So.cl, pronounced "social", is an experimental research project, developed by Microsoft's FUSE Labs, focused on exploring the possibilities of social search for the purpose of learning.
So.cl combines social networking and search, to help people find and share interesting web pages in the way students do when they work together. To encourage interaction and collaboration, So.cl provides rich media sharing, and real time sharing of videos via "video parties."
"We expect students to continue using products such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other existing social networks, as well as Bing, Google and other search tools," said Microsoft in its FAQ section, adding, "We hope to encourage students to reimagine how our everyday communication and learning tools can be improved, by researching, learning and sharing in their everyday lives."
By default, searches in So.cl are shared publicly. Your searches on So.cl are viewable by other So.cl users and will also be available to third parties. And, the So.cl search experience is powered by Bing.
"In its December 2011 report, Microsoft asserted the site is not meant to compete with Facebook or search engines, but to allow students to share materials for academic purposes," as reported by Mashable.
Users can log in with Facebook or Microsoft Live accounts.
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| eFuture Information technologies Inc |
Below is the News Transcript:
eFuture Information Technology Inc.(the "Company" or "eFuture"), a leading provider of software and services in China's rapidly growing retail and consumer goods industries, today announced an agreement with NESTLE WATER(R) to provide their Sales Force Automation ("SFA") service, a mobile Cloud service, in Beijing and Shanghai.
SFA is a mobile-based platform that connects sales teams from consumer goods companies to information such as replenishment and promotions in real time from any location, via smartphone providers Android and iPhone, and also on tablets. SFA also provides mobile field tools for managers to identify and supervise team performance and productivity.
Adam Yan, eFuture's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, "The official launch of our cloud service offering marks an important milestone in the development of our company. Not only does it provide for us a new stream of monthly recurring revenue, it also allows us to offer an expanded portfolio of solutions to our world-class retailer clients, as well as to other small to mid-sized retail and consumer goods companies. I firmly believe eFuture's Cloud Service is a meet-the-market solution that is expected to become a pioneering model as other retail and consumer goods companies look to build more efficient and effective sales automation systems."
SFA is a mobile-based platform that connects sales teams from consumer goods companies to information such as replenishment and promotions in real time from any location, via smartphone providers Android and iPhone, and also on tablets. SFA also provides mobile field tools for managers to identify and supervise team performance and productivity.
Adam Yan, eFuture's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, "The official launch of our cloud service offering marks an important milestone in the development of our company. Not only does it provide for us a new stream of monthly recurring revenue, it also allows us to offer an expanded portfolio of solutions to our world-class retailer clients, as well as to other small to mid-sized retail and consumer goods companies. I firmly believe eFuture's Cloud Service is a meet-the-market solution that is expected to become a pioneering model as other retail and consumer goods companies look to build more efficient and effective sales automation systems."
The money manager PIMCO has an annual event where they debate the major trends that are likely to play out over the next three to five years. Their Co-CEO Mohamed El-Erian has written a note (http://www.pimco.com/EN/Insights/Pages/Policy-Confusions-and-Inflection-Points.aspx) which summarises these discussions and the theme for this year's outlook is "Policy Confusions & Inflection Points". The note covers a lot of ground and I have summarised below the key points:
On EM equities, last week I had made the case for taking a contrarian exposure to Indian equities which are at historically attractive valuation levels. The chart below (from BCA research) extends the theme to the EM universe and looks at both relative equity valuations (y-axis) and currency valuations (x-axis). From that perspective, China, Taiwan, and Emerging Europe looks cheap (India is very cheap from a currency viewpoint and close to being cheap from an equity viewpoint) while Indonesia, South Korea and Latin America look expensive.
-Looking at the whole EM universe, the chart below (from Morgan Stanley) illustrates the cheapness of EM equities, which at 1.6x book value are 1 standard deviation (16%) below their 20 year historical average. So attractive valuations, combined with the secular theme in favour of emerging markets as outlined in the PIMCO note, make it a compelling case!
-The world remains mired in a self-reinforcing cycle of reactive partial policy responses, subsequent complacency and recurring crises. The longer this goes on the higher the risk of major inflection points, heralding another global crisis, over the next three to five years.
-The developed world continues to be characterised by low growth, too much debt, high unemployment, political polarisation and increasing calls for greater social justice.
