Fisher Capital Management News Directory:LinkedIn prices IPO at $45, value at $4B

http://fishercapitalmanagementnews.com/2011/05/fisher-capital-management-news-directorylinkedin-prices-ipo-at-45-value-at-4b/

Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal
Date: Wednesday, May 18, 2011, 2:28pm PDT – Last Modified: Thursday, May 19, 2011, 9:43am PDT

Read more: LinkedIn prices IPO at $45, value at $4B | Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal

LinkedIn Corp. on Wednesday priced its initial public offering at $45 per share, bringing the networking site’s valuation to more than $4 billion.
Mountain View-based LinkedIn, which is scheduled to begin trading Thursday under the ticker symbol LNKD on the New York Stock Exchange, on Tuesday raised its price range $10 per share, or $42 to $445.

In its regulatory filings LinkedIn said it expects revenue to slow and doesn’t expect profitability in 2011.
LinkedIn said it earned $3.4 million in 2010, compared to a $4 million loss the preceding year. Revenue more than doubled to $243 million.
The number of people using LinkedIn grew to more than 100 million members in 2010 from about 64 million in 2009.

Read more: LinkedIn prices IPO at $45, value at $4B | Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal

Fisher Capital Management News Directory:JPMorgan Chase CEO issues warning on economy

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Dayton Business Journal – by Neil Westergaard, DBJ Contributor

Date: Saturday, May 21, 2011, 10:58pm ED

If the United States fails to get its fiscal house in order it will trigger financial consequences that will “dwarf Lehman Brothers” and seriously diminish the nation’s role as a world economic leader, the CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Jamie Dimon, told a Denver audience Thursday night.

Dimon, the man who the New York Times dubbed “the nation’s least hated Wall Street banker,” said political talk about not raising the U.S. debt ceiling could trigger a default on the nation’s financial obligations, which he said will constitute a “moral disaster” that the U.S. will have a nearly impossible time recovering from.

“Things are going to happen that are not going to be pretty,“ Dimon said in a wide-ranging question and answer session at the University of Colorado Denver School of Business’ Celebration of Success dinner.

Congress and the president have to come to grips with gross overspending by the federal government, he acknowledged. But he complained that even though half of the deficit problem is over issues the two major political parties agree on, partisan considerations are preventing progress on any of it.

“Congress needs to deal with the half of it, and leave the rest of it until later,” Dimon said.

U.S. tax rates on corporate profits make the country uncompetitive with other nations of the world, driving capital and jobs overseas, he said. Noting that JPMorgan Chase has paid $100 billion in taxes to the federal government over the last 10 years, Dimon said anti-banking attitudes that permeate political discussions are wrong.

“I’m tired of listening to that crap,” Dimon said.

Dimon received his most enthusiastic applause, however, when he talked about the role the U.S. plays in the world. The U.S., he said, “is still the shining light in the world and we spend too much time denigrating it.”

He said business lending is improving across the board, especially in middle market companies that drive the economy the most, although he acknowledged that consumer lending, especially mortgage lending, is lagging. But the United States has been through far worse.

“We’re going to be fine,” Dimon said.

But regulatory policy in the wake of the financial collapse of some financial institutions in the recession is hindering recovery. Bank capital requirements on U.S. banks are out of sync with the requirements on foreign banks and that’s hurting the ability of U.S. institutions to compete, he said.

Dimon argued that improving opportunities for inner-city children to get a quality education and reforming U.S. immigration policies should be higher priorities in Congress and coupled with reducing the deficit, these challenges threaten U.S. economic dominance if “we don’t do it right.”

JPMorgan Chase is the third largest bank in the Dayton region and is among the largest banks in the nation. In terms of assets, Bank of America Corp. held $2.27 trillion in assets at the end of last year, while JPMorgan Chase had $2.12 trillion in assets at year-end. Citigroup Inc. had $1.91 trillion and Wells Fargo & Co. had $1.26 trillion. All of those banks have operations in the Dayton region.

Read more: JPMorgan Chase CEO issues warning on economy | Dayton Business Journal

Fisher Capital Management News: Qaddafi and Zuma Meet but Reach No Agreement

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TRIPOLI, Libya — Talks between President Jacob Zuma of South Africa and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafiended Monday with no sign of the breakthrough Libyan officials had said they hoped for ahead of the visit. The outcome appeared to leave the Tripoli government and its rebel foes still mired in the stalemate that has settled over the conflict, and NATO with the prospect of an extended campaign of airstrikes in its bid to topple the Libyan leader.

