the Pacific Fleet and the appointment of Admiral H.E. Kimmel to head it. My father acquired the paper while stationed in Hawaii with the Army Air Corps. Eleven months later the U.S. was at war, with Kimmel taking heat for having the bulk of his capital ships anchored in Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack. I was reminded of the find this week while reading the news that Gannett has agreed to sell the Honolulu Advertiser to the Star-Bulletin . The two have a 130-year history of competition, somewhat muffled until they escaped their relatively difficult marriage in a joint operating agreement between 1960s and the millennium. Now the smaller paper is buying the bigger paper, if it can comply with or skirt antitrust provisions. We are now in the last throes...

If you have followed the Toyota story, the latest twist of Toyota’s Chairman, Akio Toyoda being called to “depose” before the United States Congressional Committee, shows that the US politicians just don’t get it. “Surely if Congress can be here, so can you," Congressman Darrell Issa of California said in an electronic letter to Toyoda. Separately, he said he would "fully support" subpoenaing Toyoda, which means compelling him to appear. Behave like this and then wonder why the US is disliked so much elsewhere !! To his credit, Toyoda-san chose to appear in person. He was subject to typical bullying and rudeness by pompous Congressmen, who were of course making political capital. Toyoda-san handled it with much grace and typical Japanese politeness. Grace and politeness are alien concepts to US Congressmen. While Toyota is facing huge recalls and much business trouble, the key is that they have done nothing breaking the law. The “outrage” by the US Congress is all abou...

How do you price services which are very exclusive and for which there is no possibility of a real market ? Is there some such thing as a “fair price” or is that concept an oxymoron ? Does public opinion on what constitutes “excessive” have any role to play ? Should pricing have any relation to cost at all ? Not easy questions to answer. Welcome to the world of investment banking. The case that triggers this post is a legal suit filed by JP Morgan on Consolidated Minerals (ignore who they are for the purpose of this issue), in an Australian court. The case relates to the acquisition of Consolidated Minerals, a mining company, by Palmary for A$ 1.3 bn. JP Morgan was Consolidated Minerals' advisor in the acquisition. But the new owner, Palmary has a dispute on what fees must be paid by them to JP Morgan. Palmary believes that JP Morgan’s fees should be A$ 7m. JP Morgan believes it should be A$ 50m. Hence the dispute. Its extremely rare for investment banking fees to be brought to co...

Hu nian kuai le; or as they say in Guangdong, Kung hei fat choi. It’s the end of the spring festival holiday in China. After a week of festivities, millions of people are wending their way back to work. Come Monday, and life will be back to the routine. The overwhelming feeling is akin to a schoolgirl having to go back to school after the summer vacation. It is rather a strange feeling being in Guangzhou during this period. It's my third spring festival in China and I still haven’t got over this strangeness. For Guangzhou is half empty at this period as everybody who’s from elsewhere in China goes back home for the new year celebrations. This period sees the largest human migration in the world. Some 200 million people leave their place of work and go home for the festival. As China is full of migrant labour who have come from for work, this number balloons every year. Imagine the challenge of transporting 200 million people in a week. And then a week later transporting them back. ...

One of the largest job creators in the world is, well, you. You don’t need to necessarily work for somebody else – you can work for yourself. Millions do. Entrepreneurship is truly a magic bullet to overcome unemployment. Entrepreneurship is a long and complicated word. It hints at some grandiose big startup ; it doesn’t need to be. The largest number of entrepreneurs run an organization of 1 – themselves. It’s the corner shopkeeper, the street trader, the plumber, the carpenter, the doctor, the taxi driver, who are truly the greatest of entrepreneurs. They don’t moan about unemployment. They don’t demand 6 weeks of holidays a year. They don’t demand travel privileges in first class. They just work hard and earn their own living. Entrepreneurship need not necessarily need huge capital. It doesn’t need breakthrough ideas. It doesn’t need a MBA. It however needs commitment, guts, hard work, luck and some breaks. I’ll tell you the story of an entrepreneur I know. He comes from Bihar, o...

Build and they’ll come. Economists hate this phrase. They won’t come; they say. Maybe not to the land of the politician who said "Drill baby, drill" and to whom the title of this post owes apologies to. But in most parts of the world, they will indeed come. Infrastructure development is surely the policy area where most countries have performed poorly in. In developing countries it is because of lack of prioritisation (wasteful subsidies are considered more important) and rampant corruption. In developed countries – it is the NIMBY problem – do it anywhere, but not in my backyard. Everywhere infrastructure has been allowed to dramatically deteriorate (witness America’s airports, Britain’s M25, California’s power cuts, …..) Two stellar exceptions – Britain in the colonies in the early twentieth century and China of today. That a robust infrastructure is fundamental for economic growth is well known. But I argue here for infrastructure building as a great way of creating jobs....