English Premier League: The Social Media Season
May 18, 2012
By Sam Laird | Mashable – The English Premier League is arguably the world’s most popular sports organization, and this season saw explosive growth off the pitch in the realm of social media. Manchester City snagged its first English title in 44 years last weekend to cap off another dramatic EPL season. To recap how the league developed digitally this year, Mashable hunted down some stats.
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By Sam Laird | Mashable –
The English Premier League is arguably the world’s most popular sports organization, and this season saw explosive growth off the pitch in the realm of social media.
Manchester City snagged its first English title in 44 years last weekend to cap off another dramatic EPL season. To recap how the league developed digitally this year, Mashable hunted down some stats. We also consulted Sean Walsh, whose blog Digital Football is a leading source on the intersection between English soccer and social media.
[More from Mashable: Top 10 GIFs of the Week]
“EPL clubs have been criticized in the past for their out-of-date approach to social media in comparison to the youthful and creative tactics employed by U.S. franchises in the NBA and NFL,” Walsh, who’s interviewed the digital directors of several top European clubs over the past year, told Mashable in an email. “But the 2011-2012 season has seen the rise of social media in ‘the beautiful game,’ and Premier League clubs have finally begun to invest in it.”
Walsh says EPL clubs added a total of more than 17 million Facebook fans over the course of the season. In total, the league has almost 60 million Facebook likes — all the more impressive when you consider England’s total population is just over 50 million people.
[More from Mashable: Former Yahoo COO Who Almost Bought Facebook Shows Up on IPO Day]
So far, both the league and its individual teams have a much stronger presence on Facebook than on Twitter, where clubs count a combined following of less than 4.5 million. But the EPL’s presence is growing rapidly on Twitter as well as Facebook — Walsh counts a 126% increase in followers league-wide since last season.
Premier League side Chelsea was also involved in a piece of Twitter history recently. Its win over FC Barcelona in last month’s Champions League semifinal set a Twitter sports record of 13,684 tweets per second, eclipsing the previous record set by the most recent Super Bowl. Chelsea takes on Bayern Munich in the Champions League final this Saturday, so we’ll see if it can make Twitter history again.
Liverpool, meanwhile, became the first Premier League team to promote itself using Pinterest. The team stocked boards with historic photos, fan gear, old uniformas and memorabilia. Pinterest has become one of the newest ways sports teams around the world are seeking to leverage social media.
Among Walsh’s favorite individual digital EPL moments this year: Manchester City launching a YouTube partnership taking steps toward integrating fans’ in-person and social media experiences; Queens Park Rangers owner Tony Fernandes using Twitter to ask fans which players they wanted the club to acquire; and midfielder Joey Barton using promoted tweets to apologize to fans for being thrown out of a match.
How do you think English soccer stacks up to other pro sports in leveraging social media? Let us know in the comments.
Image courtesy toksuede, Flickr.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
Ruck.us Breaks Up Party Politics on the Social Web
May 11, 2012
By Alex Fitzpatrick | Mashable – The World at Work is powered by GE.
Original post:
By Alex Fitzpatrick | Mashable –
The World at Work is powered by GE. This new series highlights the people, projects and startups that are driving innovation and making the world a better place.
Name: Ruck.us
[More from Mashable: ‘Obama Gay Marriage’ Google Searches Spike 459% [INFOGRAPHIC]]
Big Idea: Users are matched with politically active people that share their “political DNA,” then form groups around issues they’re passionate about and take action.
Why It’s Working: Many Americans no longer define themselves as strictly Republican or Democrat — Ruck.us gives those independents an outlet for political expression outside the binary, two-party system.
[More from Mashable: Today’s Top Stories: Web Browsing on Xbox 360, Bing’s Social Search]
Ruck.us was launched by Nathan Daschle and Raymond Glendening in late 2010 to help people break free of what they consider a restrictive two-party political system, which they believe is no longer relevant to 21st century Americans.
“Parties are really antiquated systems,” says Glendening, the chief strategy officer. “Politics is the last sector of American culture that has yet to be revolutionized by technology. When you look around, every sector of our lives has a plethora of options except for our outlets for political engagement: We still have these two binary options.”
