Having the flexibility afforded by private air transportation is an important time-management tool for businesses that have operations in harder to reach/widely dispersed geographical locations.

According to the NBAA, an industry lobbying group, the majority of business aircraft seat six passengers and fly an average trip of less than 1000 nautical miles. Very light jets seat 6 to 8, have a max. range of 1178 nautical miles and cost $2 -4 MM. That's where we should see the most demand in terms of outright purchases.

In a month Milken Institute Global Conference goes on at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, April 28-May 1st. High marks, high expectations.

Here's a public discussion from this month on "How Strategy Really Works" with A.G. Lafley, former CEO of Procter & Gamble, and Roger L. Martin, Dean, Rotman School of Management
Moderated by Joel Kurtzman, Milken Institute Senior Fellow.

Institute Blog http://currencyofideas.tumblr.com/

Speakers roll (incomplete)-according to the organizer-

Christopher Ailman
Chief Investment Officer, California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS)

WSO readers never seem to get enough of

1. "How does a Portfolio Manager or Managing Director spend his/her time ?

and

2. "How did you get to where you are ?" type of questions.

You can read Jacob Wolinsky's (of http://www.valuewalk.com) interview with Scott Barbee, Founder and Portfolio Manager of Aegis Value Fund (AVALX):

[quote]

Q: How does a typical day look like? (For instance: Two hours checking news, two hours search strategy, two hours doing research on the best picks of the search strategy, two hours talking to clients, one hour checking the positions of the portfolio.)

Reuters BN ('All Rights Reserved') published a LBO simulation for the proposed 10Bn GBP ($15.b Bn) EE LBO, Britain's largest mobile phone operator. The annual return, for a 2018 sale at the same exit multiple, would hit only 15.3 percent.

They assumed a negligible tax rate (0%) and that the owners retained an ownership (of 20%). Everything Everywhere (http://everythingeverywhere.com/) is a joint venture between France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom

I have seen many very good questions posted here by readers from their actual interviews. Over a year ago, I have interviewed with Goldman Sachs myself (for a VP position) where the questions were largely background and dealflow related.

Here are 20 essential and perhaps, omni-present questions that a lot of candidates will be asked and which are, more than anything, mental exercises. I am sure they can be found in different variations (especially the conceptual ones), and may also be found on interviews-specific sites and sites that cater to the finance community.

Note these are not only Goldman Sachs interview questions, but also questions from other firms.

Couple of days ago we've heard Blackstone's Tony James musing about "changing" the name of "private equity" to "clarity equity". Frankly, it sounds like a laughable idea. Then the PE Council suggested an even more off-the-wall label, that of "growth equity". That's misleading because it denotes one already existing PE asset class, perhaps the top performing one. All this relabeling is as dumb as it sounds.

What is Growth Equity? Growth equity is one of three asset classes in PE:
buyouts, venture capital (VC) and growth equity.

What does it do first. Here is what it does/what it’s used for:

Capital extension (cushion to reach next milestones/additional milestones).
Company, asset, or intellectual property acquisition financing.
Convertible, subordinated and mezzanine loans.

The fourth edition of the Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (DTTL) Global Center for Corporate Governance’s Directors’ Alert, a global publication examining some of the top challenges likely to face companies and their boards of directors in 2013, focuses on governance topics such as strategy, capital management, management succession, risk oversight, growth, and regulation. Each article includes questions that directors may ask to further explore the issues with their own boards, as well as additional resources on each topic

Greenlight Capital's Q4 Letter (pdf enclosed).
Brief:

1. Last Quarter took a 4.9% beating, but was up 7.9% for the year.
2. Longs made the money, shorts were losers (biggest: Marvell Technologies).
3. Faith in GM, Sprint.
4. Strange idea: Verizon to buy all of VOD ?
5. Bearish on iron ore.

If you work (or follow) Wall Street you know the most talked about deal in town right now is the potential Dell buyout by Silver Lake Partners together with Founder Michael Dell, who holds 15.7% of the company.

Professors Morten T. Hansen (University of California, Berkeley), Herminia Ibarra and Urs Peyer (Insead) have created a scorecard for measuring CEOs performance beyond short-term. Accordingly, they tracked data from the following indexes:

S&P Global 1200, 1997–2010
S&P CNX 500, 1998–2010 (for India)
Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, 1998–2010
MSCI Emerging Markets Latin America Index and AméricaEconomía 500, 2002–2010
S&P BRIC 40, 1997–2010

Metrics:

Country-adjusted company returns

Industry-adjusted company returns

Market capitalization change