New book shares insights from Steve Jobs’ 1st boss, Atari’s Steve Bushnell; Bushnell turned down an offer from his former employee to invest $50,000 in Apple during its formative stages, a one-third stake now worth $120 billion

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

New book shares insights from Steve Jobs’ 1st boss

(philstar.com) | Updated March 28, 2013 – 4:11pm

bushnell

In this photo taken Wednesday, Mar. 20, 2013, Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari poses for a photo at “Two-Bits-Circus,” a Los Angeles idea factory focused on software, hardware and machines. Bushnell was the first guy to give Steve Jobs his first full-time job in Silicon Valley at Atari. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — When Steve Jobs adopted “think different” as Apple’s mantra in the late 1990s, the company’s ads featured Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Amelia Earhart and a constellation of other starry-eyed oddballs who reshaped society.

Nolan Bushnell never appeared in those tributes, even though Apple was riffing on an iconoclastic philosophy he embraced while running video game pioneer Atari in the early 1970s. Atari’s refusal to be corralled by the status quo was one of the reasons Jobs went to work there in 1974 as an unkempt, contemptuous 19-year-old. Bushnell says Jobs offended some Atari employees so much that Bushnell eventually told Jobs to work nights when one else was around.

Bushnell, though, says he always saw something special in Jobs, who evidently came to appreciate his eccentric boss, too. The two remained in touch until shortly before Jobs died in October 2011 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

That bond inspired Bushnell to write a book about the unorthodox thinking that fosters the kinds of breakthroughs that became Jobs’ hallmark as the co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc. Apple built its first personal computers with some of the parts from Atari’s early video game machines. After Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple in 1976, Apple also adopted parts of an Atari culture that strived to make work seem like play. That included pizza-and-beer parties and company retreats to the beach.

“I have always been pretty proud about that connection,” Bushnell said in an interview. “I know Steve was always trying to take ideas and turn them upside down, just like I did.”

Bushnell, now 70, could have reaped even more from his relationship with Jobs if he hadn’t turned down an offer from his former employee to invest $50,000 in Apple during its formative stages. Had he seized that opportunity, Bushnell would have owned one-third of Apple, which is now worth about $425 billion — more than any other company in the world.

Bushnell’s newly released book, “Finding The Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Hire, Keep and Nurture Creative Talent,” is the latest chapter in a diverse career that spans more than 20 different startups that he either launched on his own or groomed at Catalyst Technologies, a business incubator that he once ran. Read more of this post

Filed under Innovation, Life, TMT Trends

Innovation by Asian business leaders no longer a luxury; Amid the changing rules driven by the acceleration of globalisation, Asian leaders must be game-changing innovators to succeed in the new normal

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Innovation by Asian business leaders no longer a luxury

The Nation March 30, 2013 1:00 am

Amid the changing rules driven by the acceleration of globalisation, Asian leaders must be game-changing innovators to succeed in the new normal, according to a study by global management consulting firm Hay Group.

Increasing globalisation is a given, with international competition likely to grow fiercer and markets even more diversified. The rise of India and China, coupled with the global economic power shift towards Asia, is reshaping the world before our very eyes. In the West, the number of jobs is falling; in the East, leaders have to learn how to manage in new markets as they expand westwards.  Read more of this post