-The status quo is no longer an option for Europe over the next three to five years. The likely outcome is that Europe will evolve into a smaller but a more stable union, comprising countries with similar economic and political systems (including the big four – France, Germany, Italy and Spain).
-However, there remains a risk that the eurozone fragments due to the population losing patience and causing a political and social rejection of the union and resulting in massive disruptive private capital flows.
-The US is likely to look good compared to Europe, outperforming in terms of growth and financial stability, but will be increasingly dominated by extreme political polarization and disagreements amongst policy makers. For example, the fiscal cliff debate is likely to get very acrimonious over the coming months and provide an insight into how this theme plays out over the next several years.
-The Federal Reserve is likely to continue its policy of financial repression (i.e. zero rates) for many years and other regulatory bodies are also likely to pursue more restrictive policies. This will exacerbate concerns about growth, jobs, inequality and deficits and make the economy and financial markets more fragile.
-Emerging markets are expected to outperform both Europe and the US over the next three to five years, and account for 50% of global GDP (in PPP terms) and grow at 5% annually compared to 1% for the developed world. The debate between inflation and disinflation will continue as the effects of the stimulus versus debt deflation play against each other.
-However, over the next few years inflationary pressures are likely to build slowly as cyclical factors become more structural and impede the long-term growth potential, particularly with reference to the labour markets. Central Banks will therefore be forced to do too much, and inflation could be a politically attractive option to delever.
-Meanwhile, political uncertainty will increase as elections and transitions become more prevalent – 50% of global GDP will face a politically defining change in 2012 and 8 out of 17 eurozone governments have been voted out of office in the last few years. Potential for political upheaval is high.
-Over the next few years, elections will increase the pressure that governments feel from increasingly restless populations – especially countries with high youth employment like Greece and Spain (51%), and Italy and Portugal (36%). With "hope and opportunity" being replaced with the older generation's debt burden and low growth prospects, the possibility of unpredictable socio-political reactions remains.
-The longer it takes for the developed world to tackle their growth and debt problems, the greater the need for emerging markets to transition to domestic demand led growth. This is particularly important for China.
-In such a world, investors need to retain a claim on the upside while protecting their portfolios against "tail risk" type events. They should supplement bottom-up security selection with a macro framework which deals with the implications of various policy approaches being used to induce growth in over-indebted economies.
-This implies a bias towards quality sovereign debt and exposures in the credit and equity space in companies with high cash balances, low financial leverage, high operating margins and exposure to growth areas. In addition, focus on shorter duration sovereign debt to benefit from an attractive roll-down, and equities with high dividends to effectively shorten duration.
-Real assets (i.e. commodities) to hedge against inflation and other aspects of financial confiscation (i.e. default, appropriation) , in areas which have supply constraints and stable geopolitical risks.
-Currencies are difficult to predict – with EM currencies being supported by higher growth, strong balance sheets and capital inflows, but governments trying to keep their appreciation in check in an uncertain world driven by excessive liquidity creation in the US. The US$ is also expected to be a beneficiary of a flight-to-quality, at least during the initial part of the three to five year horizon.
-At some point over the next three to five years we are likely to reach a point where either the central bank policies of financial repression work as a bridge to more effective policies and unleash a flood of private capital or they don't work and become counterproductive and bring about various unintended consequences. In the former scenario, government bonds would be a bad place to be and under the latter scenario, principal protection would be the key theme.
-The secular outlook is therefore, to borrow a phrase from Ben Bernanke, "unusually uncertain". This does not imply investor paralysis- but requires a well thought investment plan and effective "tail risk" management.
A thought provoking note and drives home the key theme of an uncertain world with unpredictable outcomes. This type of environment makes it even more critical to construct a well diversified portfolios, which provide upside potential while protecting against principal impairment. That is portfolios weighted towards EM equities, energy and natural resources, high quality multinationals, EM government and corporate debt, cash and gold. Gold has historically done well under a negative real rate environment (i.e. financial repression-see chart below) and hedges against the risk that the central banks overstay their welcome!
On EM equities, last week I had made the case for taking a contrarian exposure to Indian equities which are at historically attractive valuation levels. The chart below (from BCA research) extends the theme to the EM universe and looks at both relative equity valuations (y-axis) and currency valuations (x-axis). From that perspective, China, Taiwan, and Emerging Europe looks cheap (India is very cheap from a currency viewpoint and close to being cheap from an equity viewpoint) while Indonesia, South Korea and Latin America look expensive.
