To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.
Steve
And the official Apple press release:
Apple's Board of Directors today announced that Steve Jobs has resigned as Chief Executive Officer, and the Board has named Tim Cook, previously Apple's Chief Operating Officer, as the company's new CEO. Jobs has been elected Chairman of the Board and Cook will join the Board, effective immediately.
"Steve's extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world's most innovative and valuable technology company," said Art Levinson, Chairman of Genentech, on behalf of Apple's Board. "Steve has made countless contributions to Apple's success, and he has attracted and inspired Apple's immensely creative employees and world class executive team. In his new role as Chairman of the Board, Steve will continue to serve Apple with his unique insights, creativity and inspiration."
"The Board has complete confidence that Tim is the right person to be our next CEO," added Levinson. "Tim's 13 years of service to Apple have been marked by outstanding performance, and he has demonstrated remarkable talent and sound judgment in everything he does."
Jobs submitted his resignation to the Board today and strongly recommended that the Board implement its succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO.
As COO, Cook was previously responsible for all of the company's worldwide sales and operations, including end-to-end management of Apple's supply chain, sales activities, and service and support in all markets and countries. He also headed Apple's Macintosh division and played a key role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an increasingly demanding marketplace.
Who says hedge funds are ambivalent about the current market? As of last week, they have not been
more bearish on the S&P since before Lehman. From SocGen: "Hedge funds have opened the biggest net short positions since early 2008, concentrated on the most liquid segment of the market, i.e. the S&P 500. Meanwhile, positioning on small caps hardly moved (slight increase in net shorts on the Russell 2000). Surprisingly, they actually stuck to their net long positions on Technology (Nasdaq)." As usual, the amusingly named "hedge" funds defy their purported nature (as in, to hedge), and merely pursue momentum, and should be more appropriately called "career risk" funds as the only variable is doing precisely what everyone else is doing: remember - to get a bonus at the end of the year, you don't have to outrun the market, you just have to outrun the biggest institutional fool out there. "Hedge funds have closed their net short positions on 10-year Treasuries and strongly diminished their net shorts on the long end (30Y), as recession fears have crunched expectations for higher bond yields, and endorsed by the Fed's announcement that it will keep rates low until at least 2013." Hedge fund infatuation with metals continues: "Hedge funds' enthusiasm for gold and platinum remains strong, as indicated by the high net long positions on these metals. Meanwhile, net long positions on base metals (copper) have been strongly reduced. Net long positions on crude oil remain relatively stable, less impressed by the perceived recession threats." Expect to see numerous short covering sprees until the end of the year, even as the market continues it secular decline back to fair value somewhere around 400.
Full article at
Following years of pandering to client demands, and assigning trillions of dollars in fixed income securities with whatever rating money bought (among other things, a factor to the credit bubble and its subsequent implosion) S&P finally tried to do the right thing and tell the truth. However in this case it picked if not the worst, then certainly the most hypocriticial credit in the world to expose – the US itself. Sure enough two weeks after the downgrade, someone made the phone call and the CEO Deven Sharma is no more. As for the kick square in the gonads: Sherma will be replaced with the COO of…you know it… the bank which demanded tens of billions in secret Fed bailout loans itself, Citibank, and whose existence is inextricably tied to America not seeing any more downgrades ever again.
As the FT reports, "The McGraw-Hill board made the decision to replace Mr Sharma at a meeting on Monday, where it also discussed an ongoing strategic review." Alas, this is nothing but a case study of modern corporate reality in America: if you are not with the status quo, you are against it, and you are promptly booted out of it: anyone who does not share the visions of one glorious future built on ponzi schemes, houses of cards, and games of three card monte, will be promptly suicided, either physically or professionally.
We expect that this flagrant example of how the powers that be will deal with any dissenters will instill the fear of god in anyone at either Moodys (or the French sycphants from Fitch) and nobody will ever again menton the words "US" and "downgrade" in the same sentence.
From the FT:
Deven Sharma is stepping down as president of Standard & Poor's only weeks after the rating agency issued an unprecedented downgrade of the credit of the US, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr Sharma will remain as an adviser to S&P's owner, McGraw-Hill, for four months and leave the company at the end of the year, they said.
