Archive for the ‘Pakistan’ Category

Forecasting the Monetary Policy decisions – will there be a rate cut or not

Forecasting the monetary policy The next monetary policy announcement is due in the last week of May 2010. We attempt to forecast the cut in the policy discount rate by looking at oil prices, the relationship between oil prices and imports, exports, remittances, the current account balance, net foreign assets, credit to the private sector [...]

May 21, 2010  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: I can't hack it, Pakistan, the economy stupid  No Comments

Value at Risk, Derivative Products and the Dummies crash course on options

I ran two workshops in Dubai and Abu Dhabi last week on derivatives and treasury risk management. Three new related courses in these two areas have now been uploaded as master classes. They are:   Master Class: Calculating Value at Risk – a quick and dirty guide to calculating VaR   Master Class: Derivative products [...]

March 21, 2010  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Pakistan, entrepreneurs  No Comments

Treasury one – redux

I had no idea that my treasury one post would generate so much traffic and commentary. On a blog where it is rare to see more than a single comment (given all my anti spam, anti bot, anti social word press defenses) in less than 24 hours 8 comments (ok I confess 4 of them [...]

February 17, 2010  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff, First degree, I can't hack it, Pakistan  2 Comments

Karachi city update

Was at work all day and then went from Baloch Colony bridge to Khayaban-e-Bahria to pick up the kids (5pm) and then took Kalapul, Shahrae-Faisal and Karsaz to head home to Gulshan (5:30 pm). Roads are open, traffic is thin, lots of security being deployed and petrol stations are closed. Two blasts in the city. [...]

February 5, 2010  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: I can't hack it, Karachi, Pakistan  No Comments

Pakistan Macro Economic Update – January 2010

The figures for July- December 2009 are guardedly encouraging as there are some signs that the economy is on the road to recovery. Trade deficit has narrowed due to a decline in imports (because of reduced oil and commodity prices in this period as well as the slowdown in economic activity) which have outweighed the [...]

January 31, 2010  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Karachi, Liquidity Risk, PASHA, Pakistan, the economy stupid  No Comments

The Caltex, PSO, Shell Challenge…

Good petrol pumps (gas stations for my friends from an earlier life) are hard to find in Karachi. Good petrol pumps that will give you consistent mileage weeks after weeks are even harder. After painfully experimenting with almost every brand and every locality I have now built my own list of three pumps that I [...]

January 31, 2010  Tags: , , , , ,   Posted in: Karachi, Pakistan, the economy stupid  One Comment

Talent ,Technology, Management

Ages ago for an upcoming PASHA career expo I did a piece on hiring. A few months earlier I had done a presentation on knowledge workers at Zayed University Campus in Abu Dhabi. Today at the Nutshell forum I used ideas from both pieces to do a different take on talent management within the technology [...]

January 23, 2010  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, I can't hack it, Karachi, PASHA, Pakistan, Startup, Startup Insiders, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  2 Comments

The Larry Ellison Fix in Karachi…

The first car that I ever wanted to drive was a Honda Accord. Don’t ask me why, there is a long convoluted tale behind that desire that goes all the way back to Abdullah Haroon Road, traffic duties as a prefect and my school days. Twelve years later the car I first learnt how to [...]

January 10, 2010  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Karachi, Pakistan, Personal shit, Taha  One Comment

The Reboot presentation at TIECON, Karachi – Revisited

The TIECON 2009, Karachi, 4th November 2009, Reboot presentation was the first time I was able to shrink the story in under 20 minutes. Spent three days putting the presentation together but it will be a while before I am able to get to an editor that will run the presentation and the video coverage [...]

November 27, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Education, Failure, Pakistan, Startup, TIE, computer science, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  No Comments

Telecompk on Reboot

Babar Bhatti covers Reboot on the Telecompk blog.

November 24, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Blue Screen, Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Failure, PASHA, Pakistan, Startup, Writing, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  No Comments

Adil Moosajee on Failure

There is something that Adil said during our Q&A session about failure that is still resonating with me. The question dealt with retaining a positive outlook after failing and Adil jumped in with a great analogy. “Have you ever cooked a new dish?”, he asked the audience. “Yes”, they said. “There must have been instances [...]

November 6, 2009  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Failure, Pakistan, TIE, entrepreneurs  8 Comments

Reboot presentation @ TIECON

Here is the slide share version of the Reboot presentation I made yesterday at the TIECON 2009 event in Karachi. Had a lot of fun putting this together. Alchemy Reboot @ TIE CON Karachi View more presentations from jafcbs.

November 5, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Blue Screen, Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Failure, Karachi, Pakistan, Startup, TIE, entrepreneurs  3 Comments

Heal Thyself or TIECON 2009, Karachi

The best of friends are the conspring kind. When Sabeen and Jehan conspired together to get me to speak at TIECON 2009 in Karachi, the original plan was to do my presentation, stay for the post presentation Q&A and then head out. I even parked in Sheraton’s outdoor parking to ensure that I wouldn’t have [...]

November 5, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Failure, Karachi, PASHA, Pakistan, Startup, TIE, entrepreneurs  7 Comments

And the winner is

MindStorm Studios and Cricket Revolution did a clean sweep today at the PASHA ICT Awards. In addition to picking up the winner slot for the digital media category they also sweeped the PASHA Tech Crunch Gong Award for a 1,000 US$. Mindstorm/Babar combo was deadly enough for Chairman PASHA to give up his welcome address [...]

October 14, 2009  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Desi Startup, PASHA, PASHA ICT Awards, Pakistan, Startup, entrepreneurs, new ventures  One Comment

Steve Jobs in Karachi or why I feel old or welcome to the future

Yesterday for the first time in many years I actually felt old and irrelevant. As part of the pre-PASHA Award event we took a sneak peak at the 10 odd companies that were competing at the PASHA TECH CRUNCH GONG show on 14th October. Two of participants were very good. The first pitched their idea [...]

October 14, 2009  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Karachi, PASHA, PASHA ICT Awards, Pakistan, Startup Insiders, entrepreneurs, small business  One Comment