Our Hits and Misses in 2013
It’s the time of year to reflect on life, business – and our best and worst posts. Your diligent scribe here at the Risk Matters blog had a few observations that proved prescient. Oh yes, there were some clunkers, too.
Merry Christmas, Mr. Fezziwig
Mahony Partners will soon adjourn to celebrate Christmas, and by tradition we will read from A Christmas Carol, the classic story of the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge, a pitiless banker. One small character in that great story has always been my favorite: Mr. Fezziwig, the merchant to whom the young Ebenezer is apprenticed. Fezziwig not […]
Elisabeth Murdoch Lights a Fire
The Murdochs were in the news again this week. But this time it was Elisabeth Murdoch, who grabbed headlines for her powerful speech at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. It’s a terrific speech, one of the best I’ve seen in a long time by a business leader, and it is instructive not only for media […]
Friday Risk Reading: Shackleton
I was catching up on holiday reading and came across this excellent New York Times piece on Ernest Shackleton written by Harvard Business School professor Nancy Koehn. Shackleton’s ambitious journey to reach the South Pole ended in failure but became a triumph of leadership, courage and determination as he brought his entire crew safely home […]
The 2011 Risk List: The year’s 5 best risk-takers
As 2011 disappears in the rear-view mirror, here’s my list of noteworthy risk-takers over the past year. These are the people and institutions that took risks intelligently and won. The list of risk-bumblers – those who mishandled critical situations – is certainly longer (UBS, Olympus, Yahoo, MF Global, I could go on) but their woes […]
RIP, Christopher Hitchens
There are many tributes today to Christopher Hitchens, and they’re packed with links to his many writings and interviews – one of the hallmarks of the public intellectual in the modern age. Vanity Fair, where Hitchens was a contributing editor, has a short remembrance and a collection of Hitchens’s video appearances. In the video below, […]
In hedge fund manager’s letter, an echo of the 1930s
Prominent hedge-fund manager Leon Cooperman wrote a widely distributed letter to President Obama this week in which he decried the President’s role in framing the national economic debate in “class warfare” terms. Cooperman’s words are remarkably similar to those of another pubic figure who warned a President about the risks stemming from a bruising policy […]
On air crashes and financial failures
I happened to be reading Malcom Gladwell’s excellent book, Outliers, just as MF Global was collapsing, and I came across Gladwell’s discussion about another kind of crash – those involving airplanes. Gladwell offers an interesting observation about the causes of air disasters that could apply to the failures at financial firms, like MF Global, or […]
While politicians dither on climate risk, companies act
Climate change has all but disappeared from the headlines, aside from serving as a popular punching bag for Republican presidential candidates. But while politicians are busy denying the problem, businesses are taking action. There’s ample evidence that corporations recognize the risk of climate change and are factoring it into their investment planning. According to media […]
Friday Risk Reading: Fostering a healthy risk culture
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about risk and corporate cultures. Some cultures produce disasters, like the massive, concealed trading loss at UBS – the most recent in a long streak of debacles for the bank. Other environments, however, seem consistently to produce good things – valued products and great experiences. Apple of course comes […]