Filed under Innovation, Macro Trends

Korean food and restaurants going global

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

2013-03-29 16:33

Korean food and restaurants going global

By Park Si-soo
This is Korea’s next export item: food. A growing number of local food companies are carving out business footprints overseas, seeking to conquer dining tables around the world. The trend is facilitated by homegrown restaurant chains that are increasingly flexing their muscle to conquer what gourmets call “hubs of international cuisine” such as New York, London and Paris. Several companies have already set up sales networks in more than 60 countries and are trying to cement their presence by establishing manufacturing bases there. While their overseas sales have so far generated income from China, Japan, America and Southeast Asian countries that have many Korean immigrants, they are now trying to diversify revenue sources by taking advantage of the boom in Korean pop culture that is sweeping Russia, Europe and Latin American countries. The Korea Agro-Fisheries and Food Trade Corp. (aT) said the country exported kimchi worth $3.87 million to the U.S. last year, up 38.6 percent from the previous year. Shipments of red pepper paste to the U.S. surged by 24.9 percent during the same period, aT said. Exports of Korean ice cream to Brazil jumped a whopping 102.2 percent last year, it noted, saying its popularity is quickly spreading to surrounding countries. “We have a good start,” a spokesman for the company said. “I believe food products will emerge as a new growth engine for the country along with semiconductors, smartphones and automobiles.”

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Filed under Investing Process, Macro Trends

When Simplicity Is the Solution; From tax forms to medicine bottles to store shelves, we are facing a crisis of complexity. But there’s a way out.

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

March 29, 2013, 8:22 p.m. ET

When Simplicity Is the Solution

From tax forms to medicine bottles to store shelves, we are facing a crisis of complexity. But there’s a way out.

Alan Siegel, author of “Simple” explains that America and the world are suffering from a crisis of complexity. WSJ’s Ryan Sager asks what this crisis is costing us and how we can achieve more simplicity.

By ALAN SIEGEL and IRENE ETZKORN

At the beginning of “Walden,” Henry David Thoreau makes a concise case against the complexity of modern life. “Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” he writes. “[L]et your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail….Simplify, simplify.”

Every facet of our lives is complicated by an ever-widening array of choices, including dozens of options for jam or mustard or frozen foods.

That was the 19th century, though, and we live in the 21st. In a typical day, we encounter dozens—if not dozens upon dozens—of moments when we are delayed, frustrated or confused by complexity. Our lives are filled with gadgets we can’t use (automatic sprinklers, GPS devices, fancy blenders), instructions we can’t follow (labels on medicine bottles, directions for assembling toys or furniture) and forms we can’t decipher (tax returns, gym membership contracts, wireless phone bills).

Every facet of our lives, even entertainment and recreation, is complicated by an ever-widening array of choices delivered at a frantic pace. Read more of this post

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Have We Evolved to Be Nasty or Nice?

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

March 29, 2013, 9:15 p.m. ET

Have We Evolved to Be Nasty or Nice?

It is futile to ask whether people are naturally cooperative or selfish. They can be either, in different circumstances.

By MATT RIDLEY

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A new study by Dirk Helbing at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and colleagues has modeled the emergence of “nice” behavior in idealized human beings. It’s done by computer, using the famous “prisoner’s dilemma” game, in which a prisoner has to decide between cooperating with a comrade to get a mutual reward or avoiding a punishment by being the first of the two to defect to the other side. The Zurich team found that so long as players in the game stay near their (modeled) parents, the birth of a nice guy predisposed to cooperate can trigger “a cascade” of generous acts.

In other words, more togetherness and physical proximity across the generations allows the development of more prosocial behavior. “The clustering of friendly agents, which promotes other-regarding preferences, is not supported when offspring move away.” They also argue that networking via social media can promote niceness, which might surprise regular users of Twitter. Read more of this post

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Does Blame Predict Performance of Investment Managers?

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Does Blame Predict Performance?

March 2013 | Jason Hsu

As an econometrician and a fund-of-funds portfolio manager, I spend much time researching quantifiable metrics to help me identify managers who can outperform consistently. There is, in fact, a rich body of literature exploring different manager selection criteria. Academic papers have considered portfolio manager attributes, such as tenure, the CFA designation, advanced degrees, and even SAT scores; they have also examined fund characteristics, such as portfolio turnover, expense ratios, and assets under management. Practitioners, especially investment consultants, have additionally focused on more nuanced and qualitative elements such as investment philosophy, compensation scheme, turnover of key professionals, ownership structure, and succession planning.

