News Corporation shutters The Daily tablet newspaper as of December 15th

The Daily iPad event

News Corporation's The Daily was to have been a vanguard of the future, based on the past -- a tablet-focused newspaper that could get us back to paying subscriptions for our regular news fix. Not enough of us were as enthralled with the retro-future concept, however. While CEO Rupert Murdoch calls The Daily a "bold experiment," he's shutting the publication down as of December 15th following sluggish growth that didn't match long-term expectations. The move may pay off for other divisions. As part of a larger spinoff of its publishing wing headed by Robert Thomson, News Corp is moving the all-digital outlet's resources and some of its staff (including Editor-in-Chief Jesse Angelo) into the considerably more paper-bound New York Post. In some senses, it wasn't hard to see a shutdown as a possibility. While Murdoch is more than a little fond of paywalls as an alternative to free, ad-based viewing, The Daily was counting on building a paid readership completely from scratch in a web-based era -- it's hard to compete with free.

Continue reading News Corporation shutters The Daily tablet newspaper as of December 15th

Filed under: ,

Comments

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/03/news-corporation-shutters-the-daily-tablet-newspaper-on-december-15/

thomas kinkade paintings easter bunny navy jet crash virginia beach isiah thomas passover easter recipes live free or die hard

Harvard's New Merger Arbitrage Position, Endowment Investing ...

Apparently Harvard (or more specifically, its endowment) engages in merger arbitrage. Taking a 5.77% percent stake in Teavana Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:TEA) after it agreed to be acquired by Starbucks (NYSE: SBUX), Harvard now owns 2,240,000 shares valued at roughly $33mm as of TEA's closing price on Friday. With a portfolio valued at over $30 billion, this represents ~0.1% of the total endowment and therefore ~0.6-0.7% of the ~15% "absolute return" portion of the endowment. It is far from large for Harvard, yet makes it one of the largest holders of TEA.

It can do this because Harvard operates an active, "hybrid"
investment model
. Unlike most endowments such as Yale, Duke, MIT, etc., Harvard Management Company (HMC) has external as well as internal managers to handle its investments. This has has indeed turned parts of HMC into a hedge fund, spinoffs and all. In particular, Convexity Capital Management (founded in 2006 by the Jack Meyer, former head of the endowment) shows some of the more complicated options/swaps-based strategies that were employed, discussed here.

But what about other methods of investing for endowments? This article from Greycourt & Co. looks to the (equity) index approach take by Norway's sovereign wealth fund, which does the "anti-Yale" approach in investing mostly in passive, liquid indices and has still done with. One possible explanation given is that Yale's focus on alternatives (mirrored by Harvard now) was done when illiquid assets were cheap/undiscovered, hence their legendary returns under David Swenson. As a result, recent lackluster returns by large endowments focused on alternatives (real estate, hedge funds, private equity) may be a function of over-interest.

What can we gain from this? Maybe, it's that like anything else in
investing, no asset class always does better and outperformance is ultimately driven by value.?

Disclosure: I am short TEA.

Source: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/blog/harvards-new-merger-arbitrage-position-endowment-investing

jon jones rashad evans ufc jones vs evans watergate mlb pregnant man outside lands 2012 lineup beloved