Archive for the ‘profile’ Category
Monday, October 26th, 2009 |
The world’s greatest moneymaker is seemingly going through the current financial crisis without any problems.
Warren “Oracle of Omaha” Buffet is 79 this year and worth about USD40 billion.
Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy.
He has always enjoyed himself in a falling market, which, as he sees it, provides him with the best opportunities.
Since 1965, his company, Berkshire Hathaway’s value has achieved a mind-boggling 20.3% average annual growth – 336,000% over the years – 84 times that of the standard US index fund, the S&P 500.
He ignores short-term share price movements, either up or down.
He has never started a business, nor invented anything, nor came up with a way of making businesses more profitable.
Still lives in his kampung, more than a thousand miles from Wall Street.
Still works from the 14th floor of a boring looking office building he has rented for almost 50 years.
He has never had a computer, calculator or even a stock ticker in his office.
If a deal needs complicated calculations before you can decide if it is right, then it probably is not.
Always leave a margin of safety so that if things don’t work out as he’d hoped, you don’t lose money.
He has one personal assistant.
He hates meetings.
He hates busy schedules.
In other words, he’s rather laidback.
He drives himself from his house to the office, a few miles apart on the same road.
Most evenings he’ll eat a ham sandwich, then do several hours of online bridge under the name T-Bone.
When you call him up, he often picks up the phone himself, or call back immediately later.
Since the 1960s, he’s been buying companies rather than mere stocks. Wonder if he’s going to buy companies involved in Kettlebells anytime soon?
The difference between owning a business outright and owning shares in it is only one of degree.
Buy shares for the long-term and, as a shareholder, think like you’re buying a part of a business.
You should think like an owner.
Invest in profitable businesses with good prospects rather than looking for undervalued shares.
Focusing on share prices makes you a mere speculator, whereas a real investor looks to the asset itself to produce the return. Like someone buying a farm: do not worry about its price but rather its productivity.
Think long term, rather than the figures for the next quarter.
Treat the business like it’s the only business your family owns. You can’t sell it. You’re going to own it for a hundred years.
Looks on his shareholders as partners who buy into his company to be part of a business and something they expect to die with.
If you take the couple of centuries we’ve had, the 19th and the 20th, we’ve had about 15 bad years in both centuries, and we’ll have fifteen bad years in centuries to come. Capitalism overshoots, and market people do get irrationally exuberant sometimes, but that’s the nature of it. You want a dynamic system, and you want a market system that’s free to make mistakes to some degree.
Source
The BBC, 25th oct 2009
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Monday, September 28th, 2009 |
Bryan Gan, 31 of Penang is the only son of a PC hardware business owner.
He created his first website in 1996 when he was 18. It was about
martial arts: Bruce Lee and Shaolin.
He graduated from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Computer Science in 2002.
He then started a sole prorietorship Comdev Software with 2 PCs and a fellow USM student as the only partner.
His company achieved 500% growth in 2005 and represented Malaysia in the 2006 CeBIT exhibition in Germany.
One of his products is Comdev One Admin, a homegrown Content Management System (CMS) which retails for USD299.
I have seen Comdev One Admin in action and suffice to say it will enable him to buy a lot of kitchen sinks!
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Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 |
Not many 23-year-olds have this much in cash. Probably even on-paper 24-year-old youngest billionaire in the world, Mark Zuckerberg does not get to hold this much paper money.
Stark details of Wayne Rooney and his wife Coleen’s income were recently made public due to the company which represented them (Proactive Sports Management) suing for unpaid commission & credit card bills. The company has been representing them since 2002.
Basic salary
GBP90,000 per week salary as a footballer with Manchester United i.e. GBP360,000 per month, GBP4.32 million per year
Image rights
GBP1.52 million a year for image rights, paid by Manchester United (including the amount that goes to his agent)
Endorsement deals
GBP1 million a year from Nike for advertisement
GBP118,689 every 6 months from computer game makers Electronic Arts Sports, with which he has appeared on 4 straight UK-version covers of the company’s FIFA series from 2005 to 2008 i.e. about GBP240,000 per year
GBP600,000 from Coca Cola for a four year deal. He also has deals with Nokia, Ford and Asda. I’d assume
Books
GBP3.55 million for 12 books. On 9th March 2006, Rooney signed the largest sports book deal in publishing history with HarperCollins, who granted him a GBP5 million advance plus royalties for a minimum of 5 books to be published over a 12-year period.
