Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
from MediaFile:
“The Cloud” overhyped? Brocade says not there for business yet
Say it's not so -- 'the cloud' isn't ready for prime time? That's the view from networking company Brocade, whose marketing chief compared the hype to the rush years ago to call center outsourcing.
All those applications and data that live off your computer somewhere in the Internet make up the cloud, from Google word processing software to your home pictures and video, and it is hot, hot, hot. But Brocade chief marketing officer John McHugh told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in San Francisco that big business was not ready to embrace it for sensitive data and the most important applications.
"There's lots of issues. They're being skirted over because they are really tough and there are no obvious solutions for them today," he said. It will take "years" before big companies do that with important data, he said.
The cloud company he envisions will have no hard assets, essentially being an all-Internet endeavor. "This technology really isn't done yet," he said.
The consumer side is moving more quickly. An avid iPhone user, he raved about the impact of mobile devices, to the point where they are threatening to make PCs obsolete.
"My home PC -- I could very easily retire that in another year or two," he told the Summit. McHugh's PC still gets pulled out for complex design work, but for keeping contacts, writing notes, finding directions, even banking, it's all gone mobile. "Did anyone really see that coming?" he asked.
More or less fun in a recession? It’s a tough call
Still unsure whether economic recession is good or bad for video-games sales, more than a year in? If so, you’re in good company — neither does the world’s biggest games publisher. Electronic Arts’ head of European publishing says the company still hasn’t figured out whether people cut spending on big items like housing and cars first, or whether those kinds of decisions are just too hard.
“We really wonder, hmm, in economically difficult times would people in order to have SOME fun actually play more games or less games, and then, would they spend more or less? It’s really, it’s impossible to say,” Jens-Uwe Intat told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in Paris.
at a difficult economic time, people’s mind work faster alternatives to tide over or resolve such issues to compatible ones for self and their nations
from MediaFile:
Verizon Wireless CEO: We don’t need the iPad — yet
Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdams kindly spent some time with us this afternoon and spoke at length about the future of LTE (Long Term Evolution) 4G high speed Internet from the No.1 U.S. wireless phone company.
Asked if there was "any hope" that Verizon would have the iPad anytime soon, McAdams laughed:
Any Hope!? Any Hope!?
For McAdams tablets will be a big part of Verizon's offering in the second half of 2010 with Android-based tablets from the usual suspects including Motorola, LG and Samsung.
Asked again if Verizon would do an iPad deal, McAdams said there was "no reason" they couldn't do a deal, but then didn't share the reason why they haven't done one until now.
Of course, the background to this is the market-defining success AT&T has had with both the iPhone and the iPad 3G. Yet the Verizon Wireless chief is confident the future of this market is bigger than Apple.
I don't believe the iPad is a game-changer but I do believe LTE is a game-changer.
from MediaFile:
Microsoft CFO: Likes iPad, loves Ballmer: apps? meh
Three things we learned from chatting with Microsoft CFO Peter Klein: for one, he's a big fan of his boss, CEO Steve Ballmer, despite their contrasting interview styles (Klein is even tempered; Ballmer is famously energetic, which I've witnessed first hand).
Reuters: What's it like working with Steve Ballmer? Klein: It's awesome. He's incredibly passionate, he cares about nothing except the success of the company. He's incredibly smart. He knows the industry backwards and forward.
Reuters: Does he jump around and make your life hell sometimes? Klein: No, he makes my life exciting everyday. It has been fabulous. He cares so much about the company. I'm a big believer in you have to be passionate about what you are doing.
Reuters: You seem so quietly spoken versus his (electric demeanor). Klein: I think we are an awesome combination. I think the finance guy needs to be a little more measured.
Reuters: Could you someday be CEO? Klein: I haven't thought about that. I'm trying to be the best CFO I can be. Steve is fired up and ready to come in every day.
** Two: Klein thinks the iPad, which some see as a threat to portable PCs that use Microsoft's Windows, is, you know, okay.
Angelides: People make mistakes, take Alan Greenspan and Captain of Titanic
Phil Angelides, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission chairman, says he’d rather see some taking of responsibility than hear another “I’m sorry.”
“Personally I don’t see my role as … to obtain apologies. What I don’t hear is a sense of responsibility and self-assessment about what occurred. There seems to be a disconnect between the practices that people undertook and the financial collapse,” he said at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit.
