IIFT EMIB

IIFT EMIB 2004 - 2006 (Source: http://www.iift.edu)

It’s been exactly five long years since I joined for my EMIB (Executive Masters in International business) from the prestigious Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi! I joined it on 9th August 2004. Time flies! But can say for sure that this degree has been my best investment made on education till date. With zero opportunity cost (it was held only on weekends – non stop for one and a half years) and the schedule was honestly grueling with no respite and kept us busy on weekdays with assignments, quizzes every weekend, mid-term exams, classes and of course, the end terms.

Berkshire Hathaway Annual report 2008 / a must read

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2008ar/2008ar.pdf

You can’t be mistaken when you are reading from the greatest punters in the Financial space – Warren Buffett. The Chairman’s letter to shareholders did not dissappoint me. It was filled with the usual interesting titbits on his insurance ops and business, the concept of insurance ‘float’, his profit margins, the stake he took in Goldman Sachs, GE etc. during the troubling cashflow starved times of late 2008, the usual caveats on on the derivatives business and the future of Berkshire! Oh btw – there was no mention of “fruit of the loom” as marketwatch said there would be!

As I have said many times before, I am a self proclaimed protege of Warren Buffett and anything he does interests me. His annual reports are always looked forward to by much ado and this time was especially different to get the views of the man who I consider is king in stock market investing alongwith with his mentor Ben Graham and associate, Charlie Munger.

Has the retail bubble in India burst?

I had blogged about retail opportunities in India about an year and a half ago here - http://ecofin.wordpress.com/2007/07/25/retail-opportunities-in-india/

It was not even an year ago that we witnessed almost every large corporate worth their salt open up stores in the name of “retail” looking for every opportunity to outwit and throw out your neighbourhood “kirana store”.

But, less than an year later, they have a sad story to tell.

The Satyam fiasco – Ramalinga Raju’s misadventures

Sorry for not blogging about this earlier. I did not have access to broadband Internet at my home for the last 3 days and was working off my Blackberry for office related tasks.

While the economic and financial implications have been written about far and wide and everyone is busy reading the tea leaves, what are the lessons one take’s away from this? Before I begin my analysis, I would like to remind my readers that I had blogged on Corporate governance and sound accounting practices as early as 1.5 years ago on this very blog: http://ecofin.wordpress.com/2007/07/06/importance-of-accounting-for-the-business-world/ and on http://www.accounting101.wordpress.com AND on Corporate Ethics here: http://ecofin.wordpress.com/2006/11/16/corporate-ethics/ more than TWO years ago!

Why am I crazy about Wall Street/US monetary policies?

Simply because, it has a huge impact - no matter where you are in this world!

What happens out there impacts every single country in this world. It impacts you you and you. It impacts the decision making we make on our jobs etc. It impacts our local domestic economy. No matter how much we claim of ourselves being insulated from Wall Street, the truth is its just an eyewash. We will all get affected by the mayhem on Wall Street and the effects take at least 6 months to trickle into economies such as India and China. This is what happened in 2001 and I was a very close observer of what happened then and used to take very conservative decisions that paid off on multiple fronts and hence it is imperative I do the same again.

The age of turbulence – Alan Greenspan’s memoir

http://www.amazon.com/Age-Turbulence-Adventures-New-World/dp/1594201315

I am going to start reading up this book starting next week once I am done with ‘The Snowball – Warren Buffett and the business of life’.

While critics are holding Greenspan responsible for advocating ARM’s way back in his testimony to Congress in 2004 and his keeping of interest rates low from the days of the dot com bubble burst, I still admire Greenspan for what he did for the US economy. Its easy to criticize the Federal reserve Chairman but what were the Wall Street companies and their hugely overpaid CEO’s doing? Who will track Dick Fuld (CEO of the now disgraced/bankrupt Lehman Brothers that sold itself to Barclays some weeks back) or who will track the activities of Merrill Lynch’s ex-CEO who was fired or who will track the activities of AIG’s ex-CEO who insured a whole load of CDS that nearly sunk AIG.

Will post my review once done but it will take some time to read up both books!

The Snowball – Warren Buffett and the business of life

http://www.amazon.com/Snowball-Warren-Buffett-Business-Life/dp/0553805096

I bought this book from Strand book stall at Manipal chambers, Bangalore today. This book was just released 2 days ago on the 28th September 2008 and lo and behold it’s already in circulation in India – that is cool.

I am a self proclaimed Warren Buffett protege and fan since I first read his books by Mary Buffett (Buffettology) and the Warren Buffett Way (2nd ed.) since 2003.

Anything about his investment habits interests me. This book written by Alice Schroeder – a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley is going to be my food for thought in the coming days! Will post my detailed review once I am done reading through this massive book that I will be forced to read at home due to its huge size – its almost 960 pages! The book I bought is Printed in Great Britain and is not the US print.

CITIGROUP takes over Wachovia banking operations

The tumble continues. The Fed’s $250 billion immediate injection to buy toxic assets of troubled financial institutions, followed by the $100 billion based on President’s approval followed by another $350 billion subject to approval of Congress did not help.

Wachovia is in trouble

It looks like Wachovia is going to be the next casuality to get acquired. Potential suitors include Citigroup (NYSE:C), Wells Fargo among others.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/business/27bank.html?hp

The $ 700 billion bailout is taking time but taking its casualities as well.

Going forward – I will blog more about the correlation between this credit crunch and a more economics, freakonomics type approach to understanding this credit crisis that will be of more interest to my readers. Watch this space as the new trend unfolds. It will have facts and figures to support it.

WaMu goes to JPMChase

Washington Mutual is the largest bank failure in US history. It went up for grabs yesterday as JPMorgan Chase & Co. quickly acquired it for $ 1.9 billion.

This continues the series of fallouts of companies since last week when Lehman announced bankruptcy and Merrill got acquired by Bank of America.

How did JPMorgan stay clear of this mess? The answer might be here – http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/29/news/companies/tully_jpmorgan.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008090216. I have a lot of respect and admiration for CEO of JPMChase (NYSE: JPM), Jamie Dimon for staying clear of this.