Mr Sharma will be replaced as S&P president by Douglas Peterson, chief operating officer of Citibank, the banking unit of Citigroup, they said.
As for the official story:
People close to the company said the search for Mr Sharma's replacement has been going on for six months, and was triggered by the split of its data, pricing and analytics business from its ratings business. The creation of that new group, McGraw-Hill Financial, reduced the scope of Mr Sharma's oversight, they said.
So let us get this straight: in America when you dare to tell the truth, your career is over, while if you are a corrupt, lying, incompetent tax evader you not only get to be Treasury Secretary but likely will be on for life as long as you do the one duty you are entrusted with: pander to the interests of the Too Big To Fail financial institutions
We should be speechless but at this point we are well beyond the point of even caring.
The only question left in this entire farce is how long before S&P issues the following upgrade of the US:
"Great service, AAA+++ rating, immediate payment, would do business again!!!"
If you have Rs 5 lakh to Rs 25 lakh and have been entrusting this money to a portfolio manager, you may not have this luxury for very long if a SEBI proposal becomes a regulation.
SEBI in a concept paper has suggested that the minimum amount for investment under Porfolio Management Services (PMS) could be Rs 25 lakh, and not Rs 5 lakh, as it is at present.
So where will someone with Rs 5 lakh to Rs 25 lakh go for customised investment advice and services?
"Such a change will definitely affect people with these kind of sums to invest. They will have to invest in mutual funds," said Mr Dinesh Thakkar, CMD of Angel Broking.
"Just going to a broker (and not under a PMS scheme) will not get the investor time and involvement that a portfolio needs. So the next route available is the mutual fund, where the money is managed by an expert," he said.
Broking houses, in fact, fear that people with such sums to invest might fall prey to their own employees and franchisees' misguided or self-serving advice.
It is typical for people with Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh who do not want to invest in mutual funds to ask brokerage employees, or branch employees or franchisees for advice on what to buy and sell. "And these employees might unnecessarily churn their investments just to earn a bit of commission themselves," said the managing director of a large broking firm.
"Under the PMS route, however, their porfolios would be centrally administered at the brokerage. There is a portfolio manager who is accountable, and whose incentives are linked to how well the porfolios do," he said.
'Killed by regulation'
Some brokerages say they are no longer growing their PMS business. "We do not take on any new clients for PMS," said Mr Deven Choksey, head of KR Choksey Securities. This product, anyway, is being killed by regulation, he said.
"Firstly, PMS is not sold scheme-wise, but the reporting on it has to be done scheme-wise. Second, we can't customise the investment according to the risk profile of an investor as SEBI has capped investment in single securities.
"So if a doctor wants to put the bulk of his money in pharma and is willing to risk it, he cannot under PMS. If we are to function like a mutual fund, then what is the point," he said.
Existing PMS customers are serviced, but new customers are given advisory services by his brokerage.
"The low minimum investment amount of Rs 5 lakhs makes these products (referring to PMS) accessible to retail investors without the protection which are available to retail investors under the mutual fund network," said SEBI in its concept paper.
"To the extent that the services under this route resemble fund management instead of customised services, there is need to recognise and regulate them as private pool of capital," says SEBI.
So, where funds are pooled they will have to be registered as Alternative Investment Funds, and where there is customised service for each portfolio this service will come under PMS.
The latest update in this news-heavy night is that Japan's unpopular Prime Minister is out, after tellng his cabinet ministers that they have about one more week before packing up and looking for new jobs. As Reuters reports "The ruling Democratic Party of Japan is planning to pick a new leader on Aug. 29, setting the stage for parliamentary confirmation of a new premier and the selection of a new cabinet." We hope for the sake of the G7 that there is no massive crisis in the next 10 days, as a leaderless Japan will hardly provide confidence that any crisis can be circumvented. As for the Yen, it is hardly troubled and at last check was trading at 76.75 to the dollar. Not an all time record… but pretty close.
From Reuters:
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan told his cabinet ministers on Tuesday that they are likely to resign on Aug. 30, Japanese Economics Minister Kaoru Yosano said on Tuesday.
The unpopular prime minister's comments effectively confirmed his intention to resign in coming days, clearing the way for Japan to select its sixth prime minister since Junichiro Koizumi ended a rare five-year term in 2006.