Ironically, perhaps, most people have given up on the hope that past positive alpha can predict future outperformance with any reliability.1 Some might even go as far as asserting that manager outperformance is mean-reverting due to cyclicality in styles and “luck.”

Some of the above-mentioned attributes may provide very incremental information on the true quality of the manager. However, most econometricians, asset owners, and investment consultants confess (although not all publicly) that effective methods for picking top quartile performers remain elusive. As one of my friends at a large Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund famously proclaimed, “We are convinced that managers who can consistently deliver alpha exist. We are, however, also convinced that we do not know how to find them.” Perhaps, then, the science of manager selection really is about winning what Charley Ellis calls “the loser’s game.” Read more of this post

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Due Diligence Disasters

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Top-Due-Diligence-Disasters

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Bing Gordon’s Founder Checklist: Animal Energy, Blind Confidence, And A Toupee.

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Bing Gordon’s Founder Checklist: Animal Energy, Blind Confidence, And A Toupee.

DEREK ANDERSEN

posted 1 hour ago

Editor’s note: Derek Andersen is the founder of Startup Grind, a 40-city community bringing the global startup world together while educating, inspiring, and connecting entrepreneurs.

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As an Electronic Arts’ intern eight years ago, I asked Bing Gordon then the chief creative officer and the only remaining early founding team member, a question about vision. “How can I know where the puck is going to be?” While he delivered a satisfactory response, two weeks later I received an email from Bing saying, “I answered that question poorly a few weeks and I wanted to try again.” A few weeks ago Bing joined me at Startup Grind in Silicon Valley where he delivered some videogame history and founder advice. In 2010 Mark Pincus called KPCB general partner Bing Gordon (look for a bald guy on the front row) one of the world’s “great CEO coaches” supporting founders on the boards of companies like Amazon, Zynga, Klout, and Zazzle. Here are some excepts from our recent interview. Read more of this post

Filed under Life, TMT Trends

Sequoia Capital In Singapore After A Year, Has Yet To Invest In A Local Startup

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Sequoia Capital In Singapore After A Year, Has Yet To Invest In A Local Startup

VICTORIA HO

posted yesterday

When Sequoia Capital India landed in Singapore quietly in 2012, the buzz around town was that a big-name US fund being in the country was going to really jolt the market and provide serious cred to the startups here.

The Indian team running operations here, however, appears to have spent the last year of its time in the island state helping startups in its India portfolio expand into Singapore, rather than directly investing in startups here. Read more of this post

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How Digital Technologies Change the Game: A Discussion with Five Leaders

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

How Digital Technologies Change the Game: A Discussion with Five Leaders

MARCH 25, 2013

During the dot-com era, “The Internet changes everything” was a popular refrain. The line was not wrong—just premature. Today, the Internet finally is changing everything.

The way we learn, form friendships, communicate, and do business has been permanently altered. Major industries, such as traditional media, have been disrupted, but all industries have felt the effects of big data, Internet connectivity, and social media. The Internet does not just change everything. It is everywhere, too. Asia and now Africa are quickly catching up with the rest of the world in terms of connectivity.

To understand what has changed and how businesses can respond, The Boston Consulting Group hosted a breakfast panel called “Digital Game Changers” at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The august group of panelists included the following:

  • Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce.com, a leader in enterprise cloud computing
  • Matt Brittin, Google vice president of Northern and Central Europe
  • Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post 
  • Steve Mollenkopf, president of Qualcomm, an innovator in wireless and next-generation technologies
  • Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia

The quintet discussed the disruptive force of the Internet on industry economics and the transformative effect of connectivity on organizations and customer interactions. They also ranged over the rapid entry of emerging markets into the connected world, the delivery of mobile health care, the dangers of cyber attacks—and the need to unplug from it all from time to time. In short, the panelists knew how to pack a punch. Read more of this post

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How Laithwaites turns wine into gold; Laithwaite is the biggest wine merchants in the world, excluding supermarket retailers.

