In what was being seen as a turf battle between sebi and irda, the winner as of now seems to be Irda. It shows the power of the people in the life Insurance business. Now if you have LIC, SBI, Hdfc, Icici, …each with a few ‘000 crores of stake in the insurance business and […]
When we do a class on debt markets one important class is that of Debt Rating. There we say the highest and the best borrower is rated AAA. However we do not even ask – the Sovereign debt is not rated. It is supposed to be above default. When the Japenese companies were running huge […]
It is funny that to be in any business you need to have some qualification. Let us take the mutual fund business for example. To be the Asset management company – you need to have 5 years of track record of some financial business. You need to have a networth of Rs. 10 crores (to […]
If you have been in the equity markets for 30 years you have some advantages. First you have seen many players come and go. You keep wondering how many are genuine, how many are fake. Over this period you classify people into platinum, gold, silver, …and of course mud. Fund managers also come in various […]
Leveraging (like derivatives) is neither good nor bad. Huge wealth has been created by leveraging (Reliance, Tata, Uday Kotak (net worth Rs. 30 lakhs to market cap Rs. 26,000 crores in 25 years) – and also ALL bankruptcies have been caused by bad management of debt. There are many advantages of gearing or borrowing: a. […]
According to Peter Lynch you should not worry too much about macros. However when you do look at some industries you wonder whether the model allows you to make money at all. For example the airline industry is so badly beaten down that whatever happens I am scared to buy shares of Spice Jet or […]
Bankers in Europe did not behave like this when they were paid moderate salaries. By the time they were in their 50s and could retire they still had to worry about their partnership in the bank to be sold. Indian, Japanese and some other East Asian bankers are not in the same set as the […]