Web D.B.S.

Sometime before 1972 when it closed:

In 1979 after complete destruction:

Present day after condos development construction:

What good is this without a Safeway around?

Comment on the Facebook IPO… but I won’t.

Time (whatever it may be) will, and those young ‘geniuses’ all grow old like the rest of us.

At least MS had some real inventions.

Apple… will get back to what it was in the early 90′s at some point. Even if I’m writing this on a MBP.

See, the easy part is to predict that the world and situations go up and down. Change management some call it.

Waiting for constructive ‘how about you?’ comments.

Wait a minute, looks like the band is doing OK after all, meeting next week!!!

How much longer can America keep increasing productivity?

Dec 31st 2011 | NEW YORK | from the print edition

http://www.economist.com/node/21542211

Robots sparking

EVERYONE complains that corporate America is reluctant to hire additional workers. Far less attention has been paid to the flip side of the jobless recovery: the remarkable improvement in American productivity. How long can this continue? “I see no limit,” says William Hickey, the boss of Sealed Air, a packaging-maker. Is he right to be so optimistic?

American firms were slow to react to the downturn at the beginning of the century, and paid the price. They learned their lesson. When the economy slumped in 2008, they were much quicker to adjust. There was little of the fall in labour productivity that normally accompanies a recession, and this was not just a one-off “batting average” effect (in which average productivity rises because the worst performers are fired). Rather, it was a productivity boost that has continued in defiance of expert predictions that workers can only be squeezed so hard for a short while.

After falling in the first half of the year, American labour productivity (output per hour) was 2.3% higher in the third quarter of 2011 than in the same period a year earlier. This was the fastest quarterly rise in 18 months. Manufacturing productivity in that quarter rose by 2.9% compared with a year earlier. America’s productivity growth has been more robust than most other rich countries’—a feat many ascribe to its flexible labour market and a culture of enterprise.

Yet some analysts expect productivity growth to stall soon. Hard-pressed workers are feeling grouchy: workforce surveys report record levels of job dissatisfaction. Many firms have been “starving the organisation to see how it can do with a lower cost structure,” says Carsten Stendevad of Citigroup, a bank. Unless the economy picks up, he predicts that productivity growth will slow in 2012. (He admits, however, that he wrongly predicted the same thing would happen in 2011.)

Two things could keep productivity rising. First, workers are terrified of losing their jobs. This makes it easier to persuade them to put in extra hours or shoulder new tasks. Even in unionised firms, there have been reports of greater flexibility. Workers have been staying on the job longer rather than “featherbedding” their hours by, for example, queuing up early to clock off as soon as the shift ends.

Second, tough times are forcing firms to strain every brain cell to become more efficient. Sealed Air, for example, has made numerous incremental tweaks, such as upgrading a machine that makes absorbent pads for supermarket meat trays so that its output increased from 400 units per hour three years ago to 550—with the same number of workers.

The willingness of firms to invest in such enhancements has varied enormously. Some would rather hoard cash or buy back their own shares than spend it on more efficient machinery or information technology. Yet there are signs that leading industrial firms are starting to increase their capital spending, says Jeff Sprague of Vertical Research Partners, a research outfit. In particular, he has noticed firms investing in “debottlenecking” which, as its name suggests, means removing hold-ups in production processes, sometimes with an additional production line.

There are hefty gains to be made from using more automation, says Mr Hickey, adding that although he worries about diminishing returns, “we haven’t hit the wall yet.” Service businesses, too, are wringing efficiency improvements from new technology. Hertz allows customers to rent cars at automated kiosks, just as airlines have for some time allowed passengers to check in without talking to anyone. Fast-food firms, such as McDonald’s and Starbucks, are continuously innovating with their products and service.

In short, the recession has forced American firms to become more muscular. This should help them thrive when the good times return. It should also give them an edge over foreign rivals. But all such advantages are temporary. As Mr Hickey points out, a factory that Sealed Air opened in Mexico was expected to be far less productive than one in America, but within four years had caught up.

Originally published here:

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10 – Internalise – As in “What you have all failed to internalise is that there has been a paradigm shift. As a result you are all now behind the curve when it comes to the multi-lateral interoperability needed to realise the supra-organisational mission statement.” Even though there is an awful lot to detest in that statement “Internalise” is the word we most object to. It appears to just means learn or remember but as telling someone to learn or remember something appears instructive, suggesting they internalise it will sound more empathetic, but at the severe cost of sounding like a clone-monkey.

