The Smalrus Web Site

Today was a day filled with promise for me.  I reserve a level of caution not to get my hopes up anywhere, but it’s always nice to imagine that as I spread out the pieces of my life’s puzzle, that some of them start to come together.  I woke up today and, after being through with my accounting midterm, got the chance to apply to a couple more internship positions that were send to me through the career centre’s weekly e-mails.  After that, I was contacted by another prospective internship about arranging an interview in the future.  However, I was in the shower when the call was received, so I made sure that I was available to take the return call once I got to Manhattan.

Once in Manhattan, I went to Borders to pick up the new John Butler Trio CD, Grand National, which came out yesterday and I had already downloaded an advance copy of it a week ago.  On my walk over to campus, I was informed that another internship opportunity had responded back to me.  So I came to the computer lab, checked and responded to my e-mail, and checked the score to the France-Austria friendly match - 1-0, France.

Finance class ran for only 25 minutes and although it was not handed back, I found out that I got a 100% on my midterm due last week.  And, in about an hour, I’m heading out to Astoria to meet Seth and David for a Guys Night at Doyle’s.  I haven’t written a personal post like this in a while, but it’s always nice to hear some positive news when you’re attempting a job search.  When you open up your options and spread your eggs out over a lot of baskets, you always fear that it means there’s more people that may not be interested in you.  And given the career market these days, good news of any sorts is always exciting.  For any one of these places, I would have different reasons and passions in pursuing a career there.

Of course, the best news is knowing you’ve finally got the job and right now that’s not yet the case.  But hopefully something will come to fruition and I’ll be all the better for it. At this point, that’s got to be enough reason for optimism…

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This is to see if the Twitter sms posting to my website works. Assuming it does, I should be able to make quick notes to my site via my cell

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Thanks to WordPress, I get to use firestats to see just where visitors to my website are coming from. The only thing is, a whois trace ends up ending at RIPE.NET, the portal to Europe’s internet link. Given the vast amount of “junk” websites out there, I’m wondering who in Russia and in Germany are using my site as the springboard for another junk site. On another stats provider through PowWeb, I’ve been seeing a lot of referral sites that are junk sites with no actual links to my site. Also, given the fact that the homepage for my site was hacked about 10 months ago, I’m questioning whether my hosting provider - PowWeb - can truly assure security of my site.

If anyone knows where those visitors to my website are coming from and would like to share, please let me know. Otherwise I might be .htaccess-ing those IP addresses from accessing the site. Not ideally that I’d like to need to moderate my site, but I’m finding the site hits to be really odd (especially since the 4th most visiting hostname is ‘webmaster2.firstvds.ru‘ and I have no idea what that is).

In other news, I might be offering some thoughts later on the French presidential election and the recent rise of Bayrou in relation to Segolene Royal. It’s going to be an interesting race and I’ve been following it rather closely. If Royal can nip Nicolas Sarkozy in the bud, she has the potential of stemming the Bayrou tide. And Bayrou has the potential of stemming the Le Pen tide. However, she really needs to spend her time attacking Sarko’s record, his policies, and his right-wing extremism. Based on my past readings of Sarkozy, he definitely seems to be a moderate version of Jean-Marie Le Pen. And that’s good for no Frenchmen, especially since most National Front supporters tend to hold their tongues on their votes, deflating poll numbers on the extreme-right.

Now in some respects, all the candidates aren’t really of high-calibre candidacy. Sarkozy is too right wing, Le Pen is way too right, Royal has no real stance on anything and might mismanage the treasury, Bayrou is a poseur for the right as well (but capitalising well on the anti-establishmentarianism against the main contenders). I’m not sure who should come in for any run-off of substance other than maybe Jose Bove, the altermondialization activist. However, Bove is an extreme long shot who barely mustered the signatures to qualify as a candidate.

I believe I had more to say about the election, but for the time being, I suppose its time for some shut-eye. Keep reading…

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An interesting little op-brief by Andrew Hill on p. 18 of today’s Financial Times. Subject: the merger talks between UK-based Barclays PLC and Dutch-based ABN Amro. It is obvious that both banks would have something to gain from positive merger discussions, particularly the struggling ABN. Just how a Barclays-ABN merger would work remains to be seen, as there have been three successful Anglo-Dutch mergers in past history (Royal Dutch Shell, Unilever, and Reed & Elsevier). However, Hill makes two points that make the current merger talks all the more interesting”

“The offer also has interesting implications for the destiny of Barclays if this deal fails - apart from the risk that, having approached the Dutch bank, Barclays may have put itself into play,” writes Mr Hill. It is interesting that Hill should mention the possibility of a failed merger discussion making Barclays more attractive to other ‘continental European partners.’ At this point the crux of the merger seems to be focused on concessions made between the listing location (Netherlands) and the main office location (England), with concerns that this agreement might not work coherently. Other suggestions have been made that, provided the merger passes, one of the banks might divest certain services such as retail banking or asset management services.

