- Goldman names new operating chief for Europe
- Demand for young lawyers pushing up pay
- Big biz traded on terror; Card giant tapped relief aid for 400G
- Hedge Funds for Yale, but Not for Everybody
Goldman names new operating chief for Europe – Reuters
Goldman Sachs <GS.N> said on Monday it had appointed Glenn Earle as chief operating officer of the U.S. investment bank’s European businesses, replacing Paul Deighton, who is moving on to head up London’s Olympic Games Organising Committee.
Earle, who has been with Goldman Sachs for more than 18 years, will also become head of operations, technology, finance and services in Europe. He will join the firm’s European management committee and its risk and business practices committees….
Demand for young lawyers pushing up pay – The Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area via MSNBC
Feeling the pressure from flat graduation rates and growing demand for legal services, law firms around the Triad are among those re-examining what they pay their youngest attorneys as they struggle to find ways to compete for new talent.
Earlier this week, Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, a Columbia, S.C.,-based law firm with nine offices in the Southeast, including one in Winston-Salem, announced that it had raised starting salaries from $100,000 to $115,000 effective Jan. 1.
And those in the industry say that’s in line with what many other law firms in the Triad and Southeast are feeling the pressure to do.
At least one other Triad firm, Kilpatrick Stockton, the Triad’s fourth-largest, reportedly already has adjusted salaries, according to industry sources, but a spokesperson for the firm would not confirm that information.
Law firms operating within the same metropolitan area typically have similar starting salaries in order to draw the best talent. Smaller law firms and law firms in more rural areas typically have lower salaries.
"When one firm raises its salaries, the others do as well," said Noah Huffstetler, a member of the executive committee of Nelson Mullins working out of Raleigh. "It’s what we have to do to recruit the top legal talent."….
Big biz traded on terror; Card giant tapped relief aid for 400G – New York Daily News
The Topps Company, a leading manufacturer of sports trading cards, couldn’t quite decide whether it was Osama Bin Laden or Pokemon that spoiled its revenues in 2001.
The company told its shareholders that the waning popularity of Pokemon — the video game minimonsters that took the world by storm in the late 1990s — had caused its revenues to plummet.But to win a $150,000 9/11 Business Recovery Grant, Topps had to sign an application that attributed the drop to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Topps was one of 14,386 companies that received a total of $556 million under the BRG program, disaster recovery money that Congress mandated go to small businesses in lower Manhattan.
As part of an ongoing investigation into how New York’s $21.4 billion in federal 9/11 aid was spent, the Daily News revealed yesterday that huge companies and tycoons, including Donald Trump, were allowed to grab small business grants because the state agency in charge of dispensing the money ignored the federal definition of a small business.
Topps is another company that wouldn’t be considered a small business under federal regulations.
On its grant application, Topps reported having 185 employees. The Small Business Administration, which sets standards for the federal government, considers toy and hobby goods wholesalers to be small only if they have fewer than 100 employees.
But the standard the Empire State Development Corp. used for all types of businesses — fewer than 500 employees in the BRG program — qualified Topps as a small business….
Hedge Funds for Yale, but Not for Everybody – HedgeWorld.com
Yale University’s hedge fund investments returned 18% for the past fiscal year. Other alternatives did even better for the school.
The overall portfolio made more than 22% in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2005. But institutions or individuals aspiring to follow the US$15 billion endowment’s example have been forewarned by Yale investment chief David Swensen.
Replicating his approach would require not only high-end expertise but also willingness to rebalance every day and stay with some very illiquid assets.
The portfolio has target allocations of 25% to absolute returns, 25% to real assets like natural resources, and 17% to private equity, with the remainder in traditional stock and bond investments.
Yale’s success certainly attracts attention. A client of First Atlas Capital, a London-headquartered US$5 billion alternative investment business, recently asked just how does Yale make higher returns.
Oscar Gil, senior associate at First Atlas Capital, points to the endowment’s long time horizon, its risk profile, and asset size as factors in the extraordinary performance.
Mr. Swensen highlighted the key question at a National Association of College and University Business Officers’ forum. If you can find the right managers that pursue the right strategies, then you can succeed in active investing, he told an audience of investment professionals.
He presented data and studies to show that individuals in general can’t do that, a point he also made in his recent book, Unconventional Success : A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment. Moreover, it looks like many institutions don’t have the capacity to make what Mr. Swensen calls high-quality active investment decisions….
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