9 – Hi, I hope all is well – With the birth of the email there came an awkward period when the formality of letters, with their “Dear Sir / Yours sincerely” had to be detuned to fit in with the new immediacy and informality. After a stuttering start the world passed through an embarrassed joint squirm and settled on “Hi” for anything other than legal representations. But 2011 has seen a pernicious ingress of a new form of insincerity with the addition of “I hope all is well” to the “Hi”. Rather than questioning either the validity or sincerity of that statement, we would just ask that the bulk senders of such missives consider where they are sent to, as for many recipients things are blindingly obviously not well. We suggest the only time this greeting is appropriate is when addressed to bore-hole companies.

8 – Weaponise price opacity – As the scarcity of new Himalayan Pink Salt in the financial market takes its toll on the bottom lines of financial institutions it is becoming more important for them to make sure that they maximise the profitability of existing basic products. Opacity of price is critical in this process but weaponising it? Wow.

7 – Ideation – What happened to good old “have a think” or “come up with some ideas”? Even running things up flag poles is less irksome than “ideation” which sounds as though it should involve radioactive iodine.

6 – Stakeholder Community – Not a Transylvanian village but the new plural of stakeholder. Theoretically a stakeholder is anyone who can affect, or is impacted by, your decisions and so could be a lowly minion in your company, but deference only ever seems to be made to “stakeholders” when they are either your bosses, investors or regulators. Please let’s call them who they really are.

5 – Socialise - When issues got out of hand in the old days you would normally either just tell the boss, or perhaps “take it upstairs.” But now a cunning adaptation of the old mantra of “My profit, our loss” has invoked a caring sharing attitude to screw-ups by “socialising” them. As in “I think we should socialise this issue with senior management and the stakeholder community.”

4 – Complementary - Odd one this, and it’s really down to our own stupidity, but we have regularly opened emails this year expecting some nice free service only to re-read it and find it’s not “complimentary” but something expensive and homeopathic. We expect the marketing world to soon be jumping on this and emailing multitudes of complementary not-at-all-free offers. Such as Ryan-Air offering “Complementary Flights” which sound as though they are free but are actually expensive and just “complement” what a decent service should be by being dreadful. Or have they done that already? “Complementary” should be banned from subject lines so that the vaguely dyslexic amongst us shouldn’t be taken advantage of.

3 – Bandwidth – The adoption of IT geeky words into mainstream fashion is nothing new but the latest over-usage of “Bandwidth” by management is particularly grating. Just as “spending more time with my family” has become the acceptable expression of “Just been fired/stiffed/shafted/backstabbed/found out but have photos” so has “I’m sorry I can’t action that, I don’t have the bandwidth” become the generic replacement for “I don’t have the time/resources/authority or inclination.” But the saddest part is the way it’s used under the false allusion that “bandwidth” is new and fashionable. Our grandmothers, thanks to broadband adverts and home routers, know what bandwidth is so please, unless you are the type of person who still uses “groovy” in the boardroom, please drop “bandwidth.”

2 – Geosourcing – Why you lose your job to someone in a different part of the world. “The support function has been geosourced” or “How’s the front office geosourcing project going?” It’s the sharp end of a simple belief of ours that if there is someone able and willing to do your job for less than you, you are toast. But the use of “geo,” which has connotations of environmental friendliness married to “source,” which conjures images of babbling fresh springs in the mountains, results in a super-eco word which actually means “You’re fired.”

1 – Reaching out – TMM first came across 2011′s winning term in July and since then it has spread like wildfire, which has us looking like Irish Riverdancers as we try to stamp it out as fast as we can. The origins and epidemiology of this disease has us suspecting it’s the product of some Class of 2011 Management School somewhere. It really is complete and utter rubbish. If you are about to call an investor for some documents you don’t “reach out to the client,” you phone or mail them. If you want to know why a trade hasn’t settled you don’t “Reach out to Bangalore” you “call back-office.” So let’s just kill that one right now before someone gets accused of molestation.

Read more: http://macro-man.blogspot.com/2011/12/management-talk-awareness-week.html#ixzz1i2y8wznd

A Downing Street story
The game
A.D. Miller, our former political editor and one of our resident novelists, whose “Snowdrops” was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize this year, returns to his old hunting-ground. The newspaper and characters are imaginary. But quite a lot of the rest is realistic.

Dec 17th 2011 | from the print edition

THE black door opened magically as Charlie Butler approached, the doorman concealing himself behind it as it swung back. Charlie switched off his mobile phone and deposited it in the wooden rack. He climbed the stairs, passing the portraits of the forgotten or reviled or (less often) venerated prime ministers. Flunkies steered him through the smaller state rooms, with their uncomfortable-looking furniture, and into the large reception room that overlooked the garden.

