A Heady Job Market for MBAs – Business Week
After some lackluster years, 2005 B-school grads are fielding multiple offers — and the outlook remains upbeat, recruitment experts say Helga Vanthournout, a 2005 graduate of the International Institute of Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland, was pleasantly surprised by her success in the job market this past year. The 31-year-old, with five years of experience in business-software and high-tech manufacturing, received five job offers within a month of graduation. After much deliberation, Vanthournout accepted a job in the Switzerland office of McKinsey & Co., the New York-based management consulting firm. Vanthournout says employers used to overlook her because of a somewhat choppy list of work experience, but her MBA and a solid job market afforded her more options than she ever imagined….By all accounts, top consulting firms and investment banks, the perennial MBA recruiters, have returned to campus in full force after shying away during the economic downturn. ESADE Business School in Barcelona has seen the number of consulting firms and investment banks on campus increase by 50%. McKinsey hired around 90 INSEAD graduates in both 2004 and 2005, up from 56 in 2002. At the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, McKinsey hired 57 graduates in 2005, up from 48 the previous year and just 24 in 2002….
UPDATE 2-NYSE seat sells for $3.55 mln – below peak – Reuters
A membership seat on the New York Stock Exchange sold for $3.55 million on Thursday, a day before such sales cease as the 213-year-old Big Board gears up to become a public company. The price is down $50,000 from the last seat sale of $3.6 million, which occurred earlier in the day on Thursday. Seat prices, which give the owner the right to trade on the Big Board, were at a record $4 million prior to Dec. 6, when exchange members voted to approve the NYSE’s plan to buy electronic trading company Archipelago Holdings Inc. and go public. Under those plans, seat sales will cease at the end of the year before the NYSE goes public — expected in late January 2006. The last day for seat sales will be Friday….
A stodgy City turns boom town – International Herald Tribune
Stand on the corner of Cornhill and Gracechurch Street in London’s financial district, and you get a sense of the new energy and buzz of the place. Smartly clad workers pour out of restaurants and through the revolving doors of office blocks. The sidewalks are packed and, above the busy avenues, new architectural wonders reach into the clear Christmas sky.
Seven years ago some pessimists predicted that all this was doomed: After decades of postwar decline, London’s fate as a financial center would finally be sealed by the advent of the euro. With Britain opting to keep the pound out of the European single currency, which came into existence on Jan. 1, 1999, the City – as the financial district is called – would be sidelined and much of its business would shift to rival financial centers in the euro zone, like Paris or Frankfurt. The ancient and colorfully named streets – Poultry, Cheapside, Lombard – would empty.
In fact, the opposite happened. The international business generated by the euro made its way to London, and the bankers followed suit. Many of continental Europe’s biggest banks relocated major operations to the City. Today, 330,000 people crowd into this small area beside the Thames. The City’s local government, the Corporation of London, predicts this number will rise to 400,000 over the next decade. Frankfurt, by contrast, employs 100,000 in financial services.
The business figures are equally astonishing: $679 billion in foreign exchange flows daily through London’s financial district, according to the City’s Foreign Exchange Joint Standing Committee. As well as more traditional business, London is becoming a center for the new boom in hedge funds. According to the Corporation of London, 60 percent of Eurobonds are issued in London. A total of 287 foreign banks have operations in the City, compared with 152 in Frankfurt, according to figures from the Corporation of London and Frankfurt’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry….
De Beers, Sotheby’s Battle Tiffany in Diamond Jewelry (Update2) – Bloomberg
Atsuko Tamura says she hopes her husband splurges on a 1.3 million yen ($11,000) De Beers flower- shaped Cocktail Fizz diamond ring for their 15th wedding anniversary. She already has a Tiffany & Co. necklace. “The diamonds are just sprinkled all over,” Tamura, 40, says as she steps out of the De Beers shop in Ginza, one of Tokyo’s busiest and most glamorous shopping neighborhoods. “De Beers is the most genuine of all.” Competition is intensifying in the $70 billion diamond jewelry market as rising wealth in Asia increases demand for higher-priced pieces. De Beers, the world’s largest supplier of diamonds, is winning customers from companies such as Tiffany and Cie. Financiere Richemont AG’s Cartier four years after creating a retail venture with LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA. Sotheby’s Holdings Inc. began selling a line of gems this month….
Who’s Who in PowerPicks 2006 – Business Week
S&P’s analysts exlain why they expect their favored stocks to perform strongly in the new year By sector, here are the 40 members of Standard & Poor’s PowerPicks 2005 portfolio — the collective "best ideas" of S&P’s equity research staff (see BW Online, 12/30/05, "S&P’s Top-Shelf Selections") — and a brief investment rationale from S&P for each…
