Borderless Investor

NYT had an excellent profile of Sir Howard Stringer and the Sony turnaround over the weekend.
This great little nugget captures the essence of both Sony’s situation and the Japan restructuring case as a whole:
Of course, Sony’s future and Sir Howard’s legacy do not rest on his charm but on his stated goal of increasing the […]

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Bertha Coombs on CNBC: “…everywhere from Mumbai to Bombay…”
And we wonder why nobody understands global investing.

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Today’s Sunday New York Times has a column on international investing and diversification. It’s not very long, but the writer manages to use the word “foreign” an astonishing 28 times.
Some folks dislike the word “foreign” because it’s not politically correct. That’s not what bothers me here. My beef with the word is that it encourages […]

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Motley Fool lives up to its name with this nonsense on Liberty Global. Nice typo in there too:
That said, I’m don’t agree that Central and Eastern Europeans will enjoy sufficiently strong economic growth to close the standard-of-living gap with the West.

That said, I agree with them on Liberty Global, but I’m [sic] don’t agree with […]

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As a kid, I was obsessed with airplanes. The first flight I ever took was with my grandfather, a veteran of the Mighty Eighth, when I was about 5 years old.
That was back when stewardesses were friendly, the food was good, the silverware was made of metal, and passengers–especially 5-year old kids–were more than […]

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Bill Gates delivers the following astonishing insight to Bloomberg:
“The future of gaming really involves software,’’ Gates said.
Ten paragraphs later we learn:
To let consumers do more with the Xbox, Microsoft said it will offer a digital camera, steering wheel and wireless headset, also in time for the holidays.
Make up your mind, Bill. Is it about the […]

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Another smooth move from the New York Times. Oops!
Editors’ Note: May 9, 2006
An article in Business Day yesterday described the start of a search by the Forbes publishing family to bring investors into its company. In preparing the article, The Times’s writer consulted an online report from The Independent on Sunday, a British newspaper, which […]

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WSJ notes Warren Buffett’s growing interest in international companies, including (gasp!) Japan:

Mr. Buffett said he hopes to buy whole companies someday in Japan. “I think we could very well have something offered to us in Japan because you do have a number of significant businesses,” he said, adding “it’s not a low probability.” He said […]

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Bloomberg reports:
Buffett, Berkshire’s chairman and chief executive officer, told investors at the company’s annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, that the $4 billion purchase of most of Israel-based toolmaker Iscar Metalworking Cos. represents another way of “mitigating’’ a fall in the dollar…
… “Buffett’s saying, `There’s no point in playing a weaker- dollar strategy in the currency […]

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This might be the strangest lead paragraph I’ve ever seen:

May 6 (Bloomberg) — Warren Buffett, aiming to find a more profitable use for Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s $42.9 billion in cash holdings, said he’s working on a $15 billion acquisition. He added that the deal probably won’t come to fruition.
What on earth does this mean? Maybe […]

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