Fortune • May 24th, 2022 The shock waves of tech stocks crashing are headed straight for startups Companies are seeing their valuations fall, to paraphrase Ernest Hemingway's quote on bankruptcy, in two ways: Gradually, and all at once.
Fortune • April 30th, 2022 The inside story of how Elon Musk won Twitter—and could still lose it Musk is putting everything on the table in his bid to buy Twitter. For sheer entertainment value, the saga of how the iconic billionaire tweeted his way to what would be the third-biggest tech takeover deal of all time is about as jaw-droppingly...
Fortune • June 23rd, 2022 Startups and VCs should be preparing for the possibility of stagflation The last time stagflation hit the U.S., “startup” was a niche term and VC an obscure cottage industry. How stagflation hurt small business in the 70s and early 80s can tell us now startups may need to respond to this looming threat.
Fortune • July 26th, 2022 Tech M&A’s surprising acceleration despite a sputtering economy Merger and acquisition spending, like most other areas of finance, tends to cool off during economic downturns as corporate executives and boards get skittish about big deals and private equity firms grow more choosy. But so far this year, the tech...
Fortune • July 29th, 2022 Alpine Investors finds its edge—cultivating CEOs for its portfolio companies Graham Weaver founded San Francisco-based Alpine Investors in 2001, but it wasn’t until the depths of the financial crisis that the firm discovered its edge. With several portfolio companies struggling, Weaver was jetting from city to city putting...
Fortune • August 5th, 2022 U.S. companies are hoarding more and more cash overseas A good cash stockpile has always provided companies with a strong insurance policy in uncertain times. But many multinationals are stuffing cash an increasingly bloated piggy bank for a different reason: to keep tax bills low. Cash held by U.S....
Fortune • July 25th, 2022 CalPERS gives an early indication of what 2022 has in store for pension funds The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) has long stood heads and shoulders above its fellow pension funds. And because its fiscal year ends on June 30, its annual net investment reports are both a bellwether and a harbinger of...
Fortune • June 24th, 2022 Cybersecurity looks like a safe haven in private finance “A good half of the art of living is resilience,” the philosopher Alain de Botton once said. For private companies, the same could be said about the art of survival in down markets.
Fortune • August 12th, 2022 Top finance execs often self-sabotage their success. A coach to top CFOs explains how to avoid it In these uncertain times, CFOs and other corporate leaders are increasingly turning to Edith Hamilton and her peers in the $14 billion executive-coaching industry. Last year, more than 70% of organizations offered some form of leadership coaching....
Fortune • June 1st, 2022 Buybacks vs dividends? In market downturns, the rules may change CFOs have two common levers to pull when returning cash to shareholders: dividends and buybacks. Both can present challenges when market selloffs signal a recession may be coming.
Fortune • May 9th, 2022 Unicorns are finding it harder to run with the pack as valuations tumble Unicorns—private startups valued above $1 billion, so called because they seemed once a rare and magical beast—have become a ho-hum, run-of-the-mill breed. Agile and quick enough to win races, perhaps. But unique? Not so much in 2022.
Mean Returns • September 7th, 2021 An Awkward 'Employment Situation' Catholics aren't alone in greeting the first Friday of the month with a longstanding ritual. On 8:30 a.m. on that date, economists gather to await a sort of monthly revelation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The two headline numbers in the...
Mean Returns • November 16th, 2020 Airbnb and the $2 Million Pigeon To understand Airbnb's planned IPO, unveiled through a Form S-1 that the company filed on Monday, it helps to consider the story of the $2 million pigeon.
TIME • March 6th, 2020 Low Rates Are Changing the Rules of Retirement Millions of investors have heard the same two pieces of retirement advice: your portfolio should be split 60/40 between stocks and bonds, and you should plan on withdrawing no more than 4% of your savings annually after leaving work. Following those...
TIME • June 17th, 2020 How to Rethink Your Investments When COVID-19 Uncertainty Reigns Every three months, publicly traded companies report both their actual financial earnings and their expected prospects over the near future. Investors closely watch these reports for signs of promise or trouble, in a ritual not unlike reading tea...
Fortune • January 28th, 2020 Rebranding Refurbished: How Big Retail Is Finding New Growth In Used Goods For retailers, old is, increasingly, becoming the new new. With retail industry revenue growing at a modest 4% a year, some brands are finding triple-digit growth by selling used goods that appeal to bargain hunters and eco-friendly consumers alike.
Fortune • January 28th, 2020 Bond market turbulence: Why it matters and what to do about it For decades, bonds have offered a kind of fallout shelter for jittery investors in uncertain times. But recently, the bond market has looked more like the tip of a warhead aimed at their portfolios.
Fortune • January 28th, 2020 Why Investors Are Shrugging Off Warnings of an Index-Fund Bubble A funny thing has happened since Vanguard set up its first index fund in 1976: Most active mutual funds have underperformed the broader market over the past 20 years, while continuing to charge investors high fees for the privilege. Meanwhile, the...
Pando • March 1st, 2013 What does it take to turn around a Web company? A look inside the only two we've ever seen Every time a has-been startup like Myspace or Digg or a big public company like Yahoo or AOL attempts a Web turnaround, the tech media is quick to remind them that Web turnarounds never work. Technically, we can't say that anymore. Two companies--...
CNN.com • April 1st, 2004 The Drug Pipeline Flows Again Tachi Yamada wrote up the ultimate Rx for GlaxoSmithKline: Making entrepreneurs out of 15,000 scientists. - April 1, 2004 January 2000 still seemed like a blue-sky dream for most of the business world. But a dark cloud had already settled over the heads of Tachi Yamada and Jean-Pierre Garnier, two top executives at SmithKline Beecham, the world's ninth-largest...