Ruck.us’ 20,000 users are first empowered to figure out the essence of their “political DNA,” or core beliefs. Then, they are matched with similar users to take collective action around an issue, such as deforestation or election reform. All of that action happens outside the traditional party structures, in groups called “rucks.”
“I think this is very reflective of where American society is moving,” says Glendening. “People are increasingly saying, ‘I don’t fit into one of these binary silos,’ and lifelong membership is just not a realistic view or expectation of what the consumer wants out of his political engagement fulfillment.”
Ruck.us hopes to increase its user base with the introduction of “sponsored rucks,” funded by brands such as the National Wildlife Federation and Livestrong.
Glendening’s strategy to get more organizations using the site is two-fold. First, both he and Daschle, Ruck.us’ CEO, come from the world of political campaigning, so they’ve got plenty of useful contacts that are able to make the connection. Second, and more critically, they see Ruck.us as a more comfortable and welcoming place for political discussion and action than anywhere else on the social web. Ruck.us, Glendening believes, can supply brands with thousands of ready-to-engage supporters.
“Facebook, for example, is a clumsy vehicle for politics,” says Glendening. “We’re offering a group of people that have said, ‘Hey, I’m online, and I’m politically active.’ We’re serving up the very right kind of person that’s 90% of the way there for any organization to turn into a sustainable user.”
Glendening’s most proud of Ruck.us’ ability to match like-minded users.
“Any person that wants to go online and engage can go to Change.org, Obama 2012 or Romney 2012 if they’re looking for something to do online — but if you’re looking for a very dialed-in way to do politics, we’re the only place we think that you can do that effectively.”
Would you engage with other politically minded voters on Ruck.us? Sound off in the comments below.
Series presented by GE
The World at Work is powered by GE. GE Works focuses on the people who make the things that move, power, build and help to cure the world.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Pgiam
This story originally published on Mashable here.
Fans can watch every Olympic event live online
May 2, 2012
By RACHEL COHEN | Associated Press – NEW YORK (AP) — Usain Bolt could be defending his Olympic 200-meter title on a Thursday afternoon in the United States. Fans will be able to watch the race live online for the first time during this summer’s London Games, but what they’ll see is very different from the tape-delayed, prime-time package that will still air a few hours later
Read more here:
By RACHEL COHEN | Associated Press –
NEW YORK (AP) — Usain Bolt could be defending his Olympic 200-meter title on a Thursday afternoon in the United States.
Fans will be able to watch the race live online for the first time during this summer’s London Games, but what they’ll see is very different from the tape-delayed, prime-time package that will still air a few hours later.
NBC executives decided to shift from their longtime philosophy and make every event available as it happens, convinced that the plan will build interest in the Olympics and not siphon off viewership from the traditional nightly broadcasts. That means the Internet streams will be fairly minimalistic, a move aimed at tempting fans to re-watch the competition in a more stylized presentation on the network that evening.
“You’ll be able to live the moment,” said Rick Cordella, the vice president and general manager for NBC Sports Digital.
The online coverage will use the world feed instead of NBC camera angles. That’s what viewers in many smaller countries see on their local networks, so the production is high quality, if less specialized than Americans are used to for the Olympics. There will be basic graphics and, for some popular sports, announcers from the Olympic Broadcasting Services.
Cordella said he didn’t know yet which commentators would call high-profile events like track, swimming and gymnastics for the OBS.
And if Bolt wins in another world record, fans will have to wait until prime time to see a post-race interview.
“It’s not infringing upon prime time,” Cordella said.
NBCOlympics.com streamed many smaller sports live during the 2008 Beijing Olympics for a total of 2,200 hours, but the big-ticket events were held back. This year, more than 3,500 hours will be shown on the website. For the top sports, replays will not be available online until after the event airs in prime time.
The service will include extra feeds for certain sports — fans can watch each apparatus in its entirety during gymnastics and up to five courts for tennis.
Most of the Internet streams will be available only to viewers who subscribe to cable or satellite services. They will need to “authenticate,” log in to prove they are customers. The “TV Everywhere” model has become popular with many networks as a way to allow viewers to watch programs on multiple devices while encouraging them to stick with cable and satellite providers. Cordella said he believed viewers were becoming more familiar with the process.
Social media has proliferated since Beijing, and NBC is counting on buzz from viewers who watch events live to attract others to the prime-time broadcasts.
