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Analysis: More U.S. shareholders call for independent chairmen
Boston (Reuters) – Welcome to the club, Jamie Dimon.
Embarrassed by a surprise $2 billion trading loss last week, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co faced heightened criticism at the bank’s annual meeting on Tuesday. That included 40 percent backing from shareholders for a resolution to strip Dimon of his chairmanship title, up from 34 percent in 2010.
With the spring U.S. annual meeting season at its midpoint, investors have voted 36 percent of their shares on average in favor of measures urging companies to appoint board chairmen who are independent from management, up from 33 percent last year and 28 percent in 2010, according to proxy advisory firm ISS.
More votes are scheduled on similar proposals this month, such as a measure on the ballot at oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp calling for an independent chair after current chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson, 60, leaves. Another calls for splitting those same two jobs at cable operator Comcast Corp now held by Brian Roberts, whose father, Ralph, co-founded the company.
Institutional investors “can see the turning point, when a split role will be the majority, not the oddity among corporations,” said Paul Hodgson, senior research associate at governance company GMI Ratings.
About 45 percent of Fortune 500 companies have divided the chairman and CEO roles between two individuals, GMI data show, up from roughly 35 percent five years ago. Even non-binding shareholder majorities are hard to ignore. Moody’s Corp named an independent chairman in April, citing an advisory vote urging it to do so in 2011.
While support to split the top roles is gaining, shareholder votes in favor of top executive pay are holding steady, even after a few high-profile rejections. Last month, Citigroup Inc shareholders delivered a surprise loss in an advisory vote to Chief Executive Vikram Pandit and his $15 million compensation package.
As of May 15, executive pay resolutions reached the overwhelming 90 percent support level at 74 percent of companies this year, up from 72 percent of companies last year, according to pay consulting firm Semler Brossy. At JPMorgan, 92 percent of votes cast backed the bank’s pay plan, including $23 million for Dimon, up from 73 percent last year.
Splitting the CEO and chairman roles should improve the process for determining pay properly, some large investors say.
Ariel Investments in Chicago voted in favor of measures to separate the chair and chief executive roles at several companies this year, though not at JPMorgan. In many cases an independent chair should help boards provide better oversight of pay and other management issues, Charles Bobrinskoy, research director at Ariel, said.
“We don’t want to have a say on pay,” he said. “We want a good process for a good board to determine compensation properly.”
Splitting the roles may improve internal reviews of executive pay, Timothy Hoyle, director of research for Haverford Investments of Radnor, Pennsylvania, said. The firm voted to cleave the roles at JPMorgan this week.
“An independent chair might instill some reality,” he said.
The lack of pay pressure and the new attention to chairman and CEO roles show investors getting down in the governance weeds rather than rebelling en masse, specialists say.
“It’s evolution versus revolution,” said Todd Sirras, Semler Brossy managing principal.
Shareholder activists and unions like the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees have also put a new emphasis on independent chair resolutions this year.
Changing voting patterns at major mutual funds, which used to march in lockstep with management, may be feeding the trend as well. Funds have been required to disclose their votes on proxy measures annually since 2004.
Last year American Funds, the second-largest manager of U.S. stock and bond mutual funds at the end of March, voted to support measures like requiring independent chairmen 67 percent of the time, up from 52 percent in 2010 and 39 percent in 2009, according to research firm Fund Votes Inc in Vancouver. Filings for 2012 are not yet available.
Several other big fund companies showed increasing support for the measures from 2010 to 2011, including BlackRock Inc and Fidelity Investments. All three fund companies declined to comment.
(Reporting by Ross Kerber; editing by Aaron Pressman and Prudence Crowther)
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How To Improve Public Relations Results with Social Media …
B2B marketers who use social media for public relations can spread their messages exponentially farther, and immediately monitor and respond to what?s being said about them.
While the formal practice of public relations has been around for over a century, in 1982 the Public Relations Society of America formally adopted a definition of public relations that remains accurate and accepted:
?Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.?
With social media, people now have one more platform from which to talk about companies and their products and services.? What?s different about social media, however, is its viral nature. When someone mentions your company in social media, what?s being said (accurately or not) can be more noticeable and spread very quickly.
