FUD - A GOOD DISEASE

Pictures: Men with FUD Disease.

-relevant to all who wants to take control of their lives, achieve their ambitions and succeed

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One do well to ask:
"If I don't graduate as ACCA Affliate - Will my current/future boss continue to exploit me for cheap labour and overwork me? Will younger chaps armed with overseas degree leapfrogged me on promotions? Will I accept the fact I am not realising my fullest potential? Can I provide best materially for my love ones - parents, spouse, kids and all."

Only the Paranoid Survives
The previous paper to P3 (BA), Paper 3.5, I gave a lecture about INTEL's boss Andrew Grove's ground breaking article that "Only the Paranoid Survives". Research shows that the Top 1000 largest companies at the beginning of 20th Century has all but lived less than a human lifespan. To be exact, only 12 remained relevant commercially. Once a giant ICI Paint (UK) Limited, was removed as a component stock from London Stock Exchange Index points as it no longer is considered large firm. Even IBM, the once IT titan is a fifth in size compared to new giants like Google and Intel. In short, to survive, you have to feel mightily insecure that you will be overtaken, made redundant, beaten.

FUD Disease in Silicon Valley
Deep sense of insecurity of the so-called FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. FUD drives IT entrepreneurs to prove they are really smart and work persistently to achieve perfection. It was so intense that Clash of Titanic Brains happen all the time. Sometimes, so ugly these industrial leaders fought openly as you could see in the article below. Ego fight you could call it. Its known worldwide (at least in the IT and informed people world) that when Apple conceded that they lost the Delta Model War (P3 - Business Analysis) or the format war to WIndows, it has to be compatible to Windows and pay franchise rights to Bill Gates. Guess what? Mr Gates only agreed on one condition - that his arch-rival Mr Steve Jobs personally come to him and apologise admitting that Windows are superior. Some ego.

What do we learn?
Insecurity and endless energy to self-improve should dominate anyone - especially ACCA candidates. As asked in the introductory paragraph above, should you try to catch the FUD Disease?

Lets learn from the IT moguls, billionaires they are, yet they have FUD disease. Some germs are good like yoghurt with acidophilus germs, so this FUD disease is also good.

Don't let others make you feel inferior.
Don't stop in believing yourself. You can PASS ACCA provided you're willing to be Paranoid like what INTEL Boss said. There is nothing wrong to feel insecure like fear of losing your job, fear that you will not pass upcoming exams. Convert this insecurity to powerful energy, let it flow through you. Convert it to works namely spend unbelievable hours in ACCA personal studies. Outrageous amount!

Know this, it drove Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Google and Facebook to success! Insecurity rooted in FUD Disease is a symptom of SUCCESS! Do you feel that your boss will fire you? Or give you RM30 yearly increment? Or classmates will beat you to graduation? Then transform your life, to achieving the goal - obtain ACCA certificate as passport to take the world by storm.

Tony Fernendaz of Air Asia did it. So did CEO of Tenaga National or MAS or MRCB Berhad. All these started with ACCA qualification and proceeded to take the world by storm.Yes, its a war! Third World War, intellectual war.

Read the following article, and see for yourself, to win you need positive energy, lots of it, to drive you to success. Of course if you can succeed but deduct the egoism seen in these Silicon Valley leaders.

Third world war, it seems, has broken out in an unexpected place: Silicon Valley. Apple and Google were once so close that Eric Schmidt, Google’s boss, joked that they should merge and change their name to AppleGoo. Now, however, the two companies are at loggerheads over everything from apps to acquisitions—and Mr Schmidt and Apple’s boss, Steve Jobs, are taking the fight personally.

Meetings have been “heated” and “confrontational”. The sense of rivalry is “intense”. The two men are treating the world to “an unusually vivid display of enmity and ambition”. One of the Times’ insiders not only likens the squabble to “world war three” but also dubs it “the biggest ego battle in history”. So much for Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony.

The business world has always been a cauldron of personal animosity, and those animosities have been particularly intense in Silicon Valley. Few do grudges quite as well as geeks. Steve Jobs is legendary for his grudge matches. He has been feuding with Bill Gates for decades. He has described Microsoft’s products as “third rate” and complained that the company has “absolutely no taste”. (“I don’t mean that in a small way. I mean that in a big way.”) Apple’s annoying “I’m a Mac” ads are strikingly personal: they pitch a frumpy Bill Gates lookalike against a too-cool-for-school Jobs doppelganger (with added hair).

