Consistent Compounders benefit disproportionately from tax rate cuts
The superficial approach of choosing winners from the recently announced tax rate cuts, is to look for companies paying the highest rate of tax and then expect a 10-15% increase in their profits. Instead, the real winners will be determined by the ability of a company to either: (a)reinvest the incremental cash flows back into […]
What former CAG Vinod Rai found when auditing the accounts of Kerala’s Shree Padmanabhaswamy temple
t Marcellus we never stop harping on the importance of clean books of accounts and why companies with cooked up numbers have caused major wealth erosion of shareholders/bondholders/banks over the years. Among other things, companies must pass our forensic audit to become part of our portfolio. This article is an excerpt from Vinod Rai’s new […]
The House Releases the Declassified Whistle-Blower Complaint Against Donald Trump
A whistle blower has released a letter that has set off the events that may well end with President Trump’s impeachment. The contents of the letter are so remarkable that Trump’s decision to make public the recording of the call to the Ukranian president (which is at the centre of the controversy) in an attempt […]
The curious case of Bhavish Aggarwal and Ola Electric
More than a decade after the Lehman Brothers bust unleashed the greatest tide of liquidity seen in the history of mankind, across the world we are now seeing weird & wonderful transactions in the Tech sector. From WeWork’s stalled IPO to Uber’s tanking share price to, closer home, the remarkable valuation of Ola Electric. Moneycontrol […]
Facts Don’t Change People’s Minds. Here’s What Does
“When my information changes, I change my mind”, is an oft quoted statement, usually attributed to economist John Keynes. But Keynes clearly is an outlier. Confirmation bias makes people ignore data or information that counters their beliefs, and no matter how hard you try, your arguments, based on facts, will usually have no effect. This […]
Casper Dreams of Being Bigger Than Mattresses
If building a business with strong competitive advantages is tough, sustaining the competitive advantage is many degrees tougher. In retailing, the internet makes it relatively easy to replicate at scale, an existing business model. And this makes it tough for incumbents to protect their market share till the time they have built enough scale for […]
Why can’t we agree on what’s true anymore?
It is fashionable to believe these days that Trump, Putin, Modi, Xi, Erdogan, etc have ushered in a new era of right-wing politics wherein all of us being relentlessly subject to propaganda and our liberties are being curtailed. This piece in The Guardian questions this notion and says “It’s not about foreign trolls, filter bubbles […]
Marcellus: Excelling Amidst Disruption – India’s Khatri Community
Published on: 25 September, 2019 As tax evading businesses and investors in real estate stare into the abyss, we look at the forceful resurgence of a north Indian business community which was uprooted by Partition. The Khatris’ history is one of remarkable enterprise and outstanding success punctuated by politically motivated loot of their wealth. Today, with […]
The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving
An incredible piece in ESPN on what hours of playing chess can do to your body. Aishwarya Kumar highlights research that shows chess can be as stressful on the body as any other physical sport. The best part of the article however is about the fitness regime of the current world chess champion and a […]
His bus conductor mother praying back home, Atharva Ankolekar steers India to U-19 Asia Cup title
Once upon a time most of the cricketers in the Indian cricket (men’s and women’s) team came from the posh schools in India’s biggest cities. These schools had names like St. Xavier’s, St. Joseph’s, Don Bosco, etc. That era is fading away as kids in the posh schools in big cities spend their lives glued […]
Thomas Piketty Back With a 1,200 Page Guide To Abolishing Billionaires
It couldn’t have been a better week to be talking about inequality as Thomas Piketty’s new book “Capital and Ideology” is published in French (the English version isn’t due until next year). As the man who brought the inequality debate to the front and centre of all political and economic discourse with his award winning […]
Why rigged capitalism is damaging liberal democracy
Four weeks ago, the Business Roundtable, a group of CEOs from the world’s largest corporations issued a statement that corporates should move from just focusing on maximising value for shareholders to benefit a wider group of stakeholders – customers, employees, vendors and the community at large. This statement has reignited the debate against capitalism and the […]
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