text:
FT: Echoes of Plato today
Echoes of Plato today
By Harry Eyres
Published: March 14 2009 01:10 | Last updated: March 14 2009 01:10
I have just been giving a talk about Plato at the Aldeburgh Literary Festival – or rather engaging in a Platonic dialogue with Irene Noel-Baker, the only translator I know who has ever dared to render the great poet-banisher into verse. This has meant going back to one of those texts that repay endless rereading; I always expect to be surprised by The Republic (despite, or because of, being the author of a small book on the subject), but this time I am amazed by its relevance to our particular dark and uncertain time, as if it had been written not in 380BC but the day before yesterday.
The bit that grabs me is the section on democracy in the entertaining description of a downward, vicious spiral of corrupt societies. I suppose everyone knows that Plato had a low opinion of democracy. But usually this is the cue for thoughtful consideration to be replaced by righteous indignation. How could anyone prefer the cruel, militaristic, apartheid and philistine regime of ancient Sparta to the rich democracy of Athens, celebrated in the noble words of Pericles' funeral oration and adorned with works of art and architecture (the Parthenon, the statues, the black figure vases) that still draw the crowds?
But if you go back to the words themselves, written with a playfulness and grace that have eluded most readers and nearly all translators, you find much food for thought, or arguments that should not be dismissed out of hand.
First of all, Socrates, the main speaker in The Republic, does not deny the attractions of democracy. If constitutions were goods on sale in a shop, everyone would choose democracy – it is like a coat of many colours compared to a suit of sombre grey. "There is liberty, and lots of freedom of speech, and the individual is free to do as she or he likes."
This sounds pretty good. But might excessive liberty end up enslaving us, both our minds and our societies, rather than setting us free?
To explain how this could happen, Socrates starts with finance. Democracy evolves from oligarchy, the system in which wealth is what counts. "The [oligarchic] Rulers, who are in power because they have amassed so much wealth, do not want to prohibit by law the extravagance of the young, and stop them from wasting their money and ruining themselves. Their intention is to make loans to such imprudent people or by buying up their property to hope to increase their own wealth and influence ... The moneymakers continue to inject the toxic sting of their loans wherever they can, and to ask for high rates of interest, with the result that the city becomes full of lazy drones and paupers." Has any better diagnosis of the origins of the credit crunch been written recently?
Democracy fosters all sorts of unnecessary desires and appetites. We end up getting addicted to these desires and appetites, and so, as Plato says, "the likely outcome of excessive freedom is only slavery in the individual and in the society".
Then, even more ominously: "Probably then tyranny develops out of no other constitution than democracy – from the very heights of liberty, I take it, to extreme and savage servitude." Words that could have been inscribed on the grave of the Weimar Republic. Democracy is "a wonderfully pleasant way of carrying on in the short term", as Socrates puts it. But chronic short-termism could be its fatal flaw. Politicians have to pander to electors; weak government is the result, in which tough decisions are endlessly put off. Plato would have been darkly amused by our attempts to deal with climate change, as short-term decisions to build runways trump long-term attempts to curb emissions, or carbon trading schemes turn into perverse incentives to pollute.
But it is not only as a stern critic of democracy that we want to celebrate Plato. Somehow, The Republic is always turned into a gloomy tract or something like a government white paper. One aspect that gets left out is love. No doubt Plato speaks about love with still greater freedom, playfulness and humour in The Symposium and in Phaedrus. But there is still a lot of love in The Republic.
Socrates famously concluded that there will only be justice in the city when philosophers rule, or "when those now called kings and potentates be imbued with a sufficient measure of philosophy". But what does he mean by a philosopher? A philosopher is first of all a kind of lover, someone who loves wisdom, that is to say a joyful, insatiable polymath, not a dry and dusty specialist.
Love is what sets the whole thing going – the passionate and excited love of inquiry that prolongs a short walk down to Piraeus into one of the great thought-adventures in human history. I happen to disagree with Plato on democracy – not that his criticisms are without weight, but that they are outweighed by the criticisms to be levelled against the other systems he apparently preferred.
But returning to this most thought-provoking of all books written in the West is always a tonic and refreshment to the mind – like going back to the music of JS Bach. As Emerson said: "He points and quibbles; and by and by comes a sentence that moves the sea and land."
harry.eyres@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/eyres
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
March 15, 2009 at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
FT: The shaming of John Thain
The shaming of John Thain
By Greg Farrell and Henny Sender, Illustration by Miles Donovan
John Thain is giving us a tour of what is soon to become America's most infamous office, with its $87,000 rug, $68,000 sideboard, $28,000 curtains – all part of a $1.2m redecoration scheme. This was early December, a little under two months before Thain would be fired in the same room by his new boss, Ken Lewis, chief executive of Bank of America.
For now, before a price tag had been placed on every item in his office, the 53-year-old chief executive of Merrill Lynch was in high spirits. The worst year on Wall Street in nearly a century was coming to an end, and Thain could rightfully claim to have saved his bank from ruin. Over a weekend in mid-September, as Lehman Brothers collapsed into bankruptcy, Thain pulled off a coup: he persuaded BofA, one of the few financial giants in the US that didn't need government money to survive, to pay $29 per share for his own firm, even though Merrill was days away from following Lehman into bankruptcy.
Thain had taken over as Merrill chief executive nine months before that weekend deal. Now, he appeared to be one of the few Wall Street leaders who grasped the enormity of the credit crisis. Thanks to his analytical approach to the marketplace, it seemed, Merrill shareholders could look forward to a stake in Bank of America. "I have received thousands of e-mails saying, 'Thank you for saving our company'," Thain told us that day. And yet he admitted that the decision to sell Merrill Lynch – a 94-year-old institution that was always "bullish on America" – had been painful. "This was a great job. This was a great franchise. Emotionally, it was a huge responsibility."
What was his personal reaction? "You can't live through an event like this and not be changed," he said. Before Merrill, Thain had gone from one success to another. He began his career at Goldman Sachs, where he rose swiftly through the ranks, then moved to the New York Stock Exchange, where he repositioned an outmoded institution for global growth. He had been hired by Merrill to save the company from the mountain of subprime-mortgage-related assets stockpiled by his predecessor, Stan O'Neal. But instead of saving the firm, he sold it to BofA. Or, from another perspective, he saved the firm by selling it.
But as the events of the next two months would show, despite what he told us that day, Thain had not been changed by his short and tumultuous tenure at Merrill. His 13 months at its helm and three weeks at BofA were to expose some blind spots. He appeared to be a man in a bubble, not good at listening to advice, and worse still at detecting changes of tone when it came to the public's tolerance for corporate excess. Even as he mused with us over the highlights of the previous year, the ground beneath him was eroding. Flashes of arrogance and misjudgment, not to mention the insubordination of his top lieutenants from Merrill Lynch, were becoming apparent to his new bosses at BofA – who were themselves keenly aware that the old Masters of the Universe banking model was done for. John Thain's world had changed, even if he hadn't.
A brilliant career
John Alexander Thain was born in Antioch, Illinois, the son of a doctor. He excelled at Antioch Community High School, captained the wrestling team and served as the school's valedictorian upon graduation.
The young man with ramrod posture and a head of thick, dark hair moved east at 18 to study electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before earning a masters in business administration at Harvard. Upon graduation in 1979, he joined Goldman Sachs, working in corporate finance, then investment banking. His rise at Goldman accelerated when he was selected to help launch a mortgage-backed securities division, reporting to Jon Corzine, who was then partner in charge of government, mortgage and money markets trading at Goldman's fixed income group. By 1990, Thain had risen to treasurer at Goldman and four years later, chief financial officer.
In 1998, as chief executive, Corzine wanted to end Goldman's partnership structure and take the firm public. In the internal dispute over this and other management issues, Thain (now presiding over the bank's European operations) and several senior Goldman executives ousted Corzine, installing investment banker Hank Paulson as co-chief executive. (On the question of going public, Thain and his co-conspirators were on the wrong side of history: the firm's initial public offering in 1999 enabled it to thrive over the next decade.)
Even at Goldman Sachs, with a corporate culture of weeding out ageing partners and promoting devotion to the firm over loyalty to individuals, Thain's decision to turn on Corzine shocked many of his colleagues, enhancing a reputation for ruthlessness. A senior New York Fed official who worked with him in 1998, on the rescue of the failed hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management, describes Thain at that time as "a stone-cold killer".
