ICG inc. Conversations

Steve Jobs

2009-01-19T09:17:00.000-08:00

Steve Jobs' Top 10 Quotes

#10. On Management

My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects.

And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.

#9. On Hiring

Recruiting is hard. It’s just finding the needles in the haystack. You can’t know enough in a one-hour interview.

So, in the end, it’s ultimately based on your gut. How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they’re challenged? I ask everybody that: ‘Why are you here?’ The answers themselves are not what you’re looking for. It’s the meta-data.

#8. On Firing

We’ve had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren’t going to lay off people, that we’d taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place — the last thing we were going to do is lay them off.

#7. On a CEO succession Plan

I mean, some people say, ‘Oh, God, if [Jobs] got run over by a bus, Apple would be in trouble.’ And, you know, I think it wouldn’t be a party, but there are really capable people at Apple.

My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that’s what I try to do.

#6. On Product Strategy

It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do.

We just want to make great products. (I think he means “insanely great products!“)

5 Leadership Mantras

#5. On Leadership

So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know - just explore things.

#4. On Evangelism

When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself.

They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them, what’s best for Steve, or anybody else. (this actually reiterates my oft-repeated mantra of “ubiquitous evangelism” in companies)

#3. On Focus

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

#2. On the User Experience

Our DNA is as a consumer company — for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it’s not up to par, it’s our fault, plain and simply.

#1. On Creativity

That happens more than you think, because this is not just engineering and science. There is art, too. Sometimes when you’re in the middle of one of these crises, you’re not sure you’re going to make it to the other end. But we’ve always made it, and so we have a certain degree of confidence, although sometimes you wonder.

I think the key thing is that we’re not all terrified at the same time. I mean, we do put our heart and soul into these things.

–

And, my favorite, which nails the ethos of living the dream at your job (that I’ve written about here)

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life.

Life is brief, and then you die, you know?

And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.
____________________

Hope you enjoyed this...
Louis

ABL and distressed debt hedge funds are hot

2009-01-10T11:57:00.000-08:00

For the past nine to twelve months a central question from anyone I meet is: with the markets the way they currently are – how is your business? The answer, maybe surprisingly, has been great. Each month we have more and more clients; each month there are new hedge fund managers who are eager to get their fund up and running. As the conventional wisdom goes, there is always a hot market somewhere and there will always be managers who think they have an edge and who can exploit that hot market. Which brings up the million dollar question – what is the hot market now?

Recently we’ve seen an increase in the amount of asset-based lending and distressed debt funds. With the market dynamics changing and the level of liquidity decreasing on a daily basis, a niche for smaller liquidity providers has arisen. These funds will focus on a variety of distressed debts and other types of assets – we’ve seen: real estate hedge funds focused the acquisition of land, single family homes, multi-family units and other retail properties; asset-based lending hedge funds; factoring hedge funds; distressed debt hedge funds which may buy and repackage certain types of debt including mortgages and credit card receivables. For a discussion on the structure of distressed debt hedge funds (and other hedge funds with hard to value assets) see structure of distressed debt hedge funds.

As noted in this week’s issue of Business Week, hedge funds are stepping up as buyers of pools of mortgages which the banks are selling at fire-sale prices. The article notes that oftentimes distressed debt hedge funds are leaner organizations which have more room to negotiate with borrower’s because of their cost basis in the loan. Because of this, and because their employees deal with far fewer borrowers on a daily and weekly basis, the fund’s are able to fashion more manageable terms to borrowers.

The Business Week article can be located at:

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D928D3480.htm

STATISTICS

2008-11-26T15:36:00.001-08:00

THE MARKET

Foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported on 265,968 properties in September, a 12 percent decrease from the previous month but still a 21 percent increase from September 2007, according to the latest RealtyTrac U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. One in every 475 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing in September.

Investors ready to snap up distressed assets, hoping to cash in later

2008-10-29T19:47:00.000-07:00

Investors ready to snap up distressed assets, hoping to cash in later

12:24 AM CDT on Sunday, September 28, 2008

By BRENDAN M. CASE and CHERYL HALL / The Dallas Morning News

The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression? For some deep-pocketed Dallas investors, that's like ringing the dinner bell.

