The Epicurean DealmakerThe Epicurean DealmakerAn occasional review and commentary on the wild and wacky world of mergers and acquisitions, from an enabler's point of view. Articles
B(ogus Ta)X
2007-07-13 22:30:00 Percy Walker must be in a bad mood today.After proclaiming himself "satisfied" yesterday with the outcome of initial hearings in Congress on the carried interest tax issue, the Greensboro billionaire and self-proclaimed "world's foremost authority on the proper tax treatment of carried interest" must be less than thrilled with today's developments. Chief among these, of course, was the incendiary page one article in the billionaire-baiting New York Times entitled "Tax Loopholes Sweeten a Deal for Blackstone."This is just the sort of headline that forces even campaign donation whores Democratic Senators from New York like Chuck Schumer to splutter darkly about "restoring fairness to the tax code." The contents of the article were no less inflammatory, asserting that not only will Steve Schwarzman and his partners recover all of the capital gains taxes they paid on the proceeds of Blackstone's recent IPO, but the government may in fact kick in an additional $200 million as a cons...
Corrections & Amplifications
2007-07-12 20:05:00 Some people seem to have felt I was a little harsh on Whole Foods CEO John Mackey the other day, when I lambasted him for goading the generally toothless Federal Trade Commission into trying to block Whole Foods' merger with fellow soymilk ice cream flogger Wild Oats Markets. Sure, what Mackey did—leaving a digital paper trail a mile wide boasting how the proposed merger would permanently remove Whole Foods' only credible competitor and relieve pricing pressure in its markets—was exactly analogous to Donald Rumsfeld walking through Sadr City alone at night wearing a t-shirt reading "Moqtada is a pork-eating pussy," but I admit I did not pull any punches.Among other provocative adjectives, I variously called Mr. Mackey an idiot, a moron, a fool, and a doofus. Now, however, after reading the latest revelations of Mr. Mackey's extracurricular activities on the internet, I feel I owe you Dear Readers a clarification:John Mackey is a putz.* * *Note to Whole Foods' (abse... More About: Corrections , Rect
The Taxman Cometh
2007-07-11 21:50:00 Henry Kravis and his peers are underwhelming me once again.That bastion of private equity haters The New York Times writes today on the steady stream of Gulfstream Jets and Bentley limousines trundling into the Beltway to man the barricades against restless politicos gunning for private equity tax dollars. While one should ingest the financial reporting of the Gray Lady with several shakers of salt close at hand, a close reading of the piece seems to indicate that the PE bigs are continuing to get their Kiton-clad asses kicked.I begin to despair of private equity's ability to do anything in public without stumbling over their own appendages. What kind of lobbying strategy are these yokels following? From the looks of it, they have not developed any sort of compelling public campaign at all, but seem to be just showing up on Capitol Hill in their expensive suits with their expensive lobbyists in order to dangle potential campaign contributions in front of the supposedly desperate... More About: Comet , Xman
Monsieur ... Qui?
2007-07-11 00:22:00 As if we needed further proof that life is simply not just, news comes from across the pond that the French—of all people—have no respect for money.The crack financial investigators from Page Six of the New York Post sadly report today that the toast of toute New York, Steve and Christine Schwarzman, apparently could not get the time of day from the locals, tourists, and wannabes at the hoppin' jive joint Club 55 in beautiful downtown St. Tropez.To top this vile humiliation off, it appears that the celebutant hoovering up all the oxygen in the room was none other than another miniscule Gothamite, Tommy Hilfiger. The nerve! As if Steve couldn't buy that Ralph Lauren wannabe twenty-seven times over. (And I have it on good authority that Steve wore newly-purchased Vilebrequin swimming shorts, to boot.)No doubt on the advice of the Schwarzmans' publicist, who travels with them to both incite and document the fawning adulation of would-be mini-moguls everywhere, the Pos... More About: Mons
It's Good to Be the King
2007-06-30 16:44:00 Just when my faith in humanity was beginning to languish at a low ebb, due to the recent dust-ups surrounding the Blackstone IPO and the Bear Stearns hedge flush—and the utter failure of anyone in the Lynwood Jail to slip a shiv in between Paris Hilton's ribs—along comes The Wall Street Journal to save the day. I guess they got the word from Washington that they should stop beating up on big Republican campaign donors titans of finance and turn their focus back on Corporate America.So, in dutiful fashion, they ran an article this weekend on the use of corporate jets by CEOs' spouses and other perks of the executive suite.When Nicki Mulally wants to travel, she can usually hop on one of Ford Motor Co.'s Falcon twin-turbo jets.The reason: She's married to Alan Mulally, Ford's chief executive.To woo Mr. Mulally from Boeing Co. last fall, Ford promised that his wife, five children and guests could fly on corporate aircraft without him, as long as he authorizes the trav... More About: The King , King , Good
