A little piece about politics today. This is a fun election coming up, because it’s going to be close and brutal. The Super PACs are going to chew up both sides and leave them for dead. Politics ain’t beanbag. The Presidential race is what I am wrestling with. I voted for Obama in 2008 because I wanted to see a black President in my lifetime and because McCain, who I preferred as a candidate, was stupid and desperate enough to pick Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Today, I am undecided. Obama’s record is a mixed bag, for sure.…
Author: Lloyd Graff
Noah and I had the opportunity to interview the Prince of Pipes, Piotr Galitzine, last week at the American offices of TMK IPSCO, a Russian owned American company with 11 (soon 12) plants in North America. Galitzine, a Prince who is a direct descendant of the Russian czars, was friendly and expansive as he gave us an insider’s view of the energy business where three quarters of IPSCO’s orders come from. Piotr wore the pinched collar shirt of a European nobleman, but talked like an American CEO, with a little bit of St. Petersburg in his voice. His father ended…
The world of auctions has always intrigued me, so when Roger Meyers alerted me to the coinciding events last week of Liquidity Services buying GoIndustry DoveBid, and Ritchie Bros. purchasing AssetNation I wanted to check it out. The buyout of Go was the most interesting because I am familiar with its history. Ross and Kirk Dove started DoveBid in 1999, though they had been in the dog eat dog auction business in the Bay area for many years. They saw the magnificent opportunity to roll up the fragmented business dominated by aggressive but small family businesses in America and Europe.…
If it’s a machine shop, the answer has typically been, “a business is worth the value of its physical assets, plus receivables less payables.” But the dynamic appears to be changing as the demand for American produced goods increases. I see companies paying for goodwill, but even more for the fluid organization of skills visible in seasoned viable businesses. Customers are transferable if the manufacturing skills can be proven and maintained. When new operators come in and fire everybody and then try to hire people back for less money, they are courting disaster. Even if the judgment they make is…
My 50th High School Reunion of the U-High class of 1962 is coming up at the end of May, but it really has already been happening over the last several months on the Web. A class of 100, which has dwindled to 80 with deaths and disappearances, has magically been brought together on the Internet with people sharing their stories, sometimes with amazing candor and sensitivity, like they never did in high school. Yesterday, the group received the awful news that the wife of a classmate had died of a heart attack over the weekend. The heartfelt condolences have been…
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers is involved in two significant high-profile strikes this week – at Caterpillar in Joliet, Illinois, and Hawker-Beechcraft in Wichita, Kansas. The situations are quite different, with Cat making record profits and Hawker on the cusp of bankruptcy with its finances controlled by a cadre of Hedge Funds – but the workers feel they are being abused in both places. Cat is asking for a 6-year wage freeze for the striking workers, who do not comprise a majority of the Joliet workforce. Caterpillar can keep the plant going without the striking workers. The…
May 1 is decision day for American colleges on the million applications from aspiring freshman. A lot of the seats that used to be occupied by Jimmy from Janesville and Susie from Springfield will be taken by Sing-Sung from Shanghai. Higher education in the United States is in a secular growth pattern despite skyrocketing tuitions because foreign students must pay full boat for an American college education. Their parents see it as the surest path to riches and respect in the world economy. U.S. parents may be doubting the value of a four-year university and its accompanying debt load, but…
The negativists see 8% unemployment, home foreclosures, Spain in free-fall, a Socialist winning in France, an Obama second term, and $4 gasoline. Plenty to moan about, but U.S. machining companies see an economic honey pot. Why? Autos (not so much pickups) are still selling despite gas prices. This indicates that car purchases are more related to economic optimism than the price of gas. Why do we have $4 gas? It is not lack of supply that hurts, because we have a glut of oil in North America. It just isn’t in the right place at the moment. The East Coast…
There has been a lot of hand wringing in the press about Facebook’s deal to buy the Bay Area startup Instagram for $1 billion, almost what the New York Times Company is valued at. Mark Zuckerberg, founder and still principal owner of Facebook, negotiated the deal with Kevin Systrom of Instagram, which has 13 employees and zero revenue. People are sniping at Zuckerberg because he did the deal over a weekend without informing his Board of Directors. But in the fast moving world of social media he saw a strategic threat to his $100 billion dollar enterprise, because his users wanted to…
The education of my son Noah in the used machinery business has been progressing for nine months. This is a report from his boss, which is complicated because he is also his father. Next week you’ll hear from Noah about his view of the process. To an outsider, buying and selling used machinery may seem simple: buy low, sell high. The reality is that it is one of the most demanding intellectual challenges I have ever encountered. Valuing dirty, broken, flawed, obsolete iron and convincing a potential buyer they are getting fair value is so difficult. The iron is generally an…