Up Front
Edited by Sheridan Prasso
Talk Show
"It is not that humans have become any more greedy than in generations past. It is that the avenues to express greed had grown so enormously." -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan
SHOPAHOLICS
Sister, Can You Spare Me a Buck?
Karyn, a twentysomething Brooklynite and admitted shopaholic who does not want her last name printed, has racked up $20,000 in credit-card bills in the past two years. And she readily admits that her purchases were hardly emergencies. "It was completely all shoes and purses and CDs and lattes," she says. But when Karyn lost her $100,000-a-year TV-production job in December, it took four months to find a new job at half the salary. Now she swears she has reformed--and hung up her Prada shoes forever. She's wearing Old Navy, dyeing her hair herself, and selling her goodies on eBay.
And, to help pay off her debt, she's soliciting donations of $1, at www.savekaryn.com. In her first weeks online, word spread, and she collected $400. Not all the responses have been kind. Karyn says half her e-mail is critical. "I didn't hurt anyone by spending too much money," she protests. "I was actually helping out the economy." She has a point. Consumer spending, which grew 3.1% in 2001, helped prevent the economy from cratering.
By Heather Timmons
STREET TALK
Hot Seats on the NYSE
Despite an 18% decline in the New York Stock Exchange Composite Index so far this year, the price of a seat there has risen by almost 14%. Seats entitle their holders to buy and sell shares on the exchange floor, and brokers say the price is an important measure of market sentiment. After falling to $1.65 million in 2000, the price of a NYSE seat hit $2.5 million on July 10, just shy of the all-time high of $2.65 million, reached in 1999.
Why the increase? The NYSE won't comment, but insiders point to rising daily volume, up 14% this year, and to consolidation among brokers that results in fewer seats for sale. Also, the switch to decimalization has increased institutional reliance on floor brokers for various technical reasons. Plus, "there's a flavor to being on the floor, to getting the body language and nuances," says Ananth Madhavan, co-author of a study on seat prices and managing director of research at ITG, which operates POSIT, an electronic stock-order matching system.
The market for seats is a thin one. Only a half-dozen or so change hands each year. Yet the rising prices are a vote of confidence in the markets, says veteran broker Richard Rosenblatt who runs his own firm. "It's clearly a bet on tomorrow." Now, if only stock prices would follow suit.
By Robert J. Rosenberg
HONCHOS
Call 'Em What You Will, They Ain't Wimps
For CEOs these days, it can't hurt to be able to outrun shareholders. Is that why 19 top managers from Motorola (MOT
), Citadel Group, Templeton Global Advisors, Unisys (UIS
), and others are taking the Ironman CEO Challenge on July 28?
Participants in the famously grueling triathlon will swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, then run 26.2 miles in the hope of being crowned "Fittest CEO." They'll make up a subgroup of the 1,700 athletes at the Ironman USA Triathlon in Lake Placid, N.Y., a qualifying stop on the way to the world championship in Kona, Hawaii, next fall. "I have no idea whether this will be fun," says Templeton's Bahamas-based CEO Mark Holowesko, 42, a competitive yachtsman and cyclist. Also eligible are COOs, principals, owners, and presidents. Two women are among them.
Execs pay higher entrance fees--$4,500, vs. $375 for the others--and get choice amenities: private coaching, a reception with past Ironman champs, lodging at the luxurious Mirror Lake Inn, and prime bike positions. "They never have to line up with the masses," says Ted Kennedy of Ironman Motivations, the challenge organizer. The CEOs are psyched, and the trash talk is flying. Holowesko says fellow participants have been e-mailing him, saying: "I'll be waiting for you at the finish line."
By Gerry Khermouch
THE LIST
APPETITE SPOILERS
Taking a Bite Out of Tradition
The scene is part Steven Spielberg, part Sam Peckinpah. It features Chinese newlyweds strolling dreamily into a wedding banquet, unaware of the carnage around them: The hem of the bride's gown is soaked with blood, and mutilated sharks lie everywhere.
The gory image is one of a series of wedding scenes appearing on hundreds of thousands of free postcards printed and distributed in Asia by the Singapore chapter of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, based in Malibu, Calif. The group is working to halt the rapid decline in numbers of sharks worldwide by discouraging Asians from eating shark fin soup. Real sharks were used to produce the photographs. "We have to hit people as hard as we can," says Grant Pereira, a Singaporean of Portugese descent who heads the chapter there. "If they eat it as a status symbol, we have to attack that."
Shark fin soup is a Chinese delicacy and is de rigueur at Chinese banquets. Top-quality soup with an entire fin intact can cost $100 per person. Sea Shepherd estimates that up to 40 sharks are killed to produce soup for a 500-guest wedding. The group's biggest concern is "finning," where fisherman merely hack off the fin and throw the rest of the shark overboard to bleed to death.
Singapore Airlines dropped the soup from its first-class service last year because of pressure from the group, Pereira says, and popular Singaporean TV actress Zoe Tay removed it from the menu at her wedding for the same reason.
Widening the campaign, the group has placed the images in magazines such as Asian Geography and Hemisphere. In Hong Kong, backers have distributed 60,000 postcards, and Pereira is looking for help to circulate the cards elsewhere in Asia--and in the Chinatowns of New York and San Francisco. Sharks need all the friends they can get.
By Frederik Balfour
COMBAT READY
Join the Army, See the World...Better
If President Bush ends up sending U.S. troops to Iraq, he'll be able to count increasingly on an eagle-eye fighting force: The Army is ramping up use of laser surgery to give GIs better vision. Army doctors, who started the operations three years ago at Fort Bragg, N.C., have expanded to five new centers in the U.S. and Germany. Combat troops have priority, and thousands have signed up for the voluntary procedure.
Laser correction gives troops tremendous advantages in battle, medical experts say. Contact lens wearers can find themselves blinded by dust and sand in combat zones such as the Persian Gulf. Eyeglass wearers can find it hard to jump off landing craft onto a beach and must deal with fogging and perspiration. "The ability to go into combat without glasses could be lifesaving," says Colonel Vernon Parmley, head of cornea services at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash. Doctors tell troops about the risks. But for many soldiers, wearing glasses or contacts in battle can be far riskier than a little surgery.
By Stan Crock
SCANDAL SHEET
Kinda High for a Repo
For sale: private jet. Wired office, leather interior, two divans, satellite communications. Repossessed from Enron. Asking price: $37 million.
Delivered to Enron in April, 2001, the Gulfstream V is nearly new, with only 380 hours of flying time. The price made "good sense" when a German bank (Bayerische Hypo-und Vereinsbank) listed it in February, says Rick Engles of Vance & Engles Aircraft Brokers in Washington, D.C. Brand-new models generally sell for $40 million. Since then, brokers say, the average price of a used one has dropped to $33 million.
That makes the jet's asking price a little inflated--just like Enron's stock not so long ago.
By Andrew Heller
THE BIG PICTURE
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Copyright 2002, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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