MikesDesk

The book “Barbarians At the Gate” written by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar is the accurate recollection of the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco tobacco and biscuit company in America. A fascinating read of greedy and egotistical directors who sell a company to benefit themselves. The eighties is a time in American investment finance history where leveraged buyouts were a popular method to buy a company. A leveraged buyout uses junk bonds (bonds below investment grade) to buy out the shares of a listed company. The acquiring company will sell off the the lagging business units of the newly bought company and may run the remaining units under a different company name. Both authors wrote the award level account of the buyout and showed the greed for power on wall street. Although this is the ethical objective of the book, I am excited by the finance described.

The past months I have focused on three parts of life. I am studying for the Chartered Financial Analyst Level 1 exam in December. I work for Investec Private Bank in Durban as an internal consultant. And I am speaking at the Highway Toastmasters club in Kloof. I have embraced my work, study and speaking but shortened my time in my other passions for open source software, education and maths. These current parts of my life have offered exciting oppotunites and I hope to write my experiences in this blog.