Thursday
Anatole Kaletsky, one of the newspaper columnists I read regularly, despite his incurable Keynesianism, has smart things to say in defence of private equity firms that have been taking over major businesses lately, provoking the ire of unions and leftist policians. Good for Anatole for refusing to jump on a silly bandwagon. Here are my thoughts on the issue a while back.
(Full disclosure: I do work for a non-listed company, thank god).
I, for one, was outraged to hear that some private equity companies get away with paying only ten percent tax. I want to pay only ten percent too!
Posted by Richard Garner at June 21, 2007 08:06 PM
Incurable Keynesiaism sounds nasty...
To be honest, I really don't think it matters who owns what. Why should it? It matters not a jot to me what the financial details of ownership of a company I do business with are. It may be private equity or a partnership or a PLC or a cooperative or Gawd knows what. I just care that they provide me with the goods and services I need at a good price.
I really wouldn't even care that as the result of someone's will the majority share-holder was a cat called Mr Frisky and the honorary CFO was a budgie called Tweets.
Posted by Nick M at June 22, 2007 09:24 AM
I really wouldn't even care that as the result of someone's will the majority share-holder was a cat called Mr Frisky and the honorary CFO was a budgie called Tweets.
I did a contract for that company once, and what made it even better was that Tweets was a proper old fashioned Finance Director, none of this American CFO nonesense. Best boss I ever had!
These days I find a great frustration in that my skills and experience mean I get more offers of work from public companies than private. I have found that I get more satisfaction from working with smaller organisations rather than having to slavishly the over regulation of listed entities, but more money from large ones, and the kids do need feeding.
Posted by MarkE at June 22, 2007 10:54 AM
Feeding to what?
Feeding to fatten them up for Christmas of course.
Not sure how to prepare them this year though; I recently finished reading Brian Sewell's "South from Ephesus" and one of his digressions involves a discussion of baby boiling. As the great Brian points out, baby is likely to be quite bland so barbequeing might be more appropriate. Normally I just fry them, very simple, as if they were veal.
Posted by MarkE at June 22, 2007 02:01 PM
"...baby is likely to be quite bland. You have never tasted a baby, have you!
Posted by Alisa at June 22, 2007 11:21 PM
