Capital Finance

Today's markets are moving into relatively uncharted territory. This session from the 2008 Milken Institute Global Conference brought together an all-star lineup of experts to discuss the shifting framework of the investment world and determine whether strategies that worked in the past can still be relevant today. What is the "new norm"? How can smart investors navigate volatility to find opportunities? What asset-allocation and risk-management strategies make sense in the current market?This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

Learn the 11 required elements of a successful corporate vision. Now you can create, test and validate your vision to increase your company's chances of success, reduce risk and use less capital to reach your goal. Developing a vision is a complex process. Figuring it out for yourself could require many years of hard work and practice with lots of trial and error. Mr. Norton has been called a visionary since his early twenties when he began developing dozens of new products that grew into successful companies rapidly. Each of these products generated anywhere from $5 million to as much as $156 million in sales within one year of their launch -- all without huge marketing resources behind them. At one point he created a new business every year for five years. Because these many successes have clearly demonstrated his knowledge he now consults with corporations of all sizes on developing their own visions.

Whether or not the global climate is changing may be subject for debate in some circles, but it's very clear that the attitude toward global warming in Washington, D.C., has shifted in the past few years. At the 2007 Milken Institute Global conference, Massachusetts Senator and former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry discusses the impact of this growing revolution in attitude with a distinguished panel of experts and what we can expect next.This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

Charles Hill’s Global Business Today, 6e (GBT) has become an established text in the International Business market for several key reasons: (1) it is comprehensive and up-to-date, (2) it goes beyond an uncritical presentation and shallow explanation of the body of knowledge, (3) it maintains a tight, integrated flow between chapters, (4) it focuses on managerial implications, (5) it makes important theories accessible and interesting to students, and (6) it incorporates ancillary resources that enliven the text and make it easier to teach. The success of the first five editions of Global Business Today has been based in part upon the incorporation of leading edge research into the text, the use of the up-to-date examples and statistics to illustrate global trends and enterprise strategy, and the discussion of current events within the context of the appropriate theory. Our research has shown that students and instructors alike enjoy the interesting, informative, and accessible writing style of GBT – so much so that the writing has become Charles Hill’s trademark. In addition to boxed material which provides deep illustrations in every chapter, Hill carefully weaves interesting anecdotes into the narrative of the text to engage the reader.

On September 23, 1998, the boardroom of the New York Fed was a tense place. Around the table sat the heads of every major Wall Street bank, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, and representatives from numerous European banks, each of whom had been summoned to discuss a highly unusual prospect: rescuing what had, until then, been the envy of them all, the extraordinarily successful bond-trading firm of Long-Term Capital Management. Roger Lowenstein's When Genius Failed is the gripping story of the Fed's unprecedented move, the incredible heights reached by LTCM, and the firm's eventual dramatic demise. Lowenstein, a financial journalist and author of Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, examines the personalities, academic experts, and professional relationships at LTCM and uncovers the layers of numbers behind its roller-coaster ride with the precision of a skilled surgeon. The fund's enigmatic founder, John Meriwether, spent almost 20 years at Salomon Brothers, where he formed its renowned Arbitrage Group by hiring academia's top financial economists. Though Meriwether left Salomon under a cloud of the SEC's wrath, he leapt into his next venture with ease and enticed most of his former Salomon hires--and eventually even David Mullins, the former vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve--to join him in starting a hedge fund that would beat all hedge funds. LTCM began trading in 1994, after completing a road show that, despite the Ph.D.-touting partners' lack of social skills and their disdainful condescension of potential investors who couldn't rise to their intellectual level, netted a whopping $1.25 billion. The fund would seek to earn a tiny spread on thousands of trades, "as if it were vacuuming nickels that others couldn't see," in the words of one of its Nobel laureate partners, Myron Scholes. And nickels it found. In its first two years, LTCM earned $1.6 billion, profits that exceeded 40 percent even after the partners' hefty cuts. By the spring of 1996, it was holding $140 billion in assets. But the end was soon in sight, and Lowenstein's detailed account of each successively worse month of 1998, culminating in a disastrous August and the partners' subsequent panicked moves, is riveting. The arbitrageur's world is a complicated one, and it might have served Lowenstein well to slow down and explain in greater detail the complex terms of the more exotic species of investment flora that cram the book's pages. However, much of the intrigue of the Long-Term story lies in its dizzying pace (not to mention the dizzying amounts of money won and lost in the fund's short lifespan). Lowenstein's smooth, conversational but equally urgent tone carries it along well. The book is a compelling read for those who've always wondered what lay behind the Fed's controversial involvement with the LTCM hedge-fund debacle. --S. Ketchum

