Category: Big Business

Speaking of not being able to handle prosperity, the first details of Jerome Kerviel’s testimony have been leaked:

As of Dec. 31, 2007, my gains had reached €1.4 billion ($2 billion), which I had not declared to the bank. At that point I had been overtaken by events and didn’t know how to present this to the bank. It represented undeclared cash of €1.4 billion. No one else had ever realized such a sum, which represented 50% of the total result of the equity-index division of SocGen. I didn’t know how to deal with it, I was happy and proud of myself, but I didn’t know how to justify it. Thus I decided not to declare it, and to hide the sum, I created an opposite fictional operation.

My pal Jon-Eric has brought me along to some NY/NJ Giants football games in the last few years, on occasions when his brother can’t use their ticket. The seats his family has are great: lower tier, 47-yard line, just below the overhang of the mezzanine. It’s a great view, somewhat protected from crappy weather, and we always have great tailgate get-togethers in the parking lot beforehand.

And when the Giants invariably cough up a lead, fumble during a big drive, or call 3 consecutive runs for -2 yards, we are graced with his dad’s signature comment: “They can’t handle prosperity, Jon-Eric!”

We joke about having a betting pool based on what point in the game his dad will utter those words, to the point of one of us handing a $5 to the other after the statement.

Which brings me to Starbucks. Our trip to Seattle last year coincided with Howard Schultz’ publicized memo about how his company had lost its way and needed to rediscover itself. Since, Schultz has reclaimed the CEO position, and is trying to retrench the company.

The story of Starbucks and how it handles “life at the top” echoes Jon-Eric’s dad’s sentiments: they can’t handle prosperity.

One of the aspects of business that fascinates me is this question of how a company copes with being a leader. I find it instructional to look at how businesses try to stay on top, particularly when they’ve established an overwhelming position in their field. Because they never stay on top: an unforeseen competitor shows up and eats its lunch, or the game changes around the market leader and its field is rendered useless, or it engages in dubious business practices that land it in serious regulatory trouble. Or a combination.

In Starbucks’ case, market dominance led to an attempt to diversify its product offerings, with the attendant loss of “romance” that Schultz lamented in his memo. I’d love to see a time-lapse map showing the opening and closing of Starbucks locations in the last 10 years; I bet there’d be a very organic/epidemiological appearance to it.

Here’s an article on how the company is trying to cope, and how local coffeeshops are benefiting as Starbucks closes some of its locations.

I think the upshot of the piece is the discovery that, even if the company is facing upheaval, at least it’s taken a big step in making sure its employees don’t breed:

Geoff Vuleta, chief executive of Fahrenheit 212, an innovation consultancy in New York, said Starbucks had lost focus on the experience that drew customers in the first place by neutering the baristas and by crowding the stores with merchandise, or as he put it, “replacing mystique with relentless commerce.”

Me? I still think their black coffee sucks, and that’s my make-or-break criteria. Maybe I need to try it with some sambuca, the way Jon-Eric’s dad’s pals end our tailgate parties before the Giants’ games. . .

(Update! Starbucks is going to stop selling sandwiches. I didn’t know they were selling sandwiches, but they showed me! The company is also planning to announce “five bold innovations” at its shareholders meeting on March 19. Unless it involves a caffeine IV-drip, I ain’t interested.)

It’s gettin’ so a businessman can’t expect no return from a fixed fight. Now if you can’t trust the fix, what can you trust? For a good return, you gotta go bettin’ on chance, and then you’re back with anarchy. Right back inna jungle.

—Johnny Caspar, Miller’s Crossing

In the midst of massive writeoff & layoff announcements from major U.S. banks, France’s Societe General SA announced a $7.2 billion writeoff (14% of its market capitalization), much of which was blamed on the actions of Jerome Kerviel, a low-level trader who had somehow managed to place $73 billion on stock-market bets (the bank’s market cap is $50 billion). The case is under investigation, and many outsiders are wondering exactly how one “rogue trader” could put that much money at risk.

A lesser-noted aspect of SG’s writeoff is that it also includes $1.6 billion in subprime mortgage exposure, $800 million in U.S. insurance bond exposure, and another $580 million set aside for future liabilities in those two areas. The bank is trying to raise around $8.0 billion in funds through a new share offering. So, sure, SocGen got wrecked by Kerviel’s improper bets, but it also managed to torch itself for almost $3.0 billion in losses based on bets that were perfectly proper.

And that brings me to the topic of risk. A few months ago, I wrote in my magazine (and reposted here) about the subject in light of quantitative hedge funds, subprime mortgages and Hudson Hawk:

Funnily enough, while we’re free of gold, we haven’t gotten over alchemy. Instead of la machina oro, we have “quant funds,” those hedge funds that employ statistical models so sophisticated that they can “find winning trade strategies,” as the Wall Street Journal puts it. From equations to money, like magic!

