L'Information est d'Or

In October 2009, I posted a message on the fantastic business story of Iliad . I said "their model is based on innovation in products and simplicity in marketing." After having revolutionized the French Internet broadband access with the "FreeBox", they have done the same when entering the mobile network operating business. Their new offer of unlimited calls and text messages, unlimited Internet access and no commitment for 20 euros per month is both simple and innovative. They managed to dramatically reduce the price compared to existing competitors by not subsidizing the purchase of the phone. As a result, this new offer has forced their three competitors: SFR, Orange and Bouygues Telecom to reduce their prices, hence breaking an oligopoly. The presentation of the new offer by Iliad's CEO, Xavier Niel, one of France's greatest entrepreneurs. (in French) Free : la conférence de Xavier Niel en intégralité par LeNouvelObservateur And this ...

Interesting comparison of Google and Apple's mobile OS strategy in AppleInsider. While Apple's strategy is established and clear (integrated platform, tight control and brand management), Google has still to find a winning formula. Comparison of business models with technical presentation

Total has sacked several hundreds of employees (up to 900 according to some reports) for participating in a strike. This is outrageous behaviour on behalf of an international company. Let's boycott them! Link to the BBC news story

A few figures about RBS, which is on the brinks of collapse (it would already have without government's support): - Assets : £1.9 trillion - Liabilities: £1.8 trillion This makes it the World largest company by assets. By comparison, its assets represent more than the GDP of France! Nationalizing it, which appears likely to be the only solution considering further asset depreciation and continuing recession, would more than double the public debt of the United Kingdom. Ouch! At the time when they were buying ABN Amro, I was wondering how they could afford it while I was witnessing other banks downsizing. Well I have the answer now: they simply could not...

At least some of them! Here is a nice example: on July 22,2008, JP Morgan auto analyst advised to buy General Motors Bonds. (See the Reuters article ) At this time, the 7.2 bond expiring in 2011 was trading at $72, a bargain according to this analyst. Well, less than 5 months later, it's now trading at $27.5, 63% lower!! Source:Bloomberg What was the analyst thinking? GM has not been profitable since 2000, that's eight years! Source:Fortune In 2006, Carol Loomis, Fortune columnist, was already explaining why GM was heading for a wreck . What has changed since then?

A recent study showed that UK companies paid much more taxes that French or German companies. Tax paid on value-added: - 6% Germany - 8% France and Germany - 12% United Kingdom

Microsoft has so far failed to catch up Google in online business. Microsoft first tried to build its own platform (Who remembers MSN or Windows Live?) then to purchase Yahoo (Yahoo CEO was too greedy). So what is MSFT's plan C? I think it should be online applications. But by the time Microsoft realises it, other competitors will already have installed strong position, or not?

Apple's vertical strategy of controling both the software and the hardware was the reason why it lost to the PC (Microsoft-Intel alliance) in the 90s. At a time were technology was evolving at a record speed (Moore law stated that the speed of microprocessors would double every 18 months), exercising a tight control on the manufactoring chain left Apple trailing the more innovative PC business. But now that computers have become a mature market, the edge is not anymore to have a fast machine but to have an electronic device that looks and feels good. And Apple has the experience and structure to deliver such hit products. How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong Yahoo! Finance Quote for AAPL/

How he could have saved Bear Sterns "Buffett says he 'got a call' about Bear Stearns, but bailing out the investment bank with only two days for due diligence, he says, 'took some guts that I didn't want to match.'" - And why he didn't. Quick lesson on the CDOs - "I read a few prospectuses for residential-mortgage-backed securities - mortgages, thousands of mortgages backing them, and then those all tranched into maybe 30 slices. You create a CDO by taking one of the lower tranches of that one and 50 others like it. Now if you're going to understand that CDO, you've got 50-times-300 pages to read, it's 15,000. If you take one of the lower tranches of the CDO and take 50 of those and create a CDO squared, you're now up to 750,000 pages to read to understand one security. I mean, it can't be done. When you start buying tranches of other instruments, nobody knows what the hell they're doing. It's ridiculous. And of course,...

Apple has been voted "World's most admired company" by FORTUNE magazine. I am a huge fan of Apple products: iPhone, MacBook Air and their amazingly intuitive and fun to use softwares. It probably takes a visionaire like Steve Jobs to get there. But does he have to be dictatorial in his leadership as fellow workers have reported it? Jobs attitude should raise the concerns of shareholders about his practices: - Non disclosure of his cancer surgery in 2004 - Stock options back-dating (OK Apple was not the only company doing it)

Who would have believed it? After the initial shock of losing €4.9Bn because of its rogue trader's unfortunate positions, Societe Generale has now recovered all its market value. Even better, SG's supposed weakness has prompted all of its hawkish competitors to enter in a bidding war, thus boosting its share price. Thank you Jerome! Evolution of SG's Market Value (in €Bn) following the anouncement of the €4.9Bn trading loss SocGen has overperformed its competitors since the Jan 24th announcement of the trading losses. Chart below shows the normalised evolution of the share price of SocGen vs its main competitors (SX7P= DJ STOXX Banks Index) SG's share price overperforms its peers

Goldman has consistently out-performed other banks. What is their secret? Michael Lewis tells it all in this Bloomberg article. For the full, article, follow the link http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aEXlKAu61sYU# By Michael Lewis from Bloomberg Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) -- In retrospect, the most intriguing subplot in the collapse of the subprime mortgage market has been not the size of the losses but their distribution. Wall Street firms have a talent for getting themselves into trouble together. They all were long Internet stocks when Internet stocks collapsed and they'll all be long North Korean credit-default swaps whenever North Korea gets hot and then crashes. What's odd about the subprime crash is Goldman Sachs Group Inc. A single firm took a position contrary to the rest of Wall Street. Giant Wall Street firms are designed for many things, but not, typically, to express highly idiosyncratic views in the market. Even more surprising is how little Wall ...

WIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 16.02 Gadgets : Wireless The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry By Fred Vogelstein 01.09.08 9:00 PM http://www.wired.com/services/referral?messageKey=bb3eb8d2aa0dd8fc16434bf4c49ef3b2 Photo: Landov The demo was not going well. Again. It was a late morning in the fall of 2006. Almost a year earlier, Steve Jobs had tasked about 200 of Apple's top engineers with creating the iPhone. Yet here, in Apple's boardroom, it was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn't just buggy, it flat-out didn't work. The phone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, "We don't have a product yet." The effect was even more terrifying than one of Jobs' trademark tantrums. When the Apple...