-Looking at the whole EM universe, the chart below (from Morgan Stanley) illustrates the cheapness of EM equities, which at 1.6x book value are 1 standard deviation (16%) below their 20 year historical average. So attractive valuations, combined with the secular theme in favour of emerging markets as outlined in the PIMCO note, make it a compelling case!
Computer systems used to establish the opening price were overwhelmed by order cancellations and updates during the “biggest IPO cross in the history of mankind," Nasdaq Chief Executive Officer Robert Greifeld said yesterday in a conference call with reporters. Nasdaq’s systems fell into a “loop” that prevented the second-largest U.S. stock venue operator from opening the shares on schedule following the $16 billion deal, he said.
While the errors were resolved and Facebook completed its offering, the day was another setback for equity exchanges trying to erase the memory of the botched IPO in March by Bats Global Markets Inc., another bourse owner. Nasdaq’s issues contributed to disappointment among investors asFacebook (FB)’s stock closed up 0.6 percent after rising 18 percent earlier.
“It’s amazing that both Bats and Nasdaq unfortunately failed in an inglorious way,” William Karsh, the former chief operating officer at Direct Edge Holdings LLC, an exchange operator that competes with Nasdaq, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “It proves that technology isn’t infallible. There are so many moving parts that things can go wrong. That’s the lesson we learn.”
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it will review the trading. Jonathan Thaw, a spokesman for Menlo Park, California-based Facebook, declined to comment.
‘Not Our Finest’
“This was not our finest hour,” Greifeld said, one day after Nasdaq’s board convened to discuss the offering. Asked if his job is secure, he said, “I certainly hope so.”
Nasdaq will use an “accommodation pool” to pay back investors that should have received executions in the opening auction, based on the decisions of a third-party reviewer, Greifeld said. It may total $13 million, he said.
Problems surfaced on May 18 at 11:11 a.m. New York time after Morgan Stanley (MS), one of the underwriters that sold 421 million shares the night before, completed its role setting the price for the trade in Nasdaq’s opening auction, Greifeld said. Nasdaq’s software for IPOs allows investors to cancel or update details of orders until the auction runs. Trade requests received during the 5 milliseconds it took to operate the auction disturbed the process, leading to an imbalance of buys and sells and sending the program into a loop.
Manual Intervention
Nasdaq officials manually intervened to allow the auction to occur at 11:30 a.m. The IPO software “didn’t work” even after thousands of hours of testing for “a hundred scenarios” aimed at anticipating problems, Greifeld said. “We’re not happy with our performance,” he said on the call yesterday.
Volume during the auction amounted to 75.7 million shares, or almost 1 percent of trading during the entire day on all U.S. exchanges, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“We saw on a real-time basis, obviously with the pressure of the world upon us, that this was happening,” Greifeld said. “We then manually intercepted this cross,” he said. “That manual intervention said we had to ignore the cancels that came in between the raindrops as we were processing the trade.”
Nasdaq wound up with 5,000 shares of Facebook because of its intervention, Greifeld said. A broker was used to sell the stock that had been placed in the exchange’s so-called error account for $10 million. Greifeld said he would ask the SEC for permission to add the money to the $3 million available from the exchange, according to its rules, to repay investors that should have received trades.
Some Dispute
Orders totaling 30 million shares were submitted into the opening auction between 11:11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., Greifeld said. About half of them may involve “some level of dispute,” he said. Greifeld said he didn’t think the delay in starting trading affected the price of Facebook shares.
Adding to the day’s confusion, Nasdaq reported an issue after trading began with confirming transactions from the opening auction with the brokerages that placed them. The exchange said in a statement posted to its website at 11:59 a.m. New York time that it was having a problem delivering the messages. An update at about 1:57 p.m. said they had been sent.
“When you have a complex market system that gets overwhelmed, it fails in bizarre ways,” James Angel, a finance professor at Georgetown University in Washington, said in a phone interview on May 18. “If you don’t know whether you got filled, you don’t know your position. If you’re buying you might buy more shares and then suddenly you’ve got twice as many shares as you wanted. It makes it hard to do your risk management and hard for brokers to know how much credit to extend to customers.”
