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Portfolio Magazine Closes
Tweet Share on Facebook April 27, 2009 CommentConde Nast is closing Portfolio, a two-year-old title that cost somewhere between $100 million and $150 million (per BW's Jon Fine) and launched at almost the exact moment the financial sector, the economy, and the advertising market started to implode.
The price tag raised a lot of eyebrows, and speculation over just how committed the company would be to a new biz mag never let up, but as the end comes there's less surprise and more sadness at the loss of a title that did do some great reporting during its short life and (especially) produced some great blogging from Felix Salmon (who recently decamped to Reuters) and media blogger Jeff Bercovici. Portfolio moved the ball forward online and produced solid stories right up to the end. Its voice will be missed.
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Banks Brace For Stress Tests: Who's Vulnerable?
Tweet Share on Facebook April 24, 2009 Comment (19)The 19 largest U.S. banks get the results of the government's "stress tests" starting today. The results will be officially released May 4 and banks still have a few days to appeal, but handicapping the results is already underway.
The AP surveys a few analysts for banks that might fare the worst:
Barclay's Capital analyst Jason Goldberg wrote Thursday that three companies could miss the mark: Cleveland-based KeyCorp, Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks Inc. and Birmingham-based Regions Financial Corp.
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Madoff Madness
Tweet Share on Facebook April 24, 2009 CommentThe newsy bit of Fortune's big Madoff story is that Bernie's close cohort, Frank DiPascali, (who is described as a "ninja" for his shadowy presence) is naming names in a plea deal, and claiming none of Madoff's family members were involved. But the story includes a ton of interesting tidbits about Madoff's own weirdness and how he ran his huge Ponzi scheme:
The technology he used to keep the fraud going should've been in a museum:
The IBM server, for instance, an AS/400 that dated from the 1980s, was so old that some data had to be keyed in by hand, yet Madoff refused to replace it. The machine -- which has been autopsied by the government -- was the nerve center of the fraud. The thousands of pages of statements printed out from it showed trades that were never made.
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Lewis Silenced, Threatened Over Merrill By Bernanke And Paulson
Tweet Share on Facebook April 23, 2009 Comment (96)Bank of America's Ken Lewis' testimony sheds some light on the gory details of last year's crisis management. From the WSJ (sub. req.):
Mr. Lewis, testifying under oath before New York's attorney general in February, told prosecutors that he believed Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke were instructing him to keep silent about deepening financial difficulties at Merrill, the struggling brokerage giant. As part of his testimony, a transcript of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lewis said the government wanted him to keep quiet while the two sides negotiated government funding to help BofA absorb Merrill and its huge losses.
The cost of refusing to keep shareholders in the dark might have been his job:
The Wall Street Journal previously reported, in a page-one story on Feb. 5, that Mr. Lewis agreed to proceed with the Merrill merger only after Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke said that he and his board would lose their jobs if Bank of America backed out of the deal. Mr. Lewis's testimony with the New York attorney general's office corroborates that account.
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Solar Cos. Bitten Twice By Economic Crisis
Tweet Share on Facebook April 22, 2009 Comment (3)Interesting tidbit from Jefferies & Co.'s '09 cleantech outlook. Solar companies are getting squeezed by both the credit crunch in Europe and the stimulus in the Chinese economy (home to a big chunk of low-cost solar panel makers). From the report (bold is mine):
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Morning Links
Tweet Share on Facebook April 22, 2009 CommentSteve Case is econ-tweeting!
If you got excited about those surprisingly strong bank earnings, Minyanville reminds you why you're wrong.
And Morgan Stanley bucks that trend (while blaming improvement in credit markets that cost the bank $1.5 billion in revenue as credit spreads tightened).
Freddie Mac CFO found dead in apparent suicide.
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Failed Bank Tour!
Tweet Share on Facebook April 21, 2009 CommentNPR's Planet Money blog links to a photo essay of failed banks in Missouri, just a couple of the 25 U.S. banks that have failed so far this year.
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Why Twitter Advertising Could Be A Huge Success
Tweet Share on Facebook April 21, 2009 Comment (9)I've been using Tweetie's great Twitter app for the iPhone this week (check out the handy bookmarklet for super-easy linking) after moving up from Twitterrific. While I'm scrolling through my recent tweets, I actually notice: There's no advertisement.
And you know what? For the first time ever, in any medium, I sort of missed it. The arguments for and against hosting ads on Twitter are still raging, and the company still hasn't shown its hand when it comes to a real business plan. But I'm betting Twitter will surprise everyone if it can get its act together connecting users with advertisers for a couple of reasons:
It's honest. If you host an ad, mark it as such (Twitterrific does), and no problem. A (small) number of ads don't clutter up my feed and if free services mean a pitch or two, well, I'll suffer through it just like I do on Facebook and The New York Times. I'm not talking about experience-killing ads like Twitter spam or marketers pretending to be users to infiltrate my feeds. Well-defined, unobtrusive ads are a separate animal, and unlike banner ads, I actually notice them when they're mixed in with my tweets.
I can tell advertisers what I want. I'll warily admit it: Serving up advertising based on my hashtags might actually be welcome. If I'm getting excited about #susanboyle, an iTunes link to her (possible) duet with Elaine Paige would actually be a help. Since I'm the one having the conversation and choosing to join a group tweeting the same, why (again) would a single ad nestled amid my latest tweets and addressing something I'm legitimately interested in be a problem? The entire concept of Twitter is so specific and the discussion is so user-controlled that it should almost be a gift for advertisers. I'm telling them what I want. I have to pick the hash, and find out who else is using it. That weeds out inconsistent searches and should eventually wrap up my interests like a gift for anyone who wants to sell me something. So does using multiple hashes per tweet.
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IMF: Global Financial Crisis Cost $4.1 Tril
Tweet Share on Facebook April 21, 2009 CommentThe International Monetary Fund has released its latest Global Financial Stability Report, and guess what it doesn't show much of?
Pick a category, and you find signs of stress. Emerging markets? Check. Their banks face "liquidity and solvency pressures." Credit risk? Check. Lending standards are still tightening even after a global wave of looser money.
Government fixes help, but aren't doing enough. From the report: "Policy actions have prevented an even deeper crisis, but the limited market improvement to date has been insufficient to prevent the onset of the adverse feedback loop with the real economy."
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Oracle Buys Sun After IBM Balks
Tweet Share on Facebook April 20, 2009 CommentAfter merger talks with IBM disintegrated, the price for Sun Microsystems (which started at $10 billion before being reduced by IBM from $10 a share to $9.40) finally ended at $7.4 billion -- with Oracle as the buyer. Under the deal today, Sun shareholders will get $9.50 a share.
Early reactions:
- S&P cuts ORCL to hold and left its price target at $20 saying, "While acquisition of the Java programming language and Solaris operating systems would offer strategic benefits, we are concerned about ORCL's entry into hardware and the impact it could have on operating margins. We think that the company can afford the transaction, but are concerned by operational challenges."
- CNET's Gordon Haff says the industry's structure is changing: "To get the bigger picture here you have to view it in the context of what's going on within the system vendor landscape more broadly. At the risk of overstating things, the system vendor landscape is being reconstituted into big, highly integrated companies that can do it all. This is how essentially all computer companies used to be, but that way of business gave way to the horizontal industry structure epitomized by the likes of Microsoft and Intel."
- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told Reuters he was "very surprised" by the deal.
- Larry Ellison's storied buyout machine is still whirring.
