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November 29, 2012
The Economist (and Bill Clinton?) on shareholder value: "Mend it; don't end it."
See in The Economist by Schumpeter Taking the Long View on the "cult" of shareholder value. Scrap it for its follies and abuses? Or tweak and fix it? It's hard to imagine a more important conversation for publicly-traded companies. Excerpts:
Rather than junking shareholder value, companies should tweak it. Some are getting better at this.... L’Oréal and Air Liquide have offered shareholders bonuses for holding shares longer than a certain period of time. Google, LinkedIn, Zynga and other tech companies have adopted dual-class voting structures that allow the founders to resist the pressure to produce short-term results.
Several companies allow their chief executives to exercise their share options only after retirement, to encourage long-term thinking. Giving managers ordinary shares (rather than options) which they cannot sell for several years aligns their interests even more closely with those of ordinary shareholders. As Bill Clinton once said of affirmative action, the best way to deal with the shortcomings of shareholder value is to “Mend it; don’t end it.”
Posted by JD Hull at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)
November 28, 2012
Best Books on Lawyering: Jim Freund's "Lawyering: A Realistic Approach to Legal Practice" (1979).
Posted by JD Hull at 05:23 AM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2012
Charlie Rose interview with Jeff Bezos: Brick-and-mortar stores for Amazon?
Answer: Maybe. Maybe not. But listen to Jeff Bezos's reasons for opening up a chain of physical book stores--or not opening them up. Charlie Rose interviewed Amazon's founder and CEO on November 16. Their discussion is especially instructive for professionals and other service providers deciding whether or not to expand into new areas. Hint: Don't go into a new line only because you can.
Posted by JD Hull at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)
November 26, 2012
Argentina v. Argentina's bondholders: Will SCOTUS step in on debt restructuring?
See at Reuters this morning "Argentina Playing Last Cards in Court Battle with Bondholders". We have two additional questions: Is the resources-rich, highly-educated and diverse nation of Argentina ever going to emerge from its especially disappointing last twelve years of recession, high inflation and false starts? Is the U.S. Supreme Court really about to enter the brave new world of global debt restructuring?
Argentina's President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Evan Schaeffer's "How to Feed a Lawyer": The Perfect Gift for Lawyers, Clients and Actual Humans.
Trial lawyer, writer and Blawg Father Evan Schaeffer has a few secrets for us. Do buy and begin to read--as I am doing--his new book "How to Feed a Lawyer--and Other Irreverent Observations from the Legal Underground".
Posted by JD Hull at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)
November 25, 2012
In Sweden, Customers Now Drive Selling with Extreme Cat-Diving Ad Campaigns.
It could happen--and it did. See Sarah Etter's piece in Monetate.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:01 PM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2012
Vary the Customer Experience, Tweak the Markets, Fly the Colors: Do Instead Small Business Saturday Tomorrow.
Part aggregator, part pundit, Business Insider started up in early 2009 and is now edited by come-back kid Henry Blodget. We follow it here because of its breadth and generally non-partisan coverage of business and politics. Today, on Black Friday, BI has this suggestion for tomorrow in "It Makes Way More Sense To Shop On Saturday Than Black Friday", by Jill Krasny and Mandi Woodruff, who succinctly but deftly give a push to AMEX's Shop Small campaign for small business, launched in 2010. We agree. Stay home today. Go small Saturday. And to their reasons we would add these two. First, almost all businesses start up small. Many of them fail in the first few years--but more of them create jobs. Give them a shot. Second, if this is the Age of Nearly Limitless Choice for buyers, let's start acting like it. Go small, and help stir the cauldron a bit, folks. At least try it for one day.
My all-time favorite: Roland's of Capitol Hill, 333 Pennsylvania Ave SE.
Posted by JD Hull at 02:48 PM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2012
American Infrastructure and the November 6 Elections: The States Get Serious.
