All posts by James Cannon

About James Cannon

James Cannon is an experienced hedge fund analyst. He has served on the advisory boards for various different Fortune 500 companies as well as serving as an adjunct professor of finance. James Cannon has written for a variety of Financial Magazines both on and off line. Contact James at james[at]businessdistrict.com

IBM Grabs Open-Source Red Hat for $34 Billion

Tech News, , , , ,
The eight-striped wordmark of IBM, the letters “IBM” in City Medium typeface. Introduced in 1967. Trademarked by International Business Machines Corporation.

Declared the third largest tech merger in history, and the largest for a software company, IBM and Red Hat have come to a deal in which IBM will purchase Red Hat for $34 billion. IBM says the merger will improve their cloud-based products.

The deal involves IBM getting all the issued and outstanding common stocks of Red Hat for $190 each share in cash. That surpasses by $70 the price of the stock just three days prior, $116.68 a share.

“The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer. It changes everything about the cloud market,” said IBM’s chairman, president and CEO, Ginni Rometty.

“IBM will become the world’s number one hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses.”

Most companies can’t progress due to the limits presented by closed platforms that prevent them from making the transformation to cloud computing. Red Hat solves the problem for IBM due to its open platform configuration.

IBM earned it reputation as a computer hardware company, but it has recently made cloud computing a priority for its growth strategy, like Amazon and Microsoft. The company has been changing their focus to include more analytics, mobile and security.

Red Hat will continue to run its business independently as a separate unit of IBM. Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst and the management team already in place will continue as is, joining IBM’s senior management team, with Rometty leading the team.

“Today is a banner day for open source,” said Paul Cormier, Red Hat’s vice president and president of products and technologies. “The largest software transaction in history and it’s an open source company. Let that sink in for a minute. We just made history.”

Red Hat was founded in 1993, launching its famous version of Linux OS one year after. It became a pioneer of the open source movement that grew to counter closed source companies like Microsoft which based their strategy on keeping their source codes secret.

The company is based in Raleigh, North Carolina with a presence in 35 countries with about 12,000 employees. It is one of the most well-known open-source firms with customers paying for custom-made software solutions. In fiscal year 2018 the company saw a net profit of $259 million on a turnover of $2.9 billion, which was an increase of 21 percent over 2017.

US Hosts Maritime Trade Talks with UK On Board the HMS Queen Elizabeth

Trade, , , ,
Official Portrait of  Robert E. Lighthizer.

UK International Trade Secretary Dr. Liam Fox hosted several events designed to reinforce the economic relationship between the UK and the USA. The events took place on October 22, 2018 on board the UK’s Royal Navy’s HMS Queen Elizabeth, docked in New York Harbor.

The New York events come in the wake of the announcement by the US Treasury Secretary, Robert Lighthizer, that the US will commence talks with the UK to forge a new US-UK Free Trade Agreement to go into effect when the UK leaves the European Union.

The Department for International Trade presented a round-table discussion including some of the UK’s key computer companies. They presented their new technological advances to several US Fortune 500 companies in the hopes of forging some business partnerships.

The Secretary, Dr. Fox, spoke during the proceedings. He emphasized the ability of the UK to protect against serious cyber threats as they grow in number and danger. He announced a new sub-committee of the Board of Trade which will investigate what methods UK companies can use to grow the amount of imports in the cyber space, and how UK-US cooperation can improve the fight against cyber-attacks.

The floating backdrop of the great ship helped set the stage for Dr. Fox’s joining with the Maritime UK to host the very first Maritime Nations Forum between the US and the UK. The forum focused on the ways these two great sea-faring nations can improve maritime trade and relations.

Economy Hot Says JOLT Data

Economy, ,
Unemployment by county in the United States 2017.

The numbers for August are in, and it seems they are telling a happy story right now about employment and the US economy. The positive findings appear in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Report (JOLT), which is an important report that does not get enough attention.

According to JOLT there were 7.14 million job openings in the USA in August, a record number. In July there were 7.10 jobs available, which was also an historic high. It seems right now is one of the best times in US history to be job hunting.

JOLT’s assessment is that the economy is running hot. August was the fifth consecutive month in which there were more jobs available than there were unemployed people to fill them. According to JOLT there were about 1.2 million more jobs than the 5.96 million unemployed. That has never happened before, at least not since series began in 2000. Also setting records is the number of new hires, which reached 5.78 million in August.

Workers are also feeling more confidence in the labor market in general. That story is told by what is known as the “quit-rate.” In August about 3.58 million workers left their jobs voluntarily, a sign, according to economists, that people feel they can take a chance and leave their old job in hopes of finding a new, better job. The number for August 2018 was up by 12.7% over last years “quit-rate” number.

Elite US Business Schools Face Shrinking Applicant Base

Education, , , , ,

The Graduate Management Admission Council released findings which show that the number of applicants to US business schools declined by 7% in 2018. Most of that drop comes from international applications which showed a 10.5% shrinkage. Domestic applications also dropped, but by only 1.8%.

Making up the slack are Canadian and European business programs, which showed strong growth from international students.

Among the schools facing a smaller number of applicants are such top MBA programs as Wharton and Harvard, a reflection that young professionals are hesitant to leave their jobs to go back to school.

The steep downturn in international applications is most likely due to the more stringent visa requirements for foreign students to enter the US on student, or any other kind, of visa. In contrast business schools in Europe, Canada and Asia Pacific all had sizable growth in their number of MBA applicants.

“Demand for graduate management education is stable year over year,” said Sangeet Chowfla, GMAC president and CEO. “However, there are significant regional variations. Non-U.S. programs continue to thrive, highlighting the continued emergence of enhanced educational and professional opportunities outside the United States.”

The trend is not only caused by “a disruptive American political environment,” but also by the growth of excellent MBA programs outside the borders of the USA. Non-US citizens are more often looking into educational and professional opportunities outside the USA.

Only One Third of Census Bureau Number for Small Businesses are Truly Small Businesses

Economy, ,

Of the 32,570,855 small businesses the US Census Bureau says are small businesses, only about one-third of them are what most people think of when they think of a small business, one that has employees.

Its even worse than that. The 76.2% of small businesses that do not have employees only account for 4% of sales of all small businesses. So what is the explanation? Who are these non-employers?

According to Alan Grundy of the Census Bureau, they are

“self-employed individuals operating a very small unincorporated business which may or may not be the owner’s principal source of income.”

Simply put, these “small business owners” are not business owners at all.

A lot of them are people making some money “on the side.” Maybe they sell a few thousand dollars a year of stuff on Etsy. Or a student that babysits to support his education. Or a professional that occasionally rents out his apartment on Airbnb. These people most likely have a full-time job with health insurance and other benefits. They are certainly not entrepreneurs. They are just earning a few extra dollars that they report on Schedule C.

Then there are other types of businesses skewing the numbers. For example, a person who owns ten rental properties, each one with its own separate tax return. Yes, he is a real business owner, but of one business, not ten. There can also be several partners that own one business, but each one files his own tax return.

Another source of the inflated figures are “independents.” These are also real businesses, but without employees. Many of these “businesses” are the main livelihood of service providers such as stockbrokers, cleaners, delivery people. A hairstylist who is independent and just works in someone else’s salon; an accountant or lawyer who works from home; or a consultant or real estate agent who works from a work-share space are all small businesses without employees. The owner and worker is the same person.

A more accurate way of knowing if someone is a small business owner is to ask whether he or she has employees. Real employers sign paychecks, have vacation policies, break rooms, hires and fires.
More precisely, there are closer to 7.8 million true small businesses in the USA. The rest of the 32 million are just people reporting extra income on their tax returns.