This was where the assembled lobby journalists were to play the latest round of their unofficial game. At least, most of them would be playing. A handful were exempt; Charlie Butler was one of them.

The prime minister wasn’t there yet, but the spin doctors were mingling in their obscurely menacing way. Alan Cormack was talking to a harmless, bespectacled reporter from a struggling red top; Cormack threw back his head to laugh, swivelling his eyes as he brought his chin down to see who else he should be bullying. There were plates of mince pies on the side tables, and a couple of half-hearted sprigs of mistletoe above the doors. The waiters were circulating with the questionable Downing Street wine, lubricating that special bonhomie shared by journalists on the same beat, with their collegial but nakedly limited co-operation.

When Cormack saw Charlie he cut short his conversation with the bespectacled man and came over to talk to him. Charlie was from the Post: the biggest-selling tabloid in the country, and the evil empire’s flagship title. The bespectacled man understood.

“Evening, squire.”

“Evening, Alan.” Cormack had been a journalist himself, until the prime minister had spotted his talent for intellectual thuggery, fished him out of the tabloid swamp and made him his creature; Cormack’s gratitude, and his loyalty, were boundless. Charlie could see his premature bald patch reflected in the gilt mirror on the wall, the skin of his scalp reddened by the warmth of the party and the wine.

“How’s the handicap? There’s an 18-holer in Dubai now apparently. We might have time in between the pressers if you’re coming on that trip to the Arab League summit next month.”

“Not sure yet. Clashes with the other lot’s conference. He coming up?”

“He’ll be up. Bollocking the health secretary I think.”

A veteran from a broadsheet that had recently been bought by a Ukrainian oligarch came over and interrupted them. He was one of those fruity Fleet Street types who put on a permanently high-camp tone in lieu of humour.

“Dear boys,” he said. “Hell-oooo.”

Charlie scanned the room. The woman from the preachy daily and the man from the Post’s broadsheet stablemate, who everyone knew were having an affair, were chatting to each other at an ostentatiously safe distance. Most of the rest were positioning themselves for the game.

He excused himself and drifted off to the far corner of the room. He stood by himself, beneath one of the appalling portraits, half-hidden by a pillar.

Charlie never played.

The aim of the game was straightforward: to speak to the prime minister—by no means guaranteed simply be being on the invitation list and at Number 10. Exactly why they were all so keen to talk to him was less clear. The chit-chat was unlikely to yield anything resembling a genuine story, since the prime minister’s instinctive response to most questions was inwardly to think, “how and why is this person trying to destroy me?”, and to start gabbing about football. The most the players could realistically hope to pick up was some circumstantial detail that they could drop into an article, to make it look like they were in the inner circle: the colour of his tie, or the sudden greying of his hair, or some unjustified generalisation about his mood (“this week the prime minister seemed in better spirits than at any time since the referendum defeat”, etc). They would be able to tell their editors that they had spoken to him, and the editors might be pacified and impressed. But not very.

No, the real motive, for most of them, was self-respect. If they were going to come to these receptions—if they were going to do this strange, glamorous yet repetitive job, if they were going to be alive—they might as well act as if it mattered. There had to be a point to it, didn’t there? They were at a Christmas party in Downing Street, so they might as well grapple with the main man. Also, for most of them, the basic, childish thrill of it hadn’t worn off entirely, however long they’d been trailing him around, and despite everything they’d seen him do and fail to. He was still the prime minister, still anointed and invisibly shimmering with the balm of power.

Charlie sipped his wine. “Twats”, he thought. “You twats.”

He was sweating into his suit (they should turn the central heating down). It was an expensive suit, which he’d bought the year before for an executive jamboree in New York. He rehearsed the question he was planning to ask the PM about soldiers’ pensions, which, according to his source in the Ministry of Defence, were about to be cut. Then he thought: Where were they all, these overprivileged pricks, when I was writing up local council meetings in Wolverhampton and chasing fire engines? Where were they when I was turning out half a dozen Nibs in an hour? Fucking Nibs. “News in briefs”: dead cats in the local swimming pool, pigs who’d escaped the abattoir, teachers suspended for groping their pupils. Nibs. Doorsteps. Death knocks—when he’d half wanted the poor bereaved bastards to slam the doors in his face so he wouldn’t have to go through with it. At least, he’d wanted that to begin with.

Death knocks. Phone hacks.

