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.