“If Bolt sets a record and prances over the finish line,” Cordella said, “you want to see that.”
___
NBC is controlled by Comcast Corp.
Fans can watch every Olympic event live online
May 2, 2012
By RACHEL COHEN | Associated Press – NEW YORK (AP) — Usain Bolt could be defending his Olympic 200-meter title on a Thursday afternoon in the United States.
Original post:
By RACHEL COHEN | Associated Press –
NEW YORK (AP) — Usain Bolt could be defending his Olympic 200-meter title on a Thursday afternoon in the United States.
Fans will be able to watch the race live online for the first time during this summer’s London Games, but what they’ll see is very different from the tape-delayed, prime-time package that will still air a few hours later.
NBC executives decided to shift from their longtime philosophy and make every event available as it happens, convinced that the plan will build interest in the Olympics and not siphon off viewership from the traditional nightly broadcasts. That means the Internet streams will be fairly minimalistic, a move aimed at tempting fans to re-watch the competition in a more stylized presentation on the network that evening.
“You’ll be able to live the moment,” said Rick Cordella, the vice president and general manager for NBC Sports Digital.
The online coverage will use the world feed instead of NBC camera angles. That’s what viewers in many smaller countries see on their local networks, so the production is high quality, if less specialized than Americans are used to for the Olympics. There will be basic graphics and, for some popular sports, announcers from the Olympic Broadcasting Services.
Cordella said he didn’t know yet which commentators would call high-profile events like track, swimming and gymnastics for the OBS.
And if Bolt wins in another world record, fans will have to wait until prime time to see a post-race interview.
“It’s not infringing upon prime time,” Cordella said.
NBCOlympics.com streamed many smaller sports live during the 2008 Beijing Olympics for a total of 2,200 hours, but the big-ticket events were held back. This year, more than 3,500 hours will be shown on the website. For the top sports, replays will not be available online until after the event airs in prime time.
The service will include extra feeds for certain sports — fans can watch each apparatus in its entirety during gymnastics and up to five courts for tennis.
Most of the Internet streams will be available only to viewers who subscribe to cable or satellite services. They will need to “authenticate,” log in to prove they are customers. The “TV Everywhere” model has become popular with many networks as a way to allow viewers to watch programs on multiple devices while encouraging them to stick with cable and satellite providers. Cordella said he believed viewers were becoming more familiar with the process.
Social media has proliferated since Beijing, and NBC is counting on buzz from viewers who watch events live to attract others to the prime-time broadcasts.
“If Bolt sets a record and prances over the finish line,” Cordella said, “you want to see that.”
___
NBC is controlled by Comcast Corp.
Google online translation tops 200 mln users
April 27, 2012
AFP Relax News – Google Translate marked its sixth birthday on Thursday with news that more than 200 million people use the free online translation service monthly.
See more here:
AFP Relax News –
Google Translate marked its sixth birthday on Thursday with news that more than 200 million people use the free online translation service monthly.
“In a given day we translate roughly as much text as you’d find in one million books,” Google Translate engineer Franz Och said in a blog post.
“We imagine a future where anyone in the world can consume and share any information, no matter what language it’s in, and no matter where it pops up.”
Och worked at US military research arm DARPA before joining California-based Google in 2003 to be part of a team of engineers ramping up the quality of computer-driven language translations.
Google Translate, which lets people paste or type text in an on-screen box to have it quickly converted into a language of their choice, rolled out in 2006 with English, Chinese and Arabic.
“We can now translate among any of 64 different languages, including many with a small Web presence, such as Bengali, Basque, Swahili, Yiddish… and even Esperanto,” Och said of the service at translate.google.com.
Traffic to Translate from smartphones has been growing exponentially, and more than 92 percent of the users are from outside the United States, according to Google.
“What all the professional human translators in the world produce in a year, our system translates in roughly a single day,” Och said.
“By this estimate, most of the translation on the planet is now done by Google Translate.”
Coke's Stock Split Recalls Buffett's Pickpocket Warning
April 25, 2012
Coca-Cola Co. (KO) Chairman Muhtar Kent, who pushed for the beverage maker’s 11th stock split with an appeal for greater market liquidity, may be philosophically at odds with his biggest investor, Warren Buffett .