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

How Laithwaites turns wine into gold

Charles Vallance and David Hopper meet a man who has made his fortune, and a company employing over 1,000 people, from his lifelong passion.

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The Laithwaites make wine at their collection of vineyards and wineries in Bordeaux and Australia. Photo: Ben Cawthra / Rex Features

By Charles Vallance and David Hopper

9:42PM GMT 29 Mar 2013

Were you to bump into Tony Laithwaite at the post office or at an airport check-in you would probably guess that he is a wine maker; put him in a vineyard and he looks like he belongs there — in the way that French existential philosophers look like they belong in street cafes on the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

The UK’s biggest wine company is eponymously named after Laithwaite and his wife, Barbara. In fact, according to some calculations, they are the biggest wine merchants in the world, excluding supermarket retailers.

Trading under his own name and several other subsidiaries, Laithwaite and his wife have built up a company with turnover in excess of £350m annually — which works out at around 50m bottles — with usually at least 2,500 wines in stock, and directly employing more than 1,000 people worldwide. Read more of this post

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Tan Sri Andrew Sheng: Financial crises a result of governance failures

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Saturday March 30, 2013

Financial crises a result of governance failures

THINK ASIAN By ANDREW SHENG

ROMAN emperor Julius Caesar was famously warned by a seer about the Ides of March, traditionally March 15.

On March 15 this year, banks in Cyprus were closed to allow politicians time to decide how to raise 5.8 billion euros so that the country could qualify for 10 billion euros in bailout funds from the rest of eurozone and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The solution suggested was to levy a tax on depositors, sparking a realisation that finally, the Europeans had decided to “bail-in” investors and depositors, rather than using public funds to “bail-out” everyone else.

The Cyprus crisis caused a stir in global financial markets, because it punctured expectations that the worst was over. Instead, it demonstrated another episode of muddling through. Read more of this post

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Meet Cyro, The Robotic Jellyfish That Will Haunt Your Dreams

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Meet Cyro, The Robotic Jellyfish That Will Haunt Your Dreams

Matthew Shaer, Christian Science Monitor | Mar. 29, 2013, 11:26 PM | 1,354 | 1

If you’re frightened of the ocean, or the creatures that lurk beneath the waves, we recommend that you read no further. According to the Los Angeles Times, engineers at aVirginia Tech lab are working on a giant, synthetic, robo-jellyfish, which one day could autonomously patrol the high seas. The project, which is funded by a $5-million grant from the US Naval Undersea Warfare Center and the Office of Naval Research, has already yielded one workable prototype: a 170-pound monster nicknamed Cyro. Geek.com reports that Cyro measures more than five feet in length, and behaves very much like its organic counterpart. Cryo consists of a central core of components in a waterproof shell connected to eight moving arms. Draped over this is a large and soft piece of white silicone, which comes into contact with each of the arms and remains flexible. Combined, the arms and silicone act as a propulsion system mimicking how real jellyfish move around. A video produced by Virginia Tech indicates that Cyro could eventually be used to keep tabs on ecologically-sensitive underwater areas or to help clean up oil spills. Jellyfish, after all, are extremely efficient swimmers – they require less energy than, say, a large fish to keep moving. Still, we stand by our original point. Regular jellyfish are scary enough. Robotic jellyfish? The stuff of horror flicks – or at least spy movies. “Imagine,” writes Matt Peckham of Time Magazine, “a fully-realized version of such a robot running underwater surveillance missions for the U.S. Navy – the marine version of a weaponless drone, in other words, perhaps poking around someone’s oceanfront property (or, heaven forbid, employed in a civilian capacity by ignoble paparazzi to stalk celebrities).” In related news, here’s a compendium of horror movies that include jellyfish. Among them: The 1965 epic “Sting of Death.”

