Mr. Smith has decided to become a venture capitalist but he is worried about capital losses and lower rate of return. Consequently, he needs important information regarding financial contracting with optimistic entrepreneurs. The need for significant information about financial contracting with optimistic entrepreneurs is fueled by the existence of seemingly little empirical work that compares the attributes of real world financial contracts. In the process of providing Mr. Smith with some important information that would help him as a venture capitalist, it is important to focus on the major areas of financial contracting with optimistic entrepreneurs. Since Smith is already worried about capital losses and lower rate of return, some of the most important information to provide includes looting of companies by their insiders, the impact of looting on venture capitalist, risk mitigation strategies, and potential impacts of the strategies. The information should also cover the extent that the recommended risk mitigation strategies would protect Mr. Smith’s capital.
Looting of Companies by their Insiders in the United States:
Despite of the enhanced legal protection of investors in the United States as compared to any other country across the globe, looting of companies by their insiders is still a major problem in the country (Ellingsen & Kristiansen, 2011, p.323). This problem is mainly fueled by the probability of diversion to occur sometimes with regards to transfer from investors to entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, the United States still has a minimal probability of the average transfer from investors to entrepreneurs that take place in the form of illegitimate diversion. The relative minimal probabili...
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...l role in determining the success and profitability of the venture. This is primarily because the venture capitalist is the principal stakeholder who provides funding for the venture while the entrepreneur is an agent responsible for the day-to-day activities or operations of the company.
In conclusion, this report provides an overview of financial contracting between venture capitalists and optimistic entrepreneurs. The report demonstrates why internal looting of companies is still a major problem in the United States despite having the best regulatory measures across the world and the effect of the looting on capital losses and lower rate of return. Notably, the main focus of the report is to provide important information to Mr. Smith regarding his concerns about capital losses and lower rate of return because of his decision to become a venture capitalist.
The purpose of this paper is to provide a summary of the article called “Can We Keep Our Promises?” by Robert D. Arnott, and to help better understand the three key risks facing each investor.
Having great financial success throughout his life, Buffet strives to share his wisdom throughout his essay. Some find Buffet’s claims unreasonable and others agree with him. Experiencing similar worries of business failure as Buffet once did, I have come to conclude, like Buffet, that the financial success of a business is much more a function of the type of business in which you enter, than the way in which you try to operate the business.
In particular, startups conform to a set of formalized, ritualistic practices in order to obtain venture capital (VC) funding during the “seed” phase. Almost paradoxically, new companies are regarded as a kernel of innovation and invention in the economy and yet they seem to emulate each others’ routines in the pursuit of early investment, decoupled from the actual products or services they plan to sell to the
Ponzi schemes are a continuing problem in the investment world and can only be stopped if the Securities and Exchange Commission does better safe guarding investors’ money. This paper will address Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and how he was able to steal billions of dollars from investors. The reasons why the SEC responded so slowly to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and what can be done in the future to make sure another Ponzi scheme of this magnitude does not happen again. Also included in this paper will be examples of good and bad leadership theories.
Jordan Belfort is the notorious 1990’s stockbroker who saw himself earning fifty million dollars a year operating a penny stock boiler room from his Stratton Oakmont, Inc. brokerage firm. Corrupted by drugs, money, and sex he went from being an innocent twenty – two year old on the fringe of a new life to manipulating the system in his infamous “pump and dump” scheme. As a stock swindler, he would motivate his young brokers through insane presentations to rile them up as they defrauded investors with duplicitous stock sales. Toward the end of this debauchery tale he was convicted for securities fraud and money laundering for which he was sentenced to twenty – two months in prison as well as recompensing two – hundred million in restitution to any swindled stock buyers of his brokerage firm (A&E Networks Television). Though his lavish spending and berserk party lifestyle was consumed by excessive greed, he displayed both positive and negative aspects of business communications.
Jordan Belfort is famous for his crooked way of earning his millions as a stockbroker on Wall Street. Even Belfort started at the bottom, on his first day in Wall Street he was told he was “lower than pond scum”(Belfort 1). After writing a book about his happenings on Wall Street, we’ve seen the
The case study is about an interview, conducted to four venture capitalists from four of the most prominent VC Silicon Valley firms, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), Menlo Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Alta Partners. These firms invest both in seed as well as in later-stage companies, which operate mostly in the information technology sector. However, each VC has developed different sector portfolio depending on the expertise of the venture capitalists, the partner network and other factors. Professor Mike Roberts and Lauren Barley a senior research associate, both from Harvard Business School, have made a series of seven questions to their interviewees to understand how they evaluate potential venture opportunities and what they look at in order to decide if they will fund them and in which way. The questions were dealing with how VC’s evaluate potential venture opportunities, how they conduct due diligence, what process id followed for the decision making, what financial analyses is performed, the role of risk in the evaluation and how they think of potential exit routes. These questions were asked individually and revealed several similarities as well as differences in the strategy and the criteria that are used for the evaluation.
