Month: December 2011

Scenes from a Business Lunch, or the Obnoxious Rudeness of Business Owners


Restaurant-TableSpeaking of lunches (and I swear this is my last holiday post of the year)…

Because there are so many corporate holiday events in December, many business people from all over the country and overseas come to New York City during the month.  Customers, suppliers, vendors, associates, partners, and other relations visit their customers, clients, etc.  So, on top of the parties, you've got lunches with out-of-towners. This is a perfect opportunity to observe the business-owners' behavior in a "casual" group setting (as opposed to conference rooms and other natural habitats).

For many visitors this is also a good occasion for combining business and pleasure (after all, NYC is still #6 most favored tourist city in the world and #1 nation-wide) and quite a few bring their spouses along.  Some are actually in business with their spouses.

At the most recent lunch outing of this kind my guests were a manufacturing business owner by himself, another business owner with a wife, an alpha-female head of a consulting group, and a husband and wife attorneys sharing a corporate legal practice. Fun bunch!  Don't worry kids, it's only going to get worse!

The manufacturer asked for a coke and downed it really fast; then had it refilled several times throughout the meal.  This, naturally, resulted in a fast accumulation of a lot of gas in his stomach, which he unceremoniously belched out every 10 minutes, or so.  It was obviously a habitual occurrence, because he did not even bother to apologize.  It's amazing, how we learned to hide our emotions in "business" situations – everyone pretended not to notice it, even though once in a while one could catch a hint of a smirk or disgust (depending on the personality) playing on the lips of other guests.

[Side note: This reminds me of another experience in my arsenal of wonderful memories.  Early in my career I worked for a company, whose owner, in my mind, will forever carry a title of The Farting Boss.  He was middle-aged, but had a younger second wife and wanted to loose weight by drinking glass after glass of Slim Fast.  This made him very gassy.  The man mastered the skill of silent farting, but the smell was literally unbearable.  Imagine my situation – we sat in the same room.  Good times!]

The lady consultant first tried her sales pitch on every guest around the table, but quickly lost her enthusiasm, when she realized that nobody is interested in her services, except for me.  Since my company already had a contract with her, she did not see a reason to waste anymore time on us and turned her attention to the Blackberry, answering emails between bites and white-wine sips.

The married businessman first attacked his wife in a very loud whisper (it could be heard even at the neighboring tables) for wearing shoes with heels.  This apparently slowed down his purposefully brisk gait that went well, I am sure, with his aggressive mannerisms.  After the woman's eyes welled up with tears he abandoned her to fight it back on her own and observed the rest of the battlefield in front of him.  Dismissing the burping guy and all females as inferior creatures, he concentrated his self-affirmation efforts on the attorney sitting across the table from him.

They went at each other like two roosters in a Filipino cockpit.  "Have you read this?"  "Do you know that guy?"  "I bought Apple at $25 and just sold it at $375." "I am keeping mine – it will be $500 a share in a year."  "I closed that famous private equity deal this year." "I brought this much venture capital to my business."  "I am opening new factory in China."  "We have a law office in Hong Kong!"

God!  I contemplated the scene thinking, "The things we must tolerate to earn a living!"    

CFO Folklore: An Insult of the Month


-1After a long period of solicitation, due diligence, term sheet amendments, and credit agreement negotiations, a company finally closed a new multi-million dollar credit line with a major national bank. Now, it's time to build working relationships with different departments: the CFO is busy establishing communication channels with the treasury services, trade finance, foreign exchange, collateral control, and so on, and so forth. There are conference calls, meetings, lunches.

This is an introductory period for both sides – a short lull between the stormy deal-making and the times of daily grind that lie ahead. There is not much business yet to discuss, so the conversations, especially during lunches, turn to probing each other's backgrounds and chatting about general topics.

During one such first-meet lunch with yet another banker, the CFO, a person of broad interests, talks about this and that, displaying familiarity with various subjects.