Two decades after a savings and loan debacle flattened some North Texas fortunes – and fattened others – fresh money is massing to buy distressed loans and properties the government cannot or will not buy this time around.

Call them the "New Vultures" (they prefer the term "opportunity funds"). These investors aim to snap up teetering assets such as real estate and mortgage-backed securities on the cheap, then cash in when prices recover.

"It's a lot of risk-taking and a lot of work," said Dallas real estate developer Craig Hall, who's teaming up with commercial real estate broker Herbert Weitzman to buy distressed real estate.

"We're going to see one of the greatest transfers of wealth in our lifetime."

The wealth transfer he has in mind is not necessarily from taxpayers to rich investors, and no one's celebrating the wave of foreclosures at the root of the current crisis.

The transfer Mr. Hall has in mind is from bloodied financial institutions and desperate property owners to people (like him) who are ready to plunk down some cash.

Waiting for a bottom

Many investors are waiting to see a bottom before plunging in.

Housing prices still have a ways to fall in many U.S. markets, analysts say. Dropping home prices fuel foreclosures, which are still on the increase. That will continue to slam the value of the mortgage-backed securities now taking down banks and jamming the financial system.

Would-be buyers are also following the fate of the proposed $700 billion federal bailout plan for clues about where asset prices are apt to settle.

"A large part of our banking community is probably sitting back and saying, 'Let's see what the government does,' " said Phil Dixon, president of Treadstone Partners LLC, a Dallas investment firm.

What's certain is that there's not enough federal largesse to buy up all the bad debt out there. So there will be opportunities for the private sector no matter what the government does.

The problems – or opportunities, depending on your perspective – are bound to extend well beyond the housing loans.

Investors like Mr. Hall and Mr. Weitzman see the fiasco as the first act in a tragedy apt to entangle credit cards, car loans, office buildings, undeveloped land and an assortment of loans backed by troubled collateral.

"Everything that's being talked about is related to subprime and mortgages, but there are a lot of commercial projects that in my mind are the 'subprime' of that industry," said North Texas developer Fehmi Karahan, who organized a fund this year to acquire distressed commercial real estate.

"You may see another wave of things that shouldn't have been built and are leveraged too thin hit the marketplace in the next two to three years," said Mr. Karahan, who developed the Shops at Legacy in Plano.

Some $300 billion or $400 billion in investment dollars could become available worldwide, said Mike Bryant, a Dallas-based executive with Capmark Financial Group Inc., a California real estate finance company.

"There's about 300 to 400 different funds being put together that are ranging in size from $25 million to $1.5 billion, and even up, who are going to get in there and bid on these assets," Mr. Bryant said.

Who's buying

Those eyeing distressed assets include wealthy individuals, pension funds, hedge funds, endowments – even Texas schoolteachers, acting through their retirement system.

One high-profile private equity firm, Dallas-based Lone Star Funds, has already gambled big on distressed mortgages.

Lone Star is headed by John Grayken, who worked with Fort Worth billionaire Robert Bass to snag distressed properties after the savings and loan bust of the 1980s.

In July, Lone Star agreed to shell out $1.5 billion and assume $4.4 billion in debt to buy a mortgage portfolio with a paper value of $9.3 billion. That works out to about 63 cents on the dollar.

The same month, the firm agreed to pay Merrill Lynch & Co. $6.7 billion for a $30.6 billion portfolio of mortgage-backed assets – or 22 cents on the dollar. Lone Star even got Merrill to help finance the deal.

Now others are on the prowl.

Mr. Hall, the Dallas developer, is mulling over distressed paper assets such as mortgages along with hard assets such as commercial real estate, residential lots and condominiums that might be purchased directly from distressed owners.

The big unknown is how to value such assets.

"If you have a subdivision with 300 lots and nobody's bought a house there in a year or two, what is that worth?" he mused.

But unlike the real estate flipping that helped fuel the housing bubble a few years ago, Mr. Hall said these new opportunities will require patience and staying power.