In 2003, Thain left Goldman to become chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange. His predecessor, Richard Grasso, had been ousted following a furore over his $187m pay package, and because he favoured maintaining the NYSE's antiquated trading system. Thain forced the exchange to embrace electronic trading. His biggest achievement was to do what he'd initially resisted at Goldman and transform the "Big Board" into a public company. Thain continued the company's expansion by acquiring Euronext, a pan-European exchange. It successfully positioned the NYSE for global growth, as the results showed: in the two years after it went public, profits rose threefold. Seatholders at the old exchange – the owners of the 1,366 "seats" that confer the right to trade – reaped a bonanza when those seats were converted to shares. Taking the NYSE public also helped Thain earn some $9m in 2006, a modest amount compared with the more than $100m he made over his career at Goldman. But more than the money, the NYSE experience proved that Thain could run a company on his own.
By 2007, Thain was anxious for a new challenge. It arrived seven blocks north-west of the NYSE, at the World Financial Centre headquarters of Merrill Lynch, where the investment bank was in the process of imploding. Under the leadership of Stan O'Neal, Merrill had boosted its earnings from $4.4bn in 2004 to $7.5bn in 2006 – fuelled in part by the firm's aggressive position in the market for securities backed by subprime mortgages (so-called CDOs, collateralised debt obligations). But O'Neal's profits came in the absence of any meaningful risk controls.
In a quest to keep boosting its income statement, Merrill bought subprime mortgage lender First Franklin in September 2006 – at the height of the real estate bubble – for $1.3bn; in October 2007, the bank was forced to write down $8bn in losses on its dodgy assets, wiping out nearly a year's profits. O'Neal resigned six days later, and the company's board launched a hurried search for a replacement. Among the candidates were acting co-chief executive Greg Fleming, who headed Merrill's investment banking operations, and Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, the massive asset management firm 49 per cent owned by Merrill. But according to a person involved in the selection process, Alberto Cribore, the lead director at Merrill, wanted Thain, the "Mr Fix-It" who had turned around the NYSE. The board moved quickly, and in November 2007, Merrill announced that Thain would become its 12th chief executive.
Mother Merrill
The new leader didn't come cheap. When Thain joined Merrill in December 2007, he was awarded a signing bonus of $15m and an incentive plan tied closely to the value of Merrill shares, then worth some $68m. What Thain did not receive upon being named chief executive was a crash course in the art of internal company politics. Merrill Lynch is best known in the US for being the brokerage firm that brought Wall Street to Main Street. After the second world war, the company aggressively courted retail investors across America, building a network of financial advisers that was unparalleled in terms of both assets under management and geographical reach. Although the company soon expanded into investment banking and trading in the markets on its own account, it remained best known for its "thundering herd" of 16,000 financial advisers. It was also a "family friendly" firm, where sons followed in their fathers' footsteps and personal loyalty trumped almost every other quality.
By 2002, when O'Neal took charge, Merrill was over-extended. O'Neal fired thousands of employees and campaigned against the "Mother Merrill" culture. As a result of O'Neal's purges, many of the firm's "culture carriers" departed, often acrimoniously. The talent drain was particularly apparent in 2006 and 2007, when Merrill dug itself into a huge financial hole. The Merrill Lynch that Thain took over in December 2007 was a shadow of its former self.
At first, Thain made the right moves, gathering allies quickly. In January 2008, he turned up at a conference of financial advisers in Arizona, pressed the flesh and declared his commitment to the thundering herd. Fleming, the head of investment banking who had survived the O'Neal era, pledged to help Thain from the start, joining him in an initial round of capital-raising. And Bob McCann, the street-smart leader of the thundering herd, also rallied round the new boss. It was hardly a holy trinity, however: Fleming and McCann weren't close to each other, and they both kept a watchful eye on their new leader even while pledging loyalty.
Over time, some Merrill executives started to complain – among themselves and to outsiders – about a perceived arrogance in Thain. Indeed, a cult of personality had sprung up around him during his tenure at the NYSE. Although the Big Board is tiny compared with Merrill, it occupies a disproportionately large share of the national attention when it comes to US financial markets. Thain's success there triggered reams of glowing press reviews, including a profile in Institutional Investor magazine titled "The Adventures of SuperThain". The hype mattered: Thain's status helped him raise almost $20bn for a firm that had lost all credibility before his arrival. But some colleagues at Merrill felt all this had gone to his head. Shortly after arriving, Thain hired two of his closest aides from the NYSE, chief financial officer Nelson Chai and communications director Margaret Tutwiler. Tutwiler's philosophy, according to those who dealt with her, was to promote Thain as "the public face of Merrill Lynch". That approach grated on some subordinates, who felt that no matter how hard they worked to turn the firm around, all the glory would accrue to one man.
Misjudgment
In our December interview, Thain admitted that he had underestimated the magnitude of the problems Merrill Lynch faced. At the time he joined, he told reporters that he didn't plan to end the bank's involvement in the already troubled CDO market, despite the $8bn in write-downs on those securities in the third quarter of 2007.
"I didn't focus on this when I took over," he told us. "I didn't know how much the market was going to deteriorate over the course of the year." He wasn't alone. Thain's generation of Wall Street leaders had never experienced anything akin to what lay before them in 2008.
It was only after the Fed brokered the sale of Bear Stearns, another famed Wall Street investment bank, to JPMorgan Chase in mid-March 2008 that Thain says he became alarmed. And yet, even in April, discussing Merrill's first-quarter losses in the wake of Bear Stearns' collapse, Thain told analysts he was staying the course. "We're not pulling back from our fundamental strategy," he said. "We're not changing our view."
Top lieutenants urged him to sell as many of Merrill's toxic assets as he could, but colleagues remember Thain dismissing suggestions from below with a curt, "No, we're not going to do that". Throughout the spring and summer, Thain argued – internally and to investors and regulators – that Merrill was different from Bear, that the steady stream of fees generated by its thundering herd would protect it.
By early summer, however, with Merrill's share price continuing to fall, there was no evidence of a turnaround. Despite this, Thain didn't seem to grasp the gravity of some of his remarks. In a conference call in June, for example, when discussing the possibility of raising capital, he mentioned that Merrill might sell its stakes in the Bloomberg publishing group or BlackRock. Although he had vaguely raised such possibilities before, in the context of the conference call the remark came as a shock to BlackRock's top executives, including founder Larry Fink. Over the next few weeks, BlackRock's share price dropped by almost 25 per cent, enraging Fink.
By mid-July, Thain had abandoned the idea of selling BlackRock, but Fink and some of Thain's top deputies had already begun to question his authority. At one meeting, Thain would insist that the trading desk "lighten up" the balance sheet. But a week later, no action would have been taken. Or Thain would turn down a request to hire a high-profile investment banker, but negotiations with the individual would still take place. Making matters worse were Thain's own high-profile hires. In the spring of 2008, Merrill announced that Tom Montag and Peter Kraus would join from Goldman Sachs. The size of the pair's pay packages – $39m and $29m respectively – shocked Merrill executives who were preparing for pay cuts.
Merrill's second quarter was a disaster, encompassing a $9.4bn write-down and a $4.6bn loss. It was obvious that the group would need more capital. Thain sold the bank's investment in Bloomberg back to New York mayor Michael Bloomberg for $4.3bn, and accelerated an on-again, off-again plan to sell a big chunk of the firm's CDOs.
On July 29, Merrill announced the sale of $31bn in CDOs to Lone Star Funds for $6.7bn. Just weeks earlier, the CDOs had been valued at $11bn on Merrill's balance sheet. Merrill provided 75 per cent of the financing to make the deal happen, but it seemed worth it: with the sale, Thain had put Merrill's problems behind him. At the same time, the bank raised $8.5bn in new capital. It was a high-wire act that Thain pulled off with aplomb. "The CDOs were the source of the vast majority of losses at Merrill," Thain told us in December. "There was a sense of relief. We had gotten rid of our most dangerous assets and we had raised capital."
The relief was shortlived. Come September, the market turned bearish, particularly towards Lehman Brothers, once regarded as the ultimate survivor. Richard Fuld, Lehman's longtime chief executive, tried to halt the slide in his company's stock price, announcing plans to put all of Lehman's bad assets into a separate bank, a feat that would have taken months to pull off. But on the evening of Friday September 12, after Lehman's share price had continued to plunge, federal regulators convened Wall Street's top bankers at the New York Federal Reserve to discuss the firm's troubles. It was clear that Lehman had three stark choices: find a partner with which to merge, hope for a bailout, or collapse into bankruptcy.