Turns out one of these winning trade strategies was investing in financial instruments that were based heavily on subprime mortgages (that is, the practice of giving large loans to people who have poor credit). Some of these sophisticated investing models managed to underestimate the risk of — repeat after me — giving large loans to people who have poor credit. [. . .]

Evaluating risk — the true foundation of finance — lost its meaning. For a while.

Now, I know a lot of readers’ eyes tend to glaze over when I try to write about business and/or finance on this site, but I really think

1. it’s important that we try to understand the market and governmental forces that shape our day-to-day lives, and
2. there are deeper meanings to all this stuff.

In this instance, I’ve been trying to understand what risk is and why the risk management systems at so many financial institutions determined they could afford to take on the investments that have led to billions of dollars in losses.

For instance, an article in the Wall Street Journal (pay-only, I think) discussed the breakdown in risk protection by companies like Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley:

“Until recently, every investment bank believed it had built an outstanding risk-management system,” Ken Moelis, former head of investment banking at UBS, wrote in a November letter to his new firm’s investors. Mr. Moelis now runs his own investment bank. “Through computer models and endless analysis, the banks believed they could measure every risk to the nth degree.” But reliance on such models and manuals “overlooked” the importance of “human judgment and the ability to evaluate the numbers being generated,” he added.

Like there’s no interesting metaphor in that? Come on!

Actually, as I did more reading on the subject in the last few weeks, I discovered that a much better writer than I did the heavy lifting for me! Earlier this month, John Lanchester (author of The Debt To Pleasure, which you really oughtta read) published Cityphilia, an epic article on finance, risk, life in London, the bank-run on Northern Rock, and how Money Changes Everything.

Lanchester does a fantastic job of explaining how credit markets work and why they can fail to work. It’s an awfully long piece, but I highly recommend it for a variety of reasons.

In the midst of the article, Lanchester cites writer Peter Bernstein, who contends that “the study of risk is a humanist project, an attempt to abolish the idea of unknowable fate and replace it with the rational, quantifiable study of chance.”

And I realized that’s where my fascination lies: this idea that the world is knowable.

Whether for the purpose of dismantling fate or “making our fortune,” isn’t that the goal of so much of our art, so many of our sciences?

* * *

Bonus Reading! Joy!

Cityphilia – The article by John Lanchester that kicked this off.

My Theory of Everything – Friedrich von Blowhard on the New Class, which reaps rewards without taking capital risks.

How Real was the Prosperity? – If it turns out that much of the economic growth was based on obviously flawed lending practices, then how real was the money? (Of course, I think about that in a more existential manner than this reporter, but I’m not writing for BusinessWeek.)

Fraud Costs Bank $7.1 Billion – One of the first articles on Jerome Kerviel’s transactions that may or may not sink Societe General SA.

SocGen Had Been Warned About Kerviel – Is 164-year-old SocGen gonna get blow’d up?

Once Again, the Risk Protection Fails – Let’s “manage” “risk”.

Good and Bad Capitalists – Sebastian Mallaby argues that hedge fund managers are more responsible than banks. Go back to Cityphilia and check out the section on Long Term Capital Management.

Tuesday Morning Quarterback – Gregg Easterbrook has a great section on CEO pay, even after companies get rocked for tremendous losses. (Search for the phrase “suppose the general manager”.)

What’s $34 Billion on Wall St.? – In that same vein . . .

French Trader was Forced To Work 30 Hours a Week – The horrible truth on why Kerviel made all those disastrous market bets.

Double-bonus! Now you can buy Jerome Kerviel t-shirts, ladies! 4.9 billion Euros: Respect! 

Sure, Bobby Fischer’s death got all the press, what with the worldwide reactions and reminiscences of his chess-playing genius, his uncomfortable relationship with celebrity, and his later hatred of Jews. But let’s also take time to mourn Richard Knerr.

I’d never heard of Mr. Knerr till I opened the NYTimes on Friday morning, when I learned about the demise of the co-founder of Wham-O. Yes, the man who unleashed the Frisbee, the Super Ball (inspiration for the Super Bowl), the Hula Hoop, and Silly String on an unsuspecting public has shuffled off this mortal Slinky coil.*

I found his obit absolutely fascinating (which is probably a sign that I need to get out more), especially the part where we find out that Wham-O sold 100 million Hula Hoops, but managed to make only $10,000 in profit by fad’s end. And, being a fan of cheap novelties, I chuckled over the penultimate paragraph:

Not all of Mr. Knerr’s brainstorms succeeded. Among them were mail-order mink coats for $9.95, a $119 do-it-yourself bomb shelter and Instant Fish, an African import whose egg-laying ability could not keep up with product orders.

For the rest of the day, I found myself humming Joe Jackson’s “I’m the Man” and wondering if I’d appreciate The Hudsucker Proxy more than I did when I saw it in 1995.

(That’s Mr. Knerr on the right. The NYTimes didn’t provide a photo credit, so I guess I should just write, “Photo: New York Times.”)

* Slinky was not marketed by Wham-O.