Waiting it out

Investors will need a good eye to spot investments with underlying value, as well as enough time and money to wait out the downturn.

"It's going to be six years, not a year or two," Mr. Hall said.

Since many mortgages have been rolled into complicated debt securities, another challenge is figuring out who can legally sell the houses.

Terry Buell, principal of SMI Mortgage Co. in Dallas, is working with an investor group hoping to get big discounts on foreclosed homes and nonperforming mortgages in housing bust areas such as California and Florida.

"We've had the money available for quite a while now," he said. "The problem has been in finding sellers that have the ability to actually sell a large pool of houses."

Even Texas teachers have been getting in on the action, said Dory Wiley, president and chief executive of Commerce Street Capital LLC, a Dallas-based investment bank.

Mr. Wiley also sits on the board of trustees of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, a pension fund with more than $100 billion in assets.

Mr. Wiley got a call this year from Larry Fink, chairman and chief executive of BlackRock Inc., a New York money management company.

Would the Texas teachers' fund like to buy a chunk of a $22 billion mortgage portfolio that BlackRock was purchasing for $15 billion from Swiss bank UBS?

"We bought $250 million," said Mr. Wiley, referring to TRS' participation in the deal.

Now Commerce Street Capital itself is looking to lend to or invest in banks. The firm has a $500 million fund to pour into community banks and a $1 billion fund to buy up bank debt.

"We're going right into the epicenter of the problem," Mr. Wiley said. "I wake up at 3 a.m. I can't sleep. I'm so excited about the opportunities."

Lesson of the '80s

So how much do these investors stand to profit from buying distressed debt, homes and commercial real estate?

Many are eager to take advantage of what they think happened in Texas in the wake of the real estate bust and savings and loans crisis of the 1980s – instant riches from quick flips of raw land, apartment and office buildings bought from the government at fire-sale prices.

Vultures, take note: To some extent, those memories are wrong. In most cases, it took several years for Texas real estate to climb out of the morass. Investors who didn't have staying power lost their skivvies.

But there were also success stories. One example among many is the property that the Stonebridge Ranch community in McKinney sits on today, said real estate developer Henry Billingsley, who watched the unfolding transactions as a nearby landholder.

In the early 1980s, thousands of acres of raw land were purchased for $125 million. Infrastructure worth $175 million was added. The RTC took ownership and quickly offloaded it for $32 million to a large New York investment company, which sold it within a few years to another New York firm for $64 million.

"A $300 million property marked down to $32 million," Mr. Billingsley said.

"It's hard to make a mistake buying at 10 cents on the dollar," he said. "They must have thought they'd died and gone to heaven."

Staff writer Eric Torbenson contributed to this report.

A Marriage gone Bad "Problems on the Financial Home Front"

2008-10-24T13:53:00.000-07:00

If you look at the landscape of today's economy one thing is very clear. No one trust anyone anymore. Just like a marriage without trust, everything becomes harder. A simple trip to Vegas with friends can turn into a divorce if there is no trust. A simple mistake in today's market can lead to an entire deal falling apart in moments... In this new market environment patience will become profitable as parties will now need time to build trust and track record before they jump into bed together. The trust was broken because of lack of honesty on the part of Brokers, Loan officers, Appraisers, Agents, and Investors. So what now? Now is a great time for honesty...

Some food for thought!
Louis C. Baker

Are there Really any deals out there?

2008-10-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

S.D. firm buys bank's troubled real estate loans

Ayres Advisors pays 40 cents on the dollar

By Mike Freeman
STAFF WRITER

August 6, 2008

A San Diego real estate investment firm has purchased a group of troubled residential development loans for less than 40 cents on the dollar – a sign that private investors are starting to smell bargains coming from lenders who made loans to builders. Ayres Advisors bought 16 loans and one foreclosure property with a face value of $122 million from Central Pacific Bank of Hawaii. The loans were backed by residential land, some condo projects and nearly completed homes, mostly in California. Ayres bought the loans on behalf of an investment partnership it co-manages.

