Monthly Archives: July 2007

Mike Bloomberg, Social Networking Mogul

David
Carr
, bringing bylines to DealBook, notes that Michael Bloomberg
is going to be hanging out with the MySpace and Facebook honchos (that’s Rupert
Murdoch
and Mark Zuckerberg, for those of you following
along at home) at Herb Allen’s Sun Valley power klatsch this
week. Carr tells us that Bloomberg "has proven to be one of the most durable
and consistently innovative media barons of our time". What he doesn’t
tell us is that Bloomberg was arguably the world’s first social-networking billionaire.
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The Economics of Book Publishing

If a book like Freakonomics can sell more copies by fudging the science, there’s a good chance that it will.
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Argentina Quietly Starts Making Friends With Energy Companies

Everyone wins. The energy companies get the tariff increases they’ve long been demanding, Argentina gets the energy it needs, and Kirchner gets to keep the whole thing quiet.
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How To Get To AAA

In the CDO market, I’m not convinced that overcollateralization always works particularly well.
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Why the S&P-Triggered Subprime Selloff Makes No Sense

S&P’s announcement today tells us nothing that we haven’t known for months about the subprime market. So count me utterly baffled by the market reaction.
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Posted in bonds and loans, housing | Comments Off on Why the S&P-Triggered Subprime Selloff Makes No Sense

The Value of the Hilton Brand

Last week was one of the best weeks in Hilton family history: it showed that Barron Hilton, just like his father Conrad, deserves to be remembered as an excellent creator of value in the hospitality industry.
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Anti-Counterfeiting Bill Doing Well in Washington

John McCary of the Wall Street Journal reports today on the Bayh-Voinovich
bill, an anti-counterfeiting bill which got nowhere in 2005 but which has slightly
better prospects
now, in the wake of minor revisions.
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Jockeying Ends for IMF Position

Dominique
Strauss-Kahn
is the
official EU candidate
to lead the IMF, which means he is the next leader
of the IMF.
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Jockeying Begins for IMF Position

Is there some kind of rule which says that high-profile international technocrats
have to be French?
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New York State’s Mind-Boggling Economic Irrationality

I said
back in 2003 that New York behaves much like a dysfunctional Latin American
nation. Since then, most Latin nations have got their act together, certainly
in terms of fiscal policy. New York, meanwhile, has gotten precisely nowhere.
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Blogging Risks in the CDO Market

After having my coffee
with Armond Budish
this morning, I found myself in the neighborhood of my
old offices at Roubini Global Economics,
so I popped in to say hi. Nouriel
was there, extremely alert and rested for someone who’d made two trips to Singapore
in the space of one week, and so was Brad
Setser
, who, being Brad, wanted to talk about the potential systemic consequences
of a rebalancing of Arab states’ foreign exchange reserves.
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Control Your Money Even After You Die

I had coffee with Armond Budish this morning, who’s plugging
his new
book on estate planning
.
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Whither the UBS Investment Bank?

Maybe the attempt to grow the investment bank will turn out to be more theoretical than real. Rohner is a veteran of UBS’s buy side; it’s not yet clear that he has a lot of love or understanding for the sell-siders in New York.
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Monday Morning Links are Feeling Charitable

I’m going to be travelling for a large part of this morning, and then having
coffee with an expert on estate planning, so here’s a few links to keep you
going until I can get up and running.
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Who Will Get Acquired On Monday?

Cotten
Timberlake
has been looking at action in Macy’s and Target shares, and reckons
it’s consistent with the kind of insidery
trading
which often precedes an acquisition announcement or a shareholder-friendly
spinoff.
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Why Dell Won’t Get Delisted

In the staredown between Dell and Nasdaq, it’s the stock exchange, not the
computer company, which blinked
first
.
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Posted in governance, stocks, technology | Comments Off on Why Dell Won’t Get Delisted

The World Bank vs China in Africa

Africa’s need for infrastructure is urgent, and any African government should jump at whatever the quickest, cheapest option is. Right now, that’s much more likely to mean looking east than looking west.
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Crazy Leverage in the Hilton Deal

Russ Winter notes that Blackstone’s acquisition of Hilton
hotels doesn’t make
a lot of sense
from a cashflow perspective.
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Posted in bonds and loans, private equity | 1 Comment

Payrolls: Unhelpful, As Usual

The monthly jobs report has increasingly little credibility.
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Bono Bashing

Does anybody have a nice word to say about Bono?
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Posted in development | Comments Off on Bono Bashing

Adventures in Technical Analysis, Apple Edition

Every so often, one comes across a piece of technical analysis mumbo-jumbo
so glorious in its meaninglessness that one can only stand back in admiration,
as though it were a Leonardo painting or perhaps a magnificent skyscraper.
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Wuffli Out at UBS

The UBS press
release
announcing "senior executive management changes" (aka
the firing of CEO Peter Wuffli) is a classic of the raises-more-questions-than-it-answers
genre.
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Edward Pastorini Unmasked as Theodore Roxford

Theodore Roxford makes something of a career out of bogus takeover bids.
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How Citi Reached the Top of the M&A League Tables

Maybe it’s not so surprising that Citi is now atop the M&A league tables: the league tables simply aren’t measuring advisory services any more.
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Posted in banking, M&A, private equity | Comments Off on How Citi Reached the Top of the M&A League Tables

Addressing Climate Change at the World Bank

"Marshall
Jevons
" has been watching the telly, and saw Sebastian Mallaby
telling Fareed Zakaria what Robert Zoellick
should be doing at the World Bank.
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