Marks in the Sand
2007-06-28 23:24:00 Felix Salmon put up a nice commentary today on an article in today's Financial Times which delved into the mess surrounding collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) backed by sub-prime mortgages. In it, he identifies four underlying risks in the current CDO situation and then correctly concludes that we cannot predict a priori that they will combine to push the market off the rails:Subprime defaults can, in theory, pass through into defaults on CDO tranches. That, in turn, can, in theory, trigger CDO liquidations. That, in turn, could mean the amount of liquidity in the credit markets drying up. And that, in turn, will mean that subprime borrowers find it much harder to refinance – thereby increasing the chance that they will default.But while all the risks are real, the linkages between them all are far from clear, and the different risks don't necessarily cascade onto and exacerbate each other in this way. They might – or they might not. If investors turn out to have reasonab... More About: Sand , Marks
J'accuse, Part Deux
2007-06-27 21:05:00 Damn, now Justin Fox needs to be spanked.This time, I nominate Ann Coulter for the job, since I know she looks good in bondage gear, and Maureen Dowd is all tuckered out from whacking Holman Jenkins' butt as punishment for his previous misdeeds.Mr. Fox, who styles himself over at Time magazine as "The Curious Capitalist," has blundered into my field of fire with the following comment, which he appended to an otherwise anodyne catalogue of corporate tax rates around the OECD:As I've studied the private equity taxation debate, I've become more and more convinced that the private equity boom of the past decade in the U.S. has been driven in large part by tax arbitrage. By buying corporations and then loading them up with enough debt that they no longer have any taxable earnings, then paying their partners with "carried interest" that for reasons that have more to do with history than logic is taxed as capital gains instead of as ordinary income, the private equity firms are doing an... More About: Part , Accu
Mere Anarchy
2007-06-26 04:18:00 Bill Gross is at it again.The Chief Poobah and Prognosticator at PIMCO has just released his July Investment Outlook, and it's a doozy. Paris Hilton, "six-inch hooker heels," and Heidi Fleiss, and those are just the G-rated comments. He saves his most scathing remarks for that seething cesspool of economic turpitude, residential real estate. Yikes!Although this bond guru is in dire need of an editor—the first reference to a Petri dish was spot on and apropos, the second simply a distraction—his message is unmistakable. In vilifying the great unwashed of the credit markets, and their supposed guardians the credit ratings agencies, he sounds like nothing less that a town elder bewailing the loose morals and bad behavior of the young.For an interesting echo in the kultursphere, we could turn to a piece in The New York Times today about Girls (and Boys) Gone Wild in Romantic Rome:“It is unbelievable,” said Flaminia Borghese, president of a homeowners’ group in the... More About: Anarchy , Narc
Ouch, Babe
2007-06-24 18:15:00 Apparently I missed this little morsel of goodness back in March:Vice Chancellor Leo E. Strine Jr., who often presides over big deal-related cases at Delaware’s Court of Chancery, offered his opinion on [the] hot-button issue [of advisory conflicts at big investment banks].In a panel discussion Thursday at Tulane Law School’s Corporate Law Institute, Vice Chancellor Strine suggested that a conflict-free bank is not always the best choice.“I question bringing in a Mickey-Mouse-size bank to [represent] a go-shop,” he said on the panel. “I still err on the side of repeat players” — meaning banks that may already have an interest in a company or a deal — who “know the tricks of the game.”A pure adviser, he suggested, can sometimes end up being a “purely ignorant adviser.”This line of discussion brought out what is likely to be one of the most memorable quotes of the event. It was spoken by panelist Robert Kindler, vice chairman of investment banking at Morgan Sta... More About: Ouch , Babe
Echo ... Echo ... Echo
2007-06-24 17:00:00 Is there an echo in here?Meriwether's only nagging worry was that Long-Term hadn't been volatile enough. The fund had told investors to expect an accordion, with pockets of losses tucked between its bellows, but over the first two years, in only one month had Long-Term lost more than 1 percent. "Where's the accordion?" one investor wondered. To William F. Sharpe, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and an adviser to one of Long-Term's investors, the returns seemed surreally smooth. "We distinctly asked, 'What's the risk?'" Sharpe recalled. "Myron [Scholes] said, 'Well, our goal is to get the risk level [the volatility] of the S&P 500.' He said, 'We're having trouble getting it that big.'"1* * *The strategy paid off for a long time -- so well that in August 2006 Mr. Cioffi's team created a similar fund that would rely significantly more on borrowing to fund its investments to boost returns. At the time, the High-Grade fund had returned more than 36% in less than three ...