Mr Jobs has accused Michael Dell of making “un-innovative beige boxes”, for example. And Messrs Gates and Dell have given as good as they have got. Mr Gates once described Apple’s software as nothing more than “warmed-over Unix”. When he was asked what he would do with then-troubled Apple back in 1997, Mr Dell replied that he would shut it down and give the proceeds back to the shareholders.

Silicon Valley is an incubator of animosity for the same reason it is a wellspring of innovation: it is a small world populated by people who want to prove how clever they are. The boundaries between markets are vague and transitory. Companies flit between friendship and enmity. The pace of innovation is so fast that it is difficult to determine who first came up with an idea. (Steve Jobs once responded to the accusation that he had “borrowed” somebody else’s idea with a quote from Pablo Picasso: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”)

People in the technology industry talk about spreading FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Andy Grove, the former boss of Intel, entitled his autobiography “Only the Paranoid Survive”.

Tech rivals such as Yahoo! and Microsoft have long seen Googlezilla as a calculating predator. The bosses of media and advertising companies worry that Google is destroying their business models, as more and more activity goes online. Rupert Murdoch has complained that it and other online news “aggregators” steal his newspapers’ stories. Apple is rightly worried that Google’s Android phone is aimed directly at its iPhone—and has unleashed its arsenal of legal and commercial weapons to try to keep it at bay.

It is always potentially dangerous when competition bleeds over into personal animosity: judgments can be clouded and strategy distorted. The danger is particularly pronounced with internal grudge-matches. Andersen Consulting and Arthur Andersen spent the 1990s engaged in a distracting matrimonial feud which culminated in an expensive divorce.

Spit and polish
Personal animosity and FUD disease can be the grit in the oyster of competition. Sometimes it can actually create business opportunities: Mr Murdoch’s personal dislike of smug liberals has helped him create a right-of-centre media empire that now includes both Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Even when vituperation does not drive competition—as is the case in the Google-Apple dust up—it can certainly sharpen it. Mr Jobs’s habit of personalising his commercial rivalry with Microsoft and Dell has honed Apple’s self-image as the coolest company on the block.

Conclusion
Note verbs in article like - unexpected, complain, worry, transitory, vague all negatives rooted in uncertainties that drives these leaders into creating giants today. What a lesson! We too can turn our challenges, problems relate to finance, obligations, conflicts into large positive energy to achieve better, get out of the hole, work relentlessly to achieve it.

Let's shout, "I WILL GRADUATE!" Well, if you did, welcome! There are 168,000 of us worldwide, waiting for you to join the club! Nurture your FUD.

Sources:
Schumper, 2010, The Economist, Look Forward in Anger, March 10
Andrew G, 2001, Only The Paronoid Survives, FT Publisher

FORD'S CROWN JEWEL FOR SALE - VOLVO

- relevant to P3 (BA)

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When parents face financial distress, rarely they will consider selling their children. But in the commercial world, parent company will not hesistate as seen in Ford selling off its crown jewel (Goold & Campbell framework).

Volvo has rock solid reputation for safety and mid-range luxury appeal. The successful launch of MPVs and SUVs model further enhanced the potential. Its parent, Ford, faced with sudden sharp drop in demand back in USA forced it to restructure ie par down debts and capacity.

Why Malaysian automakers not buying?
In Malaysia, that infamous outdated technology car maker Proton which dominates the local market with 32% or so market share selling 143,000 units last year, surprisingly has not express interest to bid for Volvo. Why not buy? If funding is an issue, really taking a closer look, its not a huge barrier with its SOFP sitting on cash reserves $250million, its NCA is valued at $1.5 billion chargeable to banks and not to forget that it can raise debentures as a listed status. After all, it did manage to pay Mitsubishi Japan Motor amount of $7.3billion over last 25 years in royalty for outdated car engines technology. I am sure Volvo will be a better gain ie to own it.

The simple answer to above is the political paradigm of its major shareholder, the government. It appears that they rather put funding, guarantees for national interests such as fuel subsidies, staple food subsidies and even national defense expenditure like the purchasing of submarine which at one time was non-submersible - teething process, I guess.

This illustrates the folly of government involvement in commerce. The cosy relationship between commerce and government involvement has bred complacency and mediocracy. Well, look at the following article as we see how Chinese carmaker Geely is gayly swooping up this deal.