Yeah, phone hacks. So what? Everybody had been at it a few years before. What was the difference, in the end, between that and eavesdropping? And everyone eavesdropped. If you had nothing to hide, you had nothing to worry about. But so many of the politicians did seem to have something to hide. There must be some sort of self-destructive impulse that went along with the lust for glory.

That’s what Charlie had been doing in his 20s and early 30s, when he’d served his time on the locals before moving to London and the dream job on the Post. It was called journalism. Most of the rest of this mob had pissed away three or four years at whichever Brideshead-style Oxbridge college they’d blagged or bribed their way into, drinking yards of ale and buggering each other. He knew he should have got over this stuff by now—he was nudging 40—but he just couldn’t. Instead it somehow got worse.

The prime minister, too, Charlie thought. Different sort of twat, but a twat all the same.

From his retreat he watched a small posse forming around the genial workaholic from Sky news, a scruffy man from one of the Scottish papers and a couple of lost-looking foreign correspondents. Charlie knew what they were up to.

The game had an awkward rule. Although the goal was to talk to the prime minister, most of the players had to wait for him to talk to them. They couldn’t just approach him, slap him on the back and ask him who he thought should win “The X Factor”. The seigniorial regime of Downing Street meant that they had to wait for Cormack to steer the PM over. Cormack would grip his arm and occasionally his collar, as if the prime minister were a hostage being forced to smile by an armed kidnapper, and deliver him to the most powerful hacks at the party, bypassing the nobodies.

Anyone who wasn’t on Cormack’s A-list, which was most of them, had to figure out what the prime minister’s movements were likely to be, where he was going to stop and talk, and try to get there first. Success took planning and timing and a certain amount of guile.

There were goalhangers, mostly novices, who hung around shamelessly by the door. But generally the prime minister, who was built like a cruiserweight, just barged pass, leaving them humiliated and mouthing questions in his wake. In any case, the reception room had more than one entrance, which he sometimes took advantage of when he wanted to avoid people. Or the hacks could attach themselves to one of the Downing Street policy team; but apart from Cormack, the prime minister mostly avoided them, too. You never knew, you might get lucky, an adviser might have half a glass of sour Merlot too many and let slip that, truth be told, the PM disagreed with the Americans about Afghanistan, or was about to “resign” the home secretary. But generally the underlings were a waste of time.

The soundest bet was to stick to one of Cormack’s favourites and gatecrash the conversation. It was best to gravitate towards them early, before the prime minister got there, so the ulterior motive wasn’t insultingly obvious. The blue chip broadcasters were the most popular targets—someone like the amiable but overworked political guru from the BBC, who knew exactly what the leeches were up to but bore it more or less patiently, or his opposite number from ITN, who didn’t. Or the man from Sky.

There was a minor commotion over by the door Charlie had come in through. He looked over and saw a small boy in a party suit standing all alone, except for a hand holding his and belonging to an adult who was otherwise out of sight. It was one of the prime minister’s kids. Five or six years old, he must have been: Charlie recognised him from the more select get-together Number 10 had thrown the Christmas before for its extra special friends in the press.

The other hand wasn’t the child’s mother’s or his nanny’s. It was a man’s hand—a spin doctor’s hand. As Charlie watched, the hand let go of the boy’s and pushed him gently on the back and into the room. The boy stumbled about, apparently looking for his father. Then a voice in the other room said “Not yet, he’s not in there yet”, louder than it probably meant to, and a woman came in and retrieved the child.

Charlie smiled. Officially the prime minister never used his kids in photo ops or political stunts. Absolutely never. But if one of them happened to wander cutely into a drinks party…Charlie decided not to write up this vignette immediately—Cormack would go berserk. He’d save it up for when the PM was on his way down, and it would no longer matter how angry they were.

It must be nearly time. The journalists had taken their places. The bigwig from the socialist rag who was secretly a Tory, and the columnist from the reactionary one who was a closet leftie, stood together by the window overlooking the garden, hoping that their combined allure would be enough. The tweeters thought lovingly of their surrendered BlackBerries. The bronzed faces of the broadcasters stood out against their white shirts. Apart from the reporters from the evening free-sheet (for whom it was already too late) and the men from the political weeklies (for whom it was too early), they half-worried about their deadlines. Everyone reminded themselves not to drink any more. Especially not the atrocious mulled wine.

The prime minister came in through the other door, avoiding the goalhangers. Cormack immediately went across and ushered him over to the kingpin from the BBC; the gaggle of lesser hacks around him were the game’s instant winners. Cormack and the prime minister stood back to back while they schmoozed and scowled, looking like those cornered Cavaliers who were killed with a single bullet during the civil war.

