Investor Bill Ackman accuses America’s best paid chief executive, Michael Johnson, of duping salespeople out of $3.8bn America’s best paid chief executive has been accused of duping some of the world’s poorest people out of $3.8bn (£2.4bn) in “the best-managed pyramid scheme…
Norilsk Nickel CEO gets record $100mn golden handshake
Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, chairman of the board of the Norilsk Nickel Mining and Metallurgical Company (RIA Novosti/Yana Lapikova)The former CEO of the world’s largest nickel and palladium producer Norilsk Nickel Vladimir Strzhalkovsky will receive record compensation when he gives up his seat on the board to Oleg Deripaska on Monday. Strzhalkovsky will receive half the sum immediately with the remainder coming in two equal parts during 2013, Vedomosti daily says referring to their sources.The $100mn ‘parachute’ is an unprecedented sum for Russia, while internationally it is also sky-high. Until now Russian executives leaving a company’s board received between $10 – $20mn. To compare, the departure of Vikram Pandit as CEO at Citigroup, was ranked one of the biggest exits in
2f3
2012 by Forbes with a $15mn compensation package. Brian Dunn, former CEO at big box electronics retailer Best Buy, left the company with what Forbes calls a “handsome” payment of $6.6mn.The biggest golden handshake paid was about $417.4mn to Jack Welch, who headed General Electric between 1981 and 2001; with Exxon Mobil Corp head Lee Raymond receiving $320.6mn, according to a research by GMI.Norilsk Nickel major shareholders agreed to have Rusal’s Deripaska as a head of Norilsk Nickel instead of Vladimir Strzhalkovsky in the framework of the agreement that brought to an end $1.4bn dispute over rights at the company. … Read More
Five Businesses Who Say They Will Be Hurt By Taxes Going Up
Republicans warn that tax increases on the rich likely to take effect next year will hurt small business. The heads of some of America's mid-size franchise chains talked to BuzzFeed, about why tax increases, even, and sometimes especially on the top 2% of wage earners would be bad for their franchisees.
Donald Fox, CEO of Firehouse Subs
Donald Fox, the CEO of Firehouse Subs says he can afford to pay higher taxes himself, but some of the company's franchise owners can not. “For those franchisees that are trying to save with the rise in taxes some of them won’t be able to,” Fox told BuzzFeed. The rise in taxes “is going to have a very real impact on those operators.” Fox was among a group of business owners who met with House Speaker John Boehner last week. He suggest letting the tax increase only hit those earning more than $1 million a year to not effect small business owners. Firehouse Subs has 562 locations.
Source: firehousesubs.com
Darin Harris, COO of Primrose Schools
Darin Harris, the COO of Primrose Schools says “many of our franchise have an income over $250,000 and it will have a negative impact on their ability to reinvest back into the system.” Primrose school is a private school franchise which offers child care and preschool programs for children 6 weeks to 5 years. Primrose has more than 245 schools in 17 states, and is planning to grow to 312 schools by 2014. Harris, however, says tax increases might but a halt on the company's plan to expand. “We've got a lot of our business that are scared.”
Source: fredericknewspost.com
Russ Reynolds, President and CEO of Batteries Plus
Russ Reynolds, the President & CEO of Batteries Plus, says “for the first time ever we've seen franchisees deciding to not go into small business over the uncertainty in the economic future.” Batteries Plus is the largest U.S. battery and light bulb franchise and has 530 retail stores in 46 states and Puerto Rico. Reynolds says “about 80% aren't gonna invest in a growth if their tax changes” citing an recent study. Reynolds says if revenue are going to go up then he would prefer if Washington used the money wisely to lower the deficit. “If taxes have to go up please show us you are good stewards of the money.”
Source: sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net
Jeffery A. Wesley, CFO of Two Men And A Truck
Jeffrey Wesley is the CFO of Two Men And A Truck, a moving company with a headquarters in Lansing, Michigan that operates 200 franchises across 34 states. He says the biggest concern for small businesses is the current uncertainty. “The Fiscal Cliff is a concern and as well as the tax/regulatory uncertainty and lack of foresight on growth policies,” Wesley said. “It certainly is a challenging world when DC is the biggest impediment to more success.”
Via: Linkedin.com
Best Tech Events This Week (ThinkCommerce, Xconomy, TimesOpen Hack Day, NY Tech Meetup, TEDxSiliconAlley, AlleyNYC Holiday Party, Hack/Meat,…
This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.
