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Horned_Devil

Listed below are comments made by Horned_Devil between Tuesday, 8th September 2009 and Friday, 25th September 2009.

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G20: History and fudge 12:42pm on 25 Sep 2009 23

Actually face to face meetings with your employees and collegues are not essential - I work in a global organisation that is managed from various places and is "loosely and virtually connected" - we all get on pretty well using technology such as Skype, video conferencing and email.

In terms of Carbon footprint as you mention - look out of the window between 8 and 9 every morning and see the constant queues of cars (esp the M25 from previous experience). This is a massive source of CO2 emmissions that could quite easily be cut down - unless you have a need to be in a physical local for work (eg manual, nursing/care etc) then there really is no need for a lot of offices/commutes - especially with the move to the 'cloud' for a lot of things for clerical style roles
G20: History and fudge 12:00pm on 25 Sep 2009 17

Its already well underway - Cheif Exec of HSBC has just relocated from London to Hong Kong (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article6848740.ece)

I think this is a political statement as much as anything else - probably related to the government interference. When there was talk of the 'talent' leaving the city and relocating is this the sort of move that was meant?
The market price of cutting airline emissions 5:42pm on 22 Sep 2009 In terms of the airline flying "ghost" flights - or near empty ones between destinations...I assume that people here are a lot better at operating the logistics of having a multiple aircraft fleet (not to mention the staffing of this operation to ensure adequate flight staff available on all flights operating under union guidelines on hours). Of course, the airlines just do it to kill the environment as part of the big conspiracy to keep "certain people in power".

If you think these empty flights can be avoided I challenge you to drive to a station, get a train to another destination and then drive back - oh, hang on - your car is somewhere else!

One of the issues with the excess amount of gasses produced by the air industry is the amount of circling they have to do before landing - partly to do with overcrowded runways, partly to do with groundstaff issues and partly to do with air traffic control/private jets - to ir traffic control a "blip" is a "blip" on the radar - whether it is a 747 or a private jet. The increase in private jets has caused a large increase in delays in landing/take off because of this - cut this and the emissions would drop substantially!
The market price of cutting airline emissions 2:47pm on 22 Sep 2009 As a complete aside - I've just been informed that HMRC are switching their bank account (for VAT payments anyway) from the Bank of England to RBS and Citi bank

Anyone have any ideas why the change?
The market price of cutting airline emissions 1:56pm on 22 Sep 2009 For all of those proposing the fact that there is more than sufficient land for everyone (and not disagreeing) - can someone please answer me the following:

1) How would resources be reallocated? In order for this to occur the whole world would need to be involved so who would be responsible for resource allocation? For example - a large amount of crops can be grown in say, the United States and there would be a large need for them in the sub-saharan areas of Africa. How could these be distributed? Or would it be better (and more environmentally friendly) to relocate the inhabitants to the US (following the older migration theory)

2) How would cultural differences be dealt with in terms of allocation? For example, if we have finite amounts of water and food to distribute at any given point of time (consider crop faliure, transport issues etc) how could we fairly allocate on a family basis to say, one family which has say, 10 children, compared to another which has only one or two (which could well be because of cultural attitudes towards the number of children in a family)

3) Have we considered the impact the internet has on the "global warming" issue. The large amount of server farms we have are supposed to have an impact on global warming/resources - isn't the move away from air travel to other forms of transport/use of the internet only delaying the issue with a growing population (eg more people will generally mean more travel/requirement to move resources) so isn't this just delaying the inevitable?

