There are a lot of things you can take from corporate America and apply to your personal life. One of my favorites is a cost/impact analysis. If you are having difficult sorting all of the work and projects you need to finish, one way to make the decision easier is to draw a box and…
The Graham-Newman Corporation was a stock company that essentially served as a hedge fund through which legendary investor Benjamin Graham managed money for his shareholders. It is the same firm where Warren Buffett worked in his twenties before moving back to Omaha and establishing the original seven partnerships upon which his fortune is based. According…
John S. Lemon, President of Tootle-Lemon National Bank in St. Joseph, Missouri (the city near the farm town where I grew up before moving to the East Coast at the end of my teenage years), died on March 17th, 1905. According to Volume LXX January to June 1905 of The Bankers’ Magazine: “He was born…
Sitting on my desk in front of me, as I type this article, is an analyst report by Morningstar for Wachovia dated December 31st, 2007. This is the bank that was built almost entirely on the foundation of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco in Winston-Salem. At the time, Wachovia common stock had closed at $38.03 and was paying a very rich 6.31% dividend yield. The analysts at Morningstar valued the shares at $61.00, indicating they were nearly 40% undervalued. Within 10 months, those same shares of Wachovia were trading for $1.00 following a catastrophic collapse.
[mainbodyad]As I explained in my investing lesson on how to read an income statement over at About.com, a division of The New York Times, gross profit and the gross profit margin are both important because they determine how much money out of each dollar sold is available for salaries, benefits, advertising, expansion, debt reduction, and…
Adolphus Green was the genius that founded the modern day Nabisco, which was known as the “biscuit trust” after J.P. Morgan combined much of the nation’s bakeries under a single entity that Green controlled. He is responsible for most of the snacks America has enjoyed for generations. The thing that impressed me most about Adolphus…
Following up on the article I wrote about cigarette market share in the United States, I thought this was a great story about the legendary employee stock ownership culture at Reynolds Tobacco back in the first half of the 20th century. It comes from Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, which you should buy. It explains how R.J. Reynolds almost forced his employees to buy stock in the company and even created a special class of dividend shares for them!
Four Companies Control 94.8% Market Share of the Domestic Cigarette Industry in the United States On this blog, in my articles, and even in my books, I have often used the example of how capital allocation determines the wealth one ultimately has. Many times, I used the illustration of a married couple, both of whom…
How a Holding Company Works A holding company is a special type of business that doesn’t do anything itself. Instead, it owns investments, such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, gold, silver, real estate, art, patents, copyrights, licenses, private businesses, or virtually anything of value. The term holding company comes from the fact that the business…
Given my two Wal-Mart inspired articles a few days ago, I thought this was germane. [mainbodyad]Wal-Mart is ending its profit sharing plan and upgrading it to include a $1,000 contribution to employee health care accounts so there is a greater cushion before workers have to pay medical deductibles plus moving to a system whereby they…
