The Psychopath Test
Read the question, come up with an answer and then click through for the result. This is not a trick question. It is as it reads.A woman, while at the funeral of her own mother, met a man who she did not know. She thought he was ‘amazing’. She believed him to be her dream […]
The corporate governance program
I recently had a chance to attend a talk by Dennis Johnson, who is the Director of the Corporate Governance program at Calpers. Some of the points I garnered from his talk….. Small Portfolio, Big Returns The CG portfolio in Calpers is only $12B, which is only a twentieth of their total portfolio; despite its […]
Analyzing the viagra spam
Ok, its sunday and I am pissed to see three more “october 75% off” viagra emails on my corporate account, so i decided to do a little more research on these.These emails are definitely from a botnet of spam zombies, i traced all three originating ip addresses – they are from Chile, Turkey and South […]
Tips to live life to the fullest
I did not write these tips, but I think these are so true; I am pasting them in my blog to remind myself that there is life beyond my boundaries. “The proper function of man is to live – not to exist.” — Jack London Too often we go through life on autopilot, going through […]
MCSD, here I come
I overestimate certifications – especially when I see them in big bold colorful letters on peoples’ resumes. I’ve been thinking of MS certification for the last few years, but never set aside the time to study and take the 5 exams. For some reason, I browsed to the MS certification site on friday night, came […]
Raw printing to a network printer
For the last two days, I have been trying to find a way to send raw commands through C# to a label printer shared from a remote location. Now, if I was printing ‘Lord of the Rings’ on an A4 on this printer, I wouldn’t really mention it here, would I? My printer is a […]
Private Equity in our backyard
To draw an accurate picture of the performance of private equity and hedge funds, we defer to a mega-fund in our own backyard – the CalPERS Alternative Investment Management (AIM) Program. Since 1990, this fund has invested in four major areas of private equity – Venture Capital, Buyout Financing, Expansion Capital, and Mezzanine Debt Financing […]
The future of private equity market
Several market watchers have asserted that the pace of growth of private equity deals has impressed upon investors the notion that stocks are reasonably priced. Consequently, they are also inclined to believe that a gradual decrease in private equity deals will signal over-valuation again. Although we don’t dismiss such a notion completely, we feel that […]
FIG Valuation – Not the typical widget maker
Ever since hedge fund performance took the limelight, hedge funds have been charging exotic fees to the range of 1-2% of total assets plus a considerable chunk (10-30%) of actual profits. For companies like Fortress, revenues come from two sources: Management Fees – This is the fee that asset management companies levy from their investors […]
The Fortress Post Mortem
On Feb 14, 2007 Fortress completed its acquisition of RailAmerica; the short-term build-up in price was immediately lost after the news of acquisition. Many analysts that covered the railroad industry resounded that the buyout was a bad deal for Fortress because of RailAmerica’s sloppy record, but Fortress most likely discovered some undervalued assets in the […]