Charlie couldn’t hear the conversation but he recognised its rhythm and could see the prime minister’s lips move. He was saying “Good to see you” as he shook hands, which was how he always greeted everyone, maybe even his wife, because it covered him whether he was supposed to know the person or not. There was the small-talk part, and then the journalists each got to ask their one-shot questions, about tuition fees or the deficit or the local elections. There was always a beat before the prime minister answered, as he tried to work out where the trap might be.

Cormack took his arm and led him across the room to a duo from the country’s second-biggest tabloid—a mid-market monster that the politicians feared almost as much as the Post—plus two wire reporters who had perceptively joined them. While the prime minister equivocated, Cormack saw Charlie standing in the corner and nodded at him. Charlie raised his glass and sipped his wine. Just a sip.

The very first time he’d come to one of these dos, with his predecessor as the paper’s political editor, the old guy had explained it all to him. All prime ministers think the Post can swing elections, he’d said; they think that we decide their fate. Maybe we can’t, maybe it’s just a superstition, but that’s what they believe. Plus there was the other thing, he’d said, perhaps it was even the main thing: the question of what we know about them. What we’ve got on them. They know there’s probably stuff that we’re holding back, from the phone hacks or wherever, but they don’t know what it is. We need to act like we can destroy them whenever we want to—the long hard way at the elections, or the short, harder way on tomorrow’s front page—and the more we act like that, the more they believe we could. That’s why we do those out-of-the-blue hatchet jobs every now and then, like “The great euro sell-out” or “Burglars’ best friend”, even when we’re supposed to be backing him. To let him know we can. The message we need to send is: Watch it. Do what we say. Do what our boss says.

That was why Charlie didn’t play. Never be the supplicant, that was the principle, always make sure it’s the other way round. It was one of the perks of working for the evil empire: the prime minister could come to him. How he must hate it, Charlie thought, abasing himself before someone like me.

For a three year old it sounds just great. Or when one has to take care of one; or take care of children in general; or just want to have some sort of a life…

That’s just NOT FAIR to IT folks in general! They luv those long hours and the ass kissing involved when those VIPs are just having a bad day!

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Volkswagen Agrees to Curb Company E-Mail in Off Hours

By REUTERS

Published: December 24, 2011

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Volkswagen has agreed to deactivate e-mails for its German staff members’ company BlackBerrys when they are off duty.Under an agreement reached this week with labor representatives, staff members at Volkswagen will receive e-mails via BlackBerry from half an hour before they start work until half an hour after they finish, and will be in blackout mode the rest of the time, a spokesman for the company said.The new e-mail protocol for Europe’s biggest automaker applies to staff members covered by collective bargaining, so it would seem that board-level executives will still be attached to their BlackBerrys.Very few companies have taken such drastic measures to force workers toward a better work-life balance.Deutsche Telekom, the telecommunications company, introduced a “smart device policy” last year that calls on workers to claim communication-free time when they are off work, in exchange for a promise that management will not expect them to read e-mail or pick up the phone at all times.”Mobile communication devices offer a great amount of freedom, but also embody the risk of no longer being able to switch off,” the company said.In Europe’s biggest economy, where burnout is blamed for almost 10 million sick days a year, labor representatives want to limit the amount of time that employees spend responding to e-mails on weekends and during vacation.Bitkom, a German technology organization, published a study this year showing that 88 percent of German workers are reachable for clients, colleagues and bosses by e-mail or mobile phone outside of working hours, compared with 73 percent two years ago.

Stop it dude, it’s not a bubble@! It has real value.

While we’re seeing some very nice success in new tech companies lately depending on what standard is used for defining ‘success’, technology itself is killing the massive numbers we need to compare to the booms we had in the hardware era of the 70s-80s-90s. We’re just not seeing companies that need 10s of thousands of high-paid workers here in Silicon Valley anymore. Thousands, sure (12/21/11: Facebook opens a new campus to accommodate up to 6000 employees), but not 10s of thousands.

Why? Let’s take a look at the differences between the new and the old:

1. Old: companies that make PHYSICAL STUFF. New: companies that make IDEAS. And not always good ones.

2. Old: hardware companies that make hardware HERE. New: companies make hardware SOMEWHERE ELSE.

3. Old: customer support is here. New: customer support is SOMEWHERE ELSE.

4. Old: data center operations are here. New: SOMEWHERE ELSE.

5. Old: companies have a “centralized” attitude in command and control. New: companies are distributed. Meaning they depend on MIS and IT. Which they’ve already outsourced elsewhere.

