Wealth Management
August 1, 2008
The Secret to a Great Board Meeting
It is extraordinary how people bond over the sharing of an interesting meal. Somehow, the breaking of bread gets people to relax and know each other better. Think of a dinner party you attended with like-minded people and how you came away inspired by the conversation. The food probably was good, setting a caring atmosphere. Look at Harry Potter eating weird, vomit flavoured candy with his newly made friends on the train to Hogwarts. What about the Klingons sitting down to dinner on the starship Enterprise with Captain Kirk, eating their foul food with their mouths wide open while claiming that Shakespeare stole all those plays from them? OK, maybe that didn’t go as well, but you get the point. Food is a shared experience which can add sparkle to an otherwise tedious event.
For your advisory board meeting, there is no need to order in pizza or soggy sandwich wraps. That signals tired ideas and soggy thinking. Get out of the box and head over to Pusitarri's, Soby’s or Loblaw's where you can purchase pre-made snacks which are delicious and different from the usual business fare. Mark McEwan, Chef Proprietaire of North 44, is opening up a ready-to-go-meals store in Toronto at Bayview and York Mills which will be terrific incentive to attend after-five meetings. Check out web sites, such as Canadian Living with Elizabeth Baird, to glean ideas of simple but unique platters of finger foods. The goal is to keep it simple but make your advisory board think they are on the dock at Muskoka watching the sunset while enjoying the company of good people.
Be sensible. An overly lavish spread may raise eyebrows, causing your board members to silently wonder if you are developing an Enron style of entertaining with the budget to match. The recent G8 summit held in Japan received criticism for the eight course banquet put on for the country leaders and wives by the Japanese leader but given at a time of food shortages around the world. Point taken. But does the G8 meal really symbolize a “let them eat cake” attitude to the poorer people in the world? Are any of those G8 leaders supping on rice wrapped in seaweed also deliberately starving their citizens? Let’s compare the G8 leadership of their populations with Bob Mugabe’s treatment of the people of his nation, the beleagured Zimbabwe. He has managed to take Africa’s bread basket and crush it to a smoldering wreck. Yet Bob managed to snag a free trip to the United Nations’ Food Conference held in Rome. He deserves a quick trip to the guillotine for that callous attitude, along with whoever issued the invitation.
Peter Handal, the head of Dale Carnegie, suggests that setting up the meal at your important meeting as a buffet because people are not stuck in their seats from the start. Not only does this keep everyone fresh, but they can network more with each other. If you plan a little in advance, your advisory board meeting could turn out to be the most valuable meal this year.
July 28, 2008
Carlyle Learns Bitter Chinese Lesson
In 2005, the Carlyle Group agreed to pay $375 million for Xugong Group Construction Machinery, however, according to the Financial Times report, it soon became a contentious issue that the Chinese government was pressured to block by nationalistic groups. The asset was considered a strategic asset that was being sold at a bargain price. The deal fell through this week, in what many consider a culmination of the difficulties of doing business in
Private Equity Hot for Infrastructure
In 2005, there were four infrastructure-focused private equity firms in the market looking to raise $
Hudson's Bay Acquired by NRDC Equity Partners
Established in 1670,
July 23, 2008
Oh no - not another crisis
The Globe & Mail reports the financial leaders met in Washington to draw up recommendations that seemed pretty basic such as have a risk committee that understands the parameters of acceptable risk.
"Another point that rather floored me," said Jacoline Loewen, author of Money Magnet, was to do your due diligence. I guess with these "pass the parcel" debt structures which sent off the loans to other financial institutions, employees got lax because they didn't think the parcel would land back in their lap and blow up.
I am glad to see that business is getting ahead of the regulators because Sar-Ox has meant that the New York Stock Exchange plummeted in IPOs listings while London's AIM rocketed. Here's more:
Although some have interpreted the report as a pre-emptive move to avoid the burden of more regulation, he IIF was quick to insist that this was not an effort in self-policing, and promised to work with regulators on new rules to benefit the industry.
But there are limits to what central banks and market officials can do, Mr. Waugh said in an interview. “Prescribed regulation hasn't been very successful in averting crises and probably never will be.”