Will, more bucks and a much harder look. If you have clients in American construction or transportation, there are some signs of happier days ahead. It is true that critics in and out of the U.S. still marvel at our apparent patience with decaying roads, rail works and bridges. See, for example, LA-based Planetizen, citing European observers of our dodgy rail system, and asking "Why Do Americans Put Up With Decaying Infrastructure?" But for the states, interestingly, the November 6 elections were also about funding construction for road and transit projects--and most those ballot measures passed. An American Society of Civil Engineers blog noted on November 9 that voters in 39 states were asked to decide 188 ballot propositions, the most since 2006. The ASCE has a partial listing of states and municipalities passing a variety of measures. According to The Kiplinger Letter, about two-thirds of the 188 initiatives passed. The biggest one was in Arkansas, where voters approved a $1.3 billion bond initiative for roads and bridges.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:46 AM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2012
Charon QC's UK Law Tour: Why does it matter?
Answer: Because Western lawyers are famously resistant to change. English and North American lawyers, especially. We simply do not roll that well with the ups and downs of changing markets. And, certainly, we rarely see changes coming. Last month our friend Charon QC began his UK Law Tour--a legal Domesday census, if you will--to see how we are all dealing with the "new normal" for the profession. See his podcast yesterday with London-based Jeremy Hopkins, the operations chief of Riverview Law, a new kind of firm launched in North West England in May of 2011. And what does "customer-centric" mean? Is that something lawyers can be? Surely, you jest, sir.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2012
Justin Patten: "Can Mediation Save The BBC?"
A few years ago in London, I was finally able to meet Justin Patten, a solicitor who focuses on employment practices and related litigation out of Hertfordshire, the ancient, embattled county just north of greater London. This month at his well-regarded Human Law Ezine he asks "Can Mediation Save The BBC?", a short but thoughtful piece triggered by the investigation into whether the beloved British Broadcasting Corporation, now in its 85th year, enabled or condoned a pattern of sexual misconduct between Sir Jimmy Savile, a BBC star who died last year, and underage or very young women "on BBC property and while he worked for the BBC". The BBC also faces the question of whether a pedophile ring had operated there for decades. The scandal hasn't just shaken the BBC and its public image. It continues to threaten its leadership and BBC jobs at several levels.
Posted by JD Hull at 02:12 AM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2012
Dem Businessman Erskine Bowles: "This Magic Moment".
Business Insider notes that Bowles, North Carolina businessman, educator, former White House Chief of Staff and Democratic co-chair of President Obama's 2010 National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, said in an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett yesterday that "now" is the time for a debt deal on Capitol Hill. Bowles and former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, the commission's Republican co-chair, wrote the Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction plan, a bipartisan proposal which President Obama would not approve after its release in December 2010.
"I think this is truly the magic moment," Bowles said.
"We've got a second-term Democratic president who is willing to put entitlements on the table. We've got a Republican speaker who really gets it, who understands the dangers we face and is willing to put revenue on the table."
"We've probably got as many as 50 members in the Senate, equal number of Republicans and Democrats who are for a balanced plan," Bowles added.
"But most importantly, what we have, we have this fiscal cliff, this crisis, which really will create chaos if we go over the fiscal cliff and we don't immediately get a deal thereafter."
Posted by JD Hull at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2012
Neoconservative Bill Kristol on Congressional Deadlock: "Let People Float New Ideas".
Me? Generally, I like free markets. I don't like progressive taxes. I want everyone to know achievements will not be (1) discouraged as dreams or (2) penalized once accomplished. I also dislike (read: hate) partisan-line or cookie-cutter thinking--on the Right, the Left or the Middle. When I can't see the logic or merit of the other side's case, I will, on occasion, tolerate compromise "just because". And I know how stubbornly "being right" is always expensive and unproductive.
In mid-February last year I spotted Bill Kristol, founder of The Daily Standard, former Daniel Moynihan aide and the closest thing to living royalty in American conservatism--his dad, Irving, was Managing Editor of Commentary and a Rock Star of the Right--in the sumptuous lobby of a west coast Ritz-Carlton and wondered two things. First, had this precocious (and by all accounts) brilliant neocon preppie with a Harvard Ph.D ever stayed in even a Cambridge Holiday Inn? Secondly, how flexible, really, was he ideologically?