Filed under TMT Trends

Demand for ‘dislike’ button grows; Facebook users want icon to warn of swindling

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

2013-03-29 19:16

Demand for ‘dislike’ button grows

Facebook users want icon to warn of swindling
By Kwon Ji-youn

“The opposite of ‘like’ is not ‘un-like,’” said Choi Jung-hwan, 23, a technician. “It’s dislike.” On Facebook, users can “like” friends’ comments, photos, or statuses by clicking on a blue “thumbs-up” icon, to express agreement or interest. But users have been, for the past few years, calling for the introduction of a “dislike” button as well. It is technically possible to “un-like” a friend’s comment or photo. But in order for this to be effective, the profile owner must be aware the friend has first liked, then “un-liked,” the comment, which calls for careful monitoring of one’s Facebook profile page. Facebook surprised its user base with a “dislike” icon in 2010. However, the icon was a scam, which directed users’ to an existing Firefox add-on that allowed Facebook users to “dislike” posts.   Read more of this post

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Making Robots Mimic the Human Hand

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

March 29, 2013

Making Robots Mimic the Human Hand

By JOHN MARKOFF

http://bcove.me/733p3d03

As part of a national research project to develop low-cost artificial hands, the Pentagon has released a video of a robot that can change a tire — almost. In the video, the two-armed robot uses a tool to remove a tire from a car. “We’re almost on the stage where we can put the the nuts back onto the bolts,” said Gill Pratt, a program manager at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa.

The goal of the program, now in its third phase, is to develop robots and prosthetic devices for wide use. Until now, high cost as well as limits on dexterity and machine vision have been major obstacles to advanced robotic systems. Robotic hands that mimic the capabilities of the human hand have cost $10,000 or more, and computer vision systems have worked only in highly structured environments on a very limited set of objects. But it is becoming feasible to make hands that will cost less than $3,000 in quantities of 1,000. Two teams — from iRobot, a robot maker in Bedford, Mass., and the government’s Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico — are working on the hand project; they employ a variety of widely available technologies, like cellphone cameras and sensors, to help lower costs. Read more of this post

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Q&A: Upworthy CEO Eli Pariser on the unpredictable nature of viral

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Q&A: Upworthy CEO Eli Pariser on the unpredictable nature of viral

By Hayley Tsukayama, Saturday, March 30, 2:48 AM

Upworthy, a site that tries to make meaningful videos, graphics and pictures go viral, recently celebrated its first anniversary by announcing that it now has 1.2 million fans on Facebook. The project is the brain child of Eli Pariser, formerly of the political publication MoveOn, and former Onion managing editor Peter Koechley. Pariser, now Upworthy’s chief executive officer, took some time to chat about what the company has learned from its first year and what’s on the horizon. An edited version of our conversation appears below:

Let’s start with a big question. What have you learned from this first year?

I think when we started we sat down with investors and partners and looked them in the eye and said people want substantive content on the Internet– secretly we wondered if that was really true. We were not sure if that was how it was going to turn out, you know, a lot of people said that thing about how you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. But we’ve found, yes, there’s an appetite. It doesn’t have to be all celebrities and pet tricks.

What kinds of things have you seen blow up that you weren’t expecting? What trends have you noticed?

It’s always surprising to us why things take off. The post about the GoldieBlox tool kit [a building toy set for girls, created by a female engineer] was such as huge hit, when other content about when girls becoming engineers wasn’t. In general, I would say we focus on the things that are visual, meaningful and shareable — that’s our triad and I think that’s served us well. Read more of this post

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Wal-Mart is examining a groundbreaking plan to use shoppers in its stores to make deliveries to consumers who have ordered the retailer’s items online. The retailer could potentially offer a discount to entice shoppers to make the deliveries on their way home from stores.

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Wal-mart to use its customers to deliver products

Wal-Mart is examining a groundbreaking plan to use shoppers in its stores to make deliveries to consumers who have ordered the retailer’s items online.

