Monthly Archives: November 2007

Wire fraud: a legal non-expert writes

November 30, 2007 5:16 pm by Financial Times

My colleague Martin Wolf has addressed the guilty plea of the NatWest Three to wire fraud, possibly in return for serving jail sentences in Britain, with a spendidly coruscating attack on the plea bargaining in the US judicial system.

I have nothing to add but I am intrigued by the notion of wire fraud, which crops up all the time in US white-collar crime cases such as the recent conviction of Conrad Black. It has always seemed odd to me that the US treats wire fraud and mail fraud as separate offences from fraud itself, as if the method by which the crime is committed trumps the crime itself.

Continue reading: “Wire fraud: a legal non-expert writes”

Posted in Business |

John Gapper Options on options on options at Porsche

November 29, 2007 7:59 pm by John Gapper

Oh dear. There is an ominous story in the FT today about Porsche and its finance director Holger Härter, who has pepped up the treasury operations of the German car maker and taken out various hedges against currency risks, notably the decline of the dollar.

The stubbled Mr Härter is apparently basking in the admiration of journalists, one of whom asked him if he was "a financial genius" at Porsche’s results press conference on Wednesday. He told my colleague Richard Milne that Porsche had adopted a complex trading strategy involving "options on options on options", adding prudently that Porsche is "not interested in speculation".

Well, yes, but currency trading and hedging is a zero sum game and I shudder when I hear of creative Treasury management at industrial companies or public institutions.

Mr Härter should recall the debacle in Orange County. Or, for that matter, take a look at Norway where four towns have suffered from investing in complex US-linked debt securities sold to them by Terra Securities. When big banks offer you innovative financial instruments, beware.

Posted in Finance |

John Gapper The myth of competing mobile standards

November 29, 2007 4:30 pm by John Gapper

Jim Surowiecki, the astute financial columnist of the New Yorker, wrote an article that I admired in Wired magazine five years ago, arguing that the US approach to technology standards for mobile phones was superior to that of Europe.

Essentially, Surowiecki said that the European approach of mandating a single technology standard in GSM had shut down technological progress, while the US decision to allow GSM to compete with other standards, including CDMA, had allowed the best technology to win.

Continue reading: “The myth of competing mobile standards”

Posted in Telecoms |

John Gapper A rapid return to Abu Dhabi

November 28, 2007 8:29 pm by John Gapper

Ingram_abu_dhabi

OK, so it did not take me long to break my promise about not writing any more about my Gulf visit. But I have an excuse: Abu Dhabi’s convenient decision to invest $7.5bn in Citigroup a week after I visited the emirate.

That is the subject of my newspaper column this week. I conclude that Americans should be thankful that Gulf countries want to recycle their energy revenues back into risk capital. You can read the rest of it here and post any comments below.

Posted in Finance |

John Gapper Kindle’s crime against the blogosphere

November 27, 2007 8:01 pm by John Gapper

Kindle_iii_3 A belated note about Kindle, Amazon’s new e-book reader, which was launched last week.

I am less interested in the product itself than some of the reaction to it, which was an example of the abuse the inner circle of technology and media bloggers metes out to anything that does not fit its vision of how the world ought to work. There is a good review of some of the comments here on the FT Tech Blog, written by my colleagues in Silicon Valley.

Continue reading: “Kindle’s crime against the blogosphere”

Posted in Technology |

John Gapper Our product is the only one you can afford

November 27, 2007 7:51 pm by John Gapper

The misuse of language in business is so common that I usually let it pass but I was provoked this morning on walking into the FT’s office in midtown Manhattan by a poster for Brite Smile, a tooth whitening group (I will leave on one side the mis-spelling of "bright").

The poster is for $399 tooth veneers, and the tag line is: The First Affordable Veneers.

If these are the first affordable veneers, it implies that nobody was able to afford veneers until now. This claim is patently false, as a glance around the gleaming choppers at any Manhattan cocktail party will tell you.

What Brite Smile means, presumably, is not "affordable" but "cheap", just as retailers talk about "value" products, as in "value for money" or . . . cheap. There is a defence for the euphemism "value" in that it is vague rather than clearly incorrect.

It reminds me of the signs you sometimes find on British motorways saying "Delays possible until June 2008" as if, after that date, delays will be impossible. Sadly, that is also false.

Posted in Advertising |

John Gapper Goodbye Emea, hello Mena

November 26, 2007 3:42 am by John Gapper

A final thought (for now) following my visit to the Gulf. Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of that strange and unconvincing region, Emea?

Emea stands for Europe, Middle East and Africa. It was popularised by US companies, which tended until recently to lump everything in the time zone around London and Paris together for the sake of geographical and managerial convenience.

Thus, a glance at Google discloses that AT&T, Microsoft and others still count Norway, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe as part of the same place.

This makes bureaucratic sense, in an Orwellian kind of way. I don’t mean totalitarianism but the fact that the world in 1984 was divided into Oceania, Eastasia and Eurania. Emea similarly allows multinational corporations to categorise the world into the Americas, Asia and that bit in between.

Continue reading: “Goodbye Emea, hello Mena”

Posted in Cities |

John Gapper Dubai built it and the world did come

November 22, 2007 12:01 am by John Gapper

Dubai

Column on the Financial Times comment page.

My epiphany about the Gulf state of Dubai came one night last week in the Souk Madinat Jumeirah. I was standing in the local franchise of Trader Vic’s, the Californian Hawaiian-themed bar, with a Mai Tai cocktail in hand, watching people dance to a salsa band.

I was with a bunch of visitors and locals, some of them consultants at McKinsey & Co, which has a large office in Dubai, as have many European and US banks and legal firms. One of the group was from Spain, another from Venezuela and a third from South Africa. Rounding it out were Americans whose parents were variously born in Jordan, Pakistan and Taiwan.

It felt as if I had died and gone to expatriate heaven.

Continue reading here. Post comments below.

Posted in Cities |
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About John and Andrew

John Gapper is an associate editor and the chief business commentator of the FT. He has worked for the FT since 1987, covering labour relations, banking and the media. He is co-author, with Nicholas Denton, of All That Glitters, an account of the collapse of Barings in 1995.

Andrew Hill is an associate editor and the management editor of the FT. He is a former City editor, financial editor, comment and analysis editor, New York bureau chief, foreign news editor and correspondent in Brussels and Milan.

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