At the end of a six-hour mission to the Libyan capital on behalf of the African Union, Mr. Zuma listed Colonel Qaddafi’s conditions for peace, which included an immediate cease-fire followed by talks with the rebels. But there was no sign that the Libyan ruler had made any concession on the issue at the center of the stalemate, his rejection of demands that he abandon power and seek exile outside Libya.

The demand for Colonel Qaddafi to quit has been set by rebel leaders in eastern Libya and backed by the NATO countries leading the 10-week-old campaign of airstrikes against the Qaddafi government, and was joined last week by Russia, long considered a Qaddafi ally. But the Libyan leader, despite a succession of heavy strikes on his command compound in Tripoli in the past month, has held fast to his vow to hang on to power.

The apparent failure of Monday’s talks, the first major diplomatic mission to Tripoli since a previous Zuma-led visit in early April, was underlined by the Qaddafi government’s silence in the hours after Mr. Zuma left.

The South African leader, however, spoke to reporters from the state-run broadcasting networks of South Africa and Libya before he boarded a South African military aircraft for the flight home.

He said Colonel Qaddafi had insisted that “all Libyans be given a chance to talk among themselves” about the country’s future, a formulation the government has repeatedly used to reject the possibility of Colonel Qaddafi’s going into exile.

Mr. Zuma said Colonel Qaddafi was ready to accept the so-called African road map for peace, a plan first advanced during the earlier Zuma trip here. The plan calls for an immediate cease-fire, including a halt to NATO bombing, international supervision of the truce, and negotiations between Tripoli and the rebels on a political settlement.

Colonel Qaddafi accepted that plan in April, but quickly ignored it and resumed his offensive against the rebels. The rebel leaders rejected it outright, as they did again on Monday.

“It is only some stuff that Qaddafi wants to announce to stay in power,” the rebel foreign minister, Fathi Baja, told reporters in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

The Zuma visit was widely trumpeted in advance by officials in Tripoli, who have come to see the African Union as a last bastion of diplomatic support. For decades, Colonel Qaddafi has sought to reach out across barriers of culture, faith and geography to promote solidarity between the continent’s Arab and African peoples, and to present himself, as posters around Tripoli proclaim him, as the “king of kings” among African leaders.

But Mr. Zuma’s departure appeared to leave the Tripoli government in an increasingly tenuous and isolated position. Beyond the NATO bombing and rebel advances in the east, Colonel Qaddafi has faced a growing erosion of his power base in Tripoli, with an acceleration of defections from his ruling elite.

The erosion gathered pace on Monday when eight senior Libyan Army officers, including five generals, appeared at a news conference in Rome to say that they have defected and to appeal to fellow officers to join the revolt against Colonel Qaddafi, according to The Associated Press.

One of the officers, Gen. Melud Massoud Halasa, said Colonel Qaddafi’s military forces were “only 20 percent as effective” as they were before the revolt broke out in mid-February.

A former Libyan foreign minister, Abdel Rahman Shalgam, told reporters that the defections brought to 120 the number of former top officials who had defected, among them at least five former cabinet ministers.

Fisher Capital Management News: Hackers Broaden Their Attacks

http://fishercapitalmanagementnews.com/2011/05/fisher-capital-management-news-hackers-broaden-their-attacks/

By BEN WORTHEN, RUSSELL ADAMS, NATHAN HODGE and EVAN RAMSTAD

Hacking incidents at defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. and broadcaster PBS that surfaced over the past few days show how widespread corporate breaches have become and underline how any organization can become a victim.

Over the weekend, the website for the PBS show “NewsHour” was altered by hackers to include a fake article claiming that rapper Tupac Shakur, who was murdered 15 years ago, was alive in New Zealand. The hackers also posted login information that stations and other entities use to access PBS sites.

The incident followed a recent breach at Lockheed, which said Saturday evening that it had detected a “significant and tenacious attack” against its computer networks on May 21. The company said it stopped the attack before data could be stolen.

The attacks are the latest in a mushrooming of breaches world-wide. While hackers once generally had targeted companies that stored financial data or had classified government information, culprits today are expanding their sights to other corporate secrets or seeking information that can lead to valuable data down the line. Amateur hackers also are becoming increasingly brazen.

In recent months, hackers stole data from EMC Corp.’s RSA security unit, email marketer Epsilon Data Management LLC, two of South Korea’s largest banks and Sony Corp., where the breach temporarily hobbled its online PlayStation Network.

“Almost anyone is a target,” said Alex Stamos, chief technology officer at security firm iSEC Partners. Professional hackers now “have good tools and good technique and know how to string them together,” he said. Hackers also are getting better at identifying the soft spots in corporate defenses, he said.

