A bank or fund is usually the sum total of several business lines. Each of these business lines has an associated risk to its assets that Basel II wishes to label Beta or Gamma. The total risk exposure can be summed as the total of the risk-weighted assets. Thus, best practice in one department does [...]
The focus of this blog is on financial markets and financial institutions. The subject of public sector finance is fortunately well outside our scope other than to the extent that it impacts on these markets and institutions. In brief, however : Income. Government income comes from taxes imposed on cor porates and individuals. The receipt [...]
What we think is important varies with our personal circumstances and the stage of the business cycle. If you talked to people three years ago – when the stock market was booming and everybody was raising money to buy dot-coms that were going to be our saviors and that were going to change everything we [...]
The basic message in mergers and acquisitions is that most M&A destroys value. We look at the data over and over again, and most acquisitions simply don’t pay off. Yet corporations still consistently make large-scale acquisitions. Trying to persuade senior executives not to pay 30 percent to 40 percent premiums to buy other companies is [...]