$42 at Auction
Facebook advanced 23 cents to $38.23 after surging as high as $45. It fell as low as the IPO price of $38, which valued the company at $104.2 billion. More than 43 million shares were executed at that level, the second-most changing hands at any price except for $42, the opening auction price, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Underwriters purchased shares to keep them from falling below $38, people with knowledge of the matter said. The bankers supported the stock amid Nasdaq’s difficulties delivering trade execution messages, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the transactions are private.
Facebook was originally scheduled to open at 11 a.m. At about 11:07 a.m., a Nasdaq official told market participants on a conference call that the exchange was delaying the opening. Aside from assurances that an update was coming, the phone line went silent until just before the first trade at about 11:30 a.m., according to two people who were on the call and asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.
Ignoring Requests
Buy and sell requests that should have been filled in the opening auction, based on the exchange’s rules, weren’t, while cancellations for other trade requests were ignored, they said. Their employers plan to appeal some of the results they received for orders sent to Nasdaq.
Nasdaq began experiencing problems with its bid and offer quotes after the opening auction trade. By 11:31 a.m., the exchange’s highest bid, or price at which market participants were willing to purchase shares, was $42.99, and its lowest offer to sell was $42.50, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The quotes produced a so-called crossed market, where sellers appear to be asking less than buyers are willing to pay.
Other markets continued trading, usually with a difference of a few cents between their best bid and lowest offer. Nasdaq’s quotes were marked as manual and not electronically accessible, which allowed brokers and other exchanges to ignore the venue’s prices. Its offer price later dropped to $38.01 and remained at that level, almost $4 below the highest bid, until 1:49 p.m., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
‘Don’t Like’
“Clearly investors would hit the ‘don’t like’ button,” Matt McCormick, who helps oversee $6.2 billion at Bahl & Gaynor Inc. in Cincinnati, said in a telephone interview.
The IPO price valued the company at 107 times trailing 12- month earnings, more than all Standard & Poor’s 500 Index stocks except Amazon.com Inc. and Equity Residential. The valuation also made Facebook, co-founded in 2004 by a then-teenage Mark Zuckerberg, the largest company to go public in the U.S.
Customers of London-based Fidessa Group Plc, which helps asset managers track transactions, weren’t receiving confirmation of Facebook trades, according to an e-mailed statement. Michael Cianfrocca, a spokesman for Charles Schwab Corp. in San Francisco, wrote in an e-mail: “There are currently industrywide delays in reporting trade executions. These issues do not appear to be unique to Schwab.”
TD Ameritrade
Uncertainty about whether orders received executions in the opening auction affected some clients of online broker TD Ameritrade Holding Corp., according to Steve Quirk, senior vice president of the trader group at the Omaha, Nebraska-based company. Facebook accounted for 22 percent of equities volume at the firm, he said by e-mail.
Clearing broker Pershing LLC told clients yesterday it worked through the weekend to address processing delays for purchases and sales of Facebook shares. The unit of Bank of New York Mellon Corp. expects to deliver trade information to customers’ account by around 7 a.m. on May 21, the broker said in the message.
Nasdaq shares fell 4.4 percent, the most since October, to $21.99 on May 18 following the problems with the IPO. NYSE Euronext (NYX), its larger rival, rose 0.3 percent to $24.61.
Facebook shares traded 582.5 million times on May 18, or about 6.6 percent of total volume on U.S. exchanges, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“I don’t think you’ll see a long-term downturn of volume on Nasdaq,” Karsh said. “Nasdaq will pick up a couple percentage points because it’s the primary listing venue for Facebook.”
Nifty Trading Tips & Outlook Today
On the Nifty, trend is definitely down due to US markets and Europe contagion fears about finance institutions. One should try to sell Nifty on every rise ( around 4960 or 5000 spot ), aggressive traders might take early call before those levels, but Sell on Rise will be the strategy until major development in Europe that turnaround the things.
Check out our previous recommendation here
Sky gazers in parts of the world are up for a celestial treat on May 21 when an annular solar eclipse takes place, a rare event in which the sun will appear as a thin ring behind the moon. However, in India it will only be visible in the northeastern states.