Banker (in a very friendly, non-offensive, even appreciative tone): You know a little about everything, don't you?

CFO (waiting for the second part of the expression, but none is coming; so she takes offence): Well, that would make me very superficial, even shallow. I assure you that there are a few areas of knowledge within and outside my professional scope, in which I can claim in-depth expertise.

They look at each other silently for a moment than move onto a discussion of the bank's operational features, both hiding their own grudges.

The Frustrated CFO's situational analysis:

My personal experience of dealing with American bankers throughout my entire career is that the majority of them are not overly bright. I assure you that I am not saying this out of disrespect – it's just a fact of life. The European banking is altogether a different matter. Overseas, the banks are smaller and the profession itself is still considered to be a prestigious occupation, even if you don't deal with investments and make million-dollar bonuses. Some of the European bankers I know graduated at the top of their classes and were recruited right out of the business schools. Ours – they are mostly average.

That's why I think that at the crucial moment of a split-second decision, the CFO went the wrong way. These mental "forks in the road" present themselves in our minds all day long. Sometimes we make right decisions, and sometimes (most of the times, for some) we don't. Looking at the situation from the outside, I gather that the banker did not mean to be brash. She was just limited. Most likely she only remembered the first part of the frequently paraphrased and transformed saying – know a little about everything and a lot about something, and used it, inappropriately, to complement the CFO's erudition. You know, it's like one of those bushisms, "Fool me once – shame on you, fool me – you can't get fooled again." You cannot take that kind of stuff seriously.

Quote of the Week: Double Jeopardy!


Images-1Contemporary Political Terminology for a $1000, please, Alex.

– A hippie with the trust-fund background.

 – What is

Version 1:    "a trustafarian?"

"MI-5" season 8, episode 3, written by Christian Spurrier and Sean Reilly.

Version 2 (still acceptable):    "an occupier of Zuccotti Park Avenue?"

                                                                                                            H.M.


Apple’s iAd Division Celebrates Christmas


Get-attachmentDecember is still with us and so are the corporate X-mas parties. The holiday cheer is inescapable for the dogged blogger like me.

Did you know that large public corporations, with their in-house event planners working schedules way in advance, always manage to have their parties as close to Christmas Day as possible? I guess it signifies how "family-like" those organizations are.

Apple's latest branching out child, the iAd division, held its party just six days before Christmas – on Monday, December 19th. Constructed out of the body parts of a mobile advertising start-up Quattro Wireless, acquired by the maker of iPhones and iPads in 2010, iAd was not moved to Apple Campus in Cupertino, CA. Instead, it stayed in the advertising capital of the world – New York City, albeit swapping the original small office in SoHo for a 45,000 square-foot expanse on Fifth Avenue at Union Square.

Everything needs to project an intended image! And so, they celebrated the traditional combination of year-end holidays in a semi-trendy restaurant in Chelsey, which is themed to alleviate nostalgic pangs of transplants from more humble regions of the US, while entertaining other patrons with a taste of Americana not found on the streets of Manhattan.

The spirit-lifting intent, customarily reserved for such parties, acquired a somewhat militant hue as iAd's execs came to the microphone, each with his own discourse on the same topic: "They all want to see us fail! But we will show them! We'll distroy them all!" Underneath all that bravado, however, there were unmistakable notes of fear. It's understandable, of course. iAd is locked in severe competition with Google for the $630 million market of ads streaming through smart phones directly into the sensory system of general public, incapable of ungluing itself from the beloved devices. The things are not going too well, though.

Apple first lost the edge when it couldn't outbid Google in acquisition of AdMob and had to settle for Quattro Wireless as a less desirable second choice. Advertisers have already rejected the original requirement of $1 million minimum commitment, which now has been slashed by more than 50%. And October departure of Quattro Wireless's founder Andy Miller, who originally accepted an Apple's VP position to lead the iAd team, only intensified the apprehension. This is public-company world – everything is about perception. The execs know their plight: today you are a big shot, but if you don't perform, you are out.