What are we left with? A relatively small number of ideas people, lead engineers, start-up people and big company execs who CHOOSE to live in Silicon Valley even though they can relocate and keep their jobs/job level in many cases.

As such, although there’s a lot of success and it is going to be great for “some” people, when you talk about macro-demographics, it’s just not enough. The Baby Boomer thing, combined with a big shift in technology are way, way bigger forces than a few new hot IPOs.

Twitter Zinga Facebook – yes!!! As far as inventions though…??? Let me stop you right there, it’s not a millennial generational thingy either.
Bubble will burst soon too. By soon I mean uh soon.

And then we have this: the Yahoo sign is going down at 6th street entrance of i80 in SF… boohoo.

I love the sign but I’m surprised it stayed up this long. Who is using Yahoo these days except for Microsoft? Only ten years ago those Yahoo doods were kings.

Those games suck…

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Zynga’s lackluster debut Friday ended a disappointing year for initial public offerings.

The San Francisco maker of online games closed at $9.50 per share, 50 cents below its $10 offering price. Zynga was one of nine U.S. companies that rushed to go public last week before the IPO market shut down for the rest of the year.

For the full year, there were 125 U.S. IPOs, including foreign companies whose primary market is a U.S. exchange. Together they raised $36.3 billion.

That’s down from 2010, when 154 companies raised almost $39 billion. However, last year’s deals included General Motors’ $16 billion mega-IPO, so “in terms of money raised, it wasn’t so bad,” says Paul Bard, director of research at IPO investment firm Renaissance Capital.

But it was still below par. “We view a healthy market as $45 billion to $50 billion in capital being raised,” Bard adds.

It was also a downer in terms of performance. About 70 percent of the companies that went public this year are trading below their offering prices. On average, they are 12 percent below. Last year, the average IPO was 25 percent above its offering price at year end, says Bard.

Although hot young Internet companies such as LinkedIn, Zynga and Groupon got most of the publicity, the year’s best-performing IPO was GNC Holdings, a retailer of vitamins and nutritional supplements founded in 1935. Its shares are trading 69.4 percent above their offering price.
Risk barometer

IPOs are a good barometer of the risk investors are willing to take. They are also important in California because when a company goes public, its employees and financial backers can cash in their restricted stock and stock options. Taxes on capital gains and stock-option income are a significant, but volatile, source of revenue in California.

When 2011 started, it was expected to be a stellar year for IPOs, especially for Internet companies.

Transactions in the shares of privately held companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn were ratcheting up their implied valuations and putting pressure on them to go public before regulators cracked down.

“The Social Network,” a hit movie about the founding of Facebook, was opening millions of people’s eyes to the business potential of social networking.

The year opened with a bang. Shares of Demand Media, which publishes online content on sites such as eHow, rose 33 percent their first trading day in January.

In May, LinkedIn went public at $45 per share and more than doubled its first day, closing at $94.25 per share.

Investors also had an appetite for consumer companies such as Dunkin’ Brands, which runs Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins. It had a first-day pop of 47 percent.

“The first seven months of the year were quite busy,” says James Krapfel, an IPO analyst with Morningstar. Some companies “came at valuations that were pretty excessive.”

But the market for new issues came to a screeching halt in August, when the stock market went into a free-fall. Investors were spooked by the near-shutdown of the federal government, Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating and the spreading financial crisis in Europe.
‘Death knell of IPOs’

“Volatility spiked globally. Volatility is the death knell of IPOs,” Bard says.

Many companies that went public earlier in the year when investors were exuberant saw their share prices tumble. The disclosure of accounting and other irregularities at some Chinese companies hurt Chinese firms that had listed their shares on U.S. exchanges, such as Renren (known as the Facebook of China) and Jiayuan.com (an online dating service).

The IPO market virtually shut down from August through October. Only six companies went public during these months. After the broader market recovered in October, the IPO window reopened and companies such as Groupon, Angie’s List and Zynga managed to slip through, but at lower prices than once envisioned.

Groupon was valued at $12 billion when it went public in early November, well below the $20 billion people were projecting based on where its shares were trading on secondary markets this summer.

Zynga, once thought to be worth $15 billion to $20 billion, is worth $6.6 billion based on Friday’s closing price.

What does this mean for Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and Living Social, the other big social-networking companies likely to go public?

Facebook “is going to go on its own terms. I don’t think it depends too much on the stock market,” Krapfel says.

But for the others, “Some of the excitement over social networking has dissipated somewhat. In the case of Groupon and Zynga, you saw a pretty dramatic slowdown in growth. With Zynga, the profitability has come down as well. Groupon continues to lose money, although at a slower rate,” Krapfel adds.