In a Hubspot whitepaper on leveraging social media for public relations success, several benefits derived from social media are outlined:
Generate Media Coverage ? There are 3 primary ways that social media can boost your media relations efforts:
- Developing relationships. Social media (especially Twitter) enables you to interact directly with many journalists, bloggers and reporters.? By communicating with and helping these influencers, you can increase your company?s chances of being top-of-mind.
- Pitching.? Social media enables you to follow what the influencers have been covering, and occasionally, what stories they are developing. Armed with that additional background, you can pitch more relevant and helpful story ideas.
- Creating interesting content. Using social media, a B2B marketer can create interesting and even fun and entertaining content.? Publishing industry data and research that your company has fielded can be enormously effective.? This interesting content can be made available through social media channels such as a company blog and even a social media newsroom.
Social Media Monitoring & Crisis Communication ? Social media monitoring is now a requirement for any PR professional.? But beyond just monitoring the conversations, social media enables B2B companies to engage in the conversation and respond.? The greatest benefit to PR efforts, however, can be your ability to respond in a crisis communications situation by updating your publics early, often, and with transparency.
Awards & Speaking Engagements ? Winning awards is a type of third party validation and can also be a great recruiting tool. Social media can extend the announcement of the award winning.? Similarly, social media can help promote upcoming speaking engagements of your key employees to underscore you company?s thought leadership. Social media such as SlideShare, enable you to share the presentations afterward.
Customer Relations ? Your customers are one of your most important ?publics.? Increasingly, customers are using social media to reach you (and journalists are watching and listening).
Employee Relations ? Like it or not, a company?s employees double as PR representatives. Being transparent and facilitating good employee relations is critical to maintaining worker trust and morale.? Social media tools such as internal wikis and corporate instant messaging can help.
Click here to download a free eBook from Hubspot, ?How to Leverage Social Media for Public Relations Success.?
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China rejects US ruling in solar dumping case
BEIJING (AP) ? China‘s government on Friday rejected a U.S. antidumping ruling against its makers of solar power equipment and Chinese manufacturers warned proposed punitive tariffs might hurt efforts to promote clean energy.
The conflict has worsened U.S.-Chinese trade tensions. The two governments have pledged to cooperate in developing renewable energy but accuse each other of violating free-trade pledges by subsidizing their own manufacturers.
“The U.S. ruling is unfair, and the Chinese side expresses its extreme dissatisfaction,” said a Commerce Ministry spokesman, Shen Danyang, in a statement.
Shen warned the ruling might harm U.S.-Chinese cooperation in clean energy but gave no indication how Beijing might respond. Some American manufacturers that oppose the trade probe have warned China might retaliate against U.S. suppliers.
Thursday’s preliminary ruling by the Commerce Department said Chinese producers sold solar cells and panels below fair price and hurt American producers. If that is upheld, tariffs averaging 31 percent could be imposed on Chinese solar-panel imports.
Three major Chinese manufacturers ? Yingli Green Energy Holdings Ltd., Suntech Power Holdings Co. and Trina Solar Ltd. ? rejected accusations they were selling goods at improperly low prices.
Such duties “are not justified by fact,” Suntech’s chief commercial officer, Andrew Beebe, said in a statement.
China’s producers of solar cells and equipment grew to be among the world’s biggest over the past decade as they supplied demand from Germany, Spain and other markets that promoted solar power.
Foreign competitors complain Chinese manufacturers get improper government support in the form of low-cost access to land, bank loans and other resources. Beijing acknowledges giving research grants and tax breaks but says those are in line with its free-trade commitments and practices by other governments.
“Tariffs are disruptive and destructive for the entire solar industry,” Yingli’s chairman, Miao Liangsheng, said in a statement.
The Commerce Department launched its investigation in November following complaints by a group of U.S. producers led by Oregon-based SolarWorld Industries America Inc., a unit of Germany’s SolarWorld AG.
The complaints were amplified by attention surrounding the bankruptcy of solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC after the California-based company received a $528 million U.S. government loan. Solyndra cited Chinese competition as one of the reasons behind its failure.
“These duties are unwarranted and serve as an impediment to the broader adoption of solar energy in a time of rising fuel costs,” said Trina’s chief commercial officer, Mark Kingsley, in a statement.
The Chinese government responded by launching its own probe last November into whether U.S. government support for producers of wind, solar and other renewable energy technology is an improper trade barrier.