“I’m struck by the extent to which all fingers point away generally from the person testifying,” Angelides said.
And it’s not just Wall Street executives that he’s talking about.
“When Alan Greenspan came in front of us he said he’d been 70 percent right, 30 percent wrong. Well, you know, the captain of the Titanic was probably 99 percent right and one percent wrong. It’s the enormity of the mistake that matters,” he said.
(He is of course referring to the former chairman of the Federal Reserve who could do no wrong until the financial crisis hit, sinking his star along with the markets).
Was Greenspan asleep at the wheel?
Where disaster and compensation intersect you’ll find Kenneth Feinberg
You can call him mediator, or you can call him negotiator, but don’t call him pay czar.
Kenneth Feinberg says he doesn’t like the shorthand title that’s used to describe his role as the administration’s supervisor of compensation practices at firms that received money under the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.
“A very unfortunate term,” he said at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit. “Pay czar implies that I’m issuing some sort of imperial edicts, arbitrary edicts on pay, without regard to consensus or the input of the beneficiaries of these decisions.”
Au contraire. Feinberg says he tries to develop consensus with the companies. “I’m the pay mediator, I’m the negotiator.”
Although with his next breath he does acknowledge having the power. “I must say the statute ultimately gives me final authority so if you don’t work something out I’m obligated by law to make the decision. But I’m not looking to impose my will on these companies.”
But one of the wonders of Feinberg is that he seems to end up in the middle of the crossroads of money and disaster, sometimes trying to make unthinkable equations as when he had to determine payments to the families of September 11 victims or distributions from a fund setup in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings.
So why does he keep ending up at that intersection?
Shunning bankers
Banker bashing has become a bit of an international sport — and fraud allegations against Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs and a U.S. class-action suit against Germany’s Deutsche Bank has added more grist to the mill. So it’s small wonder that a bank lobby group struck a wistful note at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit in London on Tuesday.
“No politician, for the next couple of years, is going to be close to a banker, hug a banker, be friendly to a banker,” said Mark Austen, the acting chief executive of AFME (Association for Financial Markets in Europe). “They (banks) are seen as institutions that have caused a crisis … We are still faced with a public’s anger to the banking community … It will take time to rebuild that trust.”
“The only thing we can do is be as constructive and neutral as we can possibly be.”
But some lawyers note bank lobby groups appear as powerful as ever. From a starting point last year, in the wake of the financial crises, where regulators discussed breaking up big banks, discussions are now centering on higher capital and liquidity buffers, living wills and bank levies. “Regulators and governments in major financial jurisdictions have really backpedalled over the last year,” says one.
Written by Kirstin Ridley in London.
Eliot Spitzer loved politics, so will he run again?
This much is clear — Eliot Spitzer loved politics, he loved being New York governor, he loved being New York attorney general.
So will he run for public office again?
Well here it gets a little bit like watching a tennis ball going back and forth over the net.
Asked at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit whether he was considering running for office again, Spitzer replied “No.”
But had he ruled it out? The answer from the Democrat was not quite as precise.
“I’m not yet ready to throw in the towel,” he said, joking (we think) that it’s like the goal of winning Wimbledon.
“You never quite give up on anything and rule things off the map. And so have I said I’m never running for office again? No. Have I said am I thinking about it at this moment? No. Did I love politics? Yes. Did I grow up at the age of 2 saying it’s the only thing I want to do with my life? No.”
His resignation was a huge mistake.
Just how much a mistake was demonstrated by the the SC Governor who refused to resign after being caught and Senator from Louisiana whose name appeared on a list of clients for a house of prostitution in DC.
Both would not even consider resigning and haven’t. Nor has the Senator from Nevada in the midst of a cheating/payoff scandal investigation.
Resigning may have been what the higher ideals he ascribes to demanded of him, but clearly political peers feel very differently.
Considering the overwhelming good he did in his public positions fighting crime, his personal transgression was not enough to justify this nation losing one of the most effective champions for justice and fair play.
His crime was personal, consensual. He betrayed trust true, but he did not commit a crime that inflicted harm or loss on anyone save himself and his family which in many ways is punishment in and of itself.
If he had stayed in office many of the big bank gamblers would be on their way to jail.
Only his resignation stopped that in its tracks.
Wall Street let out a huge cheer when he left office, because they knew the most effective champion for capitalism lost power to stymie their transformation of our nation from a capitalist country into a kleptocratic nation where thievery is legalized and operates as the norm in our financial markets.
