Finally a show of spine…
Beginning to wonder if the only organization with a backbone in this country is the army, amongst all the other spineless representatives we have roaming around the globe at any given point in time. Regrettable incident but the exact response that was required. I wonder what our other delegations would have done if subjected to the same treatment.
September 1, 2010
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Top Ten MBA programs: 15 months as a MBA student at Columbia Business School
I put these together as an informal sampler of my business school education, a journey that started with an ideal conversation in March 1997 and ended on commencement day in April 2000 at Uris Hall, the Columbia Business School campus on 116th and Broadway. In March 1997 I never thought that an Ivy League MBA from a top ten business school (ranked between number 5 and number 10 based on which MBA ranking you looked at) was in my immediate future plans.
Fourteen months later, after many a sleepless nights, hundreds of words from inward looking business school application essays and a 94% percentile GMAT score, I had the MBA admissions offer letter from one of the three schools on my list. While the collection below can never do justice to the months before business school admissions, nor to the unreal 15 months we spent on campus in New York at Columbia, it should provide a flavor (perhaps a snapshot) of the MBA education that changed my life.
Starting from my original business school application essay, I jump quickly to five pieces I wrote for the business school students’ magazine, a MBA faculty interview and a list of free online finance courses showcasing the course work we took. This salad bowl of memories is followed by an overview of my graduate course work as a Finance and Entrepreneurship major and a short sampling of class projects submitted by my project groups during the MBA program at Columbia Business School.
Business School Application: Motivation
Business School Application Essay
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Business School Memories
MBA Guides: Business School first year, first term: Case Hell
MBA Guides: Business school first year, first term: Dear Mom and Dad or the MBA contract market
MBA Guides: Business school first year, first term: The fine art of case analysis
MBA Guides: Business school first year, first term: The mid life crisis at 28
MBA Guides: Business school first year, first term: Drama in Real Life
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Business School Resources
Online Corporate Finance: The story behind the resource, the free finance courses and solved cases.
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Business School Faculty Interview
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MBA course work overview
MBA Guides: My MBA Finance course work at Columbia Business School
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MBA Sample projects
MBA Guides: Corporate Finance Training – Advertising strategy for an e-education portal
Master Case: Credit Process: Baldwin Piano
Master Case: Corporate Finance: LLC or C-Corp
Online Finance – Good and Bad bosses – A review of leadership trends across the decades
August 31, 2010
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Pakistan Flood Relief: The uphill battle to rebuild lives.
The water came at night in Nowshera.
Not silently like a thief, nor on tip toes, but with all the ferocity of a moving sea mixed with the weight of mud, stones, trees and swept away dreams. 2 am at night, all you could do was wake up and run. But unlike a tidal wave that comes in, takes what it needs to pacify an angry God, and goes, the water in Nowshera kept on coming. Days later when the flooding stopped, like an unwelcome and over bearing guest it stayed. And it brought company with it to keep away the boredom of lesser lives it haunted; misery, hunger and silence.
You could change the name of the city and repeat the story throughout the length of the mighty Indus. By the time you would reach Sind and Thatta, the late night rush to safety, the breaches in river embankments and the loss of life, livelihood and loved ones become one practiced orchestra. No audience except the three that water brought with it to Nowshera; misery, hunger and silence. No post performance celebration other than the one where millions of souls slowly start re-threading their lives, one battered tin clad suitcase at a time.
With the water slowly receding the relief mosaic across Pakistan is looking more and more like a drive in movie in an endless loop across multiple time zones. Upnorth, we need food, clothing, medicine, water purifiers and shelter. Down south, we are still waiting for Thatta and nearby cities and villages along the Indus Delta to take on the first wave of flood waters.
The widespread devastation and damage to infrastructure has added a new dimension of difficulty to relief efforts. And so if you can’t find food or support in the enclave over run by mud that you used to call home, you walk to the relief camps being set up near larger urban centers.
A school for children now houses 30 families and 150 kids. It is not women and children first. The men have opted to stay behind to guard livestock or land for in the chaos caused by a raging river there is more room for tragedy, robbery and outright villainy by your fellow beings. Possession is nine-tenth of law, especially if thy neighbor has been claimed by the rising waters of River Indus.
A white collar family is not used to handouts or being treated as landless destitute. But the tragedy that is unfolding across Pakistan across millions of lives, hundreds of cities and thousands of camps is just that.
You may have escaped the water; but will you ever escape the fate and the company the Indus brought with it.
Misery, hunger, death and silence.