Chinese solar equipment manufacturers warned earlier that sanctions could result in a loss of American jobs because U.S. companies are both buyers of Chinese products and suppliers of materials. They said Chinese manufacturers spend some $2 billion a year to buy materials such as polysilicon from U.S. suppliers.
___
Online:
Suntech Power Holdings Ltd.: http://www.suntech-power.com
Yingli Green Energy Holding Co.: http://www.yinglisolar.com
Trina Solar Ltd.: http://www.trinasolar.com
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Facebook stock up slightly in public debut
In this image provided by Facebook, Facebook founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, center, applauds at the opening bell of the Nasdaq stock market, Friday, May 18, 2012, from Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. The social media company priced its IPO on Thursday at $38 per share, and beginning Friday regular investors will have a chance to buy shares. (AP Photo/Nasdaq via Facebook, Zef Nikolla)
In this image provided by Facebook, Facebook founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, center, applauds at the opening bell of the Nasdaq stock market, Friday, May 18, 2012, from Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. The social media company priced its IPO on Thursday at $38 per share, and beginning Friday regular investors will have a chance to buy shares. (AP Photo/Nasdaq via Facebook, Zef Nikolla)
A man stops to photograph Nasdaq in Times Square as Facebook has its IPO, Friday, May 18, 2012, in New York. The social media company priced its IPO on Thursday at $38 per share, and beginning Friday regular investors will have a chance to buy shares. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Matts and Maria Nedermam, tourists visiting from Sweden, view Nasdaq’s giant monitor as it shows a welcome message for Facebook before the company began trading on the Nasdaq stock market, Friday, May 18, 2012, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Facebook is trading up 8 percent Friday, as investors seek to put a dollar value on the company that turned online social networking into a global cultural phenomenon.
Earlier, the company’s 28-year-old CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, smiled as he rang the opening bell from Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Surrounded by cheering Facebook employees and wearing his signature hoodie, the 28-year-old pushed the button that signals the opening of the stock market in New York. The morning’s events followed an all-night “hackathon” at the company, where engineers stayed up coding software and conjuring up new ideas for Facebook and its 900 million users.
On Thursday, Facebook and the investment bankers arranging the IPO settled on a price of $38 per share. The company and its early investors raised $16 billion in the offering, which valued Facebook at $104 billion. That makes Facebook the most valuable U.S. company to ever go public.
Now, the stock market will assign a dollar value to Facebook that will rise and fall with investor whims. It will be subject to broad economic forces and held accountable for profit it earns ?or loses? from one quarter to the next.
But Facebook is one a rare companies whose IPO transcends Wall Street’s money lust. It is a cultural touchstone for the way technology reshapes our lives. Since its start as a scrappy network for college students, Facebook has come to define social networking by getting people around the world to share everything from photos of their pets to their deepest thoughts.
It has done so while becoming one of the few profitable Internet companies to go public recently. It had net income of $205 million in the first three months of 2012, on revenue of $1.06 billion. In all of 2011, it earned $1 billion, up from $606 million a year earlier. That’s a far cry from 2007, when it posted a net loss of $138 million and revenue of $153 million. The company makes most of its money from advertising. It also takes a cut from the money people spend on virtual items in Facebook games such as “FarmVille.”
Facebook’s public debut marks a new milestone in the history of the Internet. In 1995, Netscape Communications’ IPO gave people their first chance to invest in a company whose graphical Web browser made the Internet more engaging and easier to navigate. Its hotly anticipated IPO lit the fuse that ignited the dot-com boom. That explosion of entrepreneurial activity and investment culminated five years later in a devastating bust that obliterated the notion that the Internet had hatched a “new economy”.
It took Google Inc.’s IPO in 2004 to prove that an Internet company with a disruptive idea could be profitable. In the process, the Internet search leader is forcing other industries to adapt to a new order where people have come to expect to be able to find just about anything they want by entering a few words into a box on any device with an Internet connection.
Facebook’s IPO heralds a new phase of the Internet’s evolution. This social era makes connections among people as important as Google’s massive index of Web links. Still, the IPO will raise new pressures for Facebook to generate more revenue, perhaps by digging further into the trove of revealing information that people share on the network to sell even more targeted ads.
