Motivation, The Three Individual States and Organizational Behavior

Housing Crisis: Begining of the end or the end of the begining?

If history has to be believed, we are in the recession/mortgage crisis for another year or two. One of the reports published by IMF today suggests, even though correction in house prices has started, it is still far from "bottomed-out". Solace is in the fact that correction is happening since last 18 months and it should be mid-way through soon. If the interpretation is correct, $700 billion bailout is not going to be of much help. It may save some companies on the wallstreet but for some families this winter is going to be harsh.

Original Report & a video on youtube explaining the situation in detail:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgxiakcCfvc

News Story: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2008/NUM100808A.htm

Wall Street Meltdown: Just 26 or more?

As predicted in an earlier post on this blog, there are more firms involved. Initial report says 26 firms are under FBI investigation. Should there be more? "Speculation" is, yes!

Read the detailed story:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/23/news/companies/fbi_finance/index.htm?cnn=yes

Wall Street Meltdown: What we know and what we dont?

Facts of the matter are:

• Lot of Americans have lost a sizable chunk of their retirement savings and they are really mad and concerned about this whole fiasco
• The remaining two investment banks, Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanley have lost their investment bank status and have been 'regularized'. Yes, they will have to start accepting deposits. Probably, they were forced to request a change in their status by the Fed.
• Replicans and Democrats together(really?) are trying to finalize the details of the biggest bailout in the history
• Value of investments in US by China, UAE & India have been wiped-out, almost

While possibilities exist that:

• There are many more skeletons hidden in the Wall Street closet
• Availability of capital in future will be scarce
• If we do not see too many foreign countries helping with the bailout, that will signal that even after the meltdown, assets are overvalued. And that will be bad news!!! Need to dig further; why Germany said no to participate in the bailout?
• As the capital will flow to foreign markets increasing the supply, it will decrease the threshold for even more projects in those markets. Majority of the capital would still be attracted by US owned businesses in BRIC or VISTA countries. Meaning? Buying the stocks of those companies which have global presence may present a money-making opportunity. Now, why is the bailout necessary?

Wall Street Meltdown: 2003 taxcuts are to be blamed?

Investment Banks knew that it was coming in 2008. How? Look at the systematic increase in the "Dividends Paid", in last few years, by the banks which failed/got bought out: Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch etc. Their financial statements tell the story. What does that really mean? Well, this is what economists call a classic Principal-Agent problem. As part of 2003 tax-cuts, one of the important change was, reduction in the tax rates on both dividends and capital gains. That gave incentives to all the CEOs to find means and ways to increase dividend payments. Dividend payments, of course, are dependent on revenues generated, meaning, to increase dividend payments revenue needs to be increased( Afterall, you should be able to justify, if you plan to play your game for few years). This is a triple whammy, on one side you need to increase the revenue so you can justify increased dividends, on the other side, less capital is available for next year because of cash being paid as dividends which could have been otherwise invested to generate more revenue in future. Apart from that, since you have less capital available to invest, you will take more debt to fund future investments.

As more and more dividends were paid, people looked for more and more ways to generate even higher revenues, of course, taking more and more debt along the way. With-in a few years, what you have is a huge number of companies on Wall Street with high debts and lower valuations. Question can be, why some companies failed earlier than others? Well, it really depends upon how fast they increased the size of debt in their pie of capital structure. Mortgage crisis was partially the result of this game, and ultimately helped in expediting the fallout. Why investment banks first? Because they can really take much-much more debt than other companies, so its not a surprise that the phenomena started with investment banks. Are there other sectors involved? I believe the answer is a big YES! Isn't that supported by the big figure of $700 billion? Well, they are trying to stagger it so that it doesn't look as bad, otherwise it is $1 trillion. Now the biggest question, why 2008? Well, think! the compromise to reduce the tax on dividends and capital gains to 15% is set to expire in 2008. Again, why 2008? Well, that is left to your imagination. For the time being, the world has a huge mess to deal with.

References:

Preliminary proof of this phenomena:
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/chetty-saezAEA06.pdf

Economists were concerned about it:
http://www.heritage.org/research/taxes/wm594.cfm



Disclaimer: I really dont know if this is the true reason. I would not have been sitting here writing this blog, if that would have been the case. So, use your own judgement! :-)

Company Valuation: The Best Multiple

Ever wondered, while doing company valuation using multiples, which multiple to use? As per a study which analyzed historical data, the multiple of Enterprise Value to Total Assets is the winner! Which is not surprising, as in the past, the total assets owned by a firm were a key value driver. Is it going to be true even in future? Doesn't seem like! As an economy becomes more and more service oriented, for the firms involved, total assets will become less and less important to valuation. Will it be the case for every firm? No. Will it be true for majority? Yes. So which multiple will win this race? Dont get surprised if the winner will be the ratio of Enterprise Value to OIBD (Operating Income Before Depreciation). OIBD is better than its frequently used cousin EBITDA because, it is less susceptible to one time fluctuations in net income.

Happy Valuation!

The Ladders - Job board with a difference!

The news is, one of the Harvard professor has written a case on The Ladders, a job board for which both recruiters and the applicants pay a fee. What is the difference? How The Ladders did what Monster, Dice, Careerbuilder and other free job boards could not do? Answer is simple, The Ladders moved up the value chain by adopting the strategy of differentiation! They post only 100K + jobs. A rigorous validation process ensures that only the "high quality" jobs are posted on the board.

Change the paradigm, beat the competition by moving up the value chain!

Disclaimer: The only affiliation I have with The Ladders is, I was its customer once.