August 29, 2010
Posted in: Alchemy stuff 3 Comments
Interesting Historical context: World GDP over the last 2000 years
Gulzar at Urbanomics picks up a graph courtesy of the Economist showing the top contributors to world GDP over the last two thousand years using 1990 dollars based Purchasing Parity Index. Over the years it seems that atleast using the Purchasing Parity Index the Global Economy has actually shrunk. Also witness the rise of the US economic might post independence in the 19th century and the rise and fall of the British Empire in the same timeframe. Then the consistent Chinese and Indian contribution to the Global economy over an 1800 year period.
August 21, 2010
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Pakistan flood relief: Mosharraf Zaidi gives a voice to our thoughts: Where is the world in Pakistan?
How different are these kids from my kids, this family from my family, this room from my room.
Mosharraf Zaidi articulates what all of us are feeling right now in his Foreign Policy piece on Why doesn’t the world care about Pakistan. In his powerful words
“There’s a degree of truth to all these explanations. But the main reason that Pakistan isn’t receiving attention or aid proportionate to the devastation caused by these floods is because, well, it’s Pakistan. Given a catastrophe of such epic proportions in any normal country, the world would look first through a humanitarian lens. But Pakistan, of course, is not a normal country. When the victims are Haitian or Sri Lankan — hardly citizens of stable, well-government countries, themselves — Americans and Europeans are quick to open their hearts and wallets. But in this case, the humanity of Pakistan’s victims takes a backseat to the preconceived image that Westerners have of Pakistan as a country.”
“Pakistan is a country that no one quite gets completely, but apparently everybody knows enough about to be an expert. If you’re a nuclear proliferation expert, suddenly you’re an expert on Pakistan. If you’re terrorism expert, ditto: expert on Pakistan. India expert? Pakistan, too then. Of South Asian origin of any kind at a think-tank, university, or newspaper? Expert on Pakistan. Angry that your parents sent you to the wrong madrassa when you were young? Expert on Pakistan.”
A country that has been familiar with the plight of refugee camps since the start of the first Afghan war of 1978, we have seen our fair share of misery of displaced people and natural disasters. The earth quake, the Swat and Waziristan IDP crisis and now the floods. Children waiting for their time to use water, men fighting over food for their families.
Mosharraf calls it a case of “Pakistan Fatigue”. The world is tired of helping us out every alternate year and as before the burden of feeding Pakistani families in need, the burden of doing the heavy lifting to help each other out is on us. Don’t trust the headlines about the dollars of aid and the sophisticated politics behind the headlines; take and give away whatever you can to whoever is trying to arrange a relief effort. Clear out your closet, clean up your wallet, skip hosting that Iftar, your budget for new clothes for the three days of Eid, or your plan for the lavish feast on the first day of Shawal. This is the month of giving, so give. That family in Nowshera is really not that different from our families at home.
August 21, 2010
Posted in: Alchemy stuff 3 Comments
Happy Birth day to me
Now that the news is out, I might as well wish myself.
For my 39th birthday at the stroke of midnight in the midst of a blog upgrading orgy (from WordPress 2.7 to 3.01), I blew up the Crude Oil Insight blog. The resulting four hour headache reminded me how inadequate I have become when it comes to technology, ftp connections and WordPress. But then only a 39 year old geek can use the four words (orgy, wordpress, blog, upgrades) in the same sentence and live to get away with it. Crude Oil Insights is still down and out and will take the rest of the day to sort out. And this is just after I was considering declaring myself a WP expert. But what the heck. It is 16th August, time to go out and party.
Thank you all for your wishes and Facebook updates and remembering me in your prayers.
August 16, 2010
Posted in: Alchemy stuff One Comment
Crude Oil Outlook – Crude Oil price outlook increasingly bearish for second half 2010
This weekend ran into a bit of time and did a review of educated posts on the status of the US economy, China, Europe, crude oil production, foreign currencies and the combined impact of all of the above on crude oil price outlook in the next two quarters. Do you want a quick summary? One word. Sell.
Let’s start with the US economy. While there is raging debates between the left and the right on who is right or wrong, the most objective, backed by data, short and sweet analysis comes through on two posts by Calculated Risk. The first on the sustained downward trend in inflation. Let the picture speak for itself.
The second on the outlook on the un-employment rate
Both factors are bearish on the US economy, the outlook of fuel consumption and the multiplier effect of both elements on the overall global demand for oil. The talk has now turned from if we will see a double dip to when will we acknowledge the second dip?
But the case is not closed as yet. Here are some interesting bits that will further muddle up the outlook. According to API US gasoline demand in June touched a six year low point, while the UCLA Ceridian index picked up in July and corporate profits are back where they belong in June 2010. The employment rate as per the Economist graph below is leveling off, you need to revisit Calculated Risk‘s argument on a rise in the unemployment rate in the remaining two quarters of 2010.
Gregory White at Business Insider has the final word on the outlook on the US economy with his collection of nightmare charts the Fed is looking at right now for the FOMC meeting. Make sure that you walk through the entire slide deck. If there is any doubt, the final nail is the coffin is the dip in US distillate demand and the rise in US distillate inventories further supporting the assumption of a broad based industrial slow down.
Next stop China. Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets shares his take on the Chinese slow down. Once again the outlook points towards a slowdown in Chinese growth figures but much more importantly nullifies any hope of a growth in Chinese domestic demand coming out and saving the world or the oil price outlook.
For the Eurozone, liquidity and funding crisis for small and mid size business sector (take a look at rising Euro Libor and Euribor rates) side by side with European austerity measures will keep demand on the low end for the remaining part of the year.
On the production front OPEC Quota compliance stays in the 50% bracket supporting the thesis that the most well informed community on this planet about the state of the global economy and the upcoming price crunch is the OPEC community of Oil ministers from the oil producing club of the world. Otherwise why these guys would be getting in each other’s way to sell all the oil they can sell at currently “depressed” prices. Especially when the “official word” is that anything under 65 should lead to an additional curtailment of crude oil production.
Crude Oil going higher? With this slew of news, analysis and coverage, not any time soon. Remember the word. Sell!
August 16, 2010
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Fixed Income securities, Bruce Tuckman: Recommended Reading
They say you can tell everything about someone by taking a look at his bedside reading list. Here is a new feature that shares my bed side reading habits as well as reviews one handy and useful book that helped me get to the next stage of understanding in this field.
My book of the week is:
Fixed Income Securities, Second edition, Bruce Tuckman
The Tuckman textbook stands out for many reasons. First unlike most computational finance reference sources, it is actually written in English. Paul Petty at Goldman Sachs told me once that he would only read my summary recommendation on the value at risk upgrade if I kept all numbers and equations out of it. While Tuckman manages to smuggle in a few Greek symbols and lots of numbers inside, he does it with such grace that it becomes part of your conversation with him.
I was introduced to Bruce when the book became prescribed reading by the Society of Actuaries for the Advance Derivative course (the old V-480 exam). In my first few reads when I read his introduction to term structure modeling, I actually wept since Bruce lucidly explained in a few pages concepts that I had struggled to comprehend after 18 readings of John C. Hull.
Fixed Income Mathematics, Term structure modeling, Interest Rate simulators, Calibration of interest rates models, repurchase contracts and mortgage backed securities. If you need an easy to read, handy reference for all of the above topics without breaking your budget or your desk, Fixed Income Securities (University edition) by Bruce Tuckman is the book for you. When working in the field I end up using Tuckman far more than the Handbook of Fixed Income securities by Fabozzi or John C. Hull.
My heavy finance reading recommendations-books to put you to sleep and more
Computational Finance on Amazon
My light fiction and non-fiction reading recommendations-books to keep you awake at night
Jawwad’s bed time reading list
August 15, 2010
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Learning Corporate Finance – A new look for the top five courses
August 14, 2010
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Online Finance courses – Top finance courses at the Finance e-education portal
Based on Google analytics tracking, here are the top courses on the Corporate Finance e-education portal this month.
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- Structured Products: Basic Products, sample term sheet and pricing | Learning Corporate Finance - 171 Views
- Calculating Forward Prices, Forward Rates and Forward Rate Agreements (FRA) – Calculation reference | Learning Corporate Finance - 146 Views
- Asset Liability Management – Rate Sensitive Gaps, Earnings at Risk, Cost to Close and MVE Analysis | Learning Corporate Finance - 144 Views
- The first course in Corporate Finance – Session Zero | Learning Corporate Finance - 137 Views
- Calculating-Value-at-Risk-VaR-VaR-methods | Learning Corporate Finance - 135 Views
August 14, 2010
Posted in: Alchemy stuff 2 Comments
Learning Corporate Finance – Now a Technorati Top 100 Finance blog
It took five months to break through the Technorati Rating system but earlier this month Learning Corporate Finance finally became a Technorati Top 100 Finance blog. Couldn’t have done this without our content team (Agnes, Nabil and Adnan) and our super editor (Uzma) or our designer (Nida Faizi) or without the marvelous technological platform of WordPress.
