Maybe Obama works??

According to a report from State Street, North American institutional investors are regaining confidence while other regions are not.

Investor confidence is rising, according to the results of the State Street Investor Confidence Index for February 2009.

The index measures investors' confidence on a quantitative basis. It analyses the actual buying and selling patterns of institutional investors.

The index found global investor confidence increased by 12.7 points to 72.9 from January's level of 60.2. The increase was mainly driven by North American institutional investors, whose confidence climbed 13 points to 64.5.

There is evidence that institutional investors appear to have "left behind the extreme gloom that characterised their outlook towards the end of 2008," concluded the report.

Difference between my Chinese thinking and American thinking

A native Chinese under an elite American education system:

Speaking in the class
my Chinese thinking: respect what professors say
my American thinking: challenge what professors say

Working with partners
my Chinese thinking: try to get along with first even he doesn't perform well
my American thinking: fire him when he doesn't perform well

Meeting with new people
my Chinese thinking: talk and chill first
my American thinking: let's talk about business

Going to a party
my Chinese thinking: have to go because the host came to my party last time
my American thinking: i am busy and don't really want to go

and there are more........

PIMCO_Stop the Decline of Asset Prices

PIMCO, headquartered in Newport Beach, Cali, is one of the asset management firms I respect. it said the most important thing for an asset manager is to control the risk exposure on its web front page, which is very true. Bill Gross, one of the companies, just published a report on stopping the decline of asset prices as a way to revive U.S. economy. Very interesting theory, just want to share.

PIMCO’s thesis for several years has held that the levered global economy long ago morphed from a banking-dominated regime to one that hid behind securitized lending and structures resembling a “shadow banking” system. SIVs, hedge funds, CDOs and increasingly levered mortgage and investment banks fueled asset appreciation in all investment markets, which in turn propelled real economic growth and employment to unsustainable levels.

To PIMCO, the remedy for this deflationary delevering and mini-depression is simple and almost axiomatic: stop the decline in asset prices.

That is the same thing as saying that current yields must come close to matching the economy’s embedded cost of debt if default is to be avoided.

PIMCO’s advice to policymakers is as follows: you can’t bail out everyone, yet economic recovery is not possible unless certain critical asset sectors are not only reliquefied, but rejuvenated in price.

Capitalism at its philosophical and practical center depends on credit, and while new loans can be and are being advanced via the banking system, it’s a much more difficult task to force shadow banks to lend. That lending depends on securitization which in turn depends on stable and eventually higher asset prices than currently exist.

The original text is here.

Twitter got funding, again

When the whole valley is talking about how twitter makes money, the investors definitely are not worried. Twitter, raised $35 million from Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital earlier, making the total investment of $50 million.

Valley is always like this: users are always the first priority before business model.

Twitter Gets New Round of Venture Capital Funding (Update2)

By Joseph Galante

Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Twitter Inc., the Web-messaging service used by everyone from Barack Obama to Britney Spears, raised $35 million from Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital, gaining funding to expand products.

Benchmark General Partner Peter Fenton will join the board, San Francisco-based Twitter said today in a blog posting. Twitter had earlier raised $22 million, bringing the total so far to more than $50 million.

Twitter has more than 55 million daily users who post short updates on anything from their latest date to their views on Congressional hearings. The service has emerged as a valuable source of information and news, which users can access from mobile devices or personal computers, said Todd Chaffee, general partner at Institutional Investors.

“This is going to be a very large media property,” Chaffee said in a telephone interview. “Any time you have millions of users engaging with your service multiple times a day, there are a lot of monetization opportunities.”

The company, founded in 2006 by Chief Executive Officer Evan Williams with partners Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey, rejected an offer to sell itself to Facebook Inc. last year, Chaffee said. The investors plan to make it an independent media company, he said.

anyone who figures out how to make money from radio should be a genius

seems Google can't figure out now..


Google to Shut Down Radio Business, Cut up to 40 Jobs (Update3)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aS850OvFGSTs&refer=us

By Brian Womack

Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., owner of the world’s most popular search engine, announced plans to shut its three- year-old radio-advertising business and cut as many as 40 jobs, saying the investment didn’t provide enough of a payoff.

The company, which expanded into the market with the 2006 purchase of DMarc Broadcasting Inc., is seeking a buyer for software that arranges ads on radio programs. Google will stop selling radio ads by May 31 and focus instead on online streaming audio, according to a blog posting today.

The move illustrates Google’s failure to parlay its dominance in Internet-search ads into offline media. The company said last month that it would close a business that sold ad space in newspapers. Google spent $102 million in cash for DMarc and agreed to pay as much as $1.14 billion in later installments depending on performance.

Founder and CEO, who can manage the company well?

As one of the few Chinese companies who successfully expanded to the world, Lenovo is always respected. Liu Chuanzhi, the founder, is definitely a character. He appointed Yang Yuanqing, a 30-something, to succeed him as the CEO, and then Chairman. He always says "Empower the youth".

Now with a huge loss reported for the last quarter, Lenovo is struggling among the pressure from investors. Liu is coming back as Chairman, and Yang resigned from chairman to be CEO. The official reason is that Yang will be mainly in charge of domestic business since that's where he came from. I can understand the pressure Lenovo is having now, but the question staying on top of my head is who can manage a company better, a founder or a CEO.

Probably Levono is learning from Yahoo to have its founder back. However, we see Yahoo went still can't get rid of the destiny to be acquired by Microsoft. One of the companies that Leveno may learn is Cisco. Founders already cashed out, while the company has been going through two generation of CEO, John Morgridge, and John Chambers. Even in bad time, Cisco can still survive.

Founders usually have a lot of emotional attachment to the company, such as its original business plan. That type of connection makes it hard to get to a good decision since emotion is hard to control. That's why when company grows bigger, professional managers are needed because they are the one who made the decision for a better future, instead of a planned future.

All I can say here is "Good luck, Lenovo".