Wal-Mart is forecasting online sales of about $9bn (£5.9bn) this year

By Richard Blackden

8:58PM GMT 28 Mar 2013

The world’s biggest retailer is making a big push to drive online sales as more Americans stay connected to the internet throughout the day through phones and tablet devices. A small number of its more than 4,000 stores have begun delivering orders directly to consumers, rather than sourcing the items from warehouses. Using consumers in its stores would take that one step further. “I see a path to where this is crowd sourced,” Joel Anderson, who runs Walmart.com in the US, told Reuters. He said the retailer could potentially offer a discount to entice shoppers to make the deliveries on their way home from stores.

Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends, TMT Trends

Jim Rogers: Depositors Globally Should ‘Run for the Hills’

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Jim Rogers: Depositors Globally Should ‘Run for the Hills’

Friday, 29 Mar 2013 08:35 AM

By Dan Weil

The losses imposed on Cyprus bank depositors by the European Union, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout should be a warning shot to bank depositors around the world, says investment legend Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings. “What more do you need to know? Please, you better hurry, you better run for the hills. I’m doing it anyway,” Rogers tells CNBC. “I want to make sure that I don’t get trapped. Think of all the poor souls that just thought they had a simple bank account. Now they find out that they are making a ‘contribution’ to the stability of Cyprus. The gall of these politicians.”

Rogers’ idea is that the risk of a confiscation of bank deposits now exists anyplace on the globe. “I, for one, am making sure I don’t have too much money in any one specific bank account anywhere in the world, because now there is a precedent,” he says. The IMF and European Union have told Cyprus, “loot the bank accounts,’” Rogers adds. “So you can be sure that other countries when problems come, are going to say, ‘well, it’s condoned by the EU, it’s condoned by the IMF, so let’s do it too.’” As for what is a good investment right now, Rogers said he owns Swiss francs and some other long-term European investments, but has been investing in Russia and Japan recently, not the United States. “I’m certainly not investing in the U.S., because the U.S. is making all-time highs based on money printing,” he explains. “If you give me a trillion dollars, I’ll show you a good time too and a lot of people are having a good time. I’m somewhat skeptical because I know it’s going to end badly.”

The Cyprus crisis could ultimately affect the United States by infecting broader Europe, David Sterman, senior market analyst at StreetAuthority.com, tells Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview. “The real threat to the U.S. is concern that things like Cyprus start to impact bigger and bigger dominoes in Europe, whether it’s Italy or Spain, and messes up all the financing mechanisms we’re desperately trying to arrange to keep things moving forward there,” he explains. “So it’s really what Cyprus means for Europe and what Europe means for the U.S.”

Filed under Macro Trends

South Korean President Park’s fund a drop in country’s debt ocean; South Korea’s much-hyped household debt relief program launched with far less money than planned in the latest sign the leader was struggling to gain traction

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

South Korean President Park’s fund a drop in country’s debt ocean

5:29am EDT

By Somang Yang

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s much-hyped household debt relief program, a key policy pledge from new President Park Geun-hye, launched on Friday with far less money than planned in the latest sign the leader was struggling to gain traction.

Park took power in February after a bruising election campaign fought largely over the economy and identified debt relief and narrowing rising income inequality as key policy platforms.

She pledged 18 trillion won ($16.18 billion) for the fund which debuted with just 800 million won and which will target 324,000 people, a tenth of the 3.2 million people Park had promised would benefit from the plan.

“I’m disappointed in Park Geun-hye, I really thought she would do more to solve the debt crisis,” said Kim Shin-hong, a 51-year-old man waiting in line at the Credit Counselling & Recovery Service offices in downtown Seoul on Thursday. South Korean household debts are 156 percent of disposable income and act as a major drag on Asia’s fourth-largest economy, which the government expects to grow just 2.3 percent this year. Park’s approval rating slipped to 41 percent in a poll conducted by Gallup, making her the nation’s most unpopular leader in the early weeks on the job. Read more of this post

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The Real Exit: Selling Strategies Subsequent to Private Equity Backed IPOs

