VCs may be exempt from new financial regulations

• By Chris Maresca

Never mind the apocalyptic drop in funding for VCs, what would have really killed off the industry would have been financial regulations.   According to the Wall Street Journal, looks like these have been stopped by Barney Frank.

As a rule, VCs carry no debt, don’t use derivatives and don’t trade in the public markets. Since they had nothing to do with the credit meltdown, it remains a mystery why Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urged Congress to force them to register with the SEC as investment advisers, subject to staggering compliance burdens.Mr. Frank’s planned stay of regulatory execution will have a positive economic impact disproportionate to the small size of the VC industry. Venture-backed companies are responsible for supporting firms that now generate more than 20% of U.S. GDP and are needed more than ever to ignite a rebound in private-sector jobs.

From the Wall Street Journal

Hopefully this will lead to a revival of fortunes in VC land, although it’s probably false hope until the other end of the equation (SarbOx) is also dealt with…

New healthcare plan ignores small businesses

• By Chris Maresca

Kevin Kelly, a small business owner in Union City, CA, writing in Newsweek, outlines how healthcare plans are just not doing it for him.  One interesting datapoint is the way SMBs are defined by congress vs the Small Business Administration:

most legislation defines small business as companies with less than 50 employees. This stands in sharp contrast to the standard set by the Small Business Administration, which defines small business as manufacturing companies with less than 500 employees and nonmanufacturing firms with receipts of less than $7 million. The definition matters. Most plans in Congress set employer mandates at 50 employees or more, with no tax credits going to companies that are larger. Small businesses will have to offer the same levels of coverage as companies many times larger, and they’ll get no help to offset costs.

He concludes with some rather sobering thoughts about small businesses leading the recovery, or not, as the case may be:

[M]y costs continue to skyrocket each year, with little hope increases will ever end. This puts me at a competitive disadvantage against foreign competitors with state-run systems.Last year our health-insurance bill jumped $140,000. We decided not to pass any of the increase on to employees since they were already being hammered by rising gasoline prices. We worried that bumping their costs up might force some good, well-trained employees to look elsewhere for work. But in order to cover that cost, we had to find either $2 million in new sales or the same in cost cuts. Otherwise, it came out of margin. I’ll give you one guess how we covered the hike.

Today I am no more hopeful, reform or not, that our company’s lot will change. I will still think twice about adding jobs when I know that I am not just taking on a new wage or salary, but high health-care costs as well. “How can you have a job recovery when you worry about such things”

Source: http://www.newsweek.com/id/217136

Obama as Nobel-laureate – Not popular

• By Chris Maresca

Well, everyone is buzzing about it and mostly not in a good way.  This post by port1080 @  TnT provides a good series of comments from usually supportive websites:

If there’s any question that this decision was bizarre, it should be dispelled by the fact that even most of the left (from the center-left to the far left) is puzzled by it:

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2009/10/09/a_premature_peace_prize/index.html

“If he achieves all [his goals], he definitely deserves a prize. But not quite yet.”

http://www.tnr.com/blog/obama-wins-nobel-peace-prize

“Seriously. Should he turn it down?”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/10/9/791325/-Turn-it-down,-Obama

“He has to turn down the Nobel Peace Prize.”

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/482445/the_aspirational_nobel

“These Nobel sentiments, however, are aspirational in my view. Obama doesn’t deserve the prize, yet. ”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/10/unexpected_developments.php?ref=fpblg

“This is an odd award. You’d expect it to come later in Obama’s presidency and tied to some particular event or accomplishment.”

34 banks miss TARP dividend payments

• By Chris Maresca

Naked Capitalism has a good post about banks missing TARP dividend payments.  It’s pretty stunning that some are missing payments on relatively small sums:

Of the 34 miscreants, two are pretty large, namely AIG and CIT, But the next on the list is First Bancorp, which received a mere $400 million from the TARP. Probably more important than the number is the trend, since the number of institutions that skipped dividends nearly doubled. In a supposedly improving economy and with a steep yield curve (at least until very recently), things appear to be getting worse rather than better.

Boy, if I missed an IRS payment, there would be some pretty big fallout, I’m sure.   But with the banks, apparently nothing bad happens…..

Featured Video – Wim Elfrink on Cisco’s Globalization Strategy

• By Chris Maresca

There are quite a few short videos online with lessons learned by business leaders, often through painful experience. I”ll be showing some of the more interesting ones here.

Wim Elfrink on Cisco’s Globalization Strategy. The metrics around growth and opportunity are particularly interesting. These kinds of global competitiveness measures are not often discussed in the US, even though a lot of people feel that they are there.

Cisco’s Globalization Strategy – One year on

• By Chris Maresca

I’ve recently looked back at Cisco’s globalization strategy, something they put into place about a year ago.   It’s similar to a strategy I outlined for a client about 18 months ago, so I was curious how Cisco has done.

Very generically, the premise behind the strategy is that Western countries, and the US in particular, are mature, slow growth markets.  Cisco believes that most of it’s future growth will come from both BRIC countries and other emerging economies.   To that end, they plan to open ‘clone headquarters’ (my terminology) in a variety of emerging places, replicating all sales, marketing, R&D, production and HR locally.   The idea is to better serve the local markets with products specifically designed and tailored for local conditions. Read more…

Featured Video – Heather Dawson on finding time to focus and think

• By Chris Maresca

There are quite a few short videos online with lessons learned by business leaders, often through painful experience. I”ll be showing some of the more interesting ones here. The first is Heather Dawson, an executive coach, on how to find time to focus, something we’ve all struggled with.

World in Transition

• By Chris Maresca

I don’t know how many people remember the ‘World at War‘ series produced in early 1970′s, but if you do, I think someone, in 20 years, will produce a similar series about the last dozen years.   Except, it will start in January 2009 and go backwards.

If you step back and look at what has happened in the last dozen or so years, it’s been a remarkable ride.  Not only have we invented whole new ways of communication, but these new technologies have wired us together in a way that no political, social, religious or economic movement has ever been able to do.   It’s lead to whole new businesses, industries, jobs, fortunes and social trends. Read more…