Facebook’s IPO almost certainly will enrich other up-and-coming entrepreneurs as Zuckerberg uses the company’s cash and stock to buy other startups in an effort to being in other talented engineers and promising technology. That’s what has been doing for years. Since it went public in 2004, Google has spent $10.2 billion buying nearly 200 other companies. Those figures don’t include Google’s still-pending $12.5 billion acquisition of cellphone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., which is still awaiting regulatory approval in China.
Zuckerberg’s biggest deal so far came when he agreed to buy Instagram, a maker of a popular mobile app for photos, for $1 billion. Because most of the deal is being paid for in stock, Instagram is already getting richer. Based on Facebook’s IPO price of $38 per share, Instagram is in line to receive nearly $1.2 billion.
Though Zuckerberg rang the Nasdaq opening bell from California, people outside the stock market in Times Square snapped photos of a big blue Facebook sign that lit up the building. Some of them used their smart phones to check in to the Nasdaq on Facebook. Frederick Nolde, who was visiting from Richmond, Va., said he bought 100 shares through the online brokerage eTrade.
He thinks the company is worth $100 billion. “I think Google is a good comparison and it’s worth $200 to 300 billion. The real question is how they do in mobile. If they can figure that out they’ll do well.”
___
AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco and Joe Pisani in New York contributed to this story.
Associated Press
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Using Twitter For Your Business's Customer Service Needs | Easy …
Twitter is pretty much the most popular social media website out there. It isn?t just for telling people about what you are doing right now, it also offers you a great way to stay in touch with your customers. It?s true; companies are using Twitter to serve their customer service needs more and more often. This trend isn?t really new; it has been growing at the same pace that the Internet has been becoming more social. So the question is, then, how does a person use Twitter for customer service? What all should you keep in mind to make the most out of it? We?ll teach you how to do this in this article.
If you?d like people to know that you offer customer service via Twitter, you need to show them. Let your presence be felt on a regular basis. Don?t just sign in to Twitter every now and then, be active. Your customers want you to be there no matter when they need you. If you are able to, get someone to monitor your Twitter account at all times. It?s important to view the money you spend maintaining your Twitter customer service line as an investment. Remember that what works well for one business situation with developing more FreebieJeebies may not work successfully with your business. How well you understand the people in your particular niche is critical, and it seems to us, based on observation, that lots of marketers have no clue about it. Understanding your market is perhaps one of the most important responsibilities you have toward your business. Naturally you want your campaigns to work the best they can, and that is perhaps the primary benefit. You need to be understood by your niche market, and that means you are the one who has to learn how to speak with them. Your readers will never get to a point where they will fulfill your most desired response if they cannot relate to it.
From time to time, you will receive off-putting remarks, no matter what sort of products you are selling on the Internet In spite of this, when you do receive the negative stuff, utilize Twitter to brazen out the negative PR you are receiving. You can make some awful circumstances better by bantering on Twitter. It will help you to make light of something that is going on. Getting negative feedback does not have to be so unpleasant; Interacting with your customers will provide you with a major advantage. It lets you recover the loyalty of your customers, just by interacting with them on Twitter. So it just has to do with utilizing social media in order to get the greatest results with customer service.
It?s a good idea to check into your direct messages each day. The reason for this is simple, a lot of people won?t bother to tweet. It might be the character limit that holds them back. Whatever be the case, you need to look into your direct messages on a regular basis. There are times when you get some valuable contact who got in touch with you. You should also do some checking to see if you have been mentioned any place else on Twitter. This is one of the many tips that you should remember if you want to find success through customers on Twitter. One of the most often asked question regarding make money with amazon is how the beginner to online business can realize the greatest benefits. The knowledgeable person can easily take things for granted, but people with limited experience will often struggle. If you are just entering the world of IM, then it is a great idea to network with experienced marketers so you can ask questions. What you are about to discover in the rest of this article will be very solid information but definitely not all you can find out on the subjects. The very best thing is to maintain an open mind, and look to see if there may be something you can extract and apply it in your business. Twitter may not be a full-fledged customer service channel, but regardless of that, you should use it. You generally want to use Twitter the same way you would email or any other method of communication. As long as people are confident that your customer service is helpful and efficient, you?ve accomplished a great deal. When people contact you for support, you want them to feel that they can count on you for a fast solution. You should offer other alternatives as well as Twitter, of course. Set up a variety of ways that people can contact you when they need customer service. Twitter is so popular today that it makes good sense to include it as part of your customer support. Do not underestimate the power that List Profit Sniper holds for a web business, and it will be smart to explore that on your own.