On Saturday morning, Greg Fleming called his boss at home at around 7am. Given Lehman's precarious situation, Fleming argued that Thain should start talking to BofA. The investment banking model was changing irrevocably and BofA was the best fit for Merrill: it was not a force in wealth management or international investment banking. Merrill also ran the risk that BofA might buy Lehman if Thain didn't act. Initially, Thain was unreceptive – he hadn't reached one of the pinnacles of Wall Street only to cash in his chips from a position of weakness a few months later.
Thain arrived at the New York Fed soon after. Within an hour or two, after New York Fed chief Timothy Geithner made it clear that Lehman wouldn't be rescued, Thain called BofA's chief executive, Ken Lewis, to initiate talks. Asked whether he was pushed to call Lewis by either Geithner or then Treasury secretary Hank Paulson (the same Paulson he helped install as chief executive of Goldman Sachs a decade earlier), Thain said no. The Fed and Treasury "were initially focused on Lehman but grew concerned about us", Thain said. "They wanted to make sure I was being proactive [but] they didn't tell me to call Ken Lewis."
For Lewis, who had climbed to the top of the US banking industry through acquisitions, Merrill was the ultimate prize. A deal could transform Bank of America from the McDonald's of the industry into a financial services titan that would outstrip – in size, know-how and reputation – Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. Lewis said he'd fly to New York from the bank's headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the two men would meet at BofA's corporate apartment in the Time Warner Center at 2.30pm.
It was around lunchtime at the Federal Reserve, where meetings continued to take place. In the early afternoon, Morgan Stanley chief executive John Mack approached Thain. The men agreed to talk that evening. One competitor, spotting Thain and Mack in conversation, said that such a union would be like two drunks trying to prop each other up. Executives at Goldman Sachs also wanted to discuss an investment in Merrill, plus a line of credit.
That afternoon, Thain met Lewis ready to discuss the sale of a minority stake in Merrill Lynch. Lewis said he wanted to buy the entire company.
"I didn't come here to sell the whole company," Thain replied. Yet Thain recalls that as he and Lewis talked, the strategic logic behind a full deal became apparent. Bank of America was the dominant retail bank in the US, flush with consumer deposits. It was also a leader in the commercial banking business, where Merrill Lynch was weak. Meanwhile, Merrill's strongest unit, its 16,000 investment advisers, would fill a gaping hole in BofA's product offerings. Merrill also wielded tremendous clout in the capital markets, where BofA was just a small player.
"The logic of it made a lot of sense to both of us," Thain says. And yet he still didn't like the idea of a deal. That evening, he and his two top Goldman hires – Montag and Kraus – met John Mack to discuss a deal with Morgan Stanley. But according to Merrill executives, by Sunday morning, Thain had dismissed the Morgan Stanley option.
Fleming, who was still pushing for a merger with BofA, was holed up at the offices of Wachtell Lipton, the bank's law firm. He argued that BofA should move quickly to buy all of Merrill to prevent the events of the coming week from derailing the discussions. He pushed for a sale price in the high 20s or low 30s for Merrill stock, a significant premium over the $17 at which the shares had closed the previous Friday.
At the Fed that morning, Paulson laid it on the line with Thain: Merrill's very existence depended on whether or not he could cut a quick deal. To more than one observer, Thain seemed shaken by the weekend's events. For the New York Fed official who had described Thain as a "stone-cold killer", the transformation of the Merrill chief executive over the weekend was remarkable. "He had lost his confidence," the official said.
By Sunday afternoon, it was apparent that BofA would offer a rich price, $29 a share, to acquire Merrill Lynch. Selling the firm was not what Thain had been hired to do, but at least, given the cataclysmic market conditions, he'd got what seemed to be a good price. At 6pm, he convened a telephone board meeting to go over the details. At 8pm, he rode up to Wachtell Lipton's offices, on 52nd Street and Sixth Avenue, to sign the final agreement. A conference room was stocked with champagne, so that at around 9pm, Thain and Lewis could toast the deal. But both sides kept finding fresh details to iron out. When the two chief executives finally made their toast, around midnight, much of the bubbly was warm and flat.
On Monday September 15 2008, after Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy protection, Bank of America announced the acquisition of Merrill Lynch in an all-stock transaction worth $50bn. When Thain convened a "town hall" meeting that afternoon to discuss the deal with Merrill Lynch employees, whatever misgivings he had about the sale were assuaged by the huge round of applause that greeted him.
Over the next few weeks, as some 200 BofA employees – members of a transition team – flocked to Merrill's offices, Thain found himself managing a new relationship – with Andrea Smith, the human resources executive dispatched from BofA headquarters to serve as his shadow.
One of the key issues in the acquisition agreement concerned the payment of bonuses. By selling to BofA, Merrill's executives knew that the days of multi-million-dollar bonus payments would come to an end. As a concession, in a non-public side-agreement, BofA allowed Merrill to pay out bonuses of about $4bn before the deal closed. Neither Lewis nor Thain realised that this small amendment to the contract would eventually spark a state investigation requiring them and others to testify under oath about what they knew about the payments and when they knew it.
Shortly after the deal was announced, Thain made it clear to his future employers that he expected a bonus of $40m for putting Merrill together with BofA. That number came as a shock. In a long conversation, BofA's chief administrative officer, J. Steele Alphin, urged Thain to revise the number downwards. Alphin told Thain that BofA didn't reward bankers simply for getting deals done, but for creating deals that worked over time. If Thain harbored any ambitions to succeed Lewis as chief executive of BofA, Alphin warned, a bonus of that size would undermine him with BofA's board.
Thain agreed, reducing his bonus request over the course of the next two months. Following the creation of a $700bn government bailout fund for US banks, public disgust with multi-million-dollar bonuses and golden parachutes was more than apparent. In November, top executives at Goldman Sachs were the first to declare that they would not accept bonuses for 2008, even though they made a profit for the year.
Thain ultimately came to an understanding with Lewis that his own bonus would be lower than that of his new boss. Presuming that the BofA chief might get as much as $10m for his stewardship of the bank that year, Thain calculated that he deserved a similar, but slightly smaller sum for himself, especially for steering Merrill clear of the bankruptcy that befell Lehman. But on the morning of December 8, the day that Merrill's board would meet to sign off on bonuses, the Wall Street Journal published a story indicating that Thain was planning to ask for as much as $10m. That afternoon, Thain recommended that neither he nor his top executives receive bonuses for the year.
The board did agree to $3.6bn in bonuses to be paid out to other Merrill Lynch executives. At BofA's request, most of the money would be paid out in cash later in the month, before the deal closed. The early payment would actually reduce expenses for BofA in 2009, making it easier for the bank to hit its first-quarter numbers. Thain's work for the year was essentially done. On December 19, he decamped with his family to their vacation home in Vail, Colorado, where they would spend the holidays. When the transaction closed on January 1, Thain, the 12th and final chief executive in Merrill's 94-year history, was 1,700 miles away from the company headquarters in New York.
Before leaving for Colorado, Thain had negotiated a new title for himself: president of global banking, securities and wealth management at BofA. He would be responsible for planning and executing the merger of Merrill's banking and trading business with that of BofA. In this portion of the deal, Merrill employees would emerge the winners, with thousands of BofA staffers laid off and replaced by their Merrill counterparts.
But in early January, signs of dissatisfaction towards Thain erupted within Merrill. McCann, head of the firm's "thundering herd", resigned. The news was no surprise to employees who attended the town hall meeting in September, just after the merger was announced. In response to a question, Thain chided McCann for leaking a story to the press, then continued to rebuke him to such an extent that others were embarrassed. Following that encounter, Thain declined to promote McCann to the management level directly beneath him in the merged company, a slap in the face.
A few days later, Fleming tendered his resignation to accept a teaching position at Yale Law School, his alma mater. More than McCann's departure, Fleming's resignation caused concern about Thain in North Carolina. Fleming had been the prime mover behind the BofA merger, and was well liked in Charlotte. If Lewis had had any illusions about how some of Thain's top deputies felt towards their boss, those illusions vanished.
On January 16, BofA and Merrill reported their fourth-quarter numbers. Merrill's were disastrous: $21bn in operating losses, the worst performance in the bank's history, even worse than the poor performances of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Still, Lewis told listeners in a conference call that he was happy that Thain had joined the BofA management team.
Lewis had other problems. In early January, BofA's share price sunk from $14 towards $10 per share. Shortly before the earnings announcement, it emerged that Lewis had lobbied the government in late December for an infusion of as much as $20bn in new capital, and a guarantee for some of Merrill's weakest assets, in order to consummate the deal. BofA's stock price plunged into single digits, shareholders were outraged and several class-action lawsuits were filed, accusing Lewis of withholding important information prior to the December 5 vote to approve the Merrill deal. The bank issued a carefully worded statement saying that up until the second week of December, Merrill's losses were in line with expectations.
