Despite the accelerated pace of the home stretch of the Spring quarter, I forcibly made some time for R&R and dabbled with photography during the long weekend.
Here is my fledgling attempt from a borrowed zoom lens! went wrong with the aperture value on this one. Exposure could have been looked into as well.
My academic fling with this course and all things related ..continues.
The course is getting interesting due to so many reasons. The professor too, Haresh Sapra, is putting in a lot more effort than the students. The course is down to the final merger model project. However, I am a little dejected with my midterm. In spite of putting enormous number of hours studying for the course, (the additional motivation being that my internship is in M&A), I did not get good scores on it. I understand the material reasonably well but I am just not sure what went wrong. I can’t blame it on lack of studying time coz I am not even employed now.
So I spent some time in solitude trying to figure out what have I learned so far in the course. I realized that:
So, coming back to why I did not fare well in the midterm …need I say more ?
Yesterday I got to attend the Chicago GSB 4th annual TATA India business conference. Here are the main highlights:
The event began with a short but motivational speech from Luis Miranda (who is a Chicago GSB alum and currently helms the PE division at IDFC). The underlying current of his speech was his own take on the GSB mantra ‘Challenge Everything’. He cited some examples from his days at the GSB and stressed on the importance of solving any problem thrown at you instead of griping about the constraints surrounding it.
Then came along Arun Shourie who, by making an emotional appeal to the passions and prejudices of the audience, seemed to strengthen his claims. Speaking in his unique paternalistic tone, he mostly concentrated on juxtaposing India and China within the boundaries of society, execution of corporate strategy and military might. Interspersed with hindi expressions, his speech touched on some insightful perspectives on India’s unmatched societal strength and China’s forced projection of its economic development to its military strength. Just when his speech had the potential to gybe into the sensitive political climate between the two countries regarding occupied territories, some nut-job in the audience had to further stoke the fire by citing some (isolated?) incident about China denying visas to some tourists..??..whatever. Luckily, a couple of terse sentences on the topic by Shourie and we were back on track. The undercurrent of Shourie’s speech being motivation, it was sugar coated with comprehensively persuasive anecdotes.
After that was Sam Pitroda (Chairman of India’s Knowledge Commission). Sam is the person who created a million plus jobs back in 1998 due to the proliferation of the Public Call Offices (PCO). A true visionary, he sought to implement his vision after a patient 5 month wait to meet Indira Gandhi and explain his vision to her. He has quite a number of patents under his name. During his keynote speech, he voiced some truly radical ideas yesterday which I felt like subscribing to instantly (it may also have been due to his deliberate intonation and resonating voice that helped drive home the point). He talked about the role of teacher as a mentor and seemed to have his own axioms that helped brace his model viz. focusing on a customer centric model vs on a content centric model. To sum it up, he looked really old-school but had some very ‘new-agey’ ideas. if there is ever a Galt’s Gulch, Mr. Pitroda needs to be in it ..for all the right reasons.
Then up on the stage was Mr. Muthuraman (MD of Tata Steel). He was a man with a social message. The bottom line of his speech was “Happy people = Profitable Company”. His hour long speech had explicit streaks of social messages shored by the fact that TATA is ‘owned by 66% philanthropic institutions’, has ‘adopted 650 villages along Jamshedpur’ and that TATA was founded with a philosophy that the ‘prime purpose of an industrial organization is to improve the lives of people’ – quoting him verbatim. I had a major ‘Atlas Shrugged’ moment while listening to him. He also managed to put in a reference to the ‘vasudhaivan kutumbakam’ saying in Sanskrit (meaning: the universe is one big family) in the Rig Vedas and drawing parallels to it in the corporate world. He also emphasized the role of the Acquisitor as a benign entity when it comes to acquisitions and pointed out how TATA (although holds the reins to the companies it acquires) lets them function on their own citing successful examples of Chorus Steel and Nat Steel. All this seemed a perfect foil to the onslaught of the current corporate culture.
He also stressed (rather predictably) on the 1991 reforms and how they propelled India out of the state-led industrialization in the socialist Nehruvian era. This comparison (Before coming to the event, I was sure one of the keynote speakers had it down in his scratch sheet) was warranted since the controls on the private sector had just been let go in 1991 and that’s when India truly progressed or as Mr. Muthuraman put it, “India was born”. The numbers that Mr. Muthuraman quoted to illustrate the progress in the post-1991 period were a quantum leap ahead from what they were in the pre-1991 era.