The ruling Democratic Party of Japan is planning to pick a new leader on Aug. 29, setting the stage for parliamentary confirmation of a new premier and the selection of a new cabinet.
Yosano also told a news conference that the government needs to devise steps to cope with the negative effects of the yen rise in the coming third supplementary budget for this fiscal year.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have announced a plan to impose a financial transactions tax (FTT) for the Eurozone, as part of an effort stem the bloc's worsening debt crisis.
The policy would introduce a tiny tax on wholesale financial transactions – something long supported by European Union members Austria and Belgium. EU heads of state are expected to discuss the proposal at a meeting in October, ahead of the G20 summit in France in November.
The European Commission threw its support behind this tax in June, saying it could raise up to 50 billion euros a year by imposing 0.1% tax on stocks and bonds and 0.01% on derivatives.
The commission has even included potential funds raised by such a tax in its long-term budget forecasts for 2014-2020.
The tide is clearly turning in Europe and leaders are getting behind this idea.
I spoke at a forum on the tax at the European Parliament in March last year. Every seat was taken – and this most certainly was not people wanting to listen to me.
Meanwhile, the debate in Australia is basically non-existent. On one hand, this is fair enough – as Australia most certainly could not impose a FTT all by itself.
The risk of stock, bond and derivative trading moving offshore, if we were to go it alone, makes the idea a political impossibility.
Despite this fear, it is clear that Australia needs to pull its head out of the sand. We have a seat at the G20, and the deliberations on this tax at that forum will be important.
We have so far opposed the tax simply because the Americans have, which has become our default position on most foreign policy matters over the past 15 years.
Australia needs to examine the evidence and take a more informed view in the G20 forum.
Because of the scale of modern financial market activity, a tiny FTT would raise somewhere between $75 billion and $500 billion annually, if applied globally.
Civil society is campaigning vigorously for this tax around the world, because it sees in it a source of revenue to address global poverty and fund the climate change adaption that is much needed in poor countries. These civil society campaigns have had considerable impact in Europe, but very little here.
The great attraction of this idea is that it's clearly rarest form of tax – a tax you should want irrespective of the revenue it might raise.
Keynes recommended such an impost in his seminal work, and 40 years ago the Nobel Laureate in economics, James Tobin, proposed the tax as a way to make markets more effective.
The idea is that an FTT would dissuade purely speculative short-term transactions and shift the balance of trading towards investors who are more focussed on the underlying value of the asset being bought and sold.
Since Tobin promoted the idea, there has been a sea change in market trading that makes the need for it much greater. In 2009, computer-driven trading accounted for at least 60% of equity market trading, 40% of futures trading in the US and 30% to 40% of European and Japanese equity trading.
This high-frequency trading is driven and executed by computer programs aimed at exploiting minor price fluctuations. The assets are often bought, held and sold in less than a second. No human mind is brought to bear on these individual trades, and the underlying real economic value of the asset being traded rarely influences the trade.
There is considerable evidence that the proliferation of this sort of trading has made markets less effective at their core function – setting prices.
Markets these days deviate for sustained periods from the prices that would be indicated by economic fundamentals. They are now driven by a tsunami of ultra-short-term trades.
An FTT would make such trades uneconomic, and the resulting markets would be able to perform their real functions of setting prices and allocating capital more effectively.
The United States has not supported an FTT, which is evidence of the power of that country's banking lobby. Barack Obama supported an FTT as a presidential candidate, but the oval-office perspective is obviously different.
Could the introduction of a tax in Europe prompt US policymakers to reconsider their position? Once foreign exchange transactions between euros and US dollars are taxed in Europe, with none of the revenue going to the US, the incentive for the US to follow Europe's lead will be massive.
But the pivotal nation in this debate today is not the US, for Europe can impose such a tax with little fear of any significant amount of trading moving to the US. The pivotal nation is the UK.
While continental Europe could impose this tax on foreign exchange transactions in euros, which clear and settle in Europe, applying the tax more broadly would risk trading in other asset classes moving to London.
Britain under Gordon Brown supported the tax, but not under the current government. So the scene is set for some interesting horse trading as Sarkozy and Merkel try to persuade David Cameron of the merits of, and need for, this crucial tax.