4) Why always the attack on the air industry when presumably cars are much more to blame (I'm guessing). Isn't it like complaining how much you have to spend to heat your house when fuel bills are going up whilst you leave the door open in winter? Shouldn't we tackle the bigger issues before attacking an easy target like airlines?
PM: 'We'll cut with Germany, France and the US' 4:22pm on 15 Sep 2009 136 - and you would be comfortable with the fees that you would be charged for "just having a current account"? I'm guessing under your model the operators of the current accounts wouldn't be running these for free (after all, how would they make their money?) - you state that cash machines, debit card systems etc are fairly cheap to run? Would you still want a bank in the high street (rent, utility bills etc), staff (I am assuming you would want staff in your branch and domestically located call centers); how about the cost of the transaction themselves (eg the interbank charges and the charges levied by visa and mastercard); what about cardholder protection? maintenance of the IT and security systems? The holding and insuring of the actual cash (and its transfer); international banking (or would you not be able to use your cards overseas?); overdrafts would presumably be banned as "loans" would be in a different area of the bank so how would you deal with bounced payments or failed DD's that might result in overdrafts? I guess all of the above is really cheap and can be provided without any charge to the customer?
How Rover executives pocketed £42m 2:59pm on 11 Sep 2009 167 - Writings...

An interesting point on equality against liberalism. Generally there is outrage when something doesn't work to someones favour or someone is seen as getting an unfair deal so you will have outrage whichever path you chose (are they mutually exclusive then...?)

When we "enforce" equality it is seen as a nanny-state interfering and obsessiveness with political correctness or bureaucracy (eg health and safety legislation is generally regarded as a joke now but the aim is to protect the workforce from unscrupulous management practices) there is therefore outrage that we are being treated as children and there is general miscontent. When there is the absence of such legisaltion the "powers that be" are seen as not doing their duties to protect the masses.

Whilst I would love the utopian state idea where people genuinely had others best interest at heart we are not (and sadly I believe never will be) in a society where such a thing happens. The question is how do we draw a balance and try and please all of the people all of the time (oh and if I knew the answer to that I wouldn't be writing on a blog but instead producing a book - where I would only take a society adjudged profit share of course :-) )
How Rover executives pocketed £42m 1:01pm on 11 Sep 2009 144 - BAN THE BANKERS?

From what exactly? Banking? How would you define that? Working? So we should let the welfare state pick up the tab? Who do you define as a "banker"?

Easy to say isn't it? Lets all have a mob mentality and burn the witch (sorry banker or executive).
How Rover executives pocketed £42m 10:28am on 11 Sep 2009 88 - BDO were employed in the capacity of forensic accountants. So effectively they were required to go through all of the financial records of the company and, in effect, chase the money and ensure that there were no fraudulent activities and that all the transactions were above board (on a legalistic view rather than a moral view). I can't remember who the auditors were but the viewpoint was that more information was needed than a simple audit (which goes into very little detail) would have picked out therefore the audited financial figures would not have given anywhere near the detail that this report would have gone into.

Remember that when the report was produced this was given to the SFO (by guess who...) who pretty much through it straight out (basically if they were involved they would have appointed forensic accountants to do the same thing...hence why it was purely a political move to throw it across to them).

In terms of the report not criticsing various elements of government etc, I am guessing that this is because this was not in the scope of the report. BDO would have been given strict guidelines on the report (and I know that the scope of their work was changed during the time hence racking up increased fees) and there report would have returned the information that was requested. I am not entirely surprised that it wasn't critical of government given that it was the government who commissioned the report and hence gave it its guidelines.

Lets not blow the cost of this piece of work out of proportion given the costs of other government reports (think of the recent McKinsey report commissioned on the NHS - the findings were then ignored by the government despite paying substantial amounts to commission it!)
The future is a merger 10:32am on 08 Sep 2009 13 - Chris - well said - I was just in the middle of writing the same thing (luckily hit refresh first!)

M&A happens all the time - in actual fact it occurs more in the boom years than in the recession, I guess with a more buoyant job market the almost inevitable shedding of jobs following some of the m&a activity goes unnoticed by the national press.

If companies have strong cash reserves, now is actually a good time to be picking up struggling companies on the cheap - this is just the way things are - and actually probably saves a few jobs as well (the acquired company in some cases may go under therefore creating a greater degree of job losses than would have happened without the acquisition)

As for enhancing shareholder value - well it is impossible to say that M&A work does or doesn't - it all depends on the individual transaction and post deal integration and achieving the desired synergies...

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