For simplicity’s sake, I won’t include the money from Coca Cola & the books.
Still, it still adds up to GBP7.08 million a year.
Assuming GBP1 equals RM5, that means RM35.4 million a year, or RM2.95 million A MONTH.
His wife’s income was also revealed, and even though she makes much less than Rooney, some are really eye-popping, not bad for a former supermarket checkout girl, like the fact that she’s being paid GBP41,667 every month (GBP500,000 per year) for her column in OK! magazine, indirectly making her one of the most highly paid journalists in the United Kingdom.
The Rooneys live in a GBP4.25 million mansion. They also own property in Florida, USA.
Yep, should they ever it, those would buy a lot of top weight loss pills…
Source
Wikipedia
Guardian (UK)
Daily Mail UK, 9th Dec 2008
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Friday, December 5th, 2008 |
For its 2008 edition, Forbes has named China’s Peng Xiaofeng, 33 as the world’s richest self-made Asian, and the world’s 462th richest person, being worth USD2.5 billion.
33 years old? USD2.5 billion? Tha moving companies San Francisco exercise should be no problems at all.
He made his furtune from solar energy.
Don’t be fooled by the uncool look:
- Started out with a trading company
- It flourished into a family-run company with 12,000 employees: made safety products eg gloves & exported worldwide
- realised no Chinese company made solar panels, so he did.
Lessons:
- No matter how much you’re making, SAVE. In 2005, Peng used USD30 million of his own money (not borrowed) to make solar panel-making factories. Heck, most people would’ve considered living the slow life if they had USD30 million (about RM100 million) in cash!!!
- Never let up: in 2007 he took his solar company into Nasdaq. Internal management problems surfaced, but he held on.
And sorry ladies, he’s married.
Source
Forbes
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Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 |
…that was back in 1973. She got started after attending a seminar about traditional healthcare and the use of “jamu.”
Of course she was, and obviously still is, passionate about these 2 things.
She started the business in her garage, producing and distributing products with a capital of USD25 and 2 workers.
Many of her family members were not supportive, but her husband (a civil servant) was.
A few years later, she already had 50 workers and needed to move out of the garage.
But she couldn’t get a bank loan. So she soldiered on, saving up money. With the money saved after many years, she set up her own manufacturing plant.
She said:
- you need to knowledgeable and keep up with demands of modern consumers in a rapidly changing local as well as global market.
- all problems can be overcome through hard work, perseverance and continuous improvement.
Mustika Ratu is now a public listed company with 3,000 employees. It gets its raw materials from its own plantation.
Later she expanded to other areas of traditional healthcare, including beauty & spa business, franchising her spa, both locally & overseas.
She obtained her PhD in Economics at the age of 79. Truly, age is never a barrier.
Dr Bra Mooryati was born in January 1928. She is also a senator.
Source
Daily Express, 14th November 2007, Page 5 (local section)
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Saturday, December 8th, 2007 |
Forbes compiled a list of the world’s 20 richest superstars under 25 years of age, checking earnings from June 2006 to June 2007. The earnings are total but before taxes or management fees, including salaries, winnings, endorsement deals and royalties.
The top 4 are all athletes:
1 LeBron James, 22, NBA forward, USD27 million. He’s now constructing his 35,000 sq ft house which has a bowling alley, casino and barber shop.
2 Reggie Bush, 22, NFL running back, USD24 million.
3 Maria Sharapova, 20, tennis, USD23 million, of which only USD3.8 million is from winnings, the rest from endorsements with Pepsi, Nike, Canon, Colgate-Palmolive and Motorola.
4 Michelle Wie, 18, golf, USD19 million. USD16 million of that is from endorsements.
5 Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, 20, child twin stars-turned-fashion icons, USD17 million EACH.
6 Daniel Radcliffe, 18, “Harry Potter” actor, USD15 million. 6 years ago, in the first Potter film, he was reportedly offered USD145K. Then, in the latest Potter film, he was reported to have been paid USD14 million. Amazingly, he made more than A-list Hollywood actresses Jennifer Aniston (USD14 million) & Sandra Bullock (USD10 million).