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

The Real Exit: Selling Strategies Subsequent to Private Equity Backed IPOs

Nikolai Visnjic Goethe University Frankfurt

March 4, 2013

Abstract: 
This study examines the exit strategy of private equity investors after they take their portfolio companies public. Recent empirical studies considering private equity exit channel and timing generally fail to expose the investor’s strategy after the IPO. For this purpose I use a comprehensive set of PE backed IPOs from 1996 to 2005 in the United States and subsequently track governance characteristics until investors exit their controlling stakes. I find strong evidence that PE investors strategically choose whether to sell their position en bloc in a trade sale or gradually to dispersed shareholders on the secondary market. Severe governance differences between the two groups of exit strategies at IPO and evolving from IPO to exit suggest that PE investors anticipate and actively plan an eventual trade sale well in advance.

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Hole in the Wall: A Study of Short Selling and Private Placements

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Hole in the Wall: A Study of Short Selling and Private Placements

Henk Berkman University of Auckland – Faculty of Business & Economics

Michael D. McKenzie University of Sydney – Discipline of Finance; University of Cambridge – Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance (CERF); Financial Research Network (FIRN)

Patrick Verwijmeren Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) – Erasmus School of Economics (ESE)

March 23, 2013

Abstract: 
Companies planning a private placement typically gauge the interest of institutional buyers before the offering is publicly announced. Regulators are concerned with this practice, called wall-crossing, as it might invite insider trading, especially when the potential investors are hedge funds. We examine privately placed common stock and convertible offerings and find widespread evidence of pre-announcement short selling. We show that pre-announcement short sellers are able to predict announcement day returns. The effects are especially strong when hedge funds are involved and when the number of buyers is high.

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Making Sense of CEOs’ Facebook Pages and Corporate Wikis: Drivers of Enterprise 2.0 Success in TMT Industries

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Making Sense of CEOs’ Facebook Pages and Corporate Wikis: Drivers of Enterprise 2.0 Success in TMT Industries

Jacques R. Bughin Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) – European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics (ECORE) ; McKinsey & Company

March 5, 2013

Abstract: 
This paper investigates whether, and if yes, under what conditions, cloud-based collaboration technologies have improved company performance in the high-tech, media and telecom (TMT) industries. Two results stand out. First, while adoption of collaboration technologies in TMT is ahead of other industries, collaboration technologies diffusion is correlated with improved company performance. Second, the extent of performance impact is strongly firm-specific, but common factors to all firms explain success, such as the intensity of collaboration within employees, and through suppliers and customers; and the extent to which organizational changes have been made to effectively leverage those technologies.

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Aristotelian Accounting

March 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Aristotelian Accounting

Gerhard Michael Ambrosi Jean Monnet Chair ad personam

November 1, 2012

Abstract: 
Aristotle’s analysis of economic exchange in the Nicomachen Ethics involves two paradigms which he addresses separately but then stresses that there is no difference between them: barter and monetary exchange. Each one of them can be rendered separately but in a mutually consistent way by using geometrical methods which were well established and widely used at Aristotle’s time, namely by the ‘algebra of areas’. In this framework Aristotle’s ‘monetary equivalence’ in exchange appears as an application of Euclid’s proposition Elements I,43 about the equality of complements. Aristotle insists that the analysis of exchange must account also for the artisans’ respective ‘own production’. In modern parlance this is their (yearly) income. Comparing, say, farmer and shoemaker in these terms leads to the accounting statement: as farmer to shoemaker, so shoes to food, namely in terms of percentage sold out of own production. The explanation of this relation solves one of the major puzzles of Aristotle’s text. But this analysis deals with accounting and not with justice. Indeed, it is Aristotle’s central critique against the Pythagoreans that they wrongly take the formal conditions of exchange as the essence of justice. But justice is a topic which goes beyond the scope of the present paper. The paper shows that Aristotle used a consistent and interesting system of geometrical accounting in exchange. It definitely merits his listing as one of the ancestors of economic analysis.

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