A week after the earnings announcement, the FT published a story about early payment of the nearly $4bn in bonuses to Merrill Lynch employees. Outraged, Andrew Cuomo, New York State's attorney-general, launched an investigation. Even though BofA executives had been actively involved in the timetable and payment of the bonuses, the bank sent a statement to the FT blaming Thain.
They had found the opportunity they'd been looking for: Thain would take the fall – for bonuses and for as much else as they could lump on him. The BofA statement was a clear sign that the end was near for Thain. But in his office on the 32nd floor, the former chief executive didn't seem to notice. He had just purchased 8,400 shares of his new company's stock and was finalising plans for a forthcoming trip to Davos for the World Economic Forum.
Lewis flew up to New York on January 22 to fire Thain. While he was still aboard the BofA corporate jet, the purpose of his trip was disclosed in the media, along with the damning details of Thain's $1.2m office redesign. On BofA's trading floor in New York, where employees were angry about what the purchase of Merrill had done to their stock, a televised image of Lewis prompted a round of boos. Subsequently, the news that Thain was about to be fired sparked enthusiastic applause.
And so, just before noon, with all of Wall Street tipped off, the embattled Lewis fired the only executive in the organisation capable of replacing him at that moment as chief executive. It was a move designed for self-preservation in more ways than one. Criticism of Lewis had reached deafening levels as it became apparent that he had overpaid for Merrill. Although Fleming was the prime negotiator on Merrill's side of the transaction, it seemed as though Thain had got the better of Lewis during that frenzied September weekend.
In the wake of his firing – when Thain apologised for the office redecoration and promised to reimburse the company – many of his former charges unburdened themselves about his failings, real and perceived. His supporters lashed back, blaming a venomous culture at Merrill that never embraced Thain as its new leader.
Was Thain the man in the bubble – brilliant at understanding the complex technical issues surrounding turn-of-the-century banking but deaf to the world beyond Wall Street, or even to dissenting voices in his own ranks? And if so, was he really so different from his peers?
On October 6, Richard Fuld testified before congressmen about the collapse of his bank, Lehman Brothers. In what amounted to an admission of Wall Street's blindness towards the financial mess it created, he said: "Not that anyone on this committee cares about this, but I wake up every single night thinking, 'What could I have done differently? What could I have said? What should I have done?' And I come back to this: at the time I made those decisions, I made those decisions with the information I had. I can look at you and say, this is a pain that will stay with me the rest of my life."
It was a speech more human than Thain has given. But then again, Merrill did not fail. It's also the sort of speech the rest of Wall Street has yet to deliver – even as it asks for billions more in taxpayer support.
Back in his office – the office that even some of his supporters feel betrayed by – John Thain is neither superhero nor the robotic demon he's made out to be by detractors. He shows us a favourite item in the room. For all the money lavished elsewhere by his designer, this – a painting from Steven Spielberg – cost nothing. It was a gift to commemorate Dreamworks Animation's initial public offering in 2004 and it depicts the ogre Shrek alighting from a carriage with his bride, Princess Fiona. It's not a castle they're bound for: the pair are about to ascend the steps of the New York Stock Exchange.
Greg Farrell is the FT's Wall Street correspondent. Henny Sender is chief correspondent, international finance.
FT: Reed's leader from dusty to digital
Reed's leader from dusty to digital
By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson
Published: March 9 2009 02:00 | Last updated: March 9 2009 02:00
The week before Sir Crispin Davis became chief executive of Reed Elsevier, Fortune magazine asked: "Is this the first company to be destroyed by the internet?" The next day, when he met one of the biggest customers of its academic journals, he was greeted with the words: "We do not like you."
It was an unpromising, if unsurprising, start. By 1999, when the marketing executive arrived to fill Reed's year-long leadership vacuum, its shareholders were seething after three profit warnings, its customers felt ill-treated and its Anglo-Dutch dual board had become notorious for infighting. "You can't help feeling sorry for Crispin Davis," the Daily Mirror concluded.
Next week, however, Sir Crispin will achieve his goal of stepping down on his 60th birthday after almost a decade in charge. This time, Reed will not have to wait for a successor. Ian Smith, a former chief executive of UK housebuilder Taylor Woodrow, has been working in a next-door office and meeting colleagues and clients since January.
Sir Crispin, a solicitor's son who describes Mr Smith as "a much better communicator than I am", is not one of the media sector's outspoken personalities, yet he has lasted almost twice as long as the average FTSE 100 chief executive - in spite of the turmoil wreaked by the digital disruption that Fortune highlighted a decade ago.
Sitting in Reed's New York offices opposite Grand Central Station before a final management meeting, he still has the measured, slightly professorial manner of the Procter & Gamble "Proctoid" he was for the first 20 years of his career when he made his name by introducing Pampers nappies to the UK.
The key to longevity as a CEO, he says, is "to keep reinventing the company - you can't stand still".
Looking back on 10 years in which adjusted pre-tax profits grew from £710m to £1.2bn on revenues up from £3.4bn to £5.3bn, however, it is clear that much of Reed's return to favour stems from actions he took at the start.
His approach to what Reed's then chairman described as "a big business that needs a strong hand" serves as a timely case study of how an outsider can get to grips with a drifting company.
Arriving from a turnround job at Aegis, the Anglo-French marketing group, Sir Crispin found a business with strong brands - from the Gray's Anatomy medical tome to Variety, the Hollywood bible. But profits had been sliding since 1997, customers were resentful and the 95 per cent of revenues coming from print books, journals and magazines was under threat from the internet.
Reed also suffered from a convoluted corporate structure. "I remember sitting down with Morris [Tabaksblat, Reed's chairman until 2005] one evening over dinner and asking: 'Why is the company in such a mess?'" Sir Crispin recalls. Customers, shareholders and employees were all fed up with the company's culture and structure, they concluded, but it had survived because 15 or 20 executives and board members wanted to preserve it. Mr Tabaksblat set about creating a single board; Sir Crispin cut a swathe through the executive team, replacing 21 of the top 25 managers within 15 months.
How, as an outsider, did he know who to keep and who to fire? "You spend a lot of time with people, pretty intense time. After 30 years in business, you develop pretty good instincts as to whether they've got it or not," Sir Crispin says. Within little more than a year, in which he folded 19 divisions into three global units, "no one had any of this Anglo-Dutch baggage".
Sir Crispin identified a small team of allies, including finance director Mark Armour and corporate strategy director Nick Baker, to hammer out a new strategy. Today, "the four people who were good are still with us" and the strategy is little changed. Reed had to evolve from being "a dusty print publisher" to become an online information provider, they realised. "The key decision was: do we follow or do we lead [our customers online]," Sir Crispin recalls. They opted for an aggressive stance, ramping up annual product development spending from £60m to £250m, helping distinguish Reed from consumer publishers that have struggled to charge for their content online.
Almost three years ago, he decided Reed needed "to raise the bar again", refining its strategy beyond simply digitising content to embedding it in productivity-enhancing online tools for lawyers, scientists and doctors. The number of technologists employed by the company has grown from 400 to 4,800 in 10 years and the share of revenues coming under the ungainly banner of "workflow solutions" has risen to more than 50 per cent.
At the same time, Sir Crispin acknowledged that, to improve profit growth, Reed would have to rethink its assets. Reluctantly, he put the Harcourt education businesses he had acquired in 2001 up for sale. "I think going into education was a wrong turning," he admits now. "Fortunately, we were able to exit it quite well." (Some of Harcourt is now owned by Pearson, owner of the Financial Times.)
He was not so lucky with the planned auction of Reed Business Information, the trade magazine business, which was abandoned this year. "In retrospect, we should have moved earlier but we really didn't think we could sell both education and RBI well at the same time," he says. "If we'd known that this downturn was going to happen, we may have said it was worth the risk."
The Harcourt disposal allowed Reed to return £2bn to investors, however, and was followed by a £2.1bn bid for Choicepoint, a risk analytics business with double-digit revenue growth and 30 per cent operating margins, and smaller purchases to expand its position in healthcare.
Conscious of investors' desire to see debt reduced, Sir Crispin says the RBI magazines are still marked for sale. The 80 per cent of Reed's revenues coming from science, medical, legal and risk "are going to help us significantly during this downturn". However, "they're not immune but they will show growth".
The focus for his successor, he says, will be on execution - of the "workflow solution" strategy, cost-reduction plans and the ChoicePoint integration. Mr Smith will need to overhaul Reed, he implies. "The strategy, I would say, is clearly right. It is working. I would not anticipate any major strategic change."
