• Citigroup to 15,000 Jobs
    Posted by on March 26th, 2007 at 12:02 pm

    Chuck Prince is in India, and the New York Times tagged along:

    Mr. Prince’s stop in India comes just weeks before Citigroup will announce a broad restructuring plan that could involve the elimination or relocation of as many as 15,000 high-cost jobs from areas including New York, London and Hong Kong, several executives briefed on the matter say. The net job loss could be 10,000 to 12,000, some through attrition.
    Citi’s consumer operations will be hardest hit, with front line and back office operations affected, they say. The corporate and investment banking businesses may be hard hit, with several thousand jobs lost, they say.
    Managers in these units have been asked to review highly paid employees and look for places to cut fat, particularly just below managing director level.

    Shouldn’t managers always be looking for places to cut the fat? Over the last three years, Citi’s stock is basically flat while the market is up around 30%.
    I wonder if there’s any message to read BREAK in between IT the lines UP.

  • Warren Watches His Buddy LeBron
    Posted by on March 26th, 2007 at 7:12 am

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    LeBron James invited a buddy who has even more money than he does to watch him play. Billions and billions more.
    Philanthropist and businessman Warren Buffett, wearing a black T-shirt with “Witness” glittering on the front, sat courtside as a guest of James on Sunday night for the Cleveland Cavaliers’ game against the Denver Nuggets.
    Though an unlikely pair, Cleveland’s All-Star forward and Buffett are friends and mutual admirers. They first met a few months ago over a lunch of cheeseburgers in Omaha, Neb.
    “He wanted a few tips on basketball and I wanted a little advice on money,” joked Buffett, estimated by Forbes Magazine to be worth $52 billion. “We switch. He tells me what socks to buy and I tell him what stocks to pick.”

  • A Stock, a Plan, a Short: Yahoo
    Posted by on March 24th, 2007 at 7:46 pm

    Now that Yahoo’s Panama is showing early signs of success, Valleywag asks if it’s time to stop bashing the company:

    It’s surely the best news for Yahoo in a while, and we’d love, in principle, to find another big company to prod. But it doesn’t change the basics: Yahoo makes less than half what Google produces in revenue for every search query; it needs much more than a one-off 10% lift in clickthroughs if it is to challenge Google’s strengthening grip on the search market.
    The narrative remains the same. Yahoo wasted time schmoozing in Hollywood while allowing two Stanford students to build a better search engine. Google has eclipsed Yahoo. Terry Semel’s failure is not absolute: Yahoo is growing much more strongly than most media companies. But it is relative. Yahoo, not Google, should have owned the internet.

    Ouch. But it’s true. I don’t get how Yahoo is a $31 stock. I wouldn’t touch it for half that. Yahoo is going for 43 times 2008’s earnings; Google, just 25.

  • Myths About the Developing World
    Posted by on March 24th, 2007 at 9:14 am

    Fascinating presentation by Hans Rosling.

  • The Buy List So Far
    Posted by on March 23rd, 2007 at 4:43 pm

    With a week to go in the first quarter, the Buy List is up 2.39% compared with 1.26% for the S&P 500 (this doesn’t include dividends). The Buy List is a tiny bit less volatile than the S&P 500 (average daily swing of 0.781% compared with 0.785%).
    Here’s the chart:
    image449.png
    Here’s the stock-by-stock breakdown:
    Jos. A Bank Clothiers (JOSB)……………………………………….21.12%
    FactSet Research Systems (FDS)………………………………..16.22%
    Respironics (RESP)…………………………………………………….10.94%
    Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY)………………………………………….8.14%
    Amphenol (APH)…………………………………………………………6.68%
    UnitedHealth Group (UNH)………………………………………….5.17%
    Donaldson (DCI)………………………………………………………..4.18%
    AFLAC (AFL)………………………………………………………………3.57%
    Graco (GGG) ……………………………………………………………..2.88%
    Biomet (BMET)……………………………………………………………2.74%
    Fiserv (FISV)……………………………………………………………..2.04%
    Nicholas Financial (NICK)…………………………………………..1.78%
    Varian Medical Systems (VAR)……………………………………1.26%
    SEI Investments (SEIC)……………………………………………..1.23%
    Danaher (DHR)…………………………………………………………-0.23%
    WR Berkley (BER)…………………………………………………….-4.38%
    Fair Isaac (FIC)…………………………………………………………-5.31%
    Medtronic (MDT)………………………………………………………..-6.71%
    Sysco (SYY) …………………………………………………………….-10.34%
    Harley-Davidson (HOG)…………………………………………….-13.15%

  • Bon Voyonage
    Posted by on March 23rd, 2007 at 2:11 pm

    Last year I wrote about Vonage‘s (VG) impending IPO:

    The offering is oversubscribed. But the price of voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) is plunging. And so will Vonage’s share price.

    I was right. In ten months, the shares are down about 80%. As an experienced market professional, I know how to judge a company’s future profit potential. For example, if the company says that it may never be profitable, that’s usually a good sign. Meaning, a bad sign. Either way, that’s about the only thing Vonage has gotten right.
    Now the company has been slapped with an injuction. It’s barred from using a patented technology from Verizon (VZ). One Wall Street firm just put a $1 target price on the shares. Why so optimistic?
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  • Blogroll
    Posted by on March 23rd, 2007 at 10:22 am

    If you haven’t had a chance, please check out my blogroll. I’ve added some new names in the past few weeks like Bill Rempel, Matthew Ash, Brett Steenbarger, Yaser Anwar and Maoxian.

  • Wallstrip Promo’d on Fast Money
    Posted by on March 23rd, 2007 at 8:30 am


    Here’s the show with DR himself.

  • The Blackstone Group’s Prospectus
    Posted by on March 22nd, 2007 at 4:13 pm

    From the SEC’s Web site. Here’s a sample:

    Our Growth Strategy
    We intend to create value for our common unitholders by:
    •generating superior investment performance across our asset management platform;
    •growing the assets under management in our existing investment fund operations;
    •expanding our asset management base by raising new investment funds;
    •increasing our investment of our own capital in our funds;
    •expanding our advisory business; and
    •entering into complementary new businesses.
    Why We Are Going Public
    We have decided to become a public company:
    •to access new sources of permanent capital that we can use to invest in our existing businesses, to expand into complementary new businesses and to further strengthen our development as an enduring institution;
    •to enhance our firm’s valuable brand;
    •to provide us with a publicly-traded equity currency and to enhance our flexibility in pursuing future strategic acquisitions;
    •to expand the range of financial and retention incentives that we can provide to our existing and future employees through the issuance of equity-related securities representing an interest in the value and performance of our firm as a whole; and
    •to permit the realization over time of the value of our equity held by our existing owners.

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  • This Just In…
    Posted by on March 22nd, 2007 at 11:09 am

    Human Beings Still Important at Citigroup