Economic Scene: When It Comes To A Search For A Spouse, Supply And Demand Is Only The Start The economist’s model of the informal market for marriage partners resembles the standard supply and demand model for ordinary goods.... Read Full Article World Briefing | United Nations: U.N. Chief ?Alarmed? At Rise In Darfur Fighting Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that a recent surge of fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan could hurt next month’s political negotiations on ending the four-year conflict. Mr. Ban said he was ... Read Full Article The Cash Advantage (Even When Rates Are Low) Although short-term interest rates have been dropping, many advisers still recommend that investors keep plenty of cash in safe and simple accounts.... Read Full Article Dow Chemical Gets Kuwaiti Partner Dow Chemical plans to sell a 50 percent interest in five of its global businesses to a Kuwaiti company for about $9.5 billion to form a joint petrochemicals venture.... Read Full Article Long-Dead Celebrities Can Now Breathe Easier Senate Bill No. 771, affectionately known as the Dead Celebrities Bill, passed without objection and was signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger earlier this month.... Read Full Article |
Maker NewsOrders for Aerion’s Concorde executive jet are more than $3 billion$The makers of a “son of Concorde” business jet have won more than $3 billion ($1.5 billion) of orders before the first plane has even left the drawing board.$Read Full Article SABMiller says beer prices to rise ’ for a couple of years’SABMiller, the world’s second largest beer maker by volume whose brands include Nastro Azzuro, Carling Black Label and Miller, said today that prices will go up across its product range for two years to pay for raw material rises.Read Full Article C&C fights as premium cider market goes flatThe dangers of following fashion in the drinks industry were laid bare today when C&C, the Irish cider maker, reported a 41.4 per cent fall in profits for its last financial year.Read Full Article Warren Buffet takes centre stage at the Berkshire Hathaway AGMWarren Buffett gave an hilarious performance at his annual shareholders’ meeting this weekend, musing that envy was the most useless of the seven deadly sins because it hurts you, rather than its subject, who may even feel better as a result. Gluttony, on the other hand, had an upside, Mr Buffett told an audience of 31,000 as he munched chocolates and guzzled cola throughout a five-hour question-and-answer session in his home town of Omaha, Nebraska, on Saturday. His take on the Christian vices was classic Buffett, combining a strict moral code with his desire to enjoy the pleasures of life and wrapping a serious message in a joke. With an estimated $62 billion ($£31.4 billion) fortune, Mr Buffett, 77, recently supplanted Bill Gates, a member of his Berkshire Hathaway board who attended the meeting, as the world’s richest man. The annual weekend of events has come to be known as the Woodstock of capitalism and is thought to be the largest financial gathering in the world, with hotel rooms booked years in advance. Mr Buffett’s annual shareholder meeting is without parallel. It attracts a range of people from successful hedge fund managers to small children, from Britain, Australia and India, to hear his opinions on derivatives and currency fluctuations. The combination of age, wealth and success has left Mr Buffett comfortable in his skin and with little to prove. How many heads of huge corporations would recommend shareholders to sell their stock in his company, as he seemed to do at the weekend? “If you have a small amount of money, for many there might be something better to do than buy Berkshire Hathaway. If you have plenty of time, there are more attractive things to buy in smaller investments - it is not feasible for us to do it now like we did in the past,” Mr Buffett said. Over the past 40 years Mr Buffett has turned a failing textiles company into a $200 billion conglomerate stretching from insurance to sweets, prompting a more than 7,000-fold rise in its share price. The sheer size of Berkshire Hathaway means that he has to make huge investments if they are to have any impact on his fund$’s bottom line. Mr Buffett bemoaned that it is much harder to make a good return on multibillion-dollar investments because there are fewer of them and the companies involved are much better known. Berkshire Hathaway owns or has stakes in about 80 companies, including Coca-Cola, See’s Candy, Tesco, Johnson & Johnson and the Washington Post. He is set to add a 19 per cent stake in Wrigley’s after agreeing to help Mars to finance a takeover of the chewing gum maker last week. “There is no question that returns for Berkshire will be lower than in the past. We operate in a universe of stocks of companies worth at least $10 billion and more often $50 billion,$” Mr Buffett said. “You can take Warren’s promise [on Berkshire’s returns] to the bank,” quipped Charlie Munger, the group’s 84-year-old vice-chairman and less famous half of the corporate world’s greatest comedy duo. Although he has not been involved in the day-to-day running of Berkshire Hathaway for years, Mr Munger has played a considerable part in the group’s success, providing an invaluable sounding board for Mr Buffett over the past 30 years. In a relationship honed over decades, Mr Buffett played his usual role of the sociable wife to Mr Munger’s grumpy, acerbic husband, jockeying him along and smoothing his bluntness for the guests. After giving an investor from New Jersey a lengthy response to a question about the futurepossible direction of the stock markets, Mr Buffett, oozing folksy Mid-Western charm, gave the floor to his po-faced, dead-pan deputy. “I have nothing to add,” Mr Munger said. “He’s been practising for weeks,” Mr Buffett joked. A little later, after his answer about future energy sources, Mr Munger concluded that “most people don’t think like that, but I do”. “Charlie does not find comfort in numbers,” Mr Buffett explained, to the same gales of