“We are not seeing any having rapid revenue growth and a much improved profit outlook.”

Until investors see companies achieving both, it could be tough for other social-networking companies to go public.

Bard says 2012 will be the year when investors will want to see whether social-networking companies can maintain their growth rates and scale their businesses.

“Next year you are going to see if the proof is in the pudding,” he says.
This year’s top 10 IPOs

Ranked by percent change between offering price and Friday’s close.
Company Change since offer price
GNC Holdings 69.4%
Tesoro Logistics 59.0
LinkedIn 47.5
Tangoe 44.9
CVR Partners 43.6
Thermon Group 43.5
Imperva 43.0
ServiceSource International 38.9
Sagent Pharmaceuticals 37.7
Ubiquiti Networks 37.0
This year’s bottom 10 IPOs

Ranked by percent change between offering price and Friday’s close.
Company Change since offer price
Friendfinder Networks -94.1%
Imperial Holdings -85.0
Kips Bay Medical -79.9
Renren -75.2
Sequans Communications -75.1
Trunkbow International -62.4
Tudou Holdings -61.2
Demand Media -59.5
BCD Semiconductor -59.1
Gevo -57.5

Source: Morningstar

Net Worth runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail Kathleen Pender at kpender@sfchronicle.com. Tweeting@kathpender.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/17/BU8B1MD70B.DTL#ixzz1gwiSYrbY

Guess we’ll see whose commercial interests prevail in the end… it’s a big market with a lot of interests involved.

I’ll always remember French banks being ‘rescued’ in 2008 to the tune of $500 Billion, almost as much as TARP loans in the US, for a much smaller country. Sarko taking care of his buddies and idolizing Bush.

Where you at Goldman Sachs? Only good to organize fake loans to Greece for instance?

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AS YOU read this, lawyers are busily drafting a European fiscal “compact” designed to restore discipline to the euro zone’s economies. In the new year all but one of the European Union’s 27 members are to start thrashing out this treaty’s details. Meanwhile the British government, having fallen out with all its 26 partners, is promising that it will remain a central part of the union—and that London will remain Europe’s financial capital. All is well.

Except that it isn’t. Merely to set out these purported achievements of the latest EU summit in Brussels is to show how hollow they are (see article). Once again Europe’s leaders have failed to solve the euro crisis. The new treaty could easily be killed by the markets or by its rejection in one or more euro-zone country. The EU has suffered plenty of disappointing summits without the sky falling in—a good many of them in the past year. But unlike the marathon dispute over a new constitution, the euro is in a race against time because markets are pushing countries to insolvency. As investors and voters lose faith, the task of saving the single currency grows harder. Sooner or later, the euro will be beyond saving.

This summit also threatens to change the nature of the EU—and not in a good way. One reason is that it has plotted a misguided course for the euro. The other is that Britain, long ambivalent about its membership, has moved closer towards dropping out, even if that would be more by accident than design. An EU without Britain would be more parochial and less liberal. An EU without the euro might not exist at all.

Is it really that bad?

For all the fuss about Britain, the main failure in Brussels was to draw up a plan to save the euro. That requires a trade-off. Governments need to bind themselves to credible fiscal rules that provide incentives for good behaviour. They need to assume some form of joint liability for debts, with only the well-behaved benefiting from the shelter of Eurobonds. In return the European Central Bank (ECB) needs to give total support to all solvent members. That would leave much to do, especially to unleash growth and to reform the banking system. But investors would at least see a clear path ahead.

Instead there was another fudge, with neither the governments nor the ECB doing enough. In the run-up to the summit, the ECB extended its support for euro-zone banks—in effect lending them unlimited cheap money. That will help the banks and might in theory feed the demand for euro-zone sovereign debt. But it hardly counts as the “big bazooka” investors want, if only because the banks are wary of taking losses on ever larger stashes of government debt. Moreover, the ECB remains adamant that it cannot intervene as the lender of last resort to euro-zone sovereigns.

The governments did even less. True, the leaders pledged extra money in the form of loans to the IMF and left open the possibility of boosting the euro zone’s own rescue fund. But there are already signs that not all the cash will turn up as promised. And the fiscal compact that was the summit’s centrepiece is flawed.

