By Morgan Brennan, Forbes Staff
It would seem the family Rybolovlev is behind yet another huge real estate deal. This time in financially-troubled Greece.
Tag Archives: Forbes Staff It
Guilty Plea In Billion-Dollar Apple Trade That Left Rochdale Holding The Bag
By Steve Schaefer, Forbes Staff
It sounds so simple: take a huge position in Apple and wait for it to turn a profit when the company reports estimate-beating earnings later that day. If it doesn’t, pawn the loss off on your company by claiming human error and a fat-fingered trade.
Howard F. Ahmanson, And the Rise of Los Angeles As a Global Economic Powerhouse
It’s perhaps hard for some to imagine now, but there was a time when Los Angeles was a sleepy, and largely inconsequential American city. For those interested in learning how it rose from irrelevance into one of the world’s most important locales, Institute of Applied Economics fellow Eric John Abrahamson has written a very interesting, if at times mis-analyzed, account of the city’s evolution through the story of banking and insurance tycoon Howard Ahmanson.
A Simple App Fights Illiteracy, Putting Free E-Books On Half-A-Million Phones
It sounds counterintuitive, but in certain developing nations it’s easier to get hold of a cell phone than a good book. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Release Of Jackie Robinson Move "42" Puts Vintage Uniforms In Spotlight
By Tom Van Riper, Forbes Staff
It’s shaping up to be a big week for America’s most popular historic/is-no-more sports franchise, the Brooklyn Dodgers. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Teens Are Getting More Optimistic About Their Financial Future
It may seem as if no one in their 20s can get a job these days. A new study confirms that a rising number of teens expect that they won’t be financially self-sufficient until they are in their late 20s. However that same study shows that more teens expect to wind up better off than their parents and a majority still think they can support themselves before they’re 25 years old. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Did J.C. Penney CEO Johnson Take A 96% Pay Cut? A Look At His Finances
It’s probably still easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven. So, just as well that J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson just took a massive 96% pay cut, right? …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Trouble For Porn Copyright Lawyer John Steele
“It should be clear by now that this court’s focus has shifted from protecting intellectual property rights to attorney misconduct.” — US District Judge Otis Wright …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Perfect Opening: Bryce Harper And Stephen Strasburg Give D.C. Fans A Show
By Tom Van Riper, Forbes Staff
It wasn’t just that the Washington Nationals won on opening day. It was the way they did it. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Automakers Hit Their Best Numbers Since The Financial Crisis In March
By Agustino Fontevecchia, Forbes Staff
It’s not just housing and equity markets that seem to have climbed out of the abyss caused by the financial crisis. In March, Detroit’s Big Three had their best sales since 2007, while Toyota, the third largest automaker in the U.S., had its best performance since the Cash for Clunkers program in 2009. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Cat Marnell, Buzz Bissinger and the Ethics of Publishing an Addict
By Jeff Bercovici, Forbes Staff
It’s been a banner week for fans of the literary overshare. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
No April Fooling – McClendon Finally Gone From Chesapeake Energy
By Christopher Helman, Forbes Staff
It’s not an April Fools gag. Aubrey McClendon really is gone from Chesapeake Energy. In a tear-choked farewell speech to the gathered faithful on Saturday, McClendon assured employees that the company he founded would survive his departure. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
How The Innovative Game Of Thrones Opening Credits Were Built
It is, at times, difficult to be king. Especially when four different nobles lay claim to the throne, exactly the situation that commences Game of Thrones’ third season. A dispute resolvable only by war—a particularly contracted, bloody one that spills across grasslands, ice and desert. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
At The South Beach Wine & Food Festival, Gluttony For The Greater Good
It’s a warm February evening in South Beach and Wayne Chaplin–his dark hair tight to his head, his mouth creased into a smile–can finally relax, at least a bit. It’s the second evening of the raucous, three-day moveable feast known as the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, for the last 12 years the pet project of Chaplin and his family’s Southern Wine & Spirits of America, the country’s largest alcohol distributor. He’s sitting at a dinner in the tony Loews Hotel honoring the famed chef, Nobu Matsuhisha, joined by the likes of Martha Stewart and Christophe Navarre, the CEO of Moët Hennessy, and 577 other guests who each paid $500 a plate. This is the crowning event of the festival, which was attended by 60,000 people who mingled with all manner of famous chefs, from Food Network stars Guy Fieri and Paula Deen to highbrow pan-rattlers Alice Waters and Alain Ducasse. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
The Two-Step Guide to 529s
By William Baldwin, Forbes Staff It is nice to have choices in life, but there is such a thing as having too many. That is the affliction for parents contemplating Section 529 college savings accounts for their children. Which state plan? Which portfolio, which share class? …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
The Best And Worst MLB Teams For The Money
It’s become an annual tradition to anoint the Tampa Bay Rays as baseball’s best team for the buck. Tampa spends less than almost every other team in the league – only four teams spent less in roster costs over the last three seasons – and yet is still one of baseball’s most dominant lineups, winning 90 or more games in four of the last five seasons. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
The Cookie Crumbles: Can Mondelez Find Its Mojo?