Read more from the original source:
Coca-Cola Co. (KO) Chairman Muhtar Kent, who pushed for the beverage maker’s 11th stock split with an appeal for greater market liquidity, may be philosophically at odds with his biggest investor, Warren Buffett.
Buffett, who controls a Coca-Cola stake of almost $15 billion, has resisted splitting Class A shares of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), which closed yesterday at $119,700. Splits, he said in a 1984 letter, may encourage short-term investment strategies that enrich brokers at the expense of the business.
“I don’t know what he would say about this one,” said Howard Buffett, the investor’s son and a director at Atlanta- based Coca-Cola. Howard Buffett, who spoke today on the sidelines of the soft-drink maker’s annual meeting, said he voted for the 2-for-1 split and had not discussed the transaction with his father. “Every situation is different.”
The transaction will halve the price of Coca-Cola, which ended yesterday at $74.12, making it more affordable for retail investors, said Jack Russo, an analyst at Edward Jones & Co. It “reflects our desire to share value with an ever-growing number of people and organizations around the world,” Kent, also the chief executive officer, said today in a statement.
“It’s somewhat ironic that a stock that’s been part of the Buffett portfolio all these years is playing that stock- splitting game,” said David Rolfe, chief investment officer of Berkshire shareholder Wedgewood Partners Inc. “Be careful what you wish for. Is it more and better shareholders that are going to have a long term view? I doubt it.”
Coca-Cola rose 1.1 percent to $74.93 at 4 p.m. in New York. Berkshire, where Buffett is chairman and CEO, accumulated its stake in the world’s largest soft-drink maker from 1988 to 1994 at a cost of about $1.3 billion.
âPickpocket of Enterprise’
Coca-Cola split its stock in 2-for-1 transactions three times while Buffett, a Coca-Cola director from 1989 to 2006, was on the board. Howard Buffett, also a director at Berkshire, joined the Coca-Cola board in 2010.
“One of the ironies of the stock market is the emphasis on activity,” Warren Buffett said in the 1984 letter. “But investors should understand that what is good for the croupier is not good for the customer. A hyperactive stock market is the pickpocket of enterprise.”
Shareholders at today’s annual meeting stood and applauded when Kent told them of the newly proposed split. Warren Buffett didn’t mention the action in a video he taped to open the meeting.
âNever Sold a Share’
“I’ve had a relationship with Coke for over 70 years,” Buffett, who drinks Cherry Coke, said in the video. “Today we own 200 million shares. We’ve never sold a share of Coca-Cola.”
Kent Landers, a spokesman for Coca-Cola, declined to comment about the statements in Buffett’s letter. Warren Buffett didn’t return a message seeking comment.
Buffett, who holds more than $40 billion in Berkshire stock, has said gains represent a barrier to entry for short- term investors and encourage shareholders to think like owners. Berkshire shares cost a minimum of $33,200 each 16 years ago. The cost of entry fell as Buffett added a second class of stock and, two years ago, split the B shares to facilitate the $26.5 billion cash-and-stock takeover of railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe.
âOne Opinion’
Berkshire Class B shares rose 15 cents to $79.94. Buffett split the B shares 50 for 1 in 2010, and said it enabled Burlington Northern investors to convert more of their holdings into Berkshire shares, reducing cash proceeds and tax costs. Howard Buffett said his father has “one opinion about how Berkshire should handle a stock split and another about how Coke would handle it.” The stock split requires shareholder approval.
Coca-Cola’s quarterly dividend has advanced more than 10- fold since Berkshire began buying shares, and Buffett said in 2011 that he expected the payouts to double in the next 10 years. Berkshire’s share of the quarterly payout rose to $102 million this year.
“Time is the friend of the wonderful business,” Buffett said of Coca-Cola in his letter to shareholders last year.
To contact the reporters on this story: Andrew Frye in New York at afrye@bloomberg.net; Duane D. Stanford in Atlanta at dstanford2@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Dan Kraut at dkraut2@bloomberg.net; Kevin Orland at korland@bloomberg.net.
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Intel 1Q earnings fall 13 percent, revenue steady
April 17, 2012
By PETER SVENSSON | Associated Press – NEW YORK (AP) — First-quarter earnings at Intel Corp. fell 13 percent as spending on research and marketing rose while revenue was flat, the world’s largest chipmaker said Tuesday. The results beat analyst expectations, but failed to sustain Intel ‘s stock, which hit a seven-year high of $28.78 in regular trading
Original post:
By PETER SVENSSON | Associated Press –
NEW YORK (AP) — First-quarter earnings at Intel Corp. fell 13 percent as spending on research and marketing rose while revenue was flat, the world’s largest chipmaker said Tuesday.