Use of Proceeds
2007-06-23 15:10:00 Best post-deal commentary on the Blackstone IPO so far:Blackstone (NYSE: BX): Stephen Schwarzman will use his cash proceeds from the IPO to buyback shares of his own soul.Market Impact 666It's not clear whether he'll get voting rights with that.Hat tip to our friends and investment advisers at Long or Short Capital.© 2007 The Epicurean Dealmaker. All rights reserved.
Backdoor Man
2007-06-22 18:10:00 With the opening this morning of The Blackstone Group's $4.6 billion IPO for trading on the NYSE, I expect vast quantities of pixels and electrons to be sacrificed on the altar of public commentary, as pundits, kibbitzers, and assorted wackos of all stripes weigh in on "What Does It All Mean?"Given the dimensions of the personal wealth event the IPO will be for Steve Schwarzman, Pete Peterson, and a few others at the company, I also predict we will see much wailing and gnashing of teeth from predictable directions on the ever-popular themes of rising income equality, preferential tax treatment for diminutive squillionaires, and the sclerotization of society arising from the upsurge in dynastic wealth creation. Being a prime offender myself in the first instance, and having already commented to the point of exhaustion in the second, I will add nothing further to the general frowst on these two issues. (Nevertheless, I predict you will not lack for reading material in this regard.)... More About: Door , Backdoor
Vendue!
2007-06-21 19:30:00 You know, it occurred to me today that I have been banging on about private equity and leveraged buyouts for months in these pages without taking into account how educated all of you may be about the particulars of the business. Some of you may have been quietly mumbling to yourselves, "Yes, I see what he's getting at, but bankers? Buyouts? What's the connection?"For those of you Dear Readers who may be a little fuzzy on the role investment bankers play in the LBO game, here are some stills from a French documentary on the subject that should be enlightening.You see? It really is that simple.The entire instructional video1, 2 showing you "How does this works?" can be found here, courtesy of IBD Monkey at The All Nighter.Classique!1 A minor quibble with the Franglish translation: Sous LBO means "under, or subject to an LBO," not "victim of an LBO."2 Another thing: If anyone finds out who this mysterious Mr. X and Mrs. Y are, please let me know. The fact that they made 10x o...
Ay! Whatta Ya, Stoopid?