Central Pacific Bank said in a press release that it sold the portfolio for $44.2 million – or about 36 cents on the dollar. A call and e-mail to the bank were not returned yesterday afternoon.

Keith Horne, president of Ayres Advisors, said the bank's announced price was within $1 million of what Ayres paid.

Ayres Advisors isn't the only investment fund looking to pluck bargains from failed real estate projects. Several private equity funds have announced plans to buy distressed loans or properties.

In San Diego, Pathfinder Partners, a private equity fund, has purchased loans for distressed condo projects in Florida and hopes to invest $300 million to $400 million in similar deals nationwide over the next 12 months.

But until recently, banks have been slow to sell distressed loans at prices low enough to justify the risk, said Lorne Polger, managing director of Pathfinder Partners.

That's starting to change, he said.

“I can tell you what we've seen in the last 60 days is a significant sea change in the way many banks are thinking about these things,” Polger said. “We're seeing pricing much more reflective of the true market value of the asset than we saw six months or 12 months ago.”

Banking regulators are pressuring institutions – particularly those overly exposed to residential land development and construction loans – to get realistic about the prospects of payback, Horne said. So “the smartest banks” have begun selling troubled loans at steep discounts to help clean up their books.

One San Diego bank that made such a move was Pacific Western, which in March sold $34.1 million of residential construction-related loans at a loss of $16.2 million, or about 50 cents on the dollar.

Of the 16 loans Ayres Advisors bought from Central Pacific Bank, 13 are delinquent. The loans are backed by 400 improved residential lots and 1,600 unimproved lots.

There are also 64 condominiums that are nearly completed in the Los Angeles area, and 105 nearly completed homes elsewhere in the state. Two of the loans involved residential developments in Seattle.

The deal also included a 14-acre commercial and residential parcel in Palm Springs that the bank foreclosed on.

“Although real estate markets continue to slide, we believe it is time to position ourselves for the next cycle,” Horne said.

Ayres, formerly known as Ayres Land Co., has done this before. It bought acres of land throughout Southern California from the Resolution Trust Corp. during the last real estate bust in the late '80s and '90s. Its largest project locally was the 600-acre Sunbow development in Chula Vista, which now has 2,000 homes.

Ayres would like to purchase three or four more portfolios similar to the Central Pacific transaction.

“We have been out there for the past year, looking and making offers,” said Horne. “We just finally got to the point, with our underwriting, where the pricing was right for us to purchase.”

The Market has Decided Now is the Time to Buy

2008-10-20T14:56:00.000-07:00

Southern California home sales shot up by an unprecedented 65 percent last month from the dismal, record lows of a year ago, when a credit crunch slammed the brakes on home financing. September sales also posted a rare gain over August as price cuts lured more buyers. Foreclosure resales rose to half of all transactions....

full story

Some Thoughts by Warren Buffett

2008-10-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

"You get more excited when there's a lot going on, you can't help it. And frankly, it will probably present more opportunity to us because when dislocations occur things get more mispriced and that sort of thing...

"So it can be a time of opportunity. It won't be for sure, but generally speaking, when there's a certain amount of chaos in certain sections, the fallout, and its unpredictable where the fallout will be, but the fallout sometimes offers some real opportunites."

Warren Buffett

A quick note about investing!

2008-10-18T12:41:00.001-07:00

Minimize your losses...

If you have 100,000 dollars and you lose 50% you are left with 50,000.
If the next year you make 50% return you only have 75,000...
It takes twice as much return to make up for losses.

Because it takes more risk to attain higher rates of return some are enticed into trying to make up for the losses by investing in higher risk products or opportunities that avail them the chance to get back to even... Sometimes that works but more often than not the downside on products, which promise abnormally high returns can be large short term losses only further crippling your portfolio.

The moral: be careful, find a consistent long term play that has high probabilities of achieving minimal downside losses, while still offering realistic upside gains.

Just some food for thought,
Louis

What Now?

