The current real estate market causes most investors to think twice before buying a piece of property, regardless of how great a deal it might be. While it’s prudent to use caution, don’t be penny wise and pound foolish. There are two areas in real estate that are begging to be noticed: short sales and…
If the strategy for investing in real estate in 2009 had to be whittled down to one word, it would be this one: “conservatively.” There are a number of differing opinions about when the market is going to rebound, which markets are fundamentally strong and where you should be putting your money. People always argue…
When vacancy rates increase you want to make sure that your units aren’t the ones that are empty. There are two ways to do that; one is to rent high quality units at excellent rates to long term tenants and the other is to keep your property manager on their toes. How do you do…
Moses Singo is an African exception. A black farmer with green fingers, he has probably had to overcome more obstacles than faced by most entrepreneurs anywhere else in the world to get his family business off the ground. A little more than a decade since launching the Singoflora Nursery in Tswane (Pretoria), he now exports…
Oh the irony. “Satyam” means “truth” in Sanskrit, a fitting name then for the fourth largest company in India’s booming information technology sector – a company that named the World Bank and a series of international blue chip businesses among its clients. But not anymore. The company, it now turns out, was a scam. Its chairman and…
“We were all Keynesians now,” said Richard Nixon, back in 1969. If it was true then, it didn’t stay true for long. The rise of monetarism and neo-liberalism in the 1970s sidelined the once-dominant theories of British economist John Maynard Keynes Nowhere was the decline of Keynes’ ideas, and their replacement with the ideology of…
After the crisis, comes the litigation – and the regulation. The financial turmoil of 2008 will lead to tougher regulatory action, and a wave of law suits, this year, as governments and market authorities try to plug the gaps exposed by the market meltdown, and investors try to get at least some of their money…
Managers say the focus this year will be on restructuring and shopping for value assets. As heads of investment banking survey a new year, some of the most crucial documents in their possession are the detailed lists kept by their subordinates of the expected dealflow. These extensive lists, referred to as the pipeline, are kept…
What element of the crisis has most surprised you?The scale of leverage and underpriced risk on banks’ balance sheets. I was more conscious of household and government debt in thinking about possible problems, and not aware how vulnerable the banks were. Simply put, the world got lazy about balance sheets and more attention was being…
When America’s biggest banks began to collapse during the presidential election campaign, the SEC became the butt of criticism from both candidates. Then when giant insurer AIG had to be rescued, the candidates agreed on one thing: SEC Chairman Christopher Cox had to go. But the revelation that Madoff affair triggered a demand for an…