2007-06-20 18:45:00 Much to the delight of acquisitive corporations, strategic buyers in private equity sheep's clothing (also known as portfolio companies), and M&A intermediaries everywhere, the official guardian of economic competition in this country, the Federal Trade Commission, has officially been on vacation for much of the current administration's tenure. You would be hard put to find a more merger-friendly FTC in recent memory, based on its smiling acquiescence to virtually every takeover deal put before it. If ever there was a time for Microsoft to have tried to buy Apple Computer, and consolidate its share of the computer software market to over 137%, the past seven years would have been it.Accordingly, market observers have been mystified by the fact that the FTC has blocked the $700 million merger of Whole Foods Market with its fellow purveyor of tasteless, overly crunchy comestibles to the Birkenstock set, Wild Oats Markets. I mean, sure, Whole Foods and Wild Oats are a couple of th... More About: Atta
Give Back; Feel Better
2007-06-19 01:15:00 Lest you have any doubt, Dear Readers, rest assured that Your Dedicated Correspondent in All Things M&A is as red in tooth and claw as the next fellow. I am sure that I have left just as many broken, twisted bodies in my bloody wake as the next investment banker. Nevertheless, on occasion even I have been known to look up from the grindstone and take a glance at the wider world.Nine times out of ten, this mood passes quickly, and I can put it down to gas or a bad oyster. On the tenth occasion, however, some inkling of the broader context in which I and my fellow mercenaries ply our trade does seep dimly into my consciousness, and I am inspired to the uncommon act of reflection.My thoughts turn this direction today in reaction to the news that Blackstone co-founder Pete Peterson, who is pulling out somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.9 billion from his company's upcoming IPO, plans to give the lion's share of his loot to charity. Now this—whether you like the man or not (... More About: Back , Give , Bett , Feel
J'accuse
2007-06-15 21:50:00 Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. should be taken out to the woods and spanked.I nominate Maureen Dowd for the job, because I hear she looks good in black leather, and I understand she and Holman have had these sessions before.How, you may ask, has Junior incurred my wrath? From his bully pulpit at the soon-to-be New York Post-it Note The Wall Street Journal, Ol' HJ penned an opinion piece on Wednesday entitled "This Year's Man Behind the Tree" (you see now why I suggest the forest for his birching), which annoyed me.Normally Mr. Jenkins resides comfortably at #6 on my Not Usually a Complete Idiot list of business commentators, which is pretty strong praise from me, given my view of pundits in general. And, in fact, I initially had little to quibble with when I perused his screed, which opened by rather presciently noting that Congress was gunning for private equity's current tax incentives and that one could have foretold this by remembering an old Beltway truism:When vast new fountains ... More About: Accu
Tax Breaks for Everyone!
2007-06-14 20:45:00 Recriminations are flying across the pond among the private equity pooh-bahs of Old Blighty today after senior officials of the industry public relations arm, the British Venture Capital Association (BVCA), were cut to ribbons on the floor of the House of Commons Tuesday by snarling MPs slavering for blood. Ostensibly primary on the hearing agenda was the MPs' keen interest in having the BVCA explain to them why private equity firms and their partners are subject to only 10% capital gains tax on their earnings, compared to the nominal income tax rate of 40% for high earners. The real agenda, as outlined by FT Alphaville this morning, was rather more political:Expecting the BVCA to mount a robust, well-argued defence of the indefensible is frankly unreasonable. Expecting them to do so in the full glare of the House of Commons, while being set upon by predatory politicians, well-versed in the art of the sound-bite and salivating at the prospect of glorifying themselves by coming u... More About: Breaks , Everyone , Brea
The $7 Billion Mouse ... er ... Man
2007-06-13 20:00:00 I am sure by now that most of you have read The Wall Street Journal's puff piece on Steve Schwarzman this morning. I wonder if you, like me, were struck by the rather pervasive attention writers Henny Sender and Monica Langley paid throughout the article to the subject's—how shall I put this delicately—untallness. There it is, staring at you, right from the first sentence:Stephen Schwarzman, who stands 5-foot-6, describes himself as a scrappy "little man" who finds ways to win.It reminds me of the classic epithet formulated by the late, lamented 1990s society rag Spy magazine to describe Mr. Schwarzman's peer and apparent nemesis in private equity, Henry Kravis: "tiny 80s relic."Mr. Kravis is somewhat optimistically described in a few places on the internet as 5-foot-7, which would give him primacy over the Blackstone poobah, if true. Having met the man in person some years ago, however, your Dutiful Correspondent must reluctantly disagree and suggest that Mr. Krav... More About: Mouse , Bill , Ouse , Billion
Waiting for the Barbarians