So-called hactivists, who take revenge on companies for perceived slights, also have moved from simply knocking websites offline to stealing data. “There are enough people out there who aren’t worried about the consequences that they are willing to wage a sustained campaign against a global company,” Mr. Stamos said.

Corporate executives said they no longer can take a passive approach to cybersecurity. Ted Chung chief executive of Hyundai Card/Hyundai Capital Co., an auto finance provider in South Korea that was hacked in April, blamed himself for not paying enough attention to the importance of information-technology security.

“When it comes to big companies or big banks, no CEO is that stupid not to pay attention. But maybe they pay the same attention I did, which is giving encouragement and budget to IT but then saying ‘What do I know about programming?’ ” he said in an interview Monday. “That is the wrong support.”

The latest attacks demonstrate a diversity of motives. Those who attacked Hyundai Capital tried to extract ransom for a database they stole. With Epsilon, the hackers made off with email addresses that could be used to send “phishing” emails that trick recipients into disclosing personal information.

At RSA, the perpetrators stole data about security systems that the company sells to its clients. Alone, the data are worthless, security experts said, but they could be used to crack defenses used by other companies.

With PBS, a group identifying itself as LulzSec claimed credit for the fake article on Tupac Shakur, which the group said was retaliation for a documentary, “WikiSecrets,” about the publication of classified documents on the WikiLeaks website and the Army intelligence analyst who has been charged with leaking them. “By the way, #WikiSecrets s—,” a message to PBS said. While the attack was more akin to graffiti than burglary, it underscored the threats companies now face.

PBS on Monday said it had corrected the false information on its website and was “notifying stations and affected parties to advise them of the situation.”

The fake article first appeared late Sunday night on the PBS “NewsHour” news blog, “The Rundown.” The group then posted a string of Twitter messages in which it took credit for the breach, beginning with a post that read, “Oh s—, what happened to @PBS?” followed shortly after by the post, “What’s wrong with @PBS…? How come their database is seized? Why are passwords cracked?  .” The group then posted links to pages with the login information for the PBS sites.

Shortly after the story was published, PBS “NewsHour” posted several messages on Twitter stating that the article wasn’t produced by PBS and that the site had been hacked.

Separately, Lockheed said Saturday evening that the company’s information-security team detected its attack “almost immediately and took aggressive actions to protect all systems and data.”

“Our systems remain secure; no customer, program or employee personal data has been compromised,” the company said. Lockheed said it was conducting an investigation and that it “has continued to keep the appropriate U.S. government agencies informed of our actions.”

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Sunday that President Barack Obama had been briefed on Lockheed attack and that the damage was understood as “fairly minimal.”

Still, that attack is likely to ripple throughout the defense industry. Lockheed supplies some of the most sophisticated weaponry to the U.S. military and is a major provider of information technology to the federal government. The company, based in Bethesda, Md., also is a top international supplier of military and security hardware, employing around 126,000 people world-wide.

Speculation around the Lockheed attack centered on whether hackers may have breached the system by exploiting a vulnerability in SecurID electronic keys made by RSA. In a memo to employees on Sunday, Lockheed Chief Information Officer Sondra Barbour said the company “took swift and deliberate actions” to step up security, including shutting down a virtual private network, resetting user passwords and upgrading SecurID tokens, among other measures.

In South Korea, prosecutors believe North Korea was behind an attack on a large farm cooperative, which couldn’t provide ATM, credit-card and online services for nearly a week after a system at its Seoul headquarters was accessed remotely. How law enforcement tracked the attack to North Korea wasn’t disclosed. But authorities said a link was made to the same Internet servers North Korea used in a 2010 denial-of-service attack against South Korean government websites. North Korea called the South’s accusation in the latest case “absurd” and “unreasonable.”

At Hyundai Capital, a pair of hackers in South Korea gained access to the company’s databases and downloaded personal information on 1.7 million customers. After the company contacted police, it agreed to pay part of what hackers sought. Police arrested the hackers after one was recorded by an ATM video camera as the hacker tried to withdraw some of the ransom. The company has since revamped its IT operation and begun an overhaul of its cybersecurity.

—Ian Sherr
contributed to this article.