The results beat analyst expectations, but failed to sustain Intel‘s stock, which hit a seven-year high of $28.78 in regular trading. In extended trading, after the release of the results, the shares fell 68 cents, or 2.4 percent from the close to $27.79.
Intel‘s first-quarter net income was $2.74 billion, or 53 cents per share, down from $3.16 billion, or 56 cents per share, a year earlier.
Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting earnings of 50 cents per share.
Revenue was flat at $12.9 billion. Analysts were expecting $12.8 billion.
Intel bought computer security company McAfee Inc. and a unit of Infineon AG last year, but the added revenue from those deals was offset by the fact that this year’s quarter was one week shorter than last year’s.
The first quarter saw the launch of a new generation of chips for server computers, but more important developments lie ahead, accounting for some of the increase in expenses. Intel is set to launch new PC chips soon, and the first smartphone with an Intel chip is also on tap this week from an unnamed manufacturer.
Intel is also going to ramp up its largest marketing campaign in many years, to support “ultrabooks,” which are thin, light laptops in the vein of Apple’s Macbook Air. All the large PC makers have responded to Intel‘s promptings to make such laptops.
Intel is dominant in the market for PC processors, supplying the main computing chip for four out of five PCs sold in the world. But it’s facing a new challenge in the form of cheap phone-style chips, which have graduated from smartphones to powering tablet computers such as the iPad. There are signs that tablet sales are cutting into PC sales, at least in the U.S.
On a call with analysts Tuesday, CEO Paul Otellini said ultrabooks combine the attractive features of a tablet, like thinness, touch screens and instant start-up, with the keyboard and convenience of a PC. A number of ultrabooks that unite those features will be hitting stores in the holiday season, he said.
In the long term, the future of the PC is probably something in between the tablet and the laptop, he said.
Microsoft Corp. is launching a new touch-oriented version of Windows late this year, meshing with Otellini’s vision. But it will also support non-Intel, phone-style chips — a first for Windows.
Results were held back by a shortage of hard drives, which meant that PC makers had to curb production and needed fewer Intel chips. The scarcity started with flooding of hard-drive factories in Thailand last year and affected Intel‘s results in the fourth quarter as well.
Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith said hard-drive supplies improved during the quarter and the shortage is now over.
The Santa Clara, Calif., company said it expects $13.1 billion to $14.1 billion in second-quarter revenue, with a midpoint of $13.6 billion, above the analyst forecast of $13.4 billion.
Pfizer reportedly to sell division to Nestle
April 17, 2012
By The Associated Press | Associated Press – NEW YORK (AP) — Pfizer Inc. is near a deal to sell its infant-nutrition business to the Swiss food conglomerate Nestle SA for $9 billion, according to a report Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal . Nestle appears to be beating out a joint bid from Groupe Danone and Mead Johnson Nutrition Co
Continue reading here:
By The Associated Press | Associated Press –
NEW YORK (AP) — Pfizer Inc. is near a deal to sell its infant-nutrition business to the Swiss food conglomerate Nestle SA for $9 billion, according to a report Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal.
Nestle appears to be beating out a joint bid from Groupe Danone and Mead Johnson Nutrition Co. The deal would be one of the largest this year and could be announced as early as next week, according to the Journal report, which cited sources familiar with the matter who were not named.
Nestle is one of the world’s largest sellers of infant formula and may face some antitrust hurdles to complete the deal. It would likely have to sell assets in certain markets to win regulatory approval, according to the report.
Pfizer said in July that it would divest its infant-nutrition business and a separate animal-health business unit.
The company may be moving forward with shedding both units. It has reportedly picked JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley to manage an initial public offering of the animal-health division, according to the newspaper. But the animal-health unit could also still be put up for sale, following reports that Novartis AG and Bayer AG had recently considered making offers.
Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker, has been shedding its non-core businesses as it moves to focus on develop new prescription drugs. Last year it was hit by the expiration of its patent on Lipitor, the cholesterol fighter that’s the biggest-selling drug ever to go off patent,
It sold its business unit that makes drugs in capsule forms to KKR & Co. last August for $2.4 billion. Some investors are hoping Pfizer will sell even more businesses, including its unit that sells Advil and other non-prescription consumer health products.
Shares of Pfizer rose 33 cents to close at $22.31 Tuesday.
Ahead of the Bell: All eyes on Apple stock
April 17, 2012
Associated Press – NEW YORK (AP) — Investors are wondering what is in store for Apple Inc. after shares of the world’s most valuable public company closed down 4 percent on Monday, their fifth straight drop. But analysts remain upbeat on the iPhone and iPad maker’s shares, encouraging investors to buy the stock after its decline.
Original post:
Associated Press –
NEW YORK (AP) — Investors are wondering what is in store for Apple Inc. after shares of the world’s most valuable public company closed down 4 percent on Monday, their fifth straight drop. But analysts remain upbeat on the iPhone and iPad maker’s shares, encouraging investors to buy the stock after its decline.
The Cupertino, Calif., company has lost $50 billion of its market capitalization over the past five days and was worth about $541 billion on Tuesday — still well ahead of Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s second-most valuable company, at $395 billion.
The stock slide comes after a rally that had driven Apple‘s shares up nearly 60 percent in 2012, driving its market cap to $600 billion. Only one other public company, Microsoft Corp., has been worth that much. Shares peaked at $644 on April 10.
Before the market opened Tuesday, Apple stock dipped $2.68, or less than 1 percent, to $577.45.
The drop in stock price and market cap is a cause for concern for the stock market. Not only is Apple a bellwether for the technology industry, it is also the biggest stock in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and the largest on the Nasdaq Composite index. Its decline weighs on broader stock measures.
The drop in the company’s shares comes about two weeks after an analyst set a $1,001 price target on Apple’s shares, the highest yet. That implies a company value of $933 billion, well above what any company has ever been worth. But since that price target was set by Topeka Capital Markets’ Brian White on April 2, shares of the maker of iPads and iPhones have dropped 6.2 percent.
One cloud hovering over the tech giant this month is the U.S. government’s accusations that it conspired with major book publishers to raise the price of e-books. Apple denied that accusation on Friday.
Many market watchers wonder if Apple’s stock may just be coming back down to earth. The company’s shares have risen 77 percent over the past year and are still up 43 percent in 2012. Apple’s stock price ascent this year has been fueled by blowout sales of iPhones and iPads in the holiday quarter, plus the announcement that the company will start paying a dividend this summer and buy back shares. That’s a way to reward shareholders by tapping Apple’s $97.6 billion cash hoard.
Sterne Agee & Leach’s Shaw Wu maintained a “Buy” rating and $750 price target for Apple, saying that the company remains a top pick and that investors should take advantage of the recent stock price decline.
Baird’s William Power echoed that, reiterating his “Outperform” rating and $700 price target on the company’s shares.
Why Are the Fed and SEC Keeping Wall Street's Secrets?
April 1, 2012
About William D Cohan William D. Cohan is the author of the recently released “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World” and the New York Times bestsellers “House of Cards” and “The Last Tycoons.” More about William D Cohan Photographer: Ben Baker/Bloomberg Getting what should be public information about major Wall Street firms can be maddeningly difficult.
See the original post:
About William D Cohan
William D. Cohan is the author of the recently released “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World” and the New York Times bestsellers “House of Cards” and “The Last Tycoons.”
Photographer: Ben Baker/Bloomberg
Getting what should be public information about major Wall Street firms can be maddeningly difficult.
Bloomberg News discovered this in its ultimately successful effort to get information on the $1.2 trillion in “secret loans” the Fed doled out during the financial crisis. And I’ve had no small experience of it myself.
As I started each of my three books — about Lazard Freres, Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) — I submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the appropriate government agencies (the Securities Exchange Commission, the State Department and the Federal Reserve) to obtain whatever documents, memos and e-mails they had about these companies and their senior executives.
I was hoping to find, among other nuggets, details of enforcement actions, or settlements that were reached where the firms “neither admitted nor denied” guilt, or other documentary evidence of the coziness that has for too long existed between Wall Street and Washington.