2007-06-12 05:45:00 Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?(How serious people's faces have become.)Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home so lost in thought?Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.And some who have just returned from the border saythere are no barbarians any longer.And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?They were, those people, a kind of solution.— from C.P. Cavafy, "Wait ing for the Barbar ians"© 2007 The Epicurean Dealmaker. All rights reserved. More About: Barbarians
Shades of Pemberley
2007-06-08 05:30:00 It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.— Jane Austen, Pride and PrejudiceWere I ever to receive a damaging blow to the temporal lobes which compelled me to devise a curriculum for first year MBA students, one of the chief works I would have the eager young beavers in my charge read and comprehend—in addition to the usual dry and dusty tomes on CAPM, merger accounting, and operations research—would be Pride and Prejudice. Like many of Jane Austen's novels, I have long been of the belief that P&P is severely underrated as a how-to manual for success in both my chosen vocation, investment banking, and the broader socioeconomic sphere in which I and many of my brethren move, New York Society.Like New York Society today, the social sphere which Miss Austen chronicled was riddled through and through by one aim, one topic of conversation, and one obsession: Money, and how to get it. Of course... More About: Berl
Pattern Recognition
2007-06-07 04:30:00 I had nothing better to do this morning in between client meetings in Beantown, so I decided to trot on over to the ACG Boston Growth conference and listen in on a panel session on the state of the M&A market. (I registered as Ben Bernanke, just to see if anyone noticed. They didn't.)I usually try to avoid such feel-good gabfests, since they uniformly sound like variations on the old Buster Poindexter song, "Hot! Hot! Hot!," but I thought this one might offer more variation than normal, since the focus of the conference and the panel was the middle market. I was wrong.The panel was emceed by the redoutable and charming Jay Jester (I kid you not) of private equity shop Audax Group and consisted of an investment banker, a lawyer, a capital provider, and an accountant. (I am reminded of the joke about the Arab, the Jew, and the Ukranian who walk into a bikini waxing emporium, but my lawyers have warned me I cannot tell such jokes to a mixed audience such as yourselves. Sorry.)Any... More About: Pattern , Recognition , Pattern Recognition
The Answer
2007-06-01 16:15:00 "Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?""I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.""But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything!" howled Loonquawl."Yes," said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, "but what actually is it?"A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and then at each other."Well, you know, it's just Everything ... Everything ..." offered Phouchg weakly."Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means."— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyYour Dedicated Correspondent in all things M&A-able is off this weekend to his college reunion somewhere north of the fort... More About: Answer , The A
Let Me Call You Sweetheart
2007-05-24 19:30:00 If any of you Dear Readers out there doubt that there is drama concealed underneath the dry prose and completely off-putting format of disclosure documents filed with the SEC, you have only to visit Michelle Leder's blogsite footnoted.org to have the wool pulled back off your eyes. The SEC's requirement that publicly traded companies disclose material information and events leads to all sorts of goodies reaching the public domain, even if management or the directors would much prefer they didn't. And, notwithstanding corporate lawyers' best efforts to wrap such dirty laundry in sixteen double-layer, airtight garbage bags' worth of impenetrable legalese, the diligent reader is still able to get a satisfying whiff of scandal.The latest such goodie to cross my (virtual) desk is an SC 13D/A filed today by Houston-based air freight forwarder EGL, Inc., which has been smack dab in the middle of a hotly contested takeover battle. On one side is Jim Crane, founder, Chairman, Preside... More About: Call , Thea
Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition
2007-05-24 06:00:00 Guns don't kill people.People kill people.With bullets.From guns.— AnonymousFT Alphaville took gentle exception a couple of days ago to some remarks made by Professor Robert Merton—of Black-Scholes and Long-Term Capital Management fame—in this past Monday's interview in the Financial Times.The "impish" former academic did say one or two things that could be construed as controversial, but the following is not one of them:"The major advantages of using derivatives are that they are efficient in transferring huge amounts of risk. ... Derivatives are like anti-lock brake systems in a way—there is no question that they can make things safer, but only if people choose to use them that way. Often they don’t—they might choose, for example, to drive faster in worse weather. Often we have chosen to use these tools not to decrease risks but to increase the benefits of taking the same risks."True, true, and true. But note his critical distinction that deriv... More About: Spanish , Span , Nobody , Nish
Look On My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair!