laughter than greeted many of their exchanges. There is an obvious chemistry between the two. At one point, Mr Buffett mused: “Charlie and I don’t even need to talk to each other. We think in the same way and have the same spheres of knowledge.” As if to underline the point, a shareholder from Mexico City asked Mr Buffett where he stood on religion. “I am an agnostic,” Mr Warren said. “I simply don’t know,” Mr Munger added, with precision timing. On the surface there is something surreal about 31,000 people flying across the world to see these elderly men talking about finance. But, more than anybody else, they represent a human face of business that people can relate and aspire to. Their investment philosophy sounds so simple - invest in solid, market-leading brands that people will always want and don’t get involved in things you don’t understand, such as derivatives. They are very funny and they have remained ordinary. Mr Buffett has lived in the same house, valued at about £350,000, since 1958 and has pledged to give away 85 per cent of his wealth over time, most of it to the Bill and Melinda Gates charitable foundation, the rest going to four family charities. He and Mr Munger take annual salaries of only $100,000 $– although their holdings make them billionaires. On the subject of pay, Mr Munger said on Saturday: “The leaders of great enterprises have a moral duty not to take the compensation they do. I don’t know how they can do it.” And Berkshire Hathaway is a company of its word, Mr Buffett said. Once it has agreed to finance a deal, it will do so “even if [Federal Reserve chairman] Ben Bernanke runs off to South America with Paris Hilton”. Towards the end of the meeting, a 12-year-old girl asked him why, when his hero was Benjamin Graham, the investment guru who taught him at Columbia, he insisted on not paying a dividend. “You were influenced by your hero in so many ways, so why not in this?” she asked.“I had to do something my way,” said Mr Buffett, who has not paid a dividend since the 1960s, preferring to reinvest all profits in his company. Ins and outs of life at Berkshire — Berkshire Hathaway’s Class A shares trade at just under $135,000 each, making them the most expensive in the world $ $— The group introduced Class B shares, with fewer voting rights, in 1996, valued at 1/30th of the Class A, to make it more affordable to invest — Mr Buffett has about 32 per cent of Berkshire’s voting power, while Charlie Munger, the vice-chairman, has 1.4 per cent — Berkshire’s investments include stakes in Tesco, American Express, Procter & Gamble, Wells Fargo, Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson — In April, Warren Buffett overtook Bill Gates to become the world’s richest man, with an estimated $62billion fortune, according to Forbes magazine$Read Full Article Microsoft, Hyundai partner for in-car technologyMicrosoft and South Korea’s top carmaker Hyundai Motor have agreed to build a music and information system to debut in cars sold in North America in 2010.Read Full Article External News for: makerTeva Buys German Drug Maker for $5 Billion - New York TimesWashington PostTeva Buys German Drug Maker for $5 BillionNew York TimesBut, in winning Ratiopharm, analysts said, Teva topped the world's biggest maker of brand-name drugs, Pfizer, and Actavis, a generic maker based in Iceland. ...Teva to buy German generic drug maker RatiopharmThe Associated PressTeva Outwrestles Pfizer to Land Generics Maker RatiopharmWall Street Journal (blog)Teva Rises On Winning Bidding War For Ratiopharm - UpdateRTT NewsWall Street Journal -Drug Store News -TMCnetall 395 news articles »Teva Buys German Drug Maker for $5 Billion - New York TimesWashington PostTeva Buys German Drug Maker for $5 BillionNew York TimesBut, in winning Ratiopharm, analysts said, Teva topped the world's biggest maker of brand-name drugs, Pfizer, and Actavis, a generic maker based in Iceland. ...Teva to buy German generic drug maker RatiopharmThe Associated PressTeva Outwrestles Pfizer to Land Generics Maker RatiopharmWall Street Journal (blog)Teva Rises On Winning Bidding War For Ratiopharm - UpdateRTT NewsWall Street Journal -Drug Store News -TMCnetall 395 news articles »Aluminum Maker Eyes Solar Industry - New York Times (blog)New WestAluminum Maker Eyes Solar IndustryNew York Times (blog)Alcoa, the aluminum giant, is testing a new type of solar technology that the company said it believed will lower the cost of renewable energy ...Solar Power Rundown for Thursday, March 18GetSolar.com (blog)all 123 news articles »Teva Buys German Drug Maker for $5 Billion - New York TimesWashington PostTeva Buys German Drug Maker for $5 BillionNew York TimesBut, in winning Ratiopharm, analysts said, Teva topped the world's biggest maker of brand-name drugs, Pfizer, and Actavis, a generic maker based in Iceland. ...Teva to buy German generic drug maker RatiopharmThe Associated PressTeva Outwrestles Pfizer to Land Generics Maker RatiopharmWall Street Journal (blog)Teva Rises On Winning Bidding War For Ratiopharm - UpdateRTT NewsWall Street Journal -Drug Store News -TMCnetall 395 news articles »Aluminum Maker Eyes Solar Industry - New York Times (blog)New WestAluminum Maker Eyes Solar IndustryNew York Times (blog)Alcoa, the aluminum giant, is testing a new type of solar technology that the company said it believed will lower the cost of renewable energy ...Solar Power Rundown for Thursday, March 18GetSolar.com (blog)all 123 news articles »Google phone maker HTC plans Apple fight - Bizjournals.comSiliconrepublic.comGoogle phone maker HTC plans Apple fightBizjournals.comTaiwanese cell phone maker HTC Corp. said in a statement Thursday that it will aggressively defend itself against an iPhone patent lawsuit filed by Apple ...HTC to 'fully defend' itself against Apple patent suitSydney Morning HeraldHTC Will "Fully Defend Itself" Against Apple's AccusationsITProPortalConfident HTC says no plans to back down from Apple lawsuitApple InsiderThe Associated Press -The Mac Observer -CNETall 283 news articles » |
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