Combined with Hill’s second point of interest, I might speculate another possibility. Hill says that if the current talks fail, ‘continental European partners’ “might suddenly see a merger with Barclays as a more attractive prospect this week than it was last.” My question is, why limit these ‘partners’ to European banks? Recall if you will, early December 2006, where rumours were swirling about a potential Bank of America takeover of Barclays. After a couple of days, BofA’s Chief Executive Ken Lewis spoke to a Goldman Sachs investor conference, attempting to downplay such rumours. Ultimately, nothing came of the rumours. However, Lewis didn’t put international expansion out of the realm of possibilities for BofA to strike a deal, provided the right one came along.

Over the next couple of months following these statements however, a series of events occurred that might make a Barclays-BofA merger more feasible, in the event that the ABN Amro talks fall through.

First in January 2007, BofA decided that it would attempt to lobby the U.S. Congress to have the maximum deposit cap of 10% of national savings raised. This soon failed. Then, later on in the month, the Board of Directors approved a $14 million share buyback, creating a greater equity stake. And thirdly, Mr Lewis recently presented a plan for ‘organic growth’ within domestic markets - particularly seeking to fill-in gaps throughout the Midwest.

It has been reported than Lewis fears expansion to international markets, however 2005 saw BofA acquiring a 9% stake in China Construction Bank. The bank can no longer acquire any more domestic banks; the capital is available. Thus, I posit the possibility that if the Barclays-ABN Amro talks fall through, BofA will either seek to align interests by re-opening discussions with Barclays for a potential merger or, if the talks go through, either Barclays or ABN sells off certain divisions (such as ABN’s LaSalle Bank) to BofA. Given the events of the past couple of months, it would seem advantageous for Bank of America to seize whatever the potential outcome of the Barclays-ABM Amro discussions.

(Ed. Note: I found out after writing this column, that marketwatch.com reported a story on 20 March, that some UBS analysts predict Bank of America will not seize on any post-merger talk opportunities. Part of this is attributed to “lack of foreign ambition,” as discussed above. However, given domestic growth prospects, it would seem to me unwise for BofA to fail to capitalize on any such opportunities, else Mr Lewis should reconsider his position.)

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I’ve been lacking things of real interest to write about here on this blog, though I must say that I’ve downloaded the new Wilco CD and it is excellent.  It sounds a little bit like Randy Newman and modern Bob Dylan, only confirming my belief that 2007 is the year of the matured artist.  In addition to the Wilco CD, I’ve obtained a copy of the new Kings of Leon album and it seems that bands are creating bigger and better albums that expand and evolve the sounds of the artist, rather than just making a sophomore or third album that falls into the rut of similar song writing styles with different melodies.  The alternate agenda of bands is to completely change their styles and heading into a different direction that alienates core fans.  A group puts a lot of its credibility on the line by taking this approach and risks either massive successes or failures.  One could look at Radiohead as a band that either alienated a lot of its pre-Kid A fanbase or only served to entice them further into the rabbit hole.

I’m not sure yet whether I will ultimately post a formal review of the Wilco and/or Kings of Leon album, but they are high on my list of 2007 albums.  The remainder of the year continues to pull some amazing follow-up talents from bands like the Arctic Monkeys (23 Apr), Travis (7 May), Radiohead (18 Aug), Coldplay (31 Oct), The Polyphonic Spree, Feist, and of course, the supposedly excellent but may never come out Guns ‘n’ Roses album.

Now onto things a little less (or more) technical:

Whilst I’m reading Michel Albert’s book Capitalisme Contre Capitalisme, I’m also starting my research into various journal articles, with my current cache of articles at 77.  Personally, I wish there was a way that I could move the pdf journal files onto my Palm Zire, but with 2MB of memory, I can barely upload one file at a time onto it.  It’s a pain to have to drag my laptop everywhere, but I’ve also put the files onto USB key, so now I can bring them with me wherever I go.  The first article I’m reading is entitled “A Comparative Analysis of New Product Programmes: European versus North American Companies.” 

As far as I’ve read, Prof. EJ Kleinschmidt encourages a cross-national approach in assessing the successes of new product programs.  Though I’m not sure where this might fit into CSR, I believe his premise is correct.  And perhaps in assessing the various CSR approaches and formulating, it is helpful to know how new product programmes function.   By doing so, I can extrapolate prescriptions as to now future product entries may be marketed with a focus on CSR.

In addition, I have started culling quotes from various television shows and other sources of pop culture.  This past Sunday, I was watching Gordon Ramsay’s F Word and there was some discussion between Chef Ramsay and British television personality Janice Street-Porter on sustainable cod farming vs. opea sea cod fishing.  I’ve been looking to some random TV quotes that depict public perceptions of corporations and responsible business in order to gain some non-academic perspective. In addition to the F Word, I have also found quotes from The Cosby Show and from NUMB3RS that are applicable to the subject.  I may use them in the chapter headers throughout the thesis to draw CSR into pop culture, particularly since a lot of marketing deals with pop culture and the ability to harness brand images and identity in the public psyche.

If anyone has any good ideas/quotes/interesting informational sources, feel free to leave comments here on the web site.  So far, my biggest (and only) participant has been Dany, who has not only added his own thoughts to the discussion, but has given me more fodder to develop my own thoughts on the subject.

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