Tribute to the late Steve Jobs

Here is one of his quotes that I must thank him for:

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

 For all of his years in the spotlight at the helm of Apple, Steve Jobs in many ways remains an inscrutable figure — even in his death. Fiercely private, Jobs concealed most specifics about his personal life, from his curious family life to the details of his battle with pancreatic cancer — a disease that ultimately claimed him on Wednesday, at the age of 56.

While the CEO and co-founder of Apple steered most interviews away from the public fascination with his private life, there's plenty we know about Jobs the person, beyond the Mac and the iPhone. If anything, the obscure details of his interior life paint a subtler, more nuanced portrait of how one of the finest technology minds of our time grew into the dynamo that we remember him as today.

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Markets 101: Who is a ‘Fat Cat?’

The term ‘Fat cat’ is one that was quite synonymous to the various corporate failures (such as the collapse of Enron) as well as the recent financial crisis. It has been argued that the main reason that the financial markets suffered the above hazards was in part due to these ‘fat cats’. Who are they then?  

A ‘fat cat’ refers to a senior executive in a company whose framework of decision making is not regulated by the owners (shareholders). This unwarranted decision making and powers result into wanton expenditure by these executives. Wanton expenditure may take the form of senior executives awarding themselves pay increases as well as fat end year bonuses irrespective of the company’s performance and hence the term Fat Cat.

Watch this space to know what measures have been put in place to safeguard shareholders wealth from these Fat Cats.

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Owning East Africa: What are the ramifications?

The year 2011 has seen the successful initial public offering and consequent listing of three stock counters in East Africa namely; Bralirwa brewers (A subsidiary of the Heineken Group), Bank of Kigali both at the Rwanda Stock Exchange as well as British – American Investments Company (Britam) on the Nairobi Securities Exchange.  While the public response to the Rwandese offers was overwhelming, the Britam offer proved a lame duck having recorded an under subscription by 40%. One of the reasons for this outcome has been said to be its coincidence with the Bank of Kigali IPO. With the benefit of hindsight on the exemplary performance of Bralirwa, I believe, investors in East Africa braced themselves for a gold rush on Bank of Kigali (BK). True to their perception, the stock seems to be a performer having been listed at Rwf 125 and closed trading on the first day at Rwf 200. The stock has since then been oscillating above its listing price with its most recent pricing at Rwf 137. As we wait to see which way the wind is blowing at the young Rwanda Securities Exchange (RSE), it would be wise to understand the region and probably pre – empt future offers. 

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