But do keep in mind that how you execute what you learn will have more of an impact one way or the other. Deciding to pursue serious growth may lead you to enter into different areas of advertising, and that can really boost your marketing numbers. There are tons of methods on the net that we bet you have never thought about, but approach with some common sense, first. You can apply it to a small segment of an existing campaign and observe the results.
You will have to remember that your business must be guarded, and you are the only person who will do that in any serious manner. Actually, the sooner you embrace that advice the better off you will be.
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The Rhine is five million years older than first thought: Age of the river corrected based on fossils
ScienceDaily (May 16, 2012) ? Scientists at the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoecology (HEP) at the University of Tubingen and the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt have examined the age of the Rhine based on fossils. They have discovered that the river is five million years older than previously believed.
The accompanying study is published May 16 in the journal PLoS ONE.
The Rhine is not an unknown entity in Europe — on its journey to the North Sea it flows through Switzerland, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands. In addition, the catchment area of the river, which is around 1,233 kilometres long, also encompasses almost all of Luxembourg as well as small parts of Belgium, France, Lichtenstein and Italy. Yet as famous as the river may be, its original age is still disputed.
“Up to now it has been assumed that the Proto-Rhine is around ten million years old,” explains Prof. Madelaine B?hme, leading author of the study and head of the HEP working group “Terrestrial Palaeoclimatology,” and continues: “But based on our examination of fossils from a site near Sprendlingen we now believe that the river is at least five million years older.”
The mammalian fossils in the Sprendlingen and Eppelsheim areas have been considered for 200 years by vertebrate palaeontologists to be the yardstick for the Neogene — the time span between 23 million and around 2.5 million years ago. The sites became famous around the world for the first ever discovery of a fossil ape (1822) and the first scientific descriptions of 19 large mammal species in the early 19th century.
The allocation of a time period to the Deinotherium sands that were found there — which contain numerous other fossils along with the teeth and bones that provided the name of the proboscidean — has often been the subject of scientific debate.
“For this reason we examined a new sample with over 300 mammalian fossils, leaves and fossilized wood. In the process we found the teeth and bones of different deer species that lived in Central Europe at the beginning of the Middle Miocene — in other words, in the period between 14 and 16 million years ago, ” explains B?hme. “The results of the examinations of fossil plant residues that were found above and below the mammalian sites reinforce our conclusions.”
The results have immediate consequences for the understanding of the development of the Main Basin and the Upper Rhine dig in geological history. Because the findings were made in the oldest known deposits of the Rhine, it must also be at least five million years older.
The conclusions of the Senckenberg scientists have an impact upon the entire chronological categorization of the flora and fauna of the Middle to Late Miocene — this, despite the fact that until now the sites near Sprendlingen had been a timing determinant for palaeontologists only.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, via AlphaGalileo.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Madelaine B?hme, Manuela Aiglstorfer, Dieter Uhl, Ottmar Kullmer. The Antiquity of the Rhine River: Stratigraphic Coverage of the Dinotherien-sande (Eppelsheim Formation) of the Mainz Basin (Germany). PLoS ONE, 2012 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0036817
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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How To Set Up An Advertising Group To Sell, Sell, Sell! Business …
There are several fundamental problems facing business start-ups and chief among them is raising financial capital to support operations, production, marketing and sales. Obviously, sales are the most important activity for a business but is often at this point, with a lack of sales, when the reality sets in that without money you cannot advertise in any meaningful way. Even something as simple as classified advertising requires a meaningful advertising budget in order to test ads, fail, adjust, test, fail, adjust until you find the winning ad. When considering other advertising like newspaper ads, direct mail, radio and TV spots, advertising budgets morph into something outside the reach of most under-capitalized business owners. Even Internet advertising can be cost prohibitive, especially when you consider the ?cost- per-click? and the low conversion ratios. You can have the best product or service in the world and if you cannot afford to advertise it, you won?t sell it. The exception to this statement is if you have an outside sales force, which, by its very nature, is another expensive and cost prohibitive option for a start-up. Obviously, there are exceptions to every rule but for most start-ups, these are the realities.