Sadly, getting this information in anything like a timely basis — say, before my books were finished and published — has been nearly impossible. At first, when I asked the SEC about documents related to Lazard’s role in the Hartford-Mediobanca scandal starting in 1968 and ending in 1981, the agency told me it could not release the information. When I reminded the FOIA administrator that the SEC had already released the information, years before, to another journalist, the agency dug up the 40 boxes of unindexed, unorganized documents and invited me to a warehouse in Pennsylvania to take a look. After an hour or so, the clerk asked me if I was done with my review. (Eventually, I persuaded the SEC to ship the boxes — at my expense — to its office in Manhattan, where I spent months poring over them.)
Zilch, Nada
But that bit of beginner’s luck turned out to be a fluke. To this day, the SEC has given me nothing — zilch, nada — about Bear Stearns or Goldman Sachs. After the Lazard book was published, the State Department sent me a thin file that was, supposedly, what it had in its possession about Felix Rohatyn’s three years as the U.S. ambassador to France. I opened the envelope and discovered that most of the 10 or so pages had been redacted.
Last December, nearly nine months after my Goldman book was published, I received an official-looking package from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Slapped on the outside of the envelope was a bright orange sticker about keeping the contents — a computer disk — away from “magnets and electric motors” and, of course, the warning “Do Not X- Ray.” This, I suspected, was my long-awaited document file about Goldman’s dealings with the Federal Reserve in the days leading up to Sept. 22, 2008, when it, along with Morgan Stanley, had the good fortune to be allowed to become a bank holding company with lifesaving unlimited access to short-term funding.
I was hoping to discover how that whole thing went down at the time, and how Goldman and Morgan Stanley got the Fed’s blessing but Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. did not. Also I was interested in Goldman’s interactions with the Fed since that fateful moment. My hopes were raised further when I heard from people at the firm that Goldman had reviewed the contents of what was being sent to me and that its executives seemed worried about it.
Nothing New
No such luck. On the disk was nothing more than a bunch of obscure — but publicly available — Federal Reserve documents about the details of Goldman’s assets and liabilities on a quarterly and annual basis, everything from the kinds of loans the firm had been making to the tenor of its derivatives book to whether the real-estate loans it owns were backed by commercial properties or residential properties.
The documents contained a bunch of detailed numbers (without explanation) about the kinds of risks Goldman was taking at a moment in time, thus prying open ever so slightly the firm’s black box.
For instance, who knew that at the end of December 2011 Goldman had $44.2 trillion in the notional amount of derivatives contracts on its books, about $1.3 trillion more than it did in 2010? Or that $36 trillion of that amount was for contracts of less than one year in tenor? Or that Goldman had $19 billion in insurance underwriting assets, up nearly 40 percent from the year before? Or that Goldman’s book of commercial and industrial loans was $7 billion at the end of 2011, up dramatically from the $829 million it held at the end of 2010? Or that the firm’s stash of mortgage-backed securities — now $1.37 billion — had nearly doubled what it had at the end of 2010?
Although I still have no idea how Goldman makes its money, I guess it is interesting to know that the government produces mind-numbing documents containing columns of numbers and then puts them on websites buried on the Internet.
But let’s not pretend that the Fed’s carefully scripted, and untimely, release of a disk of public information to me is even remotely the way FOIA is supposed to work. Where are the documents and e-mails about how Goldman was allowed by the Fed to become a bank holding company? Where are the documents from the SEC about Goldman? Where, for that matter, are the SEC documents related to the short-dated, out-of-the-money puts that investors spent millions of dollars buying in the last week of Bear Stearns’s existence? The SEC said it was investigating who bought and sold these puts, but it has never made the results of its investigation public despite my FOIA request.
If our government agencies continue to do everything in their considerable power to keep hidden information that belongs in the public realm, all the regulatory reform in the world won’t end the rot on Wall Street.
(William D. Cohan, a former investment banker and the author of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World,” is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
Read more opinion online from Bloomberg View. Today’s highlights:
The View editors on why the U.S. should ratify the nuclear-test ban and regulate money-market funds. William D. Cohan on the government hiding public information on banks. Albert R. Hunt on murder in New Orleans. Charles Dumas on why the euro should be abandoned, and Charles Wyplosz on why the euro should be kept.
To contact the writer of this article: William D. Cohan at wdcohan@yahoo.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this article: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net.
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