Thursday, October 25, 2012
Monday, September 10, 2012
Brilliantly Ballsy
This article is an absolute blast: http://skift.com/2012/09/05/ryanair-boss-michael-oleary-gives-best-quotes-in-the-industry/
Michael O'Leary might just have become my new favourite CEO. He's the CEO of Ryanair, a low-cost Irish airline. His approach to customer satisfaction is: "I'll get you there. For everything else, you pay me." I find it hard to disagree.
Some of his best quotes, taken directly from the above link:
Michael O'Leary might just have become my new favourite CEO. He's the CEO of Ryanair, a low-cost Irish airline. His approach to customer satisfaction is: "I'll get you there. For everything else, you pay me." I find it hard to disagree.
Some of his best quotes, taken directly from the above link:
On passengers who forget to print their boarding pass: “We think [they] should pay 60 euros for being so stupid.”
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary poses with a friend. Photo by Forbes/Newcred.
On refunds: “You’re not getting a refund so **** off. We don’t want to hear your sob stories. What part of ‘no refund’ don’t you understand?”
On customer service: “People say the customer is always right, but you know what – they’re not. Sometimes they are wrong and they need to be told so.”
On overweight passengers: “Nobody wants to sit beside a really fat ****** on board. We have been frankly astonished at the number of customers who don’t only want to tax fat people but torture them.”
On beginning a press conference to announce the annual results: “I’m here with Howard Miller and Michael Cawley, our two deputy chief executives. But they’re presently making love in the gentleman’s toilets, such is their excitement at today’s results.”
On apologies: “Are we going to say sorry for our lack of customer service? Absolutely not.”
On Ryanair’s image: “One of the weaknesses of the company now is it is a bit cheap and cheerful and overly nasty, and that reflects my personality.”
On Guardian readers: “The chattering bloody classes, or what I call the liberal Guardian readers, they’re all buying SUVs to drive around London. I smile at these loons who drive their SUVs down to Sainsbury’s and buy kiwi fruit from New Zealand. They’re flown in from New Zealand for Christ sakes. They’re the equivalent of environmental nuclear bombs!”
On environmentalists: “We want to annoy the ******* whenever we can. The best thing you can do with environmentalists is shoot them. These headbangers want to make air travel the preserve of the rich. They are luddites marching us back to the 18th century. If preserving the environment means stopping poor people flying so the rich can fly, then screw it.”
On protesters: “The Swampies of this world are climbing up trees to protest about airlines and airports. They should all get a job and get a ******* life.”
On consultants: “I believe hiring consultants is an abdication by management of their responsibilities. If the consultant is so good at managing change, then why not hire him to run the company and do it himself? Every idiot who gets fired in the industry shows up as a consultant somewhere. I would shoot any consultant who came through my door.”
On turbulence: “If drink sales are falling off we get the pilots to engineer a bit of turbulence. That usually spikes up the drink sales.”
On corporate life: “The meek may inherit the earth, but they will not have it for long.”
On travel agents: “Screw the travel agents. Take the ******* out and shoot them. They are a waste of bloody time. What have they done for passengers over the years?”
On ordering aircraft from Boeing: “The message to Boeing today is: ‘You keep building them, we’ll keep buying them’, and together both of us will kick the crap out of Airbus in Europe. We love Boeing. **** the French.”
On not ordering more aircraft from Boeing: “Boeing had their chance. Eventually you lose interest, dealing with a bunch of idiots who can’t make a decision. They are a bunch of numpties out in Seattle.”
On transatlantic flights: “Ryanair will never fly the Atlantic route because one cannot get there in a Boeing 737, unless one has a very strong tail wind or passengers who can swim the last hour of the flight.”
On the airline industry: “There’s a lot of big egos in this industry. Most chief executives got into this business because they want to travel for a living. Not me, I want to work.”
On European expansion: “Germans will crawl *******-naked over broken glass to get low fares.”
On Ryanair in the 1990s: “Ryanair will never make money. It will always lose money. It’s an airline. Forget it.”
On Ryanair in the 2000s: “We expect our profits to grow by 20 to 25 per cent. That’s not just good, that’s practically obscene in an industry in which few people make money. This isn’t an airline, it’s a drug baron’s business.”
On charging passengers to use the loo: “One thing we have looked at is maybe putting a coin slot on the toilet door so that people might actually have to spend a pound to spend a penny in the future. If someone wanted to pay £5 to go to the toilet I would carry them myself. I would wipe their bums for a fiver.”
On upright seating: “I’d love to operate aircraft where we take out the back ten rows and put in hand rails. We’d say if you want to stand, it’s five euros. People say ‘Oh but the people standing may get killed if there’s a crash’. Well, with respect, the people sitting down might get killed as well”
On the in-flight experience: “Anyone who thinks Ryanair flights are some sort of bastion of sanctity where you can contemplate your navel is wrong. We already bombard you with as many in-flight announcements and trolleys as we can. Anyone who looks like sleeping, we wake them up to sell them things.”
On low fares: “I don’t see why in 10 years’ time you wouldn’t fly people for free. Why don’t airports pay us for delivering the passengers to their shops?”
If you can’t find a low fare on Ryanair: “You’re a moron.”
On publicity: “I don’t mind dressing up in something stupid or pulling gormless faces if it helps. Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s arse about my personal dignity.”
With Ryanair’s marketing manager, Sinead Finn, addressing an all-male press conference when she said: “I’ve got nine men in front of me. I don’t know where to start”: “They’re hardly all men. One of them is from the Guardian.”
At an over-hyped press conference: “I’m a bit disturbed – the rumour went round we would announce my resignation and the share price rose three per cent.”
On Ryanair passengers: “Do we carry rich people on our flights? Yes, I flew on one this morning and I’m very rich.”
On BAA: “BAA want to spend £4 billion on an airport which should cost £100 million. £3.9 billion is for tree planting, new roadways and Norman Foster’s Noddy railway so they can mortgage away the future of low-cost airlines. This plan is for the birds. BAA are a glorified shopping mall.”
On breaking up BAA: “A break-up of BAA would be the greatest thing that has happened to British aviation since the founding of Ryanair. Then airline customers would not be forced to endure the black hole of Calcutta that is Heathrow or the unnecessary, overpriced palace being planned at Stansted.”
On how to settle differences with Dublin Airport: “With Semtex. Preferably during a board meeting.”
On new routes: “Sometimes there is not even a road to the airports we fly to. It is immaterial.”
On expansion: “We would like to base more aircraft here in Belfast and are working with the City Airport to get the runway extended. Let’s get the planning permission through and let’s ignore the mewling and puking from local residents which is a load of nonsense. If you don’t like living beside an airport, sell the house and move.”
On flying to Cornwall: “Newquay is the surf and dope capital of Britain. There’s next to frig-all way of getting to Cornwall unless you fly. It’s a ******* impossible nine-day hike. Closing that airport would be a disaster for surfer dudes, but also to loads of wealthy types who use us to commute up and down. I tell you, we’ll have a bloody dogfight with the RAF. Watch out for those 737s on your wing, flyboys!”
On pilot’s wages: “People ask how we can have such low fares. I tell them our pilots work for nothing.”
On his popularity: “I don’t give a ***** if no-one likes me. I am not a cloud bunny, I am not an aerosexual. I don’t like aeroplanes. I never wanted to be a pilot like those other platoons of goons who populate the airline industry.”
On his bride arriving 35 minutes late for their wedding: “She’s coming here with Aer Lingus.”
On paternity leave: “We have paternity leave but it’s a bloody joke. It is bull**** legislation. You need a couple of days off because you’ve had a baby, but this nonsensical rubbish that you’re entitled to days off for the first six years of a baby’s life. Go and get a bloody job – get a life.”
On wealth: “I buy everything low-cost. I buy cheap shirts. I buy cheap shoes. It’s a philosophy. I’m just cheap.”
On Ireland: “The airline industry is full of bull*******, liars and drunks and we excel at all three in Ireland.”
On retirement: “It would be very difficult for me to don a tie and go on to committees. Could you imagine me getting a knighthood? Puke. The weakness of British Airways is that everyone is looking for a knighthood. I plan to go on and on, like Chairman Mao.”
On free speech: “I upset a lot of people because I tell them what I think. I’m disrespectful towards what is perceived to be authority. Like, I think the Prime Minister of Ireland is a gob*****.”
On politics: “I think the most influential person in Europe in the last 20 to 30 years has been Margaret Thatcher, who has left a lasting legacy that has driven us towards lower taxes and greater efficiency. Without her we’d all be living in some French bloody unemployed republic.”
On the European Commission: “They are ******* Kim Il-Jungs (sic) in the Commission. You cannot have civil servants trying to design rules that make everything a level playing field. That’s called North ******* Korea, and everybody is starving there. The EU are pursuing some form of communist ******* Valhalla.”
On EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes’s approval of an Alitalia/Air One merger: “She”ll be rolling over like a poodle having her tummy tickled and rubber-stamping the thing.”
On how to keep employees motivated and happy: “Fear.”
On British Airways: “BA have got waterfalls in their head office. The first thing I’d do if I were in charge of BA is turn off the waterfalls. The only time we have waterfalls in the Ryanair office is when the toilet leaks.”
On the British Airways/Iberia merger: “It reminds me of two drunks leaning on each other.”
On Ryanair’s pilots: “If this is such a Siberian salt mine and I am such an ogre, then why are they still working for the airline? If any of our fellas aren’t happy with the current arrangement then they’re free to go elsewhere. Godspeed to them.”
On Aer Lingus’s pilots: “Overpaid, underworked peacocks”
On employees: “MBA students come out with: “My staff is my most important asset.” Bull****. Staff is usually your biggest cost. We all employ some lazy ******* who needs a kick up the backside, but no one can bring themselves to admit it.”
On cost-cutting: “We use our own biros and I tell the staff not to buy them, just pick them up from hotels, legal offices, wherever. That’s what I do. Recently I did an interview and I was sitting there with a hotel pen I’d nicked from somewhere. I was asked why and I said: ‘We at Ryanair have a policy of stealing hotel pens. We won’t pay for Bic biros as part of our obsession with low costs.”
On Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of easyJet: “Those of us who sell the lowest fares just get on with it, and those who do not, write whingeing letters to newspapers.”
On intelligence: “easyJet are not the brightest sandwiches in the picnic basket.”
On Southwest Airlines: “We went to look at Southwest Airlines in the US. It was like the road to Damascus. This was the way to make Ryanair work. I met with Herb Kelleher. I passed out about midnight, and when I woke up again at about 3am Kelleher was still there, the *******, pouring himself another bourbon. I thought I’d pick his brains and come away with the Holy Grail. The next day I couldn’t remember a thing.”
On Alitalia: “I would not want it if it were given to me as a present.”
To the boss of regional airline Aer Arann: “**** off back to Connemara where you come from!”
On offering advice to other airlines’ bosses: “They can **** off and do their own work”
On air marshals: “Air marshals are a complete waste of time. I can’t think of anything that would reduce security more than having a guy on board with a gun.”
On a bomb scare in Scotland: “The police force were outstanding in their field. But all they did was stand in their field. They kept passengers on board while they played with a suspect package for two and three quarter hours. Extraordinary.”
On closing Ryanair’s check-in desks: “This isn’t the end of civilization as we know it.”
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Saturday, August 11, 2012
22,451 (Crores)
Largest ever
quarterly loss in Indian corporate history? Check.
Calling for your
product to be regulated again because its only nudge-nudge-wink-wink ‘deregulated’
now? Check.
The people
supposed to pay you money not having any because they paid you out last time?
Check.
Running out of
cash to pay your suppliers? Check.
IOCL’s quarterly
numbers are a disaster, to put it lightly. Its easy to read a number and go
whoa, without really understanding anything about it. Let’s put it in
context, shall we?
You read about
the latest, greatest mobile phone going around? A little birdie called the
Samsung Galaxy S3? It retails for around 38,000. This loss could buy 59 lakh of
those and dump them in the Arabian Sea. Or wait, IOCL’s a oil company right? With
this much money, you could buy around 300,000 Honda City and dump them too. I’m
sure neither Honda nor Samsung would mind.
Actually, the
most interesting part of this for me is the news that soon IOCL will run out of limits
to buy stuff. Then what happens? Its not like we’re self-sufficient or
anything. Does crude oil inflow just stop? IOCL supplies around 40% of India’s
total crude requirement, so if something’s not done soon, we’re stuffed.
Plus a
4000-crore asset writedown and 3100 crore forex loss? Surely, surely these two
could’ve been minimized? Maybe not the inventory writedown (Brent prices fell
20% during the quarter), but the forex loss?
And yes, nothing
is going to improve till prices, especially of diesel, are raised. Prices can’t
be raised because that loses you votes stokes inflation. And so on.
Another
side-effect is that with these kinda losses, they can’t even go in for capex,
which would have helped them to increase the complexity levels of their
refineries (higher the complexity, the lower the quality of crude oil it can
turn to final products, low quality raw material costs less, hence lesser costs
and more profits) and this leads to GRMs in the range of 4 dollars or so, which
is not quite great, in the spirit of putting things mildly.
Quick question,
just how the hell do equity analysts suggest a price for these oil marketing
cos.? Isn’t just about everything determined by the government? Dunno…
In a couple of
days there will be a lot of equity research reports coming your way, if you’re
into those and I’ll be damned if this isn’t the gist of all of them. Everyone
needs to make a living.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Bear Cartel - II
So as I'd written earlier, I went through the SEBI order on the sudden mid-cap stock crash
and as is the case with most SEBI orders, I found it written up beautifully.
You should really try reading some of these sometime.
I'll try to quickly summarize; my thoughts at the
end.
- On July 26th, between 9.15 and 9.50 am, prices
of Pipavav Defence (PDO), Parsvnath Developers (PVD) and Glodyne
Technoserve (GDT) fell suddenly and without cause by 20% and that of Tulip
Telecom (TLT) by 25%. The marke, and SEBI, went WTF?!?
- NSE and BSE both dug into the list of sellers
and came up with the list of 19 entities which I'd posted here.
- The net sales by these entities in those four
stocks ranged from 51% to 95% of the market on NSE and 31% to 58% of the
market on BSE. They underbid on the stock by as much as 36% in
some cases. They were acting in unison i.e. one after the other. One would
place an order and after that got executed, someone else would place
another order and so on. And as one or two were driving prices downward,
other group entities were buying up the shares.
- SEBI dug into these entities and came up with
inter-linkages between them such as:
- Common phone numbers
- Common address
- Directorship in other entity
- Common CA (I found this brilliant)
- One of the guys, Ajit Kumar Jain, was found to
have links with companies that had been banned in the past for price
manipulation.
- A particularly neat touch was when SEBI
pointed out that these guys don't really have the stated income to be
trading in crores of rupees. Most of them were nil or upto 5 lakhs, with
two or three above 25 L.
- These companies, since Jan. 2012 were totally
into trading these four scrips and nothing else. 11 of them traded these
80% of the time or above.
- From the order, directly,
22. In my
view, generally, a seller would rationally seek a higher price to sell his
shares; however, in this case the clients were placing sale orders at
prices lower than LTP, thereby bringing down the price of the scrips. More
importantly, normally a seller would desist from revealing its entire
sell quantity since that may cause the supply-demand balance to immediately
become unfavourable to the seller. The data for the short period of time
in each scrip indicates several instances of fully disclosed orders which
were also a significant factor in causing the sharp decline of
approximately 20% in price of each scrip.
23. One
basic premise that underlies trading on the stock exchanges is that the
clients conform to standards of transparency and ethical behavior
prescribed in the various regulations and statutes, relevant in this
regard and do not indulge in fraudulent , manipulative and unfair trade
practices while dealing in securities. In this case, the above trading
pattern of the clients’ prima-facie indicates that there was a concerted
attempt to artificially manipulate/depress the prices of these scrips in a
disorderly fashion thereby adversely affecting the integrity of the
securities market.
- And then, BOOM, you're barred from the markets
pending further investigation.
But seriously, what were these guys thinking? Did
they really think they could get away with something as blatant as this? I am
also thinking of the ways in which they could have pulled this off without alerting
the regulator.
First of all, get different SIM cards.
In today's day and age, that should seriously not be a concern. Register
different addresses. I'm sure these guys have enough bogus addresses or shell
companies listed anyway. So choose carefully. These two should be no-brainers,
really.
Now it should get interesting. They'll
need different companies, obviously, operating out of the different premises
and having different phone numbers, but they'll need different directors too,
or else they are related parties. A public limited company needs seven minimum
while a private limited needs two. That gives a minimum of four people, in two
pairs, establishing a buyer and a seller. Because if they short a stock and
someone else buys it up they’ll end up losing loads of money. The timing has to
be co-ordinated. You need to establish a pattern of trading across various
stocks before zeroing in on the two-three you want to short. Don’t concentrate
80% of your trading in those.
I’m still not convinced. If one set of
companies does all the selling and another apparently unrelated group of
companies does the buying, doesn’t it become obvious? Maybe the ‘operators’
should settle on less greed. If you end up causing 20% price-drop in 30
minutes, you are bound to raise eyebrows. Why not 5% across multiple scrips,
snap ‘em up and sell them back at normal price? Given the crores in which they
deal, even 5% would be a significant amount. But 20% is pushing it a bit too
far, I think. Plus it gets you debarred.
Use different CA’s for the companies.
That also should not be a problem, ideally.
Ideally, you’d have 5-6 different set
of companies, 6-7 companies constituting a set, operating throughout India
(think Golden Quadrilateral), co-ordinating via Skype (no telephone trails),
selling and buying throughout a session (this would require some serious cash,
but I think they might have that covered). Choose your timing, in the best case
scenario, you should only trigger the selling and spook the market enough so
that they start panicking and selling. That might be a tough nut to crack. Make
sure the individuals and companies involved trade across a range of scrips
before settling on the one you want to manipulate. Random distribution of
profits would ensure everyone gains in the long-run, and collusion is difficult
to prove. This is all a bit too simplistic, yes?
Establishing 30-40 private limited
companies in India would not be a big issue for the concerned parties. An
enquiry here would involve seizure of communication equipment and I don’t think
SEBI is authorized to do that. SEBI’s the regulator, not the police. How do you
prove collusion when there is (apparently) no contact between the parties? They
might be best friends but in the absence of documentation, even friendship is
hard to prove, no?
If you’re a party who knows how shit goes
down and are laughing your guts out at me, let me know. I’d love to learn. (Not
that I’d use it, of course, but knowledge and power and all that jazz...)
If you’re SEBI, what’s your workaround
for this? Do you even need a workaround for this?
Again, putting it on paper is a
gut-wrenching reminder of absolutely how much I have no idea.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Bear Cartels?
I'm such a noob in the stock markets that it hurts to even think about it.
This is what I came across today: Sebi bars 19 entities for involvement in mid-cap stock crash. Might be the first time I've noticed a 'bear cartel' in action.
I'll try to dig into it for more. In the meantime, if anyone has anything they want to share about these 19 entities, lemme know, yes?
- 4a Financials Securities
- A To Z Steels,
- Ajit Kumar Jain
- Cheminare Trade Comm
- G N Credits
- Gajria Jayna Precision Industries
- Kuvam Plast Pvt Ltd
- Littlestar Vanijya Pvt Ltd
- Manish Agarwal
- Milestone Shares & Stock Broking Pvt Ltd.
- Neelanchal Mercantile Pvt Ltd
- North Eastern Publishing & Advertising Co.
- Passions System Solution
- Premium Hospitality Services
- Ramkripa Securities
- Umang Nemani
- Venus Infosoft
- White Horse Trading Co.
- Yashika Holding Pvt Ltd.
It seems there is quite a lot of cross-holding between these. SEBI's website is down right now, so not able to read the order. Will check it out soon and we'll see how that goes...
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