He is at pains to emphasise management continuity in spite of analysts' speculation that long-serving insiders such as Andrew Prozes, CEO of LexisNexis, or Erik Engstrom, CEO of Elsevier, might feel passed over.
"This really has been a team effort," he says with satisfaction. "One of the most rewarding experiences a management team can go through is transforming a company." In spite of the opprobrium heaped on many businesses, he adds, "I still think running a FTSE 100 company is an absolute privilege."
Sir Crispin is hoping to spend some time on the golf course with his high-achieving brothers: Ian, the outgoing managing director of McKinsey; James, a former Freshfields senior partner; and Nigel, a high court judge. But he is in the market for a chairmanship - perhaps of a private equity venture or another turnround situation - "if some company is brave enough to want me". He already sits on the boards of GlaxoSmithKline, Oxford University and the National Trust.
A decision will have to wait until after March 17. "To be honest, I'm a man so I can only do one thing at the same time."
Traffic light feedback system that cleared a customer roadblock
Tolley's Tax Annuals and Tetrahedron Letters count as "must-have" content for their professional audiences but they are hard to love. Ten years ago, customers of Reed Elsevier's legal, academic and scientific journals had begun to resent having to buy products from a company known for negligent customer service.
Arriving as chief executive from a marketing background, "the main opportunity for me was getting the company to be much more customer-focused", Sir Crispin Davis recalls. Over a decade, Reed's sales force has had to retrain from pushing books and magazines to explaining sophisticated applications and software platforms.
One initiative in the Elsevier science division illustrates Sir Crispin's efforts to get the company closer to its customers. Each of Elsevier's top 100 managers - Sir Crispin included - has been given two large accounts and told to keep a dialogue open outside the sales process.
Once a quarter, the group measures customer feedback on 25 different metrics, ranging from invoicing to technology support, using a traffic light system. "Seven or eight years ago, there was an awful lot of reds on our charts," Sir Crispin says: "Today, there are no reds - there's one orange and the rest are green."
FT: Expansion of LNG threatens gas glut
Expansion of LNG threatens gas glut
By Ed Crooks
A huge expansion of global capacity for producing liquefied natural gas is set to bring additional volumes on to an already depressed global market.
Plants scheduled to come on stream over the next year will increase global LNG production capacity by 30 per cent, putting downward pressure on natural gas prices worldwide, particularly in the US and Britain.
BG moves step closer to deal for Pure Energy - Feb-18
Nakilat sails on to secure gas supply - Mar-02
Sonagas to pursue plan in Equatorial Guinea - Feb-27
LNG – gas super-cooled to -160°C so that it can be transported by tanker – has been the fastest-growing fossil fuel of the past decade. It provides only about 7 per cent of global gas supply but plays an increasingly important role in meeting marginal demand.
A wave of LNG projects approved in the middle of the decade – in particular the vast facilities in gas-rich Qatar – is due to come on stream this year and next.
Some of their production has already been sold on long-term contracts but much of it will go into spot markets, where prices have fallen steeply over the past year.
Professor Jonathan Stern of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies said that gas demand had "gone off a cliff" worldwide, with electricity generators and industrial users such as car manufacturers cutting their use sharply.
Prof Stern estimated that Asian and European markets could shrink by 10 per cent this year.
Asian buyers are using flexibility in their contracts to take less gas, leaving sellers to look for markets in the US and Europe.
Several new terminals for receiving LNG are also coming into operation in the first half of this year, including Sabine Pass in Louisiana, South Hook in Wales and Rovigo in north-east Italy.
Much of the surplus gas is likely to head for the US. LNG from Qatar costs about $2.50 per million British thermal units to deliver to America, according to Frank Harris of Wood Mackenzie, a consultancy.
That makes it competitive in the US market, where the Henry Hub benchmark price was at a 29-month low of $3.93 per million BTU on Friday.
Mr Harris said that companies with LNG projects due to come on stream this year "would not be rushing hell for leather to get production at full tilt", and the additional volumes coming on to the market were likely to be well below the planned increase in capacity.
However, projects under construction cannot be deferred indefinitely. So if the new plants do not reach full production this year, they are likely to do so next year. "2010 may be the really horrendous year," Mr Harris said.
FT: Management metaphors are out for the count
Management metaphors are out for the count
By Lucy Kellaway
The gloves are off. The creators of business metaphors have been pulling their punches for more than a decade but have now come out swinging. There is a new metaphor in the management ring and, just in case you are too punch-drunk after so many idioms to have guessed what it is, here's the knockout blow: it's boxing.
The latest Harvard Business Review contains an 11-page article telling us that the best way to survive financial meltdown and global recession is to be like Muhammad Ali when he met George Foreman for their Rumble in the Jungle in Kinshasa, Zaire.
What the renowned boxer's performance teaches us about thriving in turbulent markets is that we must all be agile and we have to absorb blows. The point is helpfully summarised by various charts, diagrams and a two-by-two matrix with agility up one side and absorption along the other.
Curiously, the HBR doesn't mention any of the things about boxing that immediately come to my mind when I think of it. In boxing, you get beaten to a pulp – which must ring a bell with anyone who is now working on the economic front line. In boxing, you are quite likely to wind up with brain damage if you go on doing it for long enough – and, if things get much worse in the economy, this too may come to ring a bell.
Recently, I read that this bloody sport has become newly fashionable as an activity doled out by the authorities to young delinquents to distract them from drug-taking and knife crime. However, to discover that boxing is now the very latest fashion for management theorists is more surprising still.
The HBR article brings to an end 15 years of peace, love and political correctness by the purveyors of management metaphor. It is the first evidence I have seen from the management guff industry that "soft" is finally on its way out and "hard" is on its way in.
'We know what we need to survive in troubled times, and it does not take 11 pages of boxing parallels to tell us'
Since I started following these things in the early 1990s, there have been three different sorts of metaphors wheeled out by gurus to help explain and prescribe business behaviour, all benign. The first were musical metaphors. There was the idea of a company as an orchestra, with the chief executive as the conductor. Each knowledge worker scraped away at her fiddle or blew his horn, and the maestro waved a thin stick to bring them together in perfect time and harmony.
This metaphor was popular for a while but, as the internet grew, gurus got groovier and decided that classical was out and jazz was in. The great leader must not tell his players how to play but let them jam, be creative and let it all hang out. Presently, even this seemed too square, and in 2002 a Swedish writer said that the CEO should be like a DJ, mixing records to match the mood on the dance floor.
Even more popular than music as a metaphor has been sport. Most of these have been based on the idea that business is a team effort (which we know it isn't, really). Football, rugby, rowing, cricket and baseball have all taken their turn as trendy management theories. For one crazy moment, even the downbeat Sven-Göran Eriksson was rebranded as a management guru.
The only team sports I have never seen a theory based on are synchronised swimming and lacrosse, but I dare say such theories exist somewhere. Sports without teams also get a look-in in the metaphor market, in particular golf, and a weird sled race with huskies that came into vogue a few years ago.
The third, and daftest, seam of management metaphor comes from science. The idea of a business as a stream of DNA always struck me as moronic. The point about a person's DNA is that it does not change. The point about companies and business conditions is that they do. It may be more plausible for gurus to talk the language of evolution and describe companies as complex adaptive systems – or it might be helpful if I could understand what they were driving at. A metaphor is meant to simplify, not to obfuscate.
Finally, there have been some outliers that fit none of the three categories: management as akin to being a top chef in a big kitchen, and management likened to animal behaviour. There have been ape theories, geese theories and even frog theories. The softest – and most famous – was the wretched mouse with the wretched cheese in the parable, Who Moved My Cheese?.
All of these metaphors have one thing in common: they are perfectly useless. I defy anyone to show how any of them has helped us understand how businesses behave or help us get better at running them.
Metaphors can be helpful in grasping something when the thing is terribly complicated. So, when Einstein was explaining relativity, he used a train and a clock to help us understand something that would otherwise have been beyond most of us.
By comparison, business – or the theory of business – is terribly simple. We know what we need to survive in troubled times, and it does not take 11 pages of boxing parallels to tell us. We need to cut costs. We need to take fewer risks. We need to conserve cash. We need to pull out of markets in which we are not successful. We need to fly economy – or not at all. There are two things that we don't need to do: float like a butterfly or sting like a bee.
lucy.kellaway@ft.com
Read and post comments at www.ft.com/kellaway
March 06, 2009 at 01:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)


