Steve Jobs: Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Visual guide: Credit Crunch Made Easy

Probably,the finest visual guide on Credit Crunch (by Jonathan Jarvis). Everyone - from 17 year old to 77 year old - should understand at least the content of this guide about credit crunch.

The 50bn Dollar Man: Bernard Madoff

As Warren Buffett says, you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out...
Felix Salmon at Market Movers has been busy today blogging about the man who lost (or swallowed or stealed or whatever) the sum, apparently, in the markets and who told his investors that he was making great returns for them.
With that money you could feed (and put the change in the pocket of) the whole of Uzbekistan (about 27m people) for about 2.5 years. Financiers moan about the guy in the street having no sympathy towards them - how is this supposed to change that?

Lehman Brothers to file for bankruptcy?!

Unbelievable times... Bear Sterns went under, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae went under...is it now Lehman's turn?! It is a rhetoric question. The difference between the former two cases is that both Bear Sterns and Freddie and Fannie were bailed out by the US government, whereas the government is refusing to provide guarantee to the potential buyer of Lehman, British bank Barclays which now confirmed to have walked away from the discussions due to refusal. Given the scale of Lehman's liabilities, it is absolutely a critical time to watch how the developments unfold.

What I fear most is the potential impact of Lehman's insolvency. What happens to the creditors of Lehman? Any sizeable bank has, potentially, a multi billion counterparty risk on Lehman. Is this going to lead to a chain effect across the industry? Click here for more.

As I am writing this, I am reading news that Merrill Lynch is in talks with Bank of America to be acquired (See here).
I can't wait when the markets open in the morning...

UPDATE 1: 5.20am - 15 September 2008 London time
Only a few hours after the initial reports that ML was in talks with Bank of America to be acquired, NYT report that Bank of America bought ML for $50bn. If I were a ML shareholder I would have run with the money, but the issue here is that it is an all share purchase and hence shareholders can't lock in to the profit. I think BoA paid too much for ML.
So, what is next? AIG seems have nearly arrived too...

On how NOT to get a job or Impossible is Nothing...

I have copied below the story of Aleksey Vayner's infamous video attachment to his job application to UBS. As one of the commentators put it, he is a "perfect" investment banker! I like Michael Cera's parody of it -you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAV0sxwx9rY
Enjoy!

In October 2006, Yale University student Aleksey Vayner applied for a job with UBS AG. Amused by Vayner's apparent puffery, an unknown member of UBS staff emailed his application materials to other investment banks. They were soon posted on various blogs, then YouTube, from where they became an immense viral Internet phenomenon.

The video opens with a staged interview between Vayner and an offscreen voice(believed to be his own). However, the "interview" ultimately consists of a single question, to which Vayner gives a lengthy, rambling response. Using considerable amounts of business-speak jargon, Vayner praises himself and shares his various insights on success, talent, and overcoming adversity. Interspliced with the interview we see clips of Vayner performing various feats designed to look impressive, including bench pressing, skiing, playing tennis, ballroom dancing, and finally karate-chopping a stack of bricks. The video ends with a dedication, and a fairly lengthy credits sequence.

With his name and image appearing on the "Today" show, in The New York Post and all over the Web site Gawker, Aleksey Vayner may be the most famous investment-banking job applicant in recent memory.

But he says his new celebrity is less blessing than curse.

"This has been an extremely stressful time," Mr. Vayner, a senior at Yale University, told DealBook over steak in a northern New Jersey restaurant Thursday.

It was his first face-to-face meeting with a reporter since an 11-page application and elaborate video clip that he submitted to securities firm UBS showed up on two blogs, and then quickly spread to every corner of the Internet. The clip, staged to look like a job interview spliced with shots of Mr. Vayner's athletic prowess, flooded e-mail inboxes across Wall Street and eventually appeared on the video-sharing site YouTube. And the overwhelming reaction was mocking laughter.

By the way, he is apparently originally from Uzbekistan!

Damn It Feels Good to be Banker...

This is how a bunch of "jackass" bankers release their emotions when they sit opposite a similar bunch in consultancy! If you listen to it carefully, you will see that the guys are essentially going through the difference between the two career paths and a mutual stereotype about each other.

There is also a mutual dislike between bankers and traders. On a banking side, especially advisory, people tend to be more well rounded but usually not technically strong, whereas traders tend to be technically sharp but rather lacking other skills. Back in 2005 when I was applying for graduate roles, a trader asked "what other roles are you considering? Would you consider investment banking (meaning banking side of an investment banking)?". I replied by simply saying I didn't like banking (and I didn't at a time!) to which he cracked up saying he didn't like bankers either!