So what can you do to raise money to advertise your wares on and off line? One answer is to form an advertising group. One of the best ways to from an advertising group is to put together a LLC (Limited Liability Corporation) which has the benefits of a corporation and approaches the simplicity of a sole proprietorship or partnership. The purpose of the LLC is to recruit investors to invest into the group for the sole purpose of advertising the product or service. Among the benefits of having such an advertising group is the fact that investment risk is shared with no single investor carrying the burden alone. Additionally, the advertising group can be active investors meaning; that the group makes advertising decision as a mastermind group, sharing the risk and rewards of decision making thereby removing the burden from you to call all the shots. It is a way for you to arrange a board of interested directors who have a direct responsibility for the success of the group. It gets the investors involved in the advertising and selling aspect of a product or service while keeping them separated from the original business. For example, you could incorporate your start-up business and hold all the stock and, incorporate the advertising group and give away 90 percent of the stock (retain 10% for yourself) in exchange for investment capital. In this way, your core business is specifically focused on operations and order fulfillment while the advertising group specializes on advertising and selling what your core business provides. You can keep 100% ownership and control of your core business and share in the ownership of the advertising group. If the advertising group fails, your core business remains intact. This way, you can set up another advertising group and try again with another group of investors. By having the investors actively engaged in the advertising decisions of the group, their success or failure is ultimately their responsibility.
You will need the services of an attorney to make sure you are in legal and financial compliance with city. State and federal authorities including the FTC and SEC laws regarding stock sales. One way to overcome the cost of legal and accounting services is to offer the attorney and accountant 5 or 10% ownership in the advertising group in exchange for services (a performance agreement based on results). These two key players, if selected correctly, can help recruit investors and lend credibility to the advertising group start-up.
If you would like to learn more about advertising and selling on limited budget, visit our site and go to the product menu, click on business kits and look for the business kit called ?Advertising Works?. It is jammed packed with critical information to help you set up a small business advertising and marketing machine to sell, sell, sell! While you are there, check out our Smartie business E-books too!
To your unwavering success!
Copyright ? 2006 James W. Hart, IV All Rights reserved
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Buffett snags 10 million shares of GM stock
By Paul A. Eisenstein, The Detroit Bureau
Analysts and investors alike will be watching the ticker closely this week to see how the market responds to word that the ?Oracle of Omaha? has grabbed 10 million shares of General Motors (GM) stock.
According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Warren Buffett?s investment firm Berkshire Hathaway will spend $256.6 million for the stock, a nearly 20 percent?premium over their value of $214.2 million when trading on the New York Stock Exchange wrapped up on Tuesday.
Shares of GM soared early on Wednesday before settling. GM closed the trading day up 0.50 points, or 2.33 percent.
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But that?s still well behind the $330 million Buffett would have invested during GM?s November 2010 IPO. And the question is whether this move signals the possible turnaround in GM shares which have been lagging like most automotive stocks in recent months.
The maker has staged a modest recovery from its $19-a-share 52-week-low, and GM stock surged by $1 as soon as the market opened Wednesday morning before settling back slightly.
?I think he is spot-on,? wrote David Kudla, CEO of Mainstay Capital Management, which manages the portfolios for many General Motors retirees.? Kudla emphasized that unlike some other high-profile investors Buffett focuses on the longer-term by buying into companies he sees as selling below their value.
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GM?s current slump comes in sharp contrast to the optimism its IPO was greeted with, many analysts subsequently forecasting its shares could surge as high as $50 or more.? But the maker ? like most of its competitors ? has been hit a variety of headwinds, including an uncertain U.S. economy and the European debt crisis.
That, in turn, has resulted in a slump of the Continental car market ? worsening GM?s own slide in the European market.? The maker had hoped to claw back into the black in 2011 but instead reported a sharp loss which triggered a recent management shake-up.? It is expected to announce the latest in a series of turnaround plans in the coming months.
On the positive side, GM posted an all-time record profit of $7.6 billion. And while European losses hurt its first-quarter performance ? a $1 billion net profit ? earnings from the still-critical North American market shot to $1.7 billion before taxes.
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Specifically why Berkshire Hathaway has decided to buy GM stock now is something the investment firm won?t disclose, though some analysts have become increasingly bullish about the industry overall ? and the domestics in particular ? as U.S. car sales continue to outperform the overall economy.
