Major League Soccer in Charlotte’s Future? May 28, 2008
Posted by The Tryon Street Journal in Business, Charlotte.2 comments
As Charlotte becomes more and more of a major league sports city, we need to consider adding soccer to the mix. I have for years been a fan of the Charlotte Eagles, but they are in the minor leagues. Between the Panthers Stadium and the upcoming Knights Ballpark, can one of those fields double as a soccer field? The sport is not expensive relative to other more popular choices, and is a great family and bulk (youth soccer team) buying entertainment option.
When I floated the idea by my friend (and founder of internetsoccer.com) Mac Lackey, his response was, “count me in…” So who else is on board?
So what would we call the team? The Charlotte Bankers? Please, no.
Seattle has experienced great success with their team, most recently with the addition of Microsoft as the jersey sponsor.
Wessel: America’s Grand Deleveraging December 6, 2007
Posted by The Tryon Street Journal in Business.5 comments
little lot less leverage in their lives. My view is the economy is going to slow, but won’t experience a textbook recession, especially during an election year.
Cerberus break a sign of the times November 26, 2007
Posted by The Tryon Street Journal in Business.add a comment
The credit crunch has hit private equity hard… so much so that Cerberus is willing to pay $100 million to back away from the United Rentals deal without consequence. Deals are getting more and more difficult to finance because investors aren’t keen on high-leverage corporate debt like they were a year ago. But now the fun begins… we get to see who can still do deals and who has just been riding the wave. I’m interested to see how many deals firms like Carlyle and Blackstone can do in this environment, and if the delta between expected returns and cost of capital is still high enough to get them done. Stay tuned…
Microsoft’s C-Suite Looking Outside Redmond For Leaders September 26, 2007
Posted by The Tryon Street Journal in Business, Tech.add a comment
I was glad to read today about Microsoft’s willingness to…
- Accept that they’re not the dominant player in many of today’s fastest-growing segments of tech, and
- Hire and listen to outsiders with more entrepreneurial ideas of how to move the big elephant in the right direction.
Granted, when you’re sitting on billions in the bank, I can understand why it’s hard to do this. Not only is Microsoft bringing in fresh blood in product groups such as online advertising and Xbox, but their 2005 hire of Chris Liddellas CFO has proved a prudent move. (I can personally vouch for Mr. Liddell. When I was leaving Bill Gates’ house after the intern dinner just after Mr. Liddell was hired, I quizzed him about investment banking vs. corporate finance, as I was pondering my post-college path. He was very helpful.)
What Robert Guth’s WSJ articletells me is Microsoft is willing to adapt and change in this web 2.0 world we’re in. This is music to my ears, because the precise reason I didn’t stay on after my summer in Redmond was the company’s couch-potato attitude toward the market. It was apparent that they knew they had a cash cow in the OS and office suite segments, but weren’t willing to be pro-active at protecting that monopoly with innovation in those products. On top of that, MS was coming in 2nd or worse in ancillary groups such as mobile and the web.
But it sounds like Microsoft is now making wholesale changes in strategy, from the inside out (or in the case of hiring, outside in). It’s going to be interesting to observe. Here is one indication change is in the air:
Mr. McAndrews says Microsoft wants him to continue building an ad business much as he did before. Still, he says he wants input in the form of technology and other resources from Microsoft that aQuantive didn’t have on its own. They “don’t want to mess with that formula,” he says. “On the other hand, I want to mess with it some.”
Facebook: overvalued, time to sell! September 25, 2007
Posted by The Tryon Street Journal in Business, Tech.add a comment
Dennis Berman at WSJ thinks Facebook should raise another serious round of private equity or go public, but not sell the company. He cites GeoCities’ downfall as an example after it was sold to Yahoo!.
I disagree.
I think Mark Cuban would agree with me (by the way, his smartest move wasn’t selling the company to Yahoo!; it was essentially buying put options on his shares with some hedge fund, whereby he was able to continually sell Yahoo! shares at it’s ridiculous dot-com price all throughout the tech bust). And so does Bo Peabody, who sold Tripod to Lycos for $58M, arguably the net’s first social networking site.
If Mark Zuckerberg wants to maximize his cash, sell now. Reports are Yahoo!’s Terry Semel offered $1B. If that was in stock, Mark was smart to pass. But if Facebook is now reportedly valued at $10B based on Microsoft’s investment, in the words of Cramer – SELL SELL SELL! On the other hand, if Mark is captivated by controlling his empire, and cash isn’t king in his mind, then kudos for staying the course.