By Jenna Goudreau, Forbes Staff
It’s a bright, warm February day in Boca Raton, Fla., but Irene Rosenfeld doesn’t look happy. At an industry conference one week after reporting disappointing fourth-quarter results, the chairman and CEO of Mondelez International, formerly Kraft Foods, is defending her new company under a barrage of questions from irritated financial analysts. One wants to know what’s really changed after the spinoff. Another barks: “You said you’re getting frustrated? Well, we’re getting frustrated, too.” Yet another wants to know why she didn’t disclose before the earnings release that the company was having execution issues in Brazil and Russia. Beneath her no-fuss cropped red haircut and chic white blazer, her mouth hardens into a thin, straight line. “I deeply regret it impacted my credibility with you, but I don’t know what else could have been done,” she says. “The long-term prospects are quite robust.” …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Jimmy Fallon Could Double His Payday With 'Tonight Show' Move
By Dorothy Pomerantz, Forbes Staff
It looks like a sure thing that Jimmy Fallon will be plopping down in Jay Leno‘s hosting seat on The Tonight Show sometimes next year (though there is no firm deal in place). Leno’s contract is up in September 2014 and there are reports that NBC is already building Fallon a new set in New York so he can host the show from The Big Apple. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Justices Question Why They Took Gay-Marriage Case In The First Place
By Daniel Fisher, Forbes Staff
It was an equal-opportunity grilling before the U.S. Supreme Court today as the justices considered whether California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage was constitutional. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
J.P. Morgan Did Not Learn Any Lessons From 2008
By Robert Lenzner, Forbes Staff It thought “Fortress Capital” meant it was top of the mark on Wall Street— the ticket to expanding in mortgages and investment banking while Citigroup and BankAmerica and Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch were bleeding and either insolvent or close to it. Maybe, that’s the reason JPM learned no humility from the near collapse of finance in America. Maybe, that’s why its senior management did not tremble before the regulators– but scoffed at them and fought them with every lobbyist and influence it could muster in the corridors of Washington. Watching Citigroup shares collapse to 97 cents a share had to be a matter of the most enjoyable schadenfreude. Only JPM had the “Fortress Capital” to grow while others suffered. Maybe the House of Morgan understood that Washington did not care to have the whip hand over Wall Street. That there would be no limit on leverage in the Dodd-Frank bill. That no new fraud charges could be brought after 2013– when the 5 year statute of limitations ran out. That the Attorney General would never bring a criminal case against a financial behemoth with the “clout” to inhibit any sort of prosecution. That you could get away with settling SEC actions for a fraction of the dollar harm done without admitting any sort of guilt. So, maybe I shouldn’t be too shocked about the revelations brought out in the Senate hearings last week by Sen. Levin, who, at 78, showed the fine hand of a prosecuting attorney handing the media a ready-made piece of investigative journalism. Levin investigated and we wrote it. Still, that 5 years after the meltdown almost wrecked our financial system– to learn that there were deficiencies in the risk operations, that there was misleading of shareholders, high-handed behavior toward the regulators– is to learn that Morgan did not learn from the carelessness that brought its competitors to their knees. That arrogance squashed humility. That huge positions in illiquid derivatives contracts called credit default swaps– the device that required AIG to be given a $185 billion bailout– were once again the cause for despair and a loss of $6.2 billion. Finance played in the big leagues is a dangerous game, and stirs the cops to focus their scrutiny on the games people play- in a business that’s far too serious for games. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest