Moving and Storage Business News

The News Review:

- Here’s the poop on some unglamorous businesses
- In Pictures: New Looks in Portable Hard Drives
- The Enron whistle-blower who wasn’t
- Movie Review | Michael Clayton
- Real Estate Live

Here’s the poop on some unglamorous businesses
USA Today – Oct 11, 2007
Forbes magazine last month released its list of the 400 wealthiest people in the USA. It’s peppered with those such as Herbert Kohler, worth $4 billion from plumbing fixtures. Wayne Hughes is worth $3. 7 billon from self-storage; James Leprino, $2. 1 billion from mozzarella cheese; Dean White, $1. 7 billion from billboards; Christopher Goldsbury, $1. 5 billion from salsa; Dennis Albaugh, $1…
Last year, he made $1 million in salary and has stock and options in the company worth more than $50 million. Not everyone is sold on the marvels of the mundane. Steven Barnhart, CEO of online travel company Orbitz Worldwide, started his career as an economic analyst in polyurethanes. Sounds boring, but it was interesting, he says. The big difference is that the polyurethane products he worked on were in development for a decade. Now, he can have an idea launched online in an afternoon and says he doubts if he could ever go back to the slower pace. Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of the top Internet site MySpace, says the difference between the culture at his company and one that makes toothpaste is that his employees are passionate about the product.

In Pictures: New Looks in Portable Hard Drives
PC World – Oct 11, 2007
In the center of each is a one-click backup button (the drive comes with ArcSoft TotalMedia Backup software). The ring around that button serves as a capacity meter. These drives also come with 2GB of free online storage via the SimpleTech parent company’s MyFabrik. Western Digital’s Slim Passport…
The black model comes in those capacities as well as in 60GB ($80) and 80GB ($100); where they overlap, the color models cost the same as the black, but are sold only via Western Digital’s Web site or Best Buy. The Passport drive is slim, with a small status light indicator on the side. The drive comes with utilities, including WD Sync synchronization software with 128-bit AES encryption and Google’s Toolbar, Desktop, and Picasa software; the utilities are stored on the drive itself. End Cable Clutter With Buffalo’s MiniStation.

The Enron whistle-blower who wasn’t
USA Today – Oct 11, 2007
She has spoken in Great Britain, India, Venezuela, Italy, Canada, Malaysia and New Zealand, and given keynote addresses at dozens of other gatherings in the USA. She’s also a regular speaker at universities, where she lectures students on the importance of ethics in business. Brewer has even co-authored an article in Business Strategy Review with noted management guru Oren Harari showing how the leadership skills of Colin Powell could have been applied at Enron. But to those who worked with her at Enron, when she was known as EddieLynn Morgan (she changed her name after getting married in 2000), her transformation from back-office researcher to international corporate governance heroine is astonishing. “I don’t think people will even believe this,” says Ceci Twachtman, a former colleague, speaking of Brewer’s transformation. “It reminds me of that movie with Leo DiCaprio with Pan Am,” she adds, referring to Catch Me If You Can, a story about a high school dropout who passes himself off as an airline pilot. “EddieLynn is a good nurse who is trying to claim she was a brain surgeon,” says Tony Mends, a former vice president at Enron who was her boss for much of her tenure at the company…
Two years later, in her NYSE speech, her job description evolved into something more sophisticated: “I was recruited in March of 1998 to head a new risk management group …”Lynn Brewer says she first uncovered fraud at Enron late in 1998. One of her tasks that year, she writes in her book, was to summarize a deal struck by the company in December 1997 through which Enron would receive an indirect loan for $229 million from NationsBank, which has since merged with Bank of America. To pay back the loan, Enron and its subsidiaries promised to assign 80 billion cubic feet of natural gas from its Bammel storage field in Texas to a trust representing the bank, for net proceeds of $232 million. Brewer says that Texas state records showed that Enron didn’t have the requisite amount of natural gas at Bammel at the time the contract was signed. Because of that, Brewer says, the contract represented bank fraud. In her book, Brewer says she alerted her boss to the problems with the Bammel deal at the time she was working on it. She also says she wrote a contemporaneous note to her boss describing her concerns.

Movie Review | Michael Clayton
Columbus Dispatch – Oct 12, 2007
Much of that credit goes to Clooney, who presents a confident, tailored front even as hisinsides are corroding. The actor underplays his character’s self-loathing — which keeps the viewerguessing whether Clayton still has a soul worth saving. Tilda Swinton adds more complexity as a chemical-company administrator whose steely posturemasks self-doubt and misgivings. She suggests someone who willingly put her conscience instorage. Gilroy’s technique of jumping between time frames in the early scenes forces the audience tosift through scraps of narration to gain traction. Some will be lost and wish the filmmaker wouldjust go blow something up, but the patient viewer will be rewarded by the generous conclusion…
The actor underplays his character’s self-loathing — which keeps the viewerguessing whether Clayton still has a soul worth saving. Tilda Swinton adds more complexity as a chemical-company administrator whose steely posturemasks self-doubt and misgivings. She suggests someone who willingly put her conscience instorage. Gilroy’s technique of jumping between time frames in the early scenes forces the audience tosift through scraps of narration to gain traction. Some will be lost and wish the filmmaker wouldjust go blow something up, but the patient viewer will be rewarded by the generous conclusion.

Real Estate Live
Washington Post – Oct 12, 2007
: After much discussion, my new husband and I have decided to rent my house and live in his house. I’ve talked with a real estate agent who lives and rents properties in my neighborhood and she suggested I market it through a realtor and let a management company handle the leasing etc. (a management company handles her rentals in the neighborhood). Maryann Haggerty: The pitfall, of course, is that paying a real estate agent and a manager cost money. If you want the work of being a hands-on landlord, you’re welcome to it. Remember, you don’t just pick a tenant (tho that’s the most important part) then just ignore him…
_______________________D. : Our five-year ARM is up next year and we’ll probably be moving 6 months after that. (Husband is in school and will relocate after he graduates. ) Is it even worth it to try to refinance or do we just deal with the increased monthly fees for six months?Elizabeth Razzi: I wouldn’t bother for just six months unless your ARM was shooting up to something truly unbearable. But if the sale takes longer than you anticipate, that could stretch out to a year, which would tilt the scale toward refinancing. So, the question is, how accurate do you think that six-month prediction is?Maryann Haggerty: Yeah, that seems way too short a period to amortize the costs of the refi, which may be greater than your addiitonal monthly payments.