Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth

An Convenient Truth sounds very interesting. Lets see when i get to see it.

The Wizard in Woz

A very wonderfull Lunch with FT with Steve Wozniak:
He was - indeed, still is - the primal computer nerd, a bearded whizz who rode a boyhood love of electronics to spectacular early successes of the computer industry. The Apple II, a machine he designed single-handedly in 1976, is reckoned by many to be one of the most impressive engineering feats of recent decades, a machine that laid the blueprint for the desktop and laptop machines that have become central to modern life. It turned him and Jobs into stars and multimillionaires, and launched the personal computer revolution almost overnight.

For Wozniak himself, nothing else has ever come close to that early glimpse of engineering perfection. While Jobs later returned to Apple and launched a second act, Wozniak’s later efforts - a company that built unified remote-control devices for the living room, and one that tried to create wireless electronic tags that people could use to keep track of pets or personal items - fizzled.

He professes satisfaction from the years spent as a concert promoter, philanthropist and (for eight years) teaching 10-year-olds, yet still clearly hankers for a place back at the centre of the personal-computing revolution he helped launch.

So what does Steve Jobs, four years younger and at high school when the two first met, make of Wozniak’s rendition of this slice of Valley history? “From what I understand, he read it and thought it made him look like an asshole,” says Wozniak.

I can see Jobs’ point. Wozniak’s book, iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon, tells the story of how, after those sleepless nights wiring up Breakout - one of the first hit video games - Jobs, the salesman, gave him half of the $700 he said Atari had paid for the work. Only it turns out Atari actually paid several thousand dollars, and he claims Jobs had short-changed his friend.

Deutsche

Saw a very nice bit on Deutsche on Bloomberg:

A decade after Germany's largest bank set out to reinvent itself as a Wall Street-styled securities firm, only New York- based Goldman earns more money from trading stocks, bonds, currencies and derivatives. And, there's little prospect that the gap between them will narrow anytime soon because Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank eludes the risk-taking that characterizes Goldman.

While Goldman's sales and trading revenue almost doubled to $12.9 billion in the first half on big bets in the oil and stock markets, No. 2 Deutsche Bank could only manage a 38 percent increase to $9.7 billion during the same period with a trading strategy that's deliberately risk-averse.

To make the most of trading opportunities for themselves and clients, firms have increased their so-called value at risk, a measure of how much they could lose in a day if the markets turned against them. While Goldman's value at risk was 40 percent higher in the second quarter than at the end of last year, Deutsche Bank's risk was almost unchanged, company filings show. Value at risk is calculated differently at different banks.

``We have made a strategic decision to pursue a client- driven approach to sales and trading, which has produced consistently strong returns for our shareholders in a wide variety of market conditions,'' said Deutsche Bank spokeswoman Rohini Pragasam. ``We believe we have the appropriate product suite, revenue mix and risk-management capabilities to continue generating superior performance for our clients and shareholders.''

Profit Per Employee

Deutsche Bank has outpaced its European competitors, including UBS, Societe Generale SA and Credit Suisse Group, in sales and trading. The company last year leapfrogged UBS, Europe's largest bank, and New York-based Citigroup, the biggest U.S. bank.

``The European investment banks still don't have the strength in trading that you see at U.S. firms, where risk-taking and capital commitment has been a part of their capital markets business for decades,'' said Bruce Weber, a professor at the London Business School. ``European capital markets have been dominated by bank lending and debt instruments.''

Deutsche Bank's profit per employee in investment banking rose at an annual rate of about 28 percent during the past five years to 313,531 euros in 2005, said Simon Maughan, an analyst at Blue Oak Capital Ltd. in London. The closest competitor was Paris-based Societe Generale, France's No. 3 bank by assets, with 15 percent growth. UBS's profit per employee in investment banking fell 4 percent a year and earnings at Zurich-based Credit Suisse, Switzerland's second-largest bank, declined 20 percent. Goldman doesn't disclose comparable results.




Deutsche Bank's first-half revenue from equities was $3 billion, far behind the $4.8 billion reported by Goldman, as well as Zurich-based UBS and New York-based Merrill Lynch & Co. and Morgan Stanley. In oil and energy trading where Goldman had estimated revenue of $1.5 billion last year, Deutsche Bank hardly trades a barrel.

In investment banking, Deutsche Bank is a laggard compared with Goldman, which uses its perennial No. 1 position in providing mergers advice and underwriting stock sales to win trading clients. Deutsche Bank is this year's ninth-ranked takeover adviser, and eighth in arranging share sales, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The German company is the third- ranked underwriter of international bond offerings, after placing first last year.