In 1995 The Bayou Hedge Fund Group, referred to as the fund, was founded by Samuel Israel III in Stamford, Connecticut with the intention to produce high returns for investors. Good intentions were not enough when the fund began to experience losses almost immediately and Mr. Israel resorted to fraudulent activities to keep the appearance of success alive. The resulting life of the fund was filled will illegal, fraudulent, and unethical activities that finally brought the fund to bankruptcy and landed Mr. Israel and some of his key associates in prison. The objective of this paper is to overview the history of the case and to highlight some of the major issues that should have alerted investors and other outside parties to the wrongdoings being perpetrated.
Adelman, P. J., & Marks, A. M. (2010). Entrepreneurial finance. (5 ed.). Bedford, Texas: Prentice Hall.
Jordan Belfort is the notorious 1990’s stockbroker who saw himself earning fifty million dollars a year operating a penny stock boiler room from his Stratton Oakmont, Inc. brokerage firm. Corrupted by drugs, money, and sex, he went from being an innocent twenty – two year old on the fringe of a new life to manipulating the system in his infamous “pump and dump” scheme. As a stock swindler, he would motivate his young brokers through insane presentations to rile them up as they defrauded investors with duplicitous stock sales. Toward the end of this debauchery tale he was convicted for securities fraud and money laundering for which he was sentenced to twenty – two months in prison as well as recompensing two – hundred million in restitution to any swindled stock buyers of his brokerage firm. Though his lavish spending and berserk party lifestyle was consumed by excessive greed, he displayed both positive and negative aspects of business communications.
The Body Shop International case is an interesting case study into the miscommunication of owners and stockholder interests with regard to financial conditions. Anita Roddick, the founder of The Body Shop had no financial experience and thought that all she needed to do was expand her business and the financing would take shape as she developed her business. While Anita’s product concept of a natural skin-care line was good; her lack of experience in financial matters took its toll on her business.
The stock market is an enigma to the average individual, as they cannot fathom or predict what the stock market will do. Due to this lack of knowledge, investors typically rely on a knowledgeable individual who inspires the confidence that they can turn their investments into a profit. This trust allowed Jordan Belfort to convince individuals to buy inferior stocks with the belief that they were going to make a fortune, all while he became wealthy instead. Jordan Belfort, the self-titled “Wolf of Wall Street”, at the helm of Stratton Oakmont was investigated and subsequently indicted with twenty-two counts of securities fraud, stock manipulation, money laundering and obstruction of justice. He went to prison at the age of 36 for defrauding an estimated 100 million dollars from investors through his company (Belfort, 2009). Analyzing his history of offences, how individual and environmental factors influenced his decision-making, and why he desisted from crime following his prison sentence can be explained through rational choice theory.
One reason is that many successful investment ventures itself is the outcome of these ‘irrationality’. Risk-taking, which is inevitable in investment, may contribute to the investors’ better performance than others, while with the assistance of proper training, assessment accuracy can be increased(Palich and Ray Bagby, 1995). Also, if without precedent, most of the newly-invented value-maximising approaches or strategy of investment ought to be considered as crude and unthoughtful, but in reality, they are regarded as innovation(Busenitz and Barney, 1997). Furthermore, there are evidence shows that instead of being the hindrance of correct investment decision-making, those biases and heuristics are backed up by probabilistic information. Accurate statistical probability can be evaluated by our inductive reasoning mechanism with a relatively high possibility(Cosmides and Tooby,
In article “The Rise of Crowdfunding: Social Media, Big Data, Cloud Technologies” by David Colgren, the rise of crowdfunding is a moment to expand the reach of capital in assisting the SMEs marketplace, which have a less scope to increase. The law is designed (Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act in 2012) such that it provides cost-effective access to capital to make possible expansion of SMEs using crowdfunding. Crowdfunding provides mechanism to raise fund to develop their business expansion of the SMEs and it also provides security to backers from fraud business by enforcement of laws and awareness.
Before one forms an opinion on entrepreneurship, or on the big business tycoons who end up being dubbed as “robber barons,” you should understand the difference between the two types of entrepreneurs. You have the political entrepreneurs, who fit the classic mold of a robber baron, and who are commonly corrupt in the way they manage business. They take government aid, also known as a subsidy in this case, and have a propensity to waste the money, as it wasn’t theirs to begin with. They are not concerned with making a sound product, but with making as much profit as possible and getting the job done quickly, though not always efficiently. Furthermore, you have the market entrepreneurs who take little to no government aid and conduct business in an efficient manner. They are calculated risk takers who may take smaller steps towards their goal, but in doing this they learn how to do the work more efficiently, both time and cost wise. We...