PE prognosis

Many private equity players are (quite rightly) criticised for doing all they can