It?s by no means Buffett?s first automotive investment.? He currently holds a roughly 10% stake in BYD, a Chinese automaker focused on battery-based powertrains.? Short for Build Your Dreams, the firm is also one of the world?s largest providers of cellphone and laptop computer batteries.
Buffett himself drives a Cadillac DTS, one of relatively few luxuries for a man who still lives in the same Omaha home he has owned for over half a century.
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SkyMall Product Reviews: Mega Mini Spy Camera Pro
Customer Review: 
By Benny Boy from Arkansas
Level with me. Is this thing going to come out on its own, or do I have to see a doctor? Really eager to view these colon vids to make sure I’m cancer free.
Age: 46-50
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Customer Review:
By Justice Jeff from Ocean Beach, CA
How does this stand up to steam and moist environments? I have a feeling my cleaning lady is stealing from me, so I want to rig up a few of these in the shower and toilets in hopes of catching her in the act of stealing. Would like to set up multiple angles to get every possible view of the crime.
Age: 41-45
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Customer Review:
By Big Head Dave
Great camera, great video quality, excellent butt fitting. Very little stretching getting it in, although I recommend you attach a string of some kind to help pull it out. Also recommend putting it in some kind of transparent bag.
Age: 36-40
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Customer Review:
By steve musclegrave
pros: small, discrete. great for capturing those intimate moments with a women you hope to one day establish a friendship with or even just say hi to when the time is right.
cons: could be smaller, have tighter zoom capacity…
Age: 31-35
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Customer Review:
By jollyman35 from Bullion Creek, KY
GOT THIS AS A GIFT. DID NOT KNOW WHAT THE HECK TO DO WITH IT, BUT IT WAS SMALL SO I FIGURED WHY NOT? THREE DOCTOR’S VISITS LATER AND IT’S FINALLY OUT AND I’VE GOT SOME TERRIFIC VIDEO THAT NOBODY IN THE FAMILY WANTS TO SEE. THE DOCTOR SAID THE VIDEO QUALITY WAS FANTASTIC. LOTS OF PIXELS AND GOOD ONES TOO, HE SAYS.
Age: 66-70
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Customer Review:
By Judge Dad from Scranton, PA
Works like a charm! Have accrued over 80 hours of video of a certain family dog dragging his buttocks on the carpet. Will be presenting this evidence in a kangaroo court in our living room. Open and shut case, family. A slam dunk for sure. This dog is guilty and going to doggy prison.
Age: 41-45
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Customer Review:
By Jake from Terre Haute, IN
Got it out of my butt all right but it didn’t work after that. Couldn’t get it replaced because I “voided the warranty.” I voided your camera from my butt, not the warranty, idiots.
So stupid.
Age: 26-30
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Customer Review:
By vidguy
Is this supposed to come with footage already on the camera? Mine had a couple hours of footage of a man trying to install the camera someplace really dark and he kept dropping it and getting really mad and calling himself a “stupid, gross baby” and grunting a lot and then a lady came in and started yelling at him and saying he’s breaking her heart and he started yelling back and then a dog started barking and the audio got really distorted. Is that just a demo like when you press “demo” on a keyboard and it starts playing Wake Me Up Before You GO GO by Wham!??
Anyway it seems to be a good camera. Small, compact and aside from the audio the video quality from the demo movie is mostly good, though the lighting is bad.
Age: 26-30
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Customer Review:
By Carlos from San Pablo, CA
It’s a pretty good camera. I’ve been using these one make sure my neighbor isn’t up to any crime business. I have over six hours of footage of his wife hosing him off and cutting his hair in their backyard. I think he got sprayed by a skunk or maybe the wife just runs a really tight ship. Not sure what to do with this footage, but at least I know he’s not a criminal and that was worth the price.
Age: 36-40
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Customer Review:
By SkyDoc, MD
As a I doctor I strongly discourage using this camera for autocolonoscopic activities. The plastic casing is not waterproof and the sensitive nature of the electronics will make it difficult to clean and sterilize after retrieving from your rectal cavity. Hopefully SkyMall will soon offer a more practical solution for home colonoscopy hobbyists.
Age: 51-55
- Josh “Livestock” Boruff
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