Does everybody have their Thanksgiving menus planned? Or is everybody feeling calm and settled and ready with a game plan? Or somewhere in between?
Unfortunately, Erlend and I won't be doing our traditional Asian-style Thanksgiving this year (since he's still in New York). Instead, I'm hitting up two Friendsgivings on Thanksgiving day, where I'll be depositing a speculoos cheesecake at one (recipe on the blog sooooon) and this purple sweet potato pie at another.
Soooooo I actually credit this recipe entirely to Erlend. Erlend likes food as much as I do, but in a different way: while I'm always experimenting in the kitchen or reading about new restaurant openings, he's always reading about various ingredients, cuisines, and their various histories. Erlend sometimes makes requests for recipes on my blog, most of which I actually ignore because I'm not the best girlfriend and/or his suggestions are usually not very good or photogenic. Sometimes his ideas are just too flat out weird for most people — he's always finding and buying rare/obscure ingredients at international supermarkets and online, insisting that I could totally try incorporating this weird root/extract/mushroom into one of my desserts. Yeah, no. I saw how some of y'all reacted to the poll on my Instagram Stories about this purple sweet potato pie; I don't think you guys could handle the rest of his suggestions.
Anyway, I do occasionally oblige Erlend when he has a good idea that won't scare most of you all away. And this was one of them: purple sweet potatoes in a dessert. Have you ever walked around a fancy organic grocery store like Whole Foods and seen a pile of purple sweet potatoes next to the regular ol' orange ones? They're basically the same thing, but purple. But don't get purple sweet potatoes confused with regular heirloom purple potatoes — purple sweet potatoes are as sweet as a sweet potato, and just like regular potatoes, you wouldn't want to bake the regular ones into a pie.
For a long time, I dragged my feet on this concept. I was worried that the purple would turn a dull, brownish color when baked, but it actually worked out and turned into a vibrant (almost magenta?) color. The secret is to use an acidic fruit like lemon, which brightens the color. The overall result is a creamy, citrusy sweet potato pie with bursts of cinnamon and nutmeg. Enjoy!
I noticed on Instagram Stories that some of you mistakenly thought I was baking this pie with ube, the sweetish purple yam that's popular in Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines (holla at my mom!). Not quite. There are a ton of purple sweet potato varieties, and there are distinctions between them: purple yams, winged yams (a.k.a. ube), taro and its varieties, different types of purple sweet potatoes like Okinawan and American purple, etc. I'm not really sure; Erlend is the person to talk to about all these varieties if you're really super interested. For this recipe, I used American purple sweet potatoes from a company called Frieda's that I found at my local Whole Foods. Oh wait! It turns out Frieda's has a guide to the different types of purple potatoes — no need to hassle Erlend, lol. Also yams and sweet potatoes are not the same thing, people!
If you're planning on making this pie for Thanksgiving Day, I suggest planning ahead some because it's a bit of a labor intensive process. First you'll need to make the pie crust and blind-bake it before roasting some sweet potatoes for the filling. I like to make the pie dough up to a week in advance and blind-bake the pie before the day I'm going to be serving the pie itself to split up the work and make it so that I'm not stuck in the kitchen for 3 hours. Similarly, you can roast and puree the potatoes up to 2 days in advance and have them ready to go for when you make the filling. Just be sure to store them in an airtight container until then!
In a liquid measuring cup, combine 1/2 cup very cold water, 1/2 cup ice, and 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar and whisk to combine. Transfer to the refrigerator to chill while you work with the dry ingredients.
In the bowl of a food processor, combine 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt. Pulse a few times to combine. Sprinkle 1/2 cup very cold cubed unsalted butter over the dry ingredients, and continue pulsing until the butter pieces are about the size of a nickel. Remove the ice water mixture from the fridge and sprinkle 1 to 2 tablespoons over the dry ingredients, pulsing to combine. Continue adding water and pulsing until the butter pieces are about the size of a pea, and the dough sticks together when squeezed and pinched with your fingers.
Use a rubber spatula to scrape the dough out into a lightly floured surface and use your hands to shape the dough into a flat disc. Wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, preferably overnight.
Lightly flour a work surface and transfer your dough from the refrigerator to the surface. Let rest for 10 to 15 minutes, or until pliable enough to roll. Use a rolling pin to roll into a circle about 12 inches wide. Transfer the circle on to a pie plate and fold the edges of the dough to create a rolled border sitting on top of the circumference of the pie plate, using kitchen shears to trim off any excess dough. Use a fork or your fingers to crimp the edges of the crust. Use a fork to prick the bottom and sides of the pie dough, and transfer to the freezer to chill for at least 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, center a rack in the oven and preheat to 425 (F). Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. When the crust is frozen solid, remove from freezer and place on baking sheet. Cover the crust, including the crimped edges, completely with aluminum foil. Pour pie weights into the center of the aluminum foil and spread them so they are more concentrated around the edges of the pie shell. Transfer to the preheated oven and bake for 20 minutes, until the crimped edges are set but not browned. As the pie is baking, whisk together 1 large egg white and 1 teaspoon water.
After 20 minutes, remove the pie pan and baking sheet of the oven. Lift the foil containing the pie weights, and let the crust cool for 1 minute. Use a pastry brush to coat the bottom and sides of the crust with egg white glaze. Return the pie pan and baking sheet to the oven's middle rack and continue baking for 3 more minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely before filling.
Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 400 (F). Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil. Transfer 20 ounces purple sweet potatoes onto the baking sheet, and use a fork to pierce the sweet potatoes several times throughout their bodies. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until tender and a fork can easily be inserted into the center of each potato without too much resistance.
Once the potatoes have been roasted, transfer to a wire rack and cool until they can be handled. Use a knife to cut each potato lengthwise, and peel the skin off each potato. If it's easier, you can also scoop the flesh from each skin — I started out doing this but found that I was losing too much flesh and that it was actually easier to peel off the skins. Once you're done with this process, you should have around 16 ounces of sweet potato flesh. Transfer to the bowl of a food processor and add 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice, freshly grated zest from 1 medium orange, and freshly grated zest from 1 small lemon and process until the mixture is very smooth, about 30 seconds to 1 minute.
Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 350 (F). Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
In the bowl of a freestanding electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, 1/2 cup granulated sugar, 1/4 cup melted unsalted butter, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom, and 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg. Beat together on medium speed for 1 minutes, or until all ingredients are combined. Lower the mixer speed to its slowest setting and add 3/4 cup heavy cream, 2 large eggs, and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, beating until combined. Add the sweet potato puree and continue beating until combined and a homogenous purple color.
Scoop the filling into the par-baked pie shell, using an offset spatula to spread evenly across the shell and smooth the top.
Transfer the filled pie pan to the prepared baking sheet. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until the filling is puffed and set around the edges but still has a slight jiggle in the center.
Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely before covering loosely with plastic wrap and chilling overnight before slicing and serving with whipped cream.
In the bowl of a freestanding electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, combine 1/4 cup heavy cream and 1 tablespoon confectioner's sugar. Beat on medium-high speed until soft peaks appear in the cream. Use a rubber spatula to fold in 2 tablespoons crème fraîche and serve immediately.