An annual solar eclipse occurs when the Sun, the Moon and the Earth are exactly in line, but the apparent size of the Moon is smaller than that of the Sun, therefore only a part of the sun gets blocked. Hence the Sun appears like an annulus (ring), surrounding the outline of the Moon.
The next annular solar eclipse will occur after 18 years in June 2030.
"An annular eclipse of the Sun will occur May 21. The ending of the partial phase of the eclipse will be visible for a very short duration from northeast India after sunrise," said an official of the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
Other parts of India won't be able to watch the eclipse as it will be over before sunrise.
SPACE (Science Popularisation Association of Communicators & Educators) is taking an expedition of school students to Hong Kong to witness the annular solar eclipse, where it will be visible clearly.
"A total of 70 students from various schools are in Hong Kong to witness this rare celestial event," said C.B. Devgun, SPACE president, who is heading the tour.
He said the students will also participate in scientific activities and experiments, including contact timing measurement, a study of change in ambient temperature and lunar limb profile measurements.
"As the Sun won't be fully covered, you have to wear proper protection for your eyes even during the eclipse. You will also need a filter (ND filter or similar) for your camera to protect the sensor when taking pictures with telephoto/zoom lens," he said.
An annual solar eclipse occurs when the Sun, the Moon and the Earth are exactly in line, but the apparent size of the Moon is smaller than that of the Sun, therefore only a part of the sun gets blocked. Hence the Sun appears like an annulus (ring), surrounding the outline of the Moon.
The next annular solar eclipse will occur after 18 years in June 2030.
"An annular eclipse of the Sun will occur May 21. The ending of the partial phase of the eclipse will be visible for a very short duration from northeast India after sunrise," said an official of the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
Other parts of India won't be able to watch the eclipse as it will be over before sunrise.
SPACE (Science Popularisation Association of Communicators & Educators) is taking an expedition of school students to Hong Kong to witness the annular solar eclipse, where it will be visible clearly.
"A total of 70 students from various schools are in Hong Kong to witness this rare celestial event," said C.B. Devgun, SPACE president, who is heading the tour.
He said the students will also participate in scientific activities and experiments, including contact timing measurement, a study of change in ambient temperature and lunar limb profile measurements.
"As the Sun won't be fully covered, you have to wear proper protection for your eyes even during the eclipse. You will also need a filter (ND filter or similar) for your camera to protect the sensor when taking pictures with telephoto/zoom lens," he said.
"This has been done under the directions of the Ministry of Information Technology. It's because of blasphemous content," said Mohammed Yaseen, chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
"They (the ministry) have been discussing with them (Twitter) for some time now, requesting them to remove some particular content," he said.
Pakistan blocked access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and about 1,000 other websites for nearly two weeks in May 2010 over blasphemous content.
Any representation of the Prophet Mohammad is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous by many Muslims, who constitute the overwhelming majority in Pakistan.
PTA chairman Yaseen did not specify which users or messages had prompted the ban. The Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan said its members have been asked to block Twitter indefinitely, but no reason has been provided by the government.
Yaseen said the ban would be lifted after ongoing discussions between the Pakistan government and Twitter about the allegedly blasphemous material are resolved.
Officials from the Ministry of Information Technology and from Twitter were not immediately available for comment.
Twitter has become increasingly popular in Pakistan in recent years, its users including politicians and government officials.
Low-dose computerized tomography may cut the risk of dying from lung cancer by 20 percent, according to a report presented today at the American Thoracic Society International Conference and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. For every person diagnosed with lung cancer, there were 20 with suspicious findings that needed biopsies or other follow-up to rule out a malignancy, the researchers said.
The risk of cancer is great enough in heavy smokers 55 to 74 years old to justify annual CT scans, according to guidelines from the American College of Chest Physicians and the American Society of Clinical Oncology based on the study results. They aren’t recommended for older and younger smokers, people who quit more than 15 years ago, patients with limited life expectancies or those who light up less frequently.
“Low-dose computed tomography screening may benefit individuals at an increased risk for lung cancer, but uncertainty exists about the potential harms,” said researchers led by Peter Bach, from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Because most patients are diagnosed with advanced disease, there is renewed enthusiasm for the CT screening, “which is able to identify smaller nodules,” the researchers said.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death, killing an estimated 160,000 people in the U.S. each year, according to the American Cancer Society.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg updated his status to "married" on Saturday.
Zuckerberg and 27-year-old Priscilla Chan tied the knot at a small ceremony at his Palo Alto, Calif., home, capping a busy week for the couple.
Zuckerberg took his company public in one of the most anticipated stock offerings in Wall Street history Friday. And
Chan graduated from medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, on Monday, the same day Zuckerberg turned 28.
The couple met at Harvard and have been together for more than nine years.
A company spokeswoman said Zuckerberg designed the ring featuring "a very simple ruby" that he designed himself.
The ceremony took place in Zuckerberg's backyard before fewer than 100 guests, who all thought they were there to celebrate Chan's graduation.
Even after the IPO, Zuckerberg remains Facebook's single largest shareholder, with 503.6 million shares. And he controls the company with 56 percent of its voting stock.
The site, which was born in a dorm room eight years ago and has grown into a worldwide network of almost a billion people.
Zuckerberg founded Facebook at Harvard in 2004.
He was named as Time's Person of the Year in 2010, at age 26.
Zuckerberg grew up in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
The link between illicit sex, money and power goes back as far as David and Bathsheba. This week has added several new names to the list of scandals at the top of the business world.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned as head of the International Monetary Fund late Wednesday amid allegations that he sexually assaulted a maid in a luxury Manhattan hotel.
Soon after the allegations surfaced, more whispers about Strauss-Kahn’s allegedly sexually predatory behaviour emerged.
Sir Fred Goodwin, once one of the most powerful bankers in Europe as head of Royal Bank of Scotland, was said in the British Parliament on Thursday to have used a super-injunction to cover up an extramarital affair with a female subordinate.
On Wednesday, German insurer Munich Re admitted it hired 20 prostitutes as a reward for around 100 of its top sales executives at a party hosted in Budapest in 2007.
The female sex workers reportedly were given arm bands and earned stamps on their forearm to keep track of the services they had to be paid for.
These companies and leaders are far from the first to have their names linked with sex scandals.
Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in a Florida jail in 2008 for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution.
Lord Browne famously quit as chief executive of BP in 2007 after lying in court about meeting his ex-partner, Jeff Chevalier, a Canadian former rent boy, through an escort website.
And James McDermott Jr, former chief executive and chairman of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods,
spent five months in prison and was barred from the securities industry in 2000 after leaking stock tips to girlfriend Kathryn Gannon, also known as the porn star Marilyn Star.
Why do high-flying businessmen risk huge reputational damage through their sexual misadventures?
Robert Weiss, founder of the Sexual Recovery Institute and author of Why Men in Power Act Out, said of the Strauss-Kahn affair: “This latest scandal again raises questions about why some men in powerful positions often live out a double life one public and one private that involves impulsive and compulsive sexual behavior."
“Although a sense of strength and fearlessness and a near disregard of consequences can make for great, powerful leaders, problems come when these leaders do not acknowledge that they are human.”
“If their narcissism or egotism isn’t matched by a healthy dose of humility of what it means to be human…and they run on their intellect and don’t attend to their emotions on any level…then they are bound for trouble,” he added.
“People in powerful positions, such as Schwarzenegger and Strauss-Kahn, often don’t make it a priority to care for themselves emotionally, and may start looking for a 'quick fix.'"
“People with money, power, and fame often have poor feedback networks. They are surrounded by people who are dependent on them for employment or security, which makes them reluctant to tell their ‘boss’ that they need to seek help.”
Peter Detwiler, former vice chairman of stock brokerage E.F. Hutton, and Robert West, former chairman of Tesoro Petroleum, got into hot water after soliciting a prostitute for the Trinidad & Tobago finance minister, in an attempt to influence policy in the Caribbean country.
Sexual misbehaviour, as many of these men have found, can cost more than just dignity.
In one of the most famous sexual harassment cases in the financial world, six female workers at Dresdner Kleinwort sued the bank for $1.4 billion in 2006. Allegations that male executives were entertaining clients at strip clubs and bringing prostitutes back to the office surfaced before the case was settled out of court.
The vast majority of sex scandals at the top of the business world involve powerful heterosexual men and women who are less economically powerful.
This is partly simply because there are fewer women in positions of power in this sphere, with women holding just 15.7 percent of board seats at Fortune500 companies in 2010.
Evolutionary psychologist Nigel Barber believes that high social status in men is often linked to difficulty controlling sexual impulses.