John Meriwether, a famously successful Wall Street trader, spent the 1980s as a partner at Salomon Brothers, establishing the best--and the brainiest--bond arbitrage group in the world. A mysterious and shy midwesterner, he knitted together a group of Ph.D.-certified arbitrageurs who rewarded him with filial devotion and fabulous profits. Then, in 1991, in the wake of a scandal involving one of his traders, Meriwether abruptly resigned. For two years, his fiercely loyal team--convinced that the chief had been unfairly victimized--plotted their boss's return. Then, in 1993, Meriwether made a historic offer. He gathered together his former disciples and a handful of supereconomists from academia and proposed that they become partners in a new hedge fund different from any Wall Street had ever seen. And so Long-Term Capital Management was born.        In a decade that had seen the longest and most rewarding bull market in history, hedge funds were the ne plus ultra of investments: discreet, private clubs limited to those rich enough to pony up millions. They promised that the investors' money would be placed in a variety of trades simultaneously--a "hedging" strategy designed to minimize the possibility of loss. At Long-Term, Meriwether & Co. truly believed that their finely tuned computer models had tamed the genie of risk, and would allow them to bet on the future with near mathematical certainty. And thanks to their cast--which included a pair of future Nobel Prize winners--investors believed them.        From the moment Long-Term opened their offices in posh Greenwich, Connecticut, miles from the pandemonium of Wall Street, it was clear that this would be a hedge fund apart from all others. Though they viewed the big Wall Street investment banks with disdain, so great was Long-Term's aura that these very banks lined up to provide the firm with financing, and on the very sweetest of terms. So self-certain were Long-Term's traders that they borrowed with little concern about the leverage. At first, Long-Term's models stayed on script, and this new gold standard in hedge funds boasted such incredible returns that private investors and even central banks clamored to invest more money. It seemed the geniuses in Greenwich couldn't lose.        Four years later, when a default in Russia set off a global storm that Long-Term's models hadn't anticipated, its supposedly safe portfolios imploded. In five weeks, the professors went from mega-rich geniuses to discredited failures. With the firm about to go under, its staggering $100 billion balance sheet threatened to drag down markets around the world. At the eleventh hour, fearing that the financial system of the world was in peril, the Federal Reserve Bank hastily summoned Wall Street's leading banks to underwrite a bailout.         Roger Lowenstein, the bestselling author of Buffett, captures Long-Term's roller-coaster ride in gripping detail. Drawing on confidential internal memos and interviews with dozens of key players, Lowenstein crafts a story that reads like a first-rate thriller from beginning to end. He explains not just how the fund made and lost its money, but what it was about the personalities of Long-Term's partners, the arrogance of their mathematical certainties, and the late-nineties culture of Wall Street that made it all possible.        When Genius Failed is the cautionary financial tale of our time, the gripping saga of what happened when an elite group of investors believed they could actually deconstruct risk and use virtually limitless leverage to create limitless wealth. In Roger Lowenstein's hands, it is a brilliant tale peppered with fast money, vivid characters, and high drama.

Cecchetti’s Money, Banking, and Financial Markets, 2e offers a fresh, modern, and more student-friendly approach to the subject. Students will find the material more relevant and interesting because of the book’s unique emphasis on the Five Core Principles, the early introduction of risk, and an integrated global perspective. Cecchetti is THE money and banking book for today’s students. By focusing on the big picture via core principles, Cecchetti teaches students the rationale for financial rules and institutional structure so that even when the financial system evolves, students’ knowledge will not be out of date. The author draws on his vast experience, which includes: VP at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, publishing in and editing various journals, consulting for the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Israel, and the Reserve Bank of Australia, as well as his years of teaching at various schools including Ohio State, Brandeis, Princeton, and Oxford University.