Please be aware that if your company is using unauthorised GS1 barcode numbers. Your company will suffer business losses when your products are rejected by resellers.
Your company will also suffer monetary losses when you need to re-label or repackage your products.
Use of unauthorised barcode numbers means, use of GS1 prefix "955" without registering with GS1 Malaysia or had previously registered with GS1 Malaysia but has resigned or has overdue subscription fee.
In order to safeguard your brands and products, and for GS1 Malaysia to validate your barcode numbers, please join GS1 Malaysia to obtain your barcode numbers from GS1 Malaysia.
Please contact GS1 Malaysia at gs1malaysia@gs1my.org for further information.


text:
extern "C" {
// User function.
int LLVMFuzzerTestOneInput(const unsigned char* data, size_t size);
// Initialization function.
__attribute__((weak)) int LLVMFuzzerInitialize(int* argc, char*** argv);
}

std::vector<char> readFile(std::string path) {
  std::ifstream in(path);
  return std::vector<char>((std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(in)),
                           std::istreambuf_iterator<char>());
}

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
  if (argc == 1) {
    std::cerr << "Usage: " << argv[0] << " <file>..." << std::endl;
    exit(1);
  }

  if (LLVMFuzzerInitialize)
    LLVMFuzzerInitialize(&argc, &argv);

  for (int i = 1; i < argc; ++i) {
    std::cout << argv[i] << std::endl;
    auto v = readFile(argv[i]);
    LLVMFuzzerTestOneInput((const unsigned char*)v.data(), v.size());
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


what TEAMWORK really works. Love U Niswarth team.
Now I know how important empathy is in not only the classroom, but beyond. Empathy can solve lots of things.
There is always room for fun!
It takes effort to uncover the true story behind something. At first, everything looked fine!


text:
The Unbeatable Team
The Synergized Team
Unleash the True Leader Within
Become a Magnetic Employer
Reflect & Refocus
AcePoint Consulting
Accelerate your Business Growth NOW
by IsabelleGrenier | Nov 28, 2018 | leadership | 0 comments
Being Business growth, Growth Acceleration, Growth Mindset, Growth Strategy, growth is on every leaders mind. Understandably, all businesses want to grow. However, when a company begins to enter a phase of accelerated growth, how it did business in the past and how it must do it in the future become radically different. The difference is comparable to going from cruising around the city in a humble Toyota to racing Lamborghinis along narrow mountain roads. The deep-throated roar of a high-horsepower engine can give you the thrill of a lifetime, but it also amplifies your chances of falling off the road into an abyss of catastrophe.
Speed lets you achieve more in shorter periods, but speed also demands a higher level of control. The driver of a sports car needs to be acquainted with each bump and bend in the road and plan out every inch of the journey. The time to detect and respond to errors is slimmer, and small mistakes can carry enormous consequences. Like the driver, the most important thing a business transitioning into a period of accelerated growth must do is prepare. The quality of its preparation will determine the efficiency with which it navigates through future difficulties.
There are three ways that businesses can respond concerning growing at a rate above the industry average.
1. It can fail to take the opportunity to catapult itself ahead of competitors and let others do it. That company could be condemned to join the mediocre or obsolete businesses' category.
2. It could be so focused on the opportunity that it fails to develop the capacity needed to take it. Resulting in a poorly managed attempt at growth that costs the company financially, damages its reputation and hurts its past successes.
3. Thirdly, the organization can recognize the opportunity and also realize its need to prepare for it. This is the most desirable scenario.
The place to begin that preparation is, as always, with people. The organization's ability to manage is limited only by what its people know. The following are vital areas that require focused effort if the business is to maximize its potentials for accelerated growth.
– Create A Clear Vision: A company that is unable to get leaders, staff and stakeholders to agree on a future goal will not move decisively towards its objectives.
– Determine What It Takes: A SWOT analysis conducted about where the company is going rather than where it is. An understanding of what is required will uncover gaps in knowledge that might necessitate hiring new people and developing new competencies.
– Foster Collaboration Vs Competition: Results come fast when people are played against one another, but they are short-lived. Building a collaborative mindset takes time and involves more people, but it pays more over time.
– Develop A Culture of Proactive Action: Arm staff with the knowledge, confidence and tools to make decisions quickly and effectively. In the high-speed, high-stakes environment of accelerated growth, lengthy decision-making processes will harm the organization.
– Agile Communication: A culture of proactive action requires agility in data management and information sharing. Team members must have critical knowledge that will contribute to their work.
– Superior Stress Management: Individuals and teams that were succeeding in the past may begin to falter under pressure. Therefore, it is paramount that along with new challenges, there are improved methods for conflict resolution and helping individuals with difficulties.
The business graveyard is dotted with organizations that failed to make or manage their transition from average success to rapid business growth. Your business does not have to be one of them. The difference between success and failure lies in the insight of business leaders, not luck!
Continue the dialogue and contact us at info@acepointconsulting.com.
Click here to read our other articles on Leadership and Team Effectiveness.
Stay tuned for more insights.
Follow our company page.
Leverage the Power of Introverts on your Team
How to Maximize Team Performance for Business Success
Building Camaraderie and Managing Virtual Teams
How to Improve Employee Retention
How to be a confident leader and avoid the pitfalls
Copyright © 2018 AcePoint Consulting. All rights reserved.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
/*
 *  $Id: $
 */
/*
 *  Simple Programming Examples and References
 *  Copyright (C) 2007 David M. Syzdek <syzdek@gmail.com>
 *
 *  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 *  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 *  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
 *  (at your option) any later version.
 *
 *  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 *  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 *  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 *  GNU General Public License for more details.
 *
 *  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 *  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
 *  Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
 */
/*
 *  src/c/socket/socket_functions.c - socket functions
 */
#define _SPEAR_SRC_C_SOCKET_SOCKET_FUNCTIONS_C 1
#include "socket_functions.h"