Odd how few realize he is the one who fought to keep capitalism honest.
America needs our champions very badly, and we can’t afford to waste one, because they failed to live up to standards higher and stricter than the common man’s.
Few if any would have lost their job for what he did, even if picked up by the police and convicted, and we know what fellow politicians have done afterwards – stay in office regardless.
We are all Imperfect, flawed.
Expecting our heroes to be perfect is self-defeating as well as naive.
It’s their imperfections that make them so able to catch the real criminals that hurt hundreds, thousands Etc.
We have to stop judging the public professional by his private personal life and judge him by his “public performance”.
I truly hope he runs and wins big.
The nation needs as many Eliot Spitzers as it can get.
Put regulation in the hands of politicians and, well, it becomes politicised.
That, anyway, is what Europe’s new kid on lobbying block, the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME’s), told the Reuters Regulation Summit about EU plans to crack down on opaque derivatives markets by insisting on central clearing of standardised contracts, trade reporting and even exchange trading.
The European Commission will propose its draft European Markets Infrastructure Legislation (EMIL) in June which should make for some pointy headed pool side reading during the summer consulation period.
EMIL implements the G20 pledge to shine a light on derivatives but there is one additional aspect that is already coming under pressure — an idea to force clearing houses to link up with each other so that users are not limited in their choice of clearer — and hence trading platform. It’s part of wider efforts to create a cheaper bloc-wide securities market.
But there are already whispers that Germany and France feel this may be a step too far — cynics would no doubt speak about shielding Clearnet in France and Eurex in Germany. Europe’s exchanges may well soon call for the European Commission to ditch the interoperability idea from EMIL and make it part of the review of EU MiFID share trading rules.
With such background maneouvres, it’s not surprising that AFME’s acting CEO Mark Austen thinks the market can and should move ahead with creating an integrated pan-EU clearing and settlement system.
Legislation is too unpredictable.
“Decisions would be made on trade-offs between which member-states benefit, not whether it’s in the interests of market participants in general,” he added.
Impasse over model haunts raters again
Credit rating agencies are back in the spotlight and, just like a year or two ago, for all the wrong reasons.
Last week a U.S. Senate panel said the clout of Wall Street’s big banks and the thirst for profits drove ratings agencies to inflate ratings on subprime mortage-related products, helping to fuel the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Making things worse for Moody’s, S&P and Fitch, the Senators pointed to securities backed by subprime loans that Goldman offered in 2007 — now the subject of an SEC fraud lawsuit — as further evidence of questionable industry practices. Goldman has rejected the accusations.
The latest dose of self-inflicted misery for the raters is unlikely to prompt any fresh regulatory action.
The basic flaw in the whole business model is still unresolved — that the issuer being rated pays the rater and no amount of blue sky thinking over the past three years since the crisis began has come up with a better idea that works.
Have the regulators signalled defeat on this long standing problem?
Greg Tanzer, secretary general of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions told the Reuters Regulation Summit this week that its key focus is on making sure IOSCO members across the world, such as the FSA in Britain and the SEC in the United States, apply its code of conduct for rating agencies — a code the EU sniffily dismissed as ineffective and opted for a harder version in law last year.
For Tanzer, until the boffins come up with a practical alternative to the current ratings business model, the focus has to be on making sure agencies manage conflicts of interest, disclose them and improve the quality of ratings. Regulators have been criticised in the past for failing to follow through on principles adopted so IOSCO is keen to make sure its code takes effect on the ground before considering a further review.
boffins/eggheads/pumpkinheads/thebigchee ses! You made me go look it up. Gotta love that slang.
The rating agencies have a job to do and they aren’t doing it. Once again Goldman was able to coerce Moody’s to squeeze out an AAA rating because the bankers know what has to be in a prospectus before hand.
So there is much ado at cherry picking, especially when stacking the barrel to be loaded with the rottenest of apples under risky cherries for Abacus. How is that possible? Where is due diligence when this can happen? (over and over again)
The money has the power and that’s what has to stop. Wallstreet has to be reigned in and good solid regulation has to do it or it will come crashing down. Are bankers betting long or short on that?
Yes I know bankers will resist as they don’t like to be held back and feeling restricted … as they are now adrenaline junkies from making risky stupid loans and deals with other people’s money.