2008-10-17T13:30:00.001-07:00

Sometimes the best move is just to evaluate what is going on for a short time so you can get clear on where the real opportunities are... The ones that are not too complicated and yet not so obvious that every Tom, Dick and Harry are already involved. Every person needs a different solution... For the billionaire taking some risk in this market could turn one dollar into a $10,000 quickly. For the retired individual, looking for cash flow opportunities makes alot of sense and for the younger entrepreneur, now is the time to build infrastructure to take advantage of the new landscape coming on the horizon...

At the end of the day most of us like watching a sunset, hanging with friends, reading a great book and being with the people we love... All financial decision should be made under the umbrella of these ideas.

What we think about can change how we live and feel!
Louis C. Baker

Some Thoughts from a Hedge Fund Manager

2008-10-16T16:40:00.000-07:00

This was what a successful Fund Manager had to say about what's going on in the financial Markets...

As I've been searching for thoughts and ideas as to how to best lead in these
demanding times, I came across a set of rules and guidelines which I invented
and implemented in my first business 30 years ago.
I find these simple, basic rules to be more applicable today than they were
then. I thought it worthwhile to share them with you and encourage you to
adopt them.
Tom
1. Don't confuse efforts with results or activity with achievement.
2. You, and not those who work for you, should set priorities on your
available time, energy and attention. "Time management basically boils down
to being able to say no to people who make demands on your time."
3. "Arnold Schwarzenegger won five world bodybuilding championships
because, while other bodybuilders worked on their strongest parts, he put the
most work into his weakest ones. Do that in business, and your organization
won't fail because of one weak link." First you must identify your strong
and weak points.
4. Demand excellence from your employees, your contractors, and your
business associates, or cut them loose. "I have a very ambitious program
going, and there is no room in it to support indecisive or nonproductive
people."
5. Have a bias toward action - let's see something happen now. You can
break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away.
Don't procrastinate - "Do it now."
6. Find people who are able to simplify complicated situations. "Avoid
people whose solutions to problems just create more problems." Surround
yourself with "doers" not "wishers."
7. Always give 110%. It becomes contagious.
8. The time you put into a venture is only distantly related to the
success of the venture. The only thing that matters is the decisions you
make, and their consequences, not where and when you made them. I've gotten
more ideas, plans and solutions from jogging than at work, because my time
was focused and there were no distractions.
9. When choosing a career or business direction, look a distance
downstream. Set long-term goals for yourself that have potentials you'll be
content with. Ask, "If this is successful, will it be what I want, or am I
just looking around for something to do."
10. "Break the rules, and don't be afraid to start from scratch or from a
position of ignorance." Some of the greatest entrepreneurial experiences
come from going against the tide.
11. There is no substitute for preparation and follow up.
12. "Start shopping for things you'll need long before you actually need
them; you get the worst deal on anything when you must have it."
13. When engaging in business discussions, "be a better listener than a
talker; you'll learn very quickly what their interests and forms of knowledge
are."
14. It's better to look uninformed than to be uninformed. "Curb your ego
and keep asking questions. Also, you learn more from criticism than from
compliments."
15. Obstacles are just diversions in your path that will lead you in new
directions of opportunity. "Make each obstacle into a successful new path.
If your magazine ads don't work, start a catalog."
16. If you can define it, you can do it; however, defining it will be the
process that will try your soul.
17. Surround yourself with people whose qualities you emulate. Your
support group can make or break you. Avoid weak and vacillating characters
or you will become one.
18. Develop a mental image of how you would like it to be and reinforce
that through your surroundings, friends, etc. Keep a clear picture of that
image and live up to it.
19. The winners in the world are all strong in body and soul. The
discipline you impose on keeping your body in shape will reflect on your
soul.
20. Don't make loans to friends unless you consider them gifts.
21. All of life revolves around a cycle - a start, middle, and a finish;
always finish what you start.
22. Punctuality is the courtesy of Kings.
23. Extricate yourself from negative people, situations and influences.
You can only soar with the eagles if you can fly.
24. You will attain the most movement in your life from accepting risks.
If you are not willing to lose, you will never win.

Hope you enjoyed this
Louis
www.icginc.us