Taking a break
Posted on May 25, 2007 by Richard Beddard
Filed Under Companies, Markets, Reading list, Investing |
- The Great Crash of 2009
- The boom must go on
- Investors see through Brown’s blather
- Chasing 39% profit a year
- The cheapest six stocks on the market
- The truth about private equity
And some earlier articles to remember:
- Pricking the climate bubble
- The ghosts of trades past (and what it can tell you)
- Ken Fisher interview: Why investors are their own worst enemies
- The case for lower oil prices
- Enron innocent?
- The fundamental flaw in value investing
The best thing about writing a blog by far is the comments, the discussions between investors at the bottom of all these pages. Hopefully these links will spark some more!
Next, some blogs to go visit:
- Making sense of my world
- Alphaville
- Graeme’s
- For something completely different… Unusual business ideas that work, and
- And, although it’s not strictly a blog, the well-oiled machine that is Interactive Investor editorial never stops.
Finally, if like me you’re going to be ‘netless for a while, I’ve a couple of curiosities for the reading list.
- Luke Johnson, the investor and chairman of Channel 4, who made his name running Pizza Express has released a collection of his Sunday Telegraph columns, ‘the Maverick‘. Subtitled ‘dispatches from an unrepentant capitalist’, it’s a trip down memory lane, rolled up with a wry look at the world of business and investment from a personality who’s occupied a unique combination of niches within it.
- Allan Leighton on Leadership is perhaps even more curious. The Royal Mail chairman is another portfolio careerist, this time turned interviewer. In this book he interviews the great and the good of British business, some of them former buddies from his days at Mars and ASDA, and including Philip Green, Justin King (ceo of Sainsbury) and James ‘triple cyclone’ Dyson.
It’s not often you laugh out loud reading a management book unless, that is, you’re laughing at it or you’re reading a review by Lucy Kellaway, but Mr Leighton got me in his introduction. Recounting the time he sold ASDA to Wal-Mart he describes his attempts to keep the negotiation secret, he was in effect welching on a deal already agreed with Kingfisher:
“So, there I was, bound for the USA, looking as casual as I could with my heart and mind racing. Ironically, despite my clumsy attempts at disguise, a number of other businessmen hurrying to New York that morning recognised me and came up to say hello. I even found myself sitting next to my close neighbour in Yorkshire, the Earl of Harewood, who seemed slightly bemused by my outlandish baseball cap and dark glasses. I need hardly have bothered. As we landed at JFK airport a few hours later, an announcement boomed over the public address system:
‘Would Mr Leighton of ASDA, being met by the Wal-Mart jet, please make himself known to the cabin crew.’”
Both books look light enough to make good holiday reading, whilst retaining the potential to enlighten.
Whatever you’re doing over the bank holiday, I hope it’s a good one.
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