The idea is to write fiscal discipline into national constitutions and harness the EU’s institutions to punish profligacy and excess. But such a compact will not safeguard the euro against future booms and busts. Until financial markets crashed in 2008, Spain and Ireland were hailed as economic stars, with lower public-debt burdens and healthier budgets than Germany. By the time their public finances went visibly wrong, it was too late. Worse, the compact will not resolve today’s troubles. The package dwells too much on austerity, and too little on growth. That risks aggravating the deep Europe-wide recession threatening next year, which could prompt a downgrade of the entire zone’s credit ratings and cause economies to miss their deficit targets—triggering still more austerity.

Although the compact was greeted as the acme of European solidarity, it is more likely to provoke strife. The summit poured cold water on the idea of Eurobonds, in which all members would share some or all of the troubled economies’ burden of debt. Instead the adjustment is being imposed almost entirely on deficit countries, guaranteeing that it will be long and painful. If in the coming years elected governments that impose austerity stir up civil unrest, outside enforcers in the EU will before long become a target for popular rage.

Already governments that agreed to the idea of a compact are warning that its ratification depends upon the detail. The Irish government is under pressure to hold a referendum that it would struggle to win. Parliaments from Slovakia (in the euro) and the Czech Republic (outside) could balk. France’s opposition presidential candidate, who is leading in the polls, says he would renegotiate the deal to get Eurobonds and a more active ECB. All across Europe there are murmurs that Germany, which has benefited so handsomely from the euro, is asking too much of everybody else.

A poor hand misplayed

However did David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister, manage to unite them all? The answer is through a combination of political expediency, inept tactics and fumbled diplomacy. Mr Cameron’s plan was to seek safeguards for the single market and to subject some parts of financial regulation to unanimous approval, in exchange for backing a new treaty. When he failed to get what he wanted, he withheld his support.

In Mr Cameron’s defence, he has to contend not only with Conservative Eurosceptic backbenchers, but also a Eurosceptic public—just as Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy also have domestic political constraints. Furthermore, Britain has real cause to worry about financial regulation. London is host to by far the biggest financial-services industry in Europe—in some areas it has as much as 90% of the EU’s business. The European Commission, egged on by the French and others, has produced many daft proposals to regulate it, as well as suggesting a financial-transactions tax.
Browse all The Economist’s euro crisis covers with our interactive carousel

But if the politics was expedient, the tactics and the diplomacy were not. Mr Cameron knew what he wanted, but went about getting it the wrong way. He presented a last-minute unilateral demand that would have partially overturned the principle of majority voting on single-market rules, which Britain itself first put forward under Margaret Thatcher over 20 years ago. Had he prepared the ground with other governments in advance he might have succeeded. Had he talked to fellow centre-right leaders on the summit’s eve instead of staying out of their political group, he would have known that he could not.

Mr Cameron’s veto was self-defeating. He may have briefly basked in his backbenchers’ praise, but if his aim was to protect the City and the single market, he has failed. Both are threatened more by Britain’s absence from the summits of up to 26 leaders that will now take place than by Britain’s participation in a treaty of 27 that placed no constraints on it. For decades, British diplomacy has been guided by a determination to keep a seat at the table. It has worked: Britain has not been outvoted on a serious piece of financial-services legislation.

Instead of closing the door, mend the fence

If the euro collapses, or the treaty is stillborn, Mr Cameron may yet claim that he was right all along. It would certainly make his veto seem less momentous. However, other European countries will not soon forget Britain’s attempt to hold the summit to ransom at a vital moment—and to protect financial services, which many of them blame for the crisis. And the Tory Eurosceptics and their Liberal Democrat coalition partners are already at each other’s throats (see article).

At its worst, this might be the start of a process by which Britain falls out of the EU (see Bagehot). Yet it does not have to be—so long as Mr Cameron is prepared to mend fences and align his tactics with a strategy to be part of Europe.

He has made a start by withdrawing his futile threat to block the use of the EU’s buildings and institutions by the 26 members of the new treaty. As power shifts in Europe, there will be more opportunities. Britain can help other non-euro countries who gibe at the new treaty’s strictures as well as euro-zone countries that want to resist protectionism or over-regulation—including Germany. At the very least Mr Cameron should make up with Mrs Merkel, who had previously fought hard to keep the British at the table. A compromise that gives Britain some reassurance about the City and thus lets Mr Cameron return to the table may still be possible. Remember, his recalcitrance at the summit means that the new bulldog Cameron is better equipped to face down the Little Englanders. The question is not whether he can recover Britain’s position, but whether he is ready to do what it takes.

Ultimately, the euro zone faces a similar choice. Its members could strike a grand bargain that deploys the ECB’s balance-sheet and some form of Eurobond in exchange for fiscal integration. The question is not whether they can save the currency, but whether enough of them are prepared to pay the price. This summit suggests not.