August 13, 2010
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Online Financial Education – Corporate Finance for the truly insane
Jehan reviews the Corporate Finance E-Education at In the line of wire and calls it a finance for the totally insane. More details at her blog where she uses finance, torturous experience, punishment, difficult childhoods and interest rate options all in the same paragraph and manages to crack a Greek joke too at the same time.
Reviews, reviews, my kingdom for a review.
August 11, 2010
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Istanbul Hotels – Radisson Blue at the Airport
When the Turkish airline shuttle drops you off at the Radisson Blu airport hotel at 10 pm at night, you think that you have been dumped at yet another airport hotel. But that is before your monring walk when you discover that you are right next to a Metro station and the Metro station is attached to the suburb that is a city in itself surrounding the airport.
As a displaced and offloaded family of five we are able to negotiate an exchange of our four allocated rooms for a pair of business rooms right next to each other. The check in crew at Radisson Blu is infinitely more reasonable at 10 pm at night than I am certainly teach a thing or two to the Turkish airline ground crew at Istanbul airport.
The rooms are spacious, comfortable and most importantly come with free internet. We are right in front of an indoor Zen pool that immediately captivates Taha’s attention and manages to stay at spot number 2 right beneath the huge glass windows overlooking the airport and the freeway leading to it.
August 9, 2010
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Istanbul – Sultan-Ahmet-Hagia-Sofia-and-Bosphorus Cruise
Sultan Ahmet Suites, Nida’s selection of a place for us to crash for four days was perfect in many ways. Lots of space for four kids to romp around, central location (the Sultan Ahmet Mosque, Hagia Sofia, Topkapi Palace and cheap as well as expensive food were all a short walk away). Unlike a hotel the suites were bang in the middle of a residential/bed and break fast community so you could see life go by right out side your door.
First impressions of Istanbul, a city of dark clouds, minerates, masjids and gorgeous sunsets. Which quickly get resets when you discover that the Taxi drivers and the exchange companies in the city deserve to be the central characters of any book that you write about the old Constantinople.
Of the entire four days, the most moving experience was the Sultan Ahmet mosque and the Maghrib prayer that we offered at the masjid on day two.
Despite building the Hagia Sofia a number of times in Civilization IV, somehow the real life version didn’t move me as much as Sultan Ahmet. Having said that it was still a very interesting experience.
Second impression, if you could afford and get used to the taxi drivers and the tourist trap mindset that surrounds the entire Sultan Ahmet area, possibly a city with some great (but obscenely expensive) retirement homes on the coasts of the Bosphorus strait.
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August 9, 2010
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Turkey: Antalya – the city with many faces
Antalya the city has many faces. Its warm in the Sun and cooler in the shade.
The first face that we saw was suburban Antalya, outside the humdrum of the old city, the markets, the grand bazar. Set besides Duden park it was a modern retirement home for the Turkish expat community with a small town on the Mideterranean look and feel. It was where we witnessed loving Turkish hopitality that reminded us of weddings in Bombay at Nana’s (Grand Father) home when four families could live in a two bed room apartments and still have space for more.
The second face of Antalya is around the old harbor where it feels as if you have buzzed back into time in a dimension where the entire neighbourhood is one big Bohri (Grand) Bazar (market). Small lanes, smaller shops, cobbeled pavements, tramlines and lots of tourists. Relics of an old fort’s wall remind you of the age of the city. A gate that opened up to visitors and invaders alike.
It’s a great walk down to the old harbor cutting through lanes of covered shops. For the walk up, I recommend the other side right next to the café, the residences and the hotels where you can feel the breeze and steal breath taking views of the Mideterranean Sea. But at the same time don’t let the romance in the air get you to pay 20 liras for a single donner kebab and a drink. That fare is available for a lot cheaper if you are willing to look around especially before you eat.
The third is the modern market place. For us that represented a smaller mall in central Antalya called the SheMall where our primary attraction was the food court followed by the toy store given that there were six kids in our party of five.
The last and final is the nature oriented face of Antalya represented by the waterfalls, the long drives to the hills, the moonlit dinners and the sea. Irrespective of the face you pick, it is a great place to chill and spend a few days with your Turkish family, guzzling home cooked Turkish food, living of the sunlight and catching up on the no-work-at-home recharge.
August 9, 2010
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