7 Hillary Duff, 20, pop star-actress-’tween merchandise mogul, USD12 million.
8 Avril Lavigne, 23, singer, USD12 million
9 Carmelo Anthony, 23, NBA, USD10 million
10. Keira Knightley, 22, actress, USD9 million
The top 20 also include:
Dakota Fanning, 13, actress, USD4 million. She commands as much as USD3 million for major films.
Miley Cyrus, 15, “Hannah Montana” ctress, USD3.5 million.
Emma Watson, “Harry Potter” actress, USD4 million.
Rupert Grint, “Harry Potter” actor, USD4 million.
Carrie Underwood, singer, USD7 million
Lindsay Lohan, actress, USD3.5 million
Source
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Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 |
It seems everybody’s throwing money at Facebook nowadays.
In October they got a USD240 million investment from Microsoft, which resulted in a USD15 billion valuation.
Not bad for a 3-year old company founded and headed by a 23-year old, another Harvard dropout who has been dubbed “the new Bill Gates.”
They are now perhaps the world’s social networking site with the highest valuation.
Now even 79-year old Li Ka-shing, the richest man in Asia and the 9th richest in the world, has thrown his support. He invested USD60 million recently, and has the right to invest another UDS60 million if he wants to.
Li was introduced to Facebook by an existing investor who contacted Solina Chau, director of the Li Ka-shing Foundation.
Facebook is now apparently the world’s 2nd most popular social networking site, with more than 73 million members. MySpace is still the runaway leader with 289 million members. In contrast, Friendster, arguably the most popular site among Malaysians, is at 13th place with 26 million.
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Monday, December 3rd, 2007 |
According to John Chow, he first started monetizing his blog on 17th September 2006 via Google Adsense alone. By the end of that month i.e. 13 days later, he already made more than USD350, i.e. about USD27 per day. He relied mostly on digg.com and google search traffic in the early days.
2 months later (for the month of November 2006), he’s already pulling in more than RM7,000, mostly from Adsense and Vibrant IntelliTXT. That is off 217,876 unique visitors. In fact, for the month before (October 2006) he got even more unique visitors: 229,144.
A year later (November 2007), he’s on almost RM90,000. I think that’s more than what 99.999% of what Malaysians are earning!
And he’s not using Adsense at all.
Most of his income comes from Private Ad Sales (almost USD13,000), affiliate commissions (about USD6,500) and ReviewMe (paid posting) at USD4,400.
What’s most surprising perhaps is the fact that he had LESS unique visitors in November 2007 than in November 2006. In November 2007, he *only* had 185,386 unique visitors.
That means traffic went down, even when his blog is now more established / well known, yet income went up more than 12 times. In other words, he has a very high eCPM: USD84.19: his blog makes over USD80 every time 1,000 pages are viewed.
How did he do this? In his own words:
The high eCPM rate was achieved by maximizing as many revenue opportunities as possible while still preserving the user experience.This blog started with only Google AdSense. Since then, I have experimented with dozens of monetization methods. Some have worked really well while others were a complete flop. The key is to always be tweaking and not stand still. If you haven’t touch up your revenue mix in the past six months, it’s time to get your hands dirty.
His expenses for the month were very little: USD566.52 for Google Adwords advertising, and USD25 for a private ad. His hosting is sponsored.
Source
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Sunday, November 25th, 2007 |
4maxdesign.com are four 12-year olds of Sekolah Kebangsaan Bandar Baru Darulaman (Bandar Baru Darulaman Primary School) in Jitra, Kedah, Malaysia.
They offer services like logo (RM10) and web design (RM30 per page), as well as animation (RM8) and posters (RM15).
They wrote that they want to be Malaysia’s youngest internet entrepreneurs, and even though they’re still at primary school, they will still stive for the highest levels of professionalism.
Going through their website and portfolio, not bad, but I think they have work cut out for them. The logos are not of the highest standards yet and there are many broken links in their website.
Source
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Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 |
That’s RM24,000 every 3 months as harvesting is done.
He started 2 years ago.
He learnt the necessary skills in the Peninsula.
He said he does not use pesticides.
Source: Daily Express, 15th November 2007, Page 6
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