Winter is coming.
No, I’m not talking about the weather (though it has been getting chilly lately). Nor Game of Thrones (FYI, season 3 begins on March 31 for those keeping track!). I’m talking about the growing perception in Startupland that the good times might really be coming to an end (for now). Following last week’s post by Fred Wilson was this one by PandoDaily’s Sarah Lacy, talking about the Series A crunch and how as many as thousand companies who’ve received seed rounds won’t be around in six months. Then there’s this one by TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis, arguing that the Series A crunch actually extended to Series B, C and D. So what should entrepreneurs make of all this? Do what ya should be doing anyway–focus on building an insanely great product that customers really want and start thinking about monetization early. Personally, I think this is the best time to build a company.
My buddy Steve Rosenbaum (founder/CEO of Magnify) is NYCEDC’s Entrepreneur at Large, and he’ll be doing virtual office hours (via Google Hangout) to answer all your startup and entrepreneurship questions. Register here.
I have a couple of free tickets to the upcoming Mobile Loco conference in San Francisco on December 11. Speakers include Andrew Mason (Groupon), Bill Gurley (Benchmark Capital), Don Dodge (Google) and others. If interested, just shoot me an email at gary@garysguide.com with your Name, Title and Company. We’ll pick two randomly selected winners.
The annual Amazon AWS Startup Challenge deadline is at midnight this Wed (December 5). This year there’ll be four grand prizes (gaming, big data, consumer apps & business apps). Each prize includes $50,000 in cash + $50,000 in AWS credits. Nice!
And the deadline for nominating a startup for the Crunchies (co-hosted by TechCrunch, GigaOm and VentureBeat) is this Thursday (December 6).
In case ya missed TechDrinkup last week, a casting team from Bravo’s Start-ups did show, looking for NYC-edition characters. Here’s Betabeat’s writeup, with all the juicy details.
Going slightly off-topic … I’m in fairly good shape but I’ve been feeling the urge lately to find a kickass fitness regimen and get in reaaalllly great shape. But with a ton of holiday parties coming up, I’m wondering if I should start now or wait until after the holidays? Hmmmm … If anyone has any interesting fitness or diet routines to recommend, feel free to email me.
And now let’s see whats going down in the Alley this week…
TEDxSiliconAlley 2012
The theme is Rise of the Machines and the keynote speaker is Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity Is Near). Also includes Bre Pettis (founder, Makerbot), Francessca Ferrando (philosopher of posthumanism & visiting scholar at Columbia), Jincey Lumpkin (attorney & Huffington Post sex columnist) and Ken Segall (creative director of Apple’s “Think Different” campaign).
Monday (Dec. 3), 9:30 a.m. @ Terminal 5, 610 W. 56th Street
Lean Startup Conference Livestream
Keynotes by Marc Andreessen, Steve Blank, Beth Comstock and Eric Ries.
Monday (Dec. 3), 12 p.m. @ WeWorkLabs, 175 Varick Street, 4th Fl.
Windows Apps Labs Launch at WeWork Labs
Access to the newest Windows 8 devices (including Microsoft Surface). Also Bing Fund, the new angel fund and incubation program backed by Microsoft, will be dropping in to talk about the program.
Monday (Dec. 3), 6 p.m. @ WeWork Labs, 175 Varick Street
NY Mobile First: App Pitch Showdown
With Nihal Mehta (ENIAC Ventures), Sim Blaustein (Bertelsmann Venture Capital), Charlie O’Donnell (Brooklyn Bridge Ventures), Chieh Huang (Zynga NY) and Heather Hromoho (Millennial Media).
Monday (Dec. 3), 7 p.m. @ Alley NYC, 500 7th Avenue, 17th Fl.
Think Commerce Summit
Rockstar speaker list including Jon Miller (former CEO, Digital Media Group, News Corp), Bob Pittman (chairman & CEO, Clear Channel), Ben Lerer (CEO, Thrillist), Eric Hippeau (partner, Lerer Ventures), Shana Fisher (Highline Venture Partners), Ezra Kucharz (president, Local Digital Media, CBS), Nick Lehman (president of digital, NBC Universal) and others.
Tuesday (Dec. 4), 12 a.m. @ Chelsea Piers – Pier 60, 23rd Street and 11th Avenue
Xconomy Forum: Mobile Madness New York
With Rich Miner (Google Ventures), Roger Ehrenberg (IA Ventures), Peter Flint (Polaris Venture Partners), Joe Essenfeld (Jibe), Eric Koester (Zaarly), Robby Stein (Yahoo), Jalak Jobanputra (FuturePerfect Ventures), Rahul Sood (Bing Fund) and others.
