Miriam Varadi Talks about Private Equity Firms in Canada
“A private equity firm breaks itself down into finders, minders, and grinders,” said Miriam Varadi at the April 26, 2012 seminar, “Private Equity: The Colour And The Controversy” held at the new Adelaide Street offices of the CFA Toronto Society. The “finders” look for quality buyout deals, the “minders” deal with the executives and sit on the board of the bought-out companies, and the “grinders” are, in her words, “essentially apprentice minders.” In 2006, Varadi found herself caught up in a dramatic scramble of the $52 billion buyout of Bell Canada Enterprise (BCE). BCE had been mismanaged for years which was […]
Uncontrolled Risk
Uncontrolled Risk: The Lessons of Lehman Brothers and How Systemic Risk Can Still Bring Down the World Financial System by Mark T. Williams 220 pp., not including 27 pp of Appendix, Notes, and Index (Reprinted from The Analyst, March 2011 issue.) On September 15, 2008, the 158-year-old investment bank, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy, thereby unleashing a horde of systemic risk effects that continue to bedevil the financial system. In this recently-published investigation into how the collapse of one iconic institution contaminated an entire sector, Mark T. Williams draws some sobering lessons. In the 1990s, author Mark T. Williams worked […]
No One Would Listen
Book Review of: No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller by Harry Markopolos 376 pp., including three Appendices, Note on Sources, and Index (Reprinted from The Analyst, December 2010 issue.) In December 2008, Bernard Madoff confessed to running the world’s largest Ponzi scheme. This real-life thriller by Harry Markopolos details his five unsuccessful attempts to get the SEC to put a stop to a$65-billion investment fraud. Harry Markopolos spoke to the Toronto CFA Society about his experiences in September 2010. Early in his Wall Street career as a portfolio manager, Markopolos heard about a fund with an extraordinarily consistent […]