Booze and abusive behavior are traditional fear-drowning remedies for insecure males. The former was thoughtfully accommodated by the party organizers via the open-bar arrangement. Most attendees took advantage of the limitless supply; some with an enthusiasm of newborn calves, who need to be taken away from the udder lest they drink themselves to death. There was this one high-echelon specimen (let's call him The Boss's Boss) who was especially determined to stupefy himself, knocking down one gin after another. As he reached a certain condition, the desire to abuse could not be contained.

One of the waitresses serving the party was a remarkably attractive young woman (let's call her The Striking Girl). She had that star quality about her that causes double takes; something Nora Ephron once described as magnetism that makes a man across the room go, "Get me that!" An obvious target for a drunken bully.

He started by shoving a decorative tree onto her as she was passing. "I am pushing bush on bush," he sneered to other men around him. The Striking Girl didn't say anything – he was a customer. She remained poised and diligently went about her job.

You see, the thing about the hospitality industry in New York City is that a significant portion of waiting, bar-tending, catering, etc. staff consists of struggling writers, artists, actors, musicians – the creative hopefuls. Service jobs are usually divided into shifts and one can combine them into a flexible schedule that leaves time to attend to the true calling. The Striking Girl, as it turned out, happened to be an aspiring writer and a filmmaker, with her first short recently accepted to one of the New York's indie festivals. It explained her composure: she prepares herself to dealing with Hollywood and getting her ego bruised on daily basis.

So, she continued being friendly and pleasant to other attendees. When someone spoke with a Russian accent, she mentioned that she was born in St. Petersburg and was brought to New York as a baby by her political-refugee parents. The Boss's Boss, now never far away from her, heard that. "I have a friend," he said, "he just loves banging Russian pussy."

Next time he caught her in the tiny space of the service station. "Did you come to apologize?" she asked calmly. He thrust his drunken mug into her fragile cheek and responded with,"There is no need for apologies. It's that St. Petersburg love, baby."

Hey, I am a middle-aged broad. I know only too well that chivalry is dead, buried, its corpse rotted into dust long time ago. Still, it's shocking that not a single so-called "man" felt an urge to speak up on behalf of the young lady.

Is this the type of culture Apple Inc. cultivates? Of abusively unrestrained bosses and silent yes-men?

I wonder, how the parents of the Striking Girl felt, when they learned of this incident? Is this the type of democracy and liberty we offer here, in the United States of America, now? Any corporate honcho is free to behave like a dirty animal, while everyone else acts as if their mouths taped shut?

By the way, did you know that corporate execs in public companies get stocks as part of their bonuses? Well, I've sold my Apple stock after that party. The thought that my holding on to them may contribute to the further rise of share prices and one day make the Boss's Boss richer made me sick.

“CFO Techniques” Has Been Released Today


Guzik coverAvailable on Amazon

From the editorial note:

"CFO Techniques: A Hands-on Guide to Keeping Your Business Solvent and Successful is a comprehensive and instructive working manual for multitasking chief financial officers and controllers working in the fast-paced commercial environment. Every senior financial professional with an ever-broadening span of control will benefit from this complete outline of the core activities—with specific descriptions of individual tasks—comprising the daily agenda of a successful CFO or controller. It covers everything from traditional responsibilities like budgeting and financial reporting, to more innovative tasks like performance analytics and business strategy development.

While emphasizing specific guidelines on what it takes to excel as a company’s head of finance, the book refrains from overwhelming dryness by using cultural references, real-life examples, and a casual tone. With its bite-sized, easy-to-read chapters, CFO Techniques serves as both an invaluable desktop reference handbook and a good bedtime read. Whether you need a quick recommendation on treasury procedures, adhering to GAAP, keeping funds safe from embezzlers, or advice on dealing with the CEO, you will find the answers in this book."