It’s not looking very good for the latest film version of The Great Gatsby judging by the reviews. I had my concerns from the very start when Baz Luhrmann was chosen as director. Baz is s musical specialist not someone with much experience directing dramas. I’m just not a fan of musicals.
“Luhrmann’s 3-D visual flourishes feel superfluous: Occasionally, words pop out across the screen as Nick feverishly writes Gatsby’s tale … None of it contributes to a sense of immersion.”
“Luhrmann’s direction of his actors cudgels every instinct of naturalness out of them and pushes everyone, even as instinctively genuine an actress as Mulligan, toward overblown characterizations and stilted line reading.”
“She’s down-to-earth pretty (a tad mousy) rather than unattainably glamorous. She does well in Daisy’s most challenging scene, in which she has to oscillate between the desires of two impossible men, the monomaniacal Gatsby and the overentitled Buchanan. But it’s possible to forget she’s in the movie.”
Hedge Fund Manager is Another Route to Billionaire Status
Just found this:
That truism has never been more evident than during the past four years.
Forty hedge-fund managers have now made the Forbes billionaire list, and the conference, known as SALT, beginning Wednesday has become the place for them to hobnob with world leaders, former presidents, political pundits and Hollywood celebrities.
But the people whose money hedge funds manage haven’t exactly hit the jackpot.
So How Did Carlos Slim Become the World’s Richest Man?
When I’m asked how tycoons make their fortunes the One Red Paperclip story often comes to mind. If you are not familiar with it it’s the one about a man who started a chain of Craig’s List barter trades with a red paperclip and ended up with a house. It took him just 10 or 12 trades to accomplish this feat. Tycoons apply the same basic principle to building wealth although the mechanism is not quite the same. Both stories are about building wealth through incremental improvements in the value of assets over time. It’s the opposite of trying to strike it rich with just one deal. Think of the differences as those between a football team that wins because it has a strong ground game consistently moving the ball down the field instead and one that relies on the occasional “Hail Mary Pass” to win.
How Does Tom Gores Do it?
Most of the news about Tom Gores has to do with the Detroit Pistons, so it’s always great to hear some business news about him and Platinum Equity.
“This is a good story for Michigan,” Remenar said. “It’s a good story for Michigan, Platinum Equity taking two businesses in need of growth capital and providing it, to create a stronger, more capable auto supplier.”
Carlos Slim: How Great Fortunes Are Made
If you study the history of how great fortunes have been made over the past 160 years or so [1], you come to understand that there are just a few growth strategies or “tycoon plays.” One way is to focus on building up a single company to a colossal size. Think of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and the Google Guys as examples. However, the more common way is through a combination of building a single company with sales growth and wheeling & dealing in acquisitions. A third way is to be a deal-maker exclusively who just wheels & deals in companies.
It’s important to understand that even the single company builders have to eventually resort to acquisitions because it’s the only proven way to maintain high growth over a prolonged period of time. Do you want to shoot for billionaire or tycoon status? If you do, you will need to sustain a hyper rate of growth over many years.
Frankly, I can’t think of any company off the top of my head that grew to a large size without acquisitions. If you know of one, let me know.
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