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Showing posts from August, 2012

Knocking Down Doors in Venture Capital

Jenn Wei, a Stanford MBA who once worked in investment banking, is now researching, chasing and negotiating deals in technology as a venture capitalist at Bloomberg Capital.  Last week, in postings that appeared widely in business media, including  VentureBeat.com , she wrote about the startling, but not surprising lack of women in venture capital--in Silicon Valley (California), in Silicon Alley (New York) and at other pivotal venture spots around the country. She reminded us of the glaring scarcity of females at negotiating tables, within network huddles when ideas are bantered about, and in closed-door meetings where entrepreneurs, deal-doers and investors decide the right amounts for an early-round investment to support the next new thing. She offered a few reasons why women are not prominent in the industry and dared to propose solutions. She said women desperately need role models in the industry and industry participants need to take time to understand the likes, interests, and

Considerable Cautions While Opting a Financial Loan

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Sometimes at some part of our lives we face financial problems. You may fall short of cash to meet our needs and wants like paying our monthly bills, medical bills, buying a car or home. To fulfil our needs and wants we look for sources which offer financial support. Loans are one of the best sources which assist you financially to achieve your goal. However you need to be very careful and consider certain points when choosing which loans to go for. ` First of all determine which type of loan will suit your needs. If you require small amounts of money then you can go for short term loans. If you need instant cash then you can opt for paydayloans . If you want to finance for a new home then you can opt for long term mortgage loans. Taking a long term loan for smaller requirements does not make a sense. So, determine your needs and choose accordingly.  Consider the loans with lower interest rates. Don’t ever consider loans with high interest rates for a small advantage that they are easi

On Campus: Getting Back to School

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Yale SOM's new campus: One year away In late August, there's always a vibrancy on the campuses at business schools (including the Consortium 17 ) across the country as they prepare for the fall sessions.  New MBA students arrive on campus--wide-eyed, anxious, and excited about new experiences, new classmates and the challenges of in-depth study of finance, accounting, marketing, policy and recruiting.  Second-year students arrive after the intensity of summer internships (and with full-time offers for the fortunate ones), ready to resume studies in cherished, more interesting electives after the core courses are done.  Professors and deans get excited, too, as they are buoyed by the interests, eagerness and dreams of students. Always there is electricity during the early days of school in the fall, until students drift into an October grind, when it's time to ward off the pressures of upcoming midterms and recruiting chores. But for now, it's August, and there are new f

Morgan Stanley: Can It Please Analysts?

A financial institution strives hard to get it right--stay out of the headlines, focus on core businesses, hire talented people, manage risks, oversee diverse sources of revenue, rationalize costs and allocate capital properly. And despite all efforts, the institution is not a darling among equity analysts, investors, and market watchers.  Analysts and the markets sense something is amiss. They recognize  the organization is fine-tuned and structured appropriately. They reason the right managers are at the top managing a complex, global business. But they sense an undetected vulnerability. The bank experiences a periodic, surprising earnings stumble, and the market declares degrees of doom. The company is admired, its history revered, but analysts are biased toward a high probability that losses will occur from nowhere. Sounds like Morgan Stanley . While some financial institutions have been whipped soundly in business headlines the past few years ( Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citi

Irreversible Euro

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During the ECB press conference last Thursday August 2nd, Mario Draghi, the President of the ECB, mentioned that the Euro is 'irreversible'. A media reporter asked him what did he mean when he said 'irreversible'? Mario spoke in a firm and clear tone, "when I said irreversible it means Euro can never go back to lira or drachma, it is here to stay for ever!" Through out the whole Q&A session, he answered many questions on bond purchase and financial aids for the Eurozone, but it is nothing compared to the above statement about Euro dollar sent a very strong signal that whoever think Euro is going to collapse, will need to think twice! The next day, DJI soared 2% and subsequently other Asian markets rebounded on Monday. Whether this rally genuine or not depends on the following factors: - Corporate earnings - As we've come to the earnings season in August, what drives the market very much depends on the individual corporate earnings. If economies are r

Dark Days at Knight Capital

Despite all efforts to corral Wall Street to avert a crisis, avoid market collapse, and instill confidence in the system, guess what happens. Yet another major misstep in the marketplace by one of its big participants.  And not just the rare market mistake that occurs once every year or two.  Missteps, hiccups, and strange collapses seem to be occurring these days just about every other week. This week, it's Knight Capital , the equities market-making firm that announced losses of over $400 million after it launched new software in its trading systems.  Software errors and technology glitches led the firm's black boxes to spew large orders of errant trades. By the time the firm's humans (not machines) could discover what was happening, it was too late. The losses had piled up on trades the firm had no idea it had booked and would have never wanted to make in the first place.  The losses wiped out about half of its book-value equity, and now it struggles to survive intact. U