2007-05-22 20:00:00 Well, my call for reader nominations for the best articles posted on this site since its inception came a cropper. The deadline for entries came and went yesterday, with absolutely no-one sending in a submission. Were I in possession of a less well-defended ego, I might actually even be hurt.As you might suspect, I have developed a number of hypotheses for this deplorable lack of feedback from you Dear Readers, which I am happy to share.1) Many of you did indeed try to select the best of my posts, but were overwhelmed by their uniformly superb quality, and abandoned any effort to differentiate among the jewels on display.2) Some of you were inspired to write in, but were terrified that I might sic Equity Private on you if I found your entries displeasing, as I had indeed threatened. I must say that your fears were probably unfounded—I am more of a pussycat than I seem—but I agree that it was tactically unwise of me to dangle such a harrowing prospect over your heads... More About: Works , Pair , Look , Despair , Mighty
Not Far Now
2007-05-11 15:26:00 Professor: When the three planets are in eclipse, the black hole like a door is open. Evil comes, spreading terror and chaos.See the snake, Billy: the ultimate evil. Make sure you get the snake.Billy: [drawing] Yes, I've got your snakes. I've got all the snakes.So when is this snake act supposed to occur?Professor: Huh? Well, uh ... if this is the five, and this is the one ... [calculates] ... every 5,000 years.Billy: So ... I've got some time then.— The Fifth ElementAlpha Male over at AllAboutAlpha.com posted an interesting article yesterday about the concept of kurtosis, or "fat tails," as they relate to hedge fund returns. In it, he debunks the notion that having a fat tailed return distribution necessarily makes a particular investment "riskier" than one with a more "normal" or even thin-tailed distribution. (Normal distributions by definition have kurtosis—or "excess kurtosis"—of zero.)In the way normal humans understand and talk about risk, a "r...
P(x) = 1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
2007-05-10 05:00:00 In the first months of 1998, markets were smooth. ... The mood at Long-Term was relaxed, too. Though the fund's leverage was up, and though the partners had taken out huge personal loans, their exposure seemed tolerable. ... According to their models, the maximum that they were likely to lose on any single trading day was $45 million—certainly tolerable for a firm with a hundred times as much in capital. According to these same models, the odds against the firm's suffering a sustained run of bad luck—say, losing 40 percent of its capital in a single month—were unthinkably high. (So far, in their worst month, they had lost a mere 2.9 percent.) Indeed, the figures implied that it would take a so-called ten-sigma event—that is, a statistical freak occuring one in every ten to the twenty-fourth power times—for the firm to lose all of its capital within one year.1Let's see if I have this right. Long-Term Capital Management failed in 1998 due to a com...
Call for Entries
2007-05-09 22:05:00 TED has reached a milestone, of sorts, with the publication yesterday of our fiftieth1 post on this site. In celebration, we will shortly inaugurate a new topic category tentatively titled "classics" or "the canon" or somesuch other modest sobriquet befitting the weight and importance of our most significant writings. We intend to leaf back fondly through our output and anoint those pieces particularly worthy of permanent preservation2 with said modest sobriquet, the better to allow the forgetful, the uninitiated, and the just plain unwashed among you to find our most earth-shattering work.We, of course, have our own candidates in mind for this honor. But, in a gesture of remarkable yet characteristic noblesse oblige magnanimity3, we have elected to solicit opinions from you, our Dear Readers, as to which entries you think best deserve canonization. (I know, I know, you don't deserve me.)Therefore, take pen, pencil, or keyboard in hand, and write to me posthaste at epicureandea... More About: Call , Trie
Ozymandias
2007-05-08 16:35:00 I met a traveller from an antique landWho said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.And on the pedestal these words appear:"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"Nothing beside remains: round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away.— Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias"Jeff Matthews is freaking me out. He travelled to Omaha, Nebraska this past weekend to attend the annual meeting for Berkshire Hathaway, and he has posted the first in a series on his journey. So far, the full story has yet to be told, but Mr. Matthews has set the stage with an extensive description of his travels.I do not know how Mr. Ma...
A Tedious Argument of Insidious Intent
More articles from this author:2007-05-07 00:15:00 My Devoted Readers may have trouble believing this, but it can get a little lonely here on occasion in the volcano lair. This blogsite as yet does not attract the sort of voluminous and incisive correspondence that certain reclusive, sardonic, and reputedly attractive private equity memoirists receive. (I am not surprised: who would not rather suck up to a potential fee-paying client—no matter how sardonic—than a logorrheic investment banker?)Every now and then, however, the little red flag on TED's virtual mailbox pops up, and we get to indulge in a little epistolary back-and-forth with one of you. Today, for instance, a kind reader wrote to reassure me that, pace my recent worrying in these pages, (s)he has no trouble understanding my writings. However, citing what (s)he obviously considered a particularly egregious example of what I might characterize as literary overreach, (s)he remarked:Strunk & White (probably too provincial for your Cosmopolitan grammatical ... More About: Tent 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
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