HSBC is a solid, and perhaps staid, bank. It rode the financial crisis reasonably well and generally stays out of the headlines. Surprising then to see it on top of the financial news for the last five days thanks to a messy succession saga.
Here's what happened. Successions in HSBC are very orderly. The Chairman retires to tend to his garden somewhere in the English countryside. The CEO becomes...
Saturday, 25 September 2010
Friday, 24 September 2010
Jobs for Life
Jobs for life ? A quaint and obsolete concept ? Not even dinosaurs would think of such an idea ; Right? Don't snigger. No less a company than Siemens has done just that in Germany.
My first reaction was, of course, what on earth has Siemens done. Has it simply bowed to the pressure of the mighty German trade unions ? The power of trade unions in Germany is well known. The country has adopted...
Sunday, 19 September 2010
In praise of Vaithy mama
Vaithy mama is a legendary figure if you were a schoolboy playing cricket in a certain district in the south of India in the 70s. No prizes for guessing that this blogger was one of them. Vaithy mama was the lone selector of the district cricket team and had the power of life and death over earnest schoolboys for whom being dropped from the team was the end of the world.
Vaithy mama's selection criteria...
Sunday, 12 September 2010
The Right to no Information
The Right to Information is a fundamental right in most countries. Freedom of the press is a cherished goal. All very good. But I think its now time to have a Right to NOT have information. I write this even though I have witnessed at close quarters for three years, the perils of such an idea.
Take the case of the story of the idiot in Florida who wanted to burn the Koran, which is the trigger...
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Small enough to fail - alas
I had never heard of ShoreBank until I read this article in The Economist. The Economist titled its article – Small enough to fail. I add an “alas” to my post header.
ShoreBank , according to The Economist article, thrived for 35 years on a business model of a small community bank that targeted lending to poor people in poor neighbourhoods. It actually had higher repayment rates and lower delinquency, ...
Sunday, 5 September 2010
I have the right to blog in office time !
The blurring of lines between work life and personal life has been a profound change in the last 10 years. We may not have fully realized it as it’s a classic case of slow boiling of the frog. If anybody had presented to you what the demands of working life would be when you started your career, you would have recoiled with horror. But like the proverbial frog, we have all been slowly cooked to death.E...
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