Trust matters because when it unexpectedly departs, so too goes much of the value it created and sustained.
The Refco situation is not just going to hell in a handbasket, but on the express track. Yesterday, the NYSE halted trading in its stock; its bonds and traded debt have fallen at least as low as 30 cents on the dollar (down from 108 before the news broke); and the company suspended operations […]
But the news isn’t all that bad: there’s a boomlet underway on Wall Street for good, old-fashioned advice from seasoned bankers who are neither intermediaries nor capital-raisers. Let’s hear it for independent and objective expertise.
It seems that more than a few got taken on this one. And while it’s too early (and unfair) to render guilty verdicts, there is no doubt that many were at least asleep at the switch, if not driving the train toward disaster.
There’s no doubt that losing one’s pension or health insurance is a problem of epic proportions, but this is like quite like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. We’ve all seen this coming for a long, long time and we ignored it.
Intangibles, and the error one makes by under or overweighting their importance, remains a huge unresolved debate among accountants, economists, investors and business leaders, due to several still-evolving trends and an accounting system struggling to catch up.
This power stems from the very nature of markets as information machines: they both consume and produce information, the latter being an invaluable asset to management as it makes decisions about an uncertain future.
The Clearest View is about ideas that affect the creation (or impairment) of value, particularly in private firms. Why bother? Good question.