Boiler Room

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20000218/REVIEWS/2180301/1023

BY ROGER EBERT / February 18, 2000

cast & credits Seth: Giovanni Ribisi Chris: Vin Diesel Abby: Nia Long Greg: Nicky Katt New Line Presents A Film Written And Directed By Ben Younger. Running Time: 119 Minutes. Rated R (For Strong Language And Some Drug Content). Printer-friendly » E-mail this to a friend »

"Boiler Room" tells the story of a 19-year-old named Seth who makes a nice income running an illegal casino in his apartment. His dad, a judge, finds out about it and raises holy hell. So the kid gets a daytime job as a broker with a Long Island, N.Y., bucket shop that sells worthless or dubious stock with high-pressure telephone tactics. When he was running his casino, Seth muses, at least he was providing a product that his customers wanted.

The movie is the writing and directing debut of Ben Younger, a 29-year-old who says he interviewed a lot of brokers while writing the screenplay. I believe him. The movie hums with authenticity, and knows a lot about the cultlike power of a company that promises to turn its trainees into millionaires, and certainly turns them into efficient phone salesmen.

No experience is necessary at J.T. Marlin: "We don't hire brokers here--we train new ones," snarls Jim (Ben Affleck), already a millionaire, who gives new recruits a hard-edged introductory lecture crammed with obscenities and challenges to their manhood. "Did you see `Glengarry Glen Ross'?" he asks them. He certainly has. Mamet's portrait of high-pressure real estate salesmen is like a bible in this culture, and a guy like Jim doesn't see the message, only the style. (Younger himself observes that Jim, giving his savage pep talks, not only learned his style from Alec Baldwin's scenes in "Glengarry" but wants to be Baldwin.) The film's narrator is Seth Davis (Giovanni Ribisi), an unprepossessing young man with a bad suit who learns in a short time to separate suckers from their money with telephone fantasies about hot stocks and IPOs. Everybody wants to be a millionaire right now, he observes. Ironically, the dream of wealth he's selling with his cold calls is the same one J.T. Marlin is selling him.

In the phone war room with Seth are several other brokers, including the successful Chris (Vin Diesel) and Greg (Nicky Katt), who exchange anti-Jewish and Italian slurs almost as if it's expected of them. At night the guys go out, get drunk and sometimes get in fights with brokers from other houses. The kids gambling in Seth's apartment were better behaved. We observe that both gamblers and stockbrokers bet their money on a future outcome, but as a gambler you pay the house nut, while as a broker you collect the house nut. Professional gamblers claim they do not depend on luck but on an understanding of the odds and prudent money management. Investors believe much the same thing. Of course, nobody ever claims luck has nothing to do with it unless luck has something to do with it.

The movie has the high-octane feel of real life, closely observed. It's made more interesting because Seth isn't a slickster like Michael Douglas or Charlie Sheen in "Wall Street" (a movie these guys know by heart), but an uncertain, untested young man who stands in the shadow of his father the judge (Ron Rifkin) who, he thinks, is always judging him.

The tension between Seth and the judge is one of the best things in the film--especially in Rifkin's quiet, clear power in scenes where he lays down the law. When Seth refers to their relationship, his dad says: "Relationship? What relationship? I'm not your girlfriend. Relationships are your mother's shtick. I'm your father." A relationship does grow in the film, however, between Seth and Abby (Nia Long), the receptionist, and although it eventually has a lot to do with the plot, what I admired was the way Younger writes their scenes so that they actually share hopes, dreams, backgrounds and insecurities instead of falling into automatic movie passion. When she touches his hand, it is at the end of a scene during which she empathizes with him.

Because of the routine racism at the firm, Seth observes it must not be a comfortable place for a black woman to work. Abby points out she makes $80,000 a year and is supporting a sick mother. Case closed, with no long anguished dramaturgy over interracial dating; they like each other and have evolved beyond racial walls. Younger's handling of their scenes shames movies where the woman exists only to be the other person in the sex scene.

The acting is good all around. A few days ago I saw Vin Diesel as a vicious prisoner in the space opera "Pitch Black," and now here he is, still tough, still with the shaved head, but now the only guy at the brokerage that Seth really likes, and trusts enough to appeal to. Diesel is interesting. Something will come of him.

"Boiler Room" isn't perfect. The film's ending is a little too busy; it's too contrived the way Abby doesn't tell Seth something he needs to know; there's a scene where a man calls her by name and Seth leaps to a conclusion when in fact that man would have every reason to know her name; and I am still not sure exactly what kind of a deal Seth was trying to talk his father into in their crucial evening meeting. But those are all thoughts I had afterward. During the movie I was wound up with tension and involvement, all the more so because the characters are all complex and guilty, the good as well as the bad, and we can understand why everyone in the movie does what they do. Would we? Depends.