Tuesday (Dec. 4), 2 p.m. @ NYC Microsoft Office, 1290 6th Avenue
December 2012 NY Tech Meetup
You know the drill. Five-minute, rapid-fire demos. A bunch of amazing new startups. Now hopefully you’ve managed to snag one of those elusive tickets.
Tuesday (Dec. 4), 7 p.m. @ NYU Skirball Center For The Performing Arts, 566 Laguardia Place
TechHub NY – A Very Merry TechHub
Networking, hosted drinks and bites, DJs, photo-booth action, and more.
Wednesday (Dec. 5), 6:30 p.m. @ Ace Hotel, 20 W. 29th Street
Pitchcrawl 2.0 – Angel Investor / Entrepreneur Mixer
Investors include Marissa Campise (Venrock), Lucas Nelson (DFJ Gotham), Rahul Gandhi (High Peaks Venture Partners), Mark Wachen (DreamIt Ventures), Peter Flint (Polaris Venture Partners), Charlie Kemper (Revel Partners & ERA), William Peng (Raptor) and others.
Wednesday (Dec. 5), 7 p.m. @ To be decided
Columbia Engineering Entrepreneurship Night
Arguably among the most influential technology entrepreneurs over the last decade, Bill Campbell and Ben Horowitz will discuss the new NYC tech boom, how it is driving the East Coast startup ecosystem, and how NYC entrepreneurship is giving Silicon Valley a run for its money.
Thursday (Dec. 6), 6 p.m. @ Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 W. 18th Street
Water Collective Holiday Party
An evening of open bar, hors d’oeuvres, silent auction, and raffle to celebrate a new year of clean water and economic empowerment.
Thursday (Dec. 6), 7 p.m. @ Top Of The Garden, 251 W. 30th Street, 16th Fl.
Celebrate the Arts with AlleyNYC (Holiday Party!)
Just pure partying and having fun with awesome people.
Thursday (Dec. 6), 8 p.m. @ AlleyNYC, 500 7th Avenue, 17th Fl.
Investor series with Erik Norlander of Google Ventures
Google is one of the largest companies and a frequent dream strategic partner, investor, acquirer. Hear from the inside how it works as well as the acquisition process.
Friday (Dec. 7), 4 p.m. @ The Lab, 122 W. 26th Street, 5th Fl.
Hack // Meat
Bringing together technologists, entrepreneurs, creatives, policy experts, non-profit leaders and industry executives to develop technologies and tools that help democratize meat.
Friday (Dec. 7), 6 p.m. @ Grind, 419 Park Avenue South, 2nd Fl.
TimesOpen Hack Day
A day filled with learning, coding, tinkering, having fun and hanging out with some of the best developers in NYC.
Saturday (Dec. 8), 10 a.m. @ The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, 15th Fl.
More events on the horizon…
Women in Wireless Holiday Party on Dec. 10 @ SoHo House
Charity Ball 2012 on Dec. 10 @ 69th Regiment Armory
FashInvest 2012 Capital Conference on Dec. 11 @ Fashion Institute of Technology
10 Startup Mistakes to Avoid on Dec. 11 @ Orrick at The CBS Building
Damsels in Design 2012 Holiday Soiree on Dec. 11 @ Museum of the City of New York
Perfecting Your Business Development Strategies on Dec. 12 @ Anchin
Ultra Light Startups: Investor Feedback Forum on Dec. 13 @ Microsoft
StartupBus: Accelerate NYC 2012 on Dec. 15 @ The Alley
December NY Enterprise Technology Meetup on Dec. 18 @ Cooley
Windows 8 Launch Celebration! on Dec. 18 @ Microsoft
Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! 
… Read More
News Corp. taps WSJ editor as publishing CEO
Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate News Corp. plans to name Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson as chief executive of its publishing spinoff, the newspaper said on Saturday. The Journal cited people familiar with the matter as saying that the name of the new publishing…
Citigroup CEO Walks Off With $260 Million After His Bank Loses 88 Percent Of Its Value
Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit abruptly resigned today, leaving the helm of the bank that he guided through the financial crisis … Read More
Top Google executive appointed Yahoo CEO
Marissa Mayer was internet search company’s first female engineer and has led various businesses at Google. … Read More