<Bloggers Digression>
While on the topic of the 1991 economic reforms, did you happen to read the WSJ article “How to fix India’s Financial Sector‘ coauthored by Chicago GSB Professor Raghuram Rajan and Cornell Professor Eswar Prasad. This paper talks about regulations in the financial sector and how it has prevented the financial sector (among others) in becoming competitive and efficient. There are direct recommendations for reforms and for uncoupling the government controls on the financial sector. The language used is ‘requirements need to be eased’ and ‘India’s political process…could bog down process’ and ‘Government ownership of 70% of the banking system..hindrances to development of corporate debt ..have stunted financial development’. From what I learned reading the article and the report, it seems that private enterprise (within the banking domain) is still bound by social controls. There is still a whiff of democratic socialism and centralization within this sector. There is a seemingly apocryphal analog to the state owned railways (during the Nehru era) reflecting both the good and the bad :- The railways reflected India’s democracy in a way that the poorest Indian had become mobile (analog: the above report talks about financial inclusions within the financial sectors penetrating into the masses and how 83% of rural workers with annual incomes above the national average have bank accounts). However Private companies, during that time, would not transport goods by rail becuase of tariffs and delays and other such shackles which eventually reduced any chances of privatization (analog: the above article talks about lack of incentives of private banks to expand lending due to rate ceilings imposed by the Government). If you read the report, you will find many more examples conforming to the above analog.
<End of Bloggers Digression>
Between the keynote speakers were panel discussion on Growth Capital/Entrepreneurship etc, However there was nothing spectacular about most of these panels since there was not much time given for QnA despite the audience wanting tons of it. Also, I felt that the moderators could have done a better job time-slicing the event: some panelists just hogged the limelight while some who really should have done the talking kept quiet. The moderators should have prodded the panel guests with more questions to solicit their opinions.
To end the speaker session for the event was the rejuvenating talk given by O.P. Bhatt in his funny avuncular tone where he rattled off yet another truckload of statistics showing SBI’s progress in the banking domain and its foray into PE. But by then, I was too tired and came back home to catch up on some sleep and some R&R.
Finally got done with my M&A accounting midterm. After spending countless hours preparing for it, it feels like the quarter just got over. Came back home to start working on a case for another course that’s due on Monday. Does this ever end?
After a logical end to my case writeup by evening, I headed out with friends to the Allstate Arena to attend the Police concert. While drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers did look as if age had caught up to them, Sting, though 50+, looked as fit as a 30 yr old (I want the moisturizer that he uses). Back during my undergrad days, I even used to own a VHS (video) cassette with the entire 1983 Synchronicity album – live in concert. Yesterday evening brought back some old memories. The paisa vasool (money’s worth) yesterday was the near 2-minute (of what seemed improvised) guitaring by Summers, and then there was Copeland’s rendition of ‘Wrapped around..’ on some esoteric percussion instruments. Of course I did see Sting mouth the words ‘Mephistopheles’, ‘Scylla’ and ‘Charybdes’ in their entirety.
After the concert, there was the usual indulgence in alcohol, yesterday being Saturday night. My friends wanted to go on all the way through the morning, I was determined to put a hard stop at 2 am. It was imperative for me to catch up on my sleep this weekend. Weather was just right last night. I woke up today, however, to a wet, windy, cloudy and thus a dreary Sunday morning.
Looking ahead for the month, there’s a lot of things to do. Only a month to go before the quarter ends and I head out for my internship. Having quit my job, I am going to give myself about 3 days of doing nothing but eating good and swimming. Once recharged, I hope to give my best to the home stretch for the Spring quarter.
Top 4 reasons to look forward to taking classes on the 3rd floor at the Gleacher Center:
I have been absorbed in a quandary: when to quit my workplace. I start my internship in just over a month. Is there even a point in continuing? I am not motivated at work. There is information asymmetry between me and my employer. Incentives between us two are just not aligned. I am seriously deliberating whether to give my 2 weeks notice this week and just focus on the coursework from then on.
This quarter I am taking the so called M&A Accounting course (30117) taught by Haresh Sapra. The course seems to be okay so far, but is demanding a lot of time. The course talks about Tax Structuring and Tax Implications of M&A deals including changes to the Financial reporting rules for M&A deals. Unfortunately everything is US based. As I mentioned in my previous post, deals are happening aplenty in India and it would be beneficial to know the M&A implications of Emerging economies.
About the prof: Haresh is just great. I had heard so much about him coming into the quarter, now I am having a tough time getting the aura off and just focusing on the lectures. The guy has so much stamina; he teaches 3 sections of the same course: 2 on friday, 1 on saturday and then has a review session on sunday. Also for the last 3 weeks he is trying to make up for a lost session and as a result is teaching 4 hrs each class. So he goes off for 8 hrs on Friday with just a half hour break between the two sections and then again 4 hrs on Saturday. This weekend besides the regular classes, we have 2 sessions on saturday and sunday. I am sure some students are not happy with this ..but just look at the professor’s commitment !! To top it all, these long sessions are in between Haresh running the Boston Marathon. A true stud !
Usually, my initial impressions of the professors teaching the course decreases exponentially as the quarter progresses. But Haresh’s corona is still strong and is showing no signs of waning.
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