He wrote in an article for Psychology Today: "In the world of animal behaviour, when one sees high status, intense male-male competition, and a high sex drive, one is looking at the unmistakable handiwork of testosterone (and other "male" sex hormones).
"Testosterone also rises with competitive success for humans, and even with sexual intercourse so there is a positive feedback loop whereby prominent men acquire high testosterone levels along with increased social status.
"They are also more attractive to women who acquire status and power themselves through such pairings. It all adds up to an arrogant sense by male leaders that they can treat women as they please."
Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned as head of the International Monetary Fund late Wednesday amid allegations that he sexually assaulted a maid in a luxury Manhattan hotel.
Soon after the allegations surfaced, more whispers about Strauss-Kahn’s allegedly sexually predatory behaviour emerged.
Sir Fred Goodwin, once one of the most powerful bankers in Europe as head of Royal Bank of Scotland, was said in the British Parliament on Thursday to have used a super-injunction to cover up an extramarital affair with a female subordinate.
On Wednesday, German insurer Munich Re admitted it hired 20 prostitutes as a reward for around 100 of its top sales executives at a party hosted in Budapest in 2007.
The female sex workers reportedly were given arm bands and earned stamps on their forearm to keep track of the services they had to be paid for.
These companies and leaders are far from the first to have their names linked with sex scandals.
Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in a Florida jail in 2008 for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution.
Lord Browne famously quit as chief executive of BP in 2007 after lying in court about meeting his ex-partner, Jeff Chevalier, a Canadian former rent boy, through an escort website.
And James McDermott Jr, former chief executive and chairman of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods,
spent five months in prison and was barred from the securities industry in 2000 after leaking stock tips to girlfriend Kathryn Gannon, also known as the porn star Marilyn Star.
Why do high-flying businessmen risk huge reputational damage through their sexual misadventures?
Robert Weiss, founder of the Sexual Recovery Institute and author of Why Men in Power Act Out, said of the Strauss-Kahn affair: “This latest scandal again raises questions about why some men in powerful positions often live out a double life one public and one private that involves impulsive and compulsive sexual behavior."
“Although a sense of strength and fearlessness and a near disregard of consequences can make for great, powerful leaders, problems come when these leaders do not acknowledge that they are human.”
“If their narcissism or egotism isn’t matched by a healthy dose of humility of what it means to be human…and they run on their intellect and don’t attend to their emotions on any level…then they are bound for trouble,” he added.
“People in powerful positions, such as Schwarzenegger and Strauss-Kahn, often don’t make it a priority to care for themselves emotionally, and may start looking for a 'quick fix.'"
“People with money, power, and fame often have poor feedback networks. They are surrounded by people who are dependent on them for employment or security, which makes them reluctant to tell their ‘boss’ that they need to seek help.”
Peter Detwiler, former vice chairman of stock brokerage E.F. Hutton, and Robert West, former chairman of Tesoro Petroleum, got into hot water after soliciting a prostitute for the Trinidad & Tobago finance minister, in an attempt to influence policy in the Caribbean country.
Sexual misbehaviour, as many of these men have found, can cost more than just dignity.
In one of the most famous sexual harassment cases in the financial world, six female workers at Dresdner Kleinwort sued the bank for $1.4 billion in 2006. Allegations that male executives were entertaining clients at strip clubs and bringing prostitutes back to the office surfaced before the case was settled out of court.
The vast majority of sex scandals at the top of the business world involve powerful heterosexual men and women who are less economically powerful.
This is partly simply because there are fewer women in positions of power in this sphere, with women holding just 15.7 percent of board seats at Fortune500 companies in 2010.
Evolutionary psychologist Nigel Barber believes that high social status in men is often linked to difficulty controlling sexual impulses.
He wrote in an article for Psychology Today: "In the world of animal behaviour, when one sees high status, intense male-male competition, and a high sex drive, one is looking at the unmistakable handiwork of testosterone (and other "male" sex hormones).
"Testosterone also rises with competitive success for humans, and even with sexual intercourse so there is a positive feedback loop whereby prominent men acquire high testosterone levels along with increased social status.
"They are also more attractive to women who acquire status and power themselves through such pairings. It all adds up to an arrogant sense by male leaders that they can treat women as they please."
© 2011 CNBC.com