I just got my answer on the second one, and I think Bill Kristol has big ones. Well done, sir. See Fox News clip below.
And in The Huffington Post:
WASHINGTON -- Conservative commentator and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said Sunday the Republican Party should accept new ideas, including the much-criticized suggestion by Democrats that taxes be allowed to go up on the wealthy.
"It won't kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires," he said on "Fox News Sunday." "It really won't, I don't think. I don't really understand why Republicans don't take Obama's offer."
"Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic and half of whom live in Hollywood and are hostile?" he asked.
One of the biggest fights as Congress returns will be over taxes, as cuts put in place by former President George W. Bush are set to expire at the end of the year. Republicans want to extend those tax cuts for all income brackets, while Democrats want to raise revenue by allowing them to expire for wealthy Americans.
Exit polls last week found that six in ten voters supported ending the tax cuts on the wealthy, but House Republicans have remained adamantly opposed to allowing any of the rates to expire, instead supporting other changes to the tax code. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) indicated on Friday that was unlikely to change.
"By lowering rates and cleaning up the tax code, we know that we're going to get more economic growth," he said at a press conference. "It'll bring jobs back to America. It'll bring more revenue. We also know that if we clean up the code and make it simpler, the tax code will be more efficient. The current code only collects about 85 percent of what's due the government. And it's clear that if you have a simpler, cleaner, fairer tax code, that efficiency -- the effectiveness and efficiency of the tax code increases exponentially."
Posted by JD Hull at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2012
An Education in Global Good: Pilgrims Geldof and Bono's Steep, Wondrous Learning Curve.
This weekend's Financial Times previews a cautionary tale with a happy ending that every world-changer, compassionate capitalist and limousine liberal on the planet should take to heart. See Pro Bono: How Rockers Change the World, by Peter Aspden, about the Live Aid campaign started by Bob Geldof and Bono on news of the 1984 famine in Ethiopia. Excerpt:
First came the single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, big-haired contributors singing hastily written lines in assault of the seasonal charts. Then came the 1985 concert, Live Aid, featuring some good music, some bad music and torrents of televisual fury from the righteous and unstoppable Geldof.
The public duly bought the single and whipped out its credit cards. But the organisers of Live Aid were at the bottom of a steep learning curve. They soon realised, in Bono’s words, that there was “more to extreme poverty than unfortunate circumstances”. They had picked a battle against a drought; what they faced now was a war against the global economic order.
It was pointed out to Geldof and Bono that the amount they had raised, tens of millions of pounds – far beyond their initial ambitions – paled in comparison with the debt payments faced by African countries. If they were serious about famine and starvation, they needed to raise their sights. It was no longer enough to be concerned artists.
They needed to make some new buddies. They had to become properly political.
Learning the Moves: Geldof & Bono gave this King George an Irish Bible.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2012
Congratulations, Mr. President. So, what now, sir?
I got to DC last night late. Obama won. And the Senate withstood a GOP challenge. Around 12:15 am, after I started to hear the celebratory honking from folks on U Street, Q Street and streets in east Georgetown, it occurred to me. With this close and this grueling a race, even with it over, America is the most politically and culturally divided it has been in my lifetime. We are still at an iffy place of definitions. What next, folks? And let's start with those SCOTUS nominations. Jobs. The deficit. Privacy issues. Energy security. Mideast policy. Health care. And the fact that we have split into several Americas.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2012
Vote, ok? Just vote.
Like prayer, meditation or horseshoes, voting need not be perfect. It need not be fully informed. It doesn't have to be correct. But do vote today. Use or lose it, big guy.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:05 AM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2012
“My dear young lady, I’m a lawyer, and I’m used to lying on both sides.”
See Charon QC's Report No. 4: Lawyers: What They Are and What They Do at his Van Rouge UK Law Tour.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)
November 01, 2012
Day of the Innocents: Henri 2, Paw de Deux.
Existential cat hero Henri is the creation of Seattle's Will Braden.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 03:50 AM | Comments (0)