Ford's selling its crown jewel
Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally said talks to sell the automaker’s Volvo unit to China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. are proceeding, rebutting local media reports the deal could be delayed.

“We are making progress on the negotiations,” Mulally said in an interview in Shanghai, without giving a time frame for when the agreement will be made.

Ford aims to sign a $2 billion deal to sell Volvo Cars to Geely by the end of this month, three people familiar with the talks said last week. Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford put Volvo up for sale in late 2008, part of a strategy of dropping European luxury lines to concentrate on its namesake brand. The China Daily said yesterday financing and technology problems could delay the acquisition, citing people familiar with the matter.

Ford ended three years of losses in 2009 by posting $2.7 billion in net income, its first full-year profit since Mulally came from Boeing Co. in 2006. Mulally has focused on refreshing Ford’s lineup, including adding more fuel-efficient small cars, while cutting costs. He reduced the North American workforce by about 47 percent and sold the Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin luxury brands.

“Whoever buys Volvo, in this case it’s Geely that’s a frontrunner right now, they are gaining a great brand,” Mulally said. “We will continue to support Volvo just like we did with Aston Martin, Jaguar and Tata.”

Asia Growth
Geely, China’s largest private automaker based on 2008 sales, wants to gain insights into Western vehicle development and manufacturing through buying a mainstream European brand.
Mulally, 64, said he sees about 40 percent of global auto sales coming from the Asia-Pacific region over the next 10 years, while 35 percent will be in the European region and 25 percent in the Americas.

“We are going to invest whatever we need to support Asia- Pacific,” Mulally said. “It’s clearly the highest growth market going forward.”

Ford gained U.S. market share last year for the first time since 1995 with new models such as the revamped Taurus sedan, while the predecessors of GM and Chrysler Group LLC reorganized in bankruptcy and received federal aid. Ford surpassed General Motors Co. last month to become the top-selling automaker in the U.S. for the first time since 1998.

Mulally broke ground in September on a $490 million small- car factory in Chongqing, Ford’s third assembly plant in China. Ford ranks 12th in the nation with 2.8 percent of sales, according to auto researcher J.D. Power & Associates. GM, which emerged from bankruptcy July 10, outsells Ford 3-to-1 in the country, building twice as many vehicles.

PS: All currency above are in US$.

DID YOU EARN A PROFIT OF RM9,685.00?

This is my third year blogging with excess of 100 articles. Lots of fun.

I thought why not state my BLOG'S OBJECTIVES? So here goes:
1. To improve candidates' maturity level in understanding ACCA subjects especially at high level

2. To improve candidates' exam practice techniques

3. To encourage and motivate ACCA students in their quests to achieve ACCA Certificate - ie GRADUATE

4. To profit all readers. Useful Stock Market tips, analysis were given. For example, if you take the investment analysis dated August 6, 2008, after less than 20 months, the stock - TSM Global shares shot up by 96.8%. That outperformed the KLCI by >80%. The same period, the KLCI was at 1114 and now was at 1,286 (3 MARCH, 2010) In other words if you [dare] sell your car for say RM10,000 and invest in this stock, you will earn RM19,685.00 before Stock Commission charge.

Now, the extra money is enough to pay for the entire Kasturi Tuition fees for ACCA!!

5. Have humour as Reader's Digest famously say, "Laughter is the Best Medicine."

On profits, look at the re-print from article on Wednesday, August 6, 2008 below:

EXTERNAL STRATEGIC ANALYSIS (WITH FINANCIAL INDICATORS)
ARE YOU REALLY AN ACCOUNTANT?
- Relevant to P3 (ACCA) but not P4 (ACCA)

TABLE 1: TSM GLOBAL BERHAD

SHARE PRICE AS AT 4 AUGUST 2008 : RM 1.27

NET TANGIBLE ASSETS : RM 2.05

MARKET DISCOUNT TO NET ASSETS : 60%

NET CASH POSITION PER SHARE : RM 1.35

PRICE/EARNINGS RATIO : 3.5 times



WORLD'S RICHEST MAN... (con'd) on :-

http://marcusong88.blogspot.com/2008/08/external-strategic-analysis-with.html

So, blogging here is to benefit ACCA candidates and those who strongly believe that ACCA knowledge is powerful and profitable.

Happy reading.
Marcus - Senior Lecturer