/////////////////
//             //
//  Functions  //
//             //
/////////////////

/* creates a socket and binds to interface */
int * socket_bind(const char * host, const char * service, int socktype)
{
   /* declares local vars */
   int               s;		// stores socket number
   int               e;		// stores error code from getaddrinfo()
   int               opt;	// user to set socket options
   int             * ptr;	// used when reallocating memory
   int             * slist;	// array of socket handles
   int               slist_len;	// length of socket list
   size_t            len;	// used to calculate memory allocations
   struct addrinfo * r;
   struct addrinfo * res;
   struct addrinfo   hints;
   char              hbuff[NI_MAXHOST];
   char              sbuff[NI_MAXSERV];

   /* clears memory */
   memset(hbuff,  0, NI_MAXHOST);
   memset(sbuff,  0, NI_MAXSERV);
   memset(&hints, 0, sizeof(struct addrinfo));

   /* sets initial values */
   s                  = -1;
   slist              = NULL;
   slist_len          = 0;
   hints.ai_flags     = AI_PASSIVE|AI_ADDRCONFIG;
   hints.ai_socktype  = socktype;

   /* resolves host and port */
   if ((e = getaddrinfo(host, service, &hints, &res)) != 0)
   {
      fprintf(stderr, "getaddrinfo(): %s\n", gai_strerror(e));
      return(NULL);
   };

   /* loops through results */
   for(r = res; r; r = r->ai_next)
   {
      /* prints host information */
      getnameinfo(r->ai_addr, r->ai_addrlen, hbuff, NI_MAXHOST, sbuff,
                  NI_MAXSERV, NI_NUMERICHOST|NI_NUMERICSERV);
      printf("attempting to bind to %s %s...\n", hbuff, sbuff);

      /* creates socket */
      if ((s = socket(r->ai_family, r->ai_socktype, r->ai_protocol)) == -1)
      {
         perror("socket()");
         return(NULL);
      };

      /* sets socket options */
      opt = 1;
      setsockopt(s, SOL_SOCKET, SO_NOSIGPIPE, (void *)&opt, sizeof(int));
      opt = 1;
      setsockopt(s, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, (void *)&opt, sizeof(int));
      opt = 1;
      if (socktype == SOCK_STREAM)
         setsockopt(s, SOL_SOCKET, SO_KEEPALIVE, (void *)&opt, sizeof(int));

      /* binds to socket */
      if ((bind(s, r->ai_addr, r->ai_addrlen)) == -1)
      {
         perror("bind()");
         close(s);
         s = -1;
      };

      /* listens for connections */
      if (s != -1)
         if (listen(s, 5))
         {
            perror("listen()");
            close(s);
            s = -1;
         };

      /* allocates memory in slist for new socket */
      if (s != -1)
      {
         len = sizeof(int) * (slist_len + 2);
         if (!(ptr = (int *) realloc(slist, len)))
         {
            fprintf(stderr, "%s: out of virtual memory\n", PROGRAM_NAME);
            close(s);
            return(NULL);
         };
         slist            = ptr;
         slist[slist_len] = s;
         slist_len++;
         slist[slist_len] = -1;
      };
   };

   /* frees memory */
   freeaddrinfo(res);

   /* ends function */
   return(slist);
}

/* closes list of file descriptors */
void socket_close_slist(int * slist)
{
   int   i;
   if (!(slist))
      return;
   for(i = 0; slist[i] != -1; i++)
      close(slist[i]);
   free(slist);
   return;
}

/* creates a socket and connects to remote host */
int socket_connect(const char * host, const char * service, int socktype)
{
   /* declares local vars */
   int               s;
   int               e;
   int               opt;
   struct addrinfo * r;
   struct addrinfo * res;
   struct addrinfo   hints;
   char              hbuff[NI_MAXHOST];
   char              sbuff[NI_MAXSERV];

   /* clears memory */
   memset(hbuff,  0, NI_MAXHOST);
   memset(sbuff,  0, NI_MAXSERV);
   memset(&hints, 0, sizeof(struct addrinfo));

   /* sets initial values */
   s = -1;
   hints.ai_socktype = socktype;
#ifdef AI_ADDRCONFIG
   hints.ai_flags    = AI_ADDRCONFIG;
#endif

   /* resolves host and port */
   if ((e = getaddrinfo(host, service, &hints, &res)) != 0)
   {
      fprintf(stderr, "getaddrinfo(): %s\n", gai_strerror(e));
      return(-1);
   };

   /* loops through results */
   for(r = res; r; r = r->ai_next)
   {
      /* prints host information */
      getnameinfo(r->ai_addr, r->ai_addrlen, hbuff, NI_MAXHOST, sbuff,
                  NI_MAXSERV, NI_NUMERICHOST|NI_NUMERICSERV);
      printf("attempting to connect to %s %s...\n", hbuff, sbuff);

      /* creates socket */
      if ((s = socket(r->ai_family, r->ai_socktype, r->ai_protocol)) == -1)
      {
         perror("socket()");
         return(-1);
      };

      /*
       *  disables signal sigpipe
       *  Note:
       *     This prevents the application from terminating when a socket
       *     terminates unexpectedly and triggers an unhandled SIGPIPE.
       */
#ifdef SO_NOSIGPIPE
      opt = 1;
      if (setsockopt(s, SOL_SOCKET, SO_NOSIGPIPE, (void *)&opt, sizeof(int)))
      {
         perror("setsockopt()");
         close(s);
         return(-1);
      };
#endif

      /*
       *  enables TCP keep alives
       *  Note:
       *     This should be implemented in the application layer
       *     if possible whether the purpose is to tear down an idle
       *     connection or to maintain a connection which passes through
       *     a firewall.  For UDP connections, keepalives must be performed
       *     at the application layer.
       */
      if (socktype == SOCK_STREAM)
      {
         opt = 1;
         if (setsockopt(s, SOL_SOCKET, SO_KEEPALIVE, (void *)&opt, sizeof(int)))
         {
            perror("setsockopt()");
            close(s);
            return(-1);
         };
      };

      /* connects socket to remote host */
      if (!(connect(s, r->ai_addr, r->ai_addrlen)))
           break;

       perror("connect()");
       close(s);
       s = -1;
   };

   /* frees memory */
   freeaddrinfo(res);

   if (s == -1)
   {
      fprintf(stderr, "connection attempt failed\n");
      return(-1);
   };

   /* sets socket to non-blocking */
//   if ((fcntl(s, F_SETFL, O_NONBLOCK)) == -1)
//   {
//      perror("sfcntl()");
//      close(s);
//      return(-1);
//   };

   /* ends function */
   return(s);
}

/* counts sockets in list */
int socket_slist_len(int * slist)
{
   int i;
   if (!(slist))
      return(0);
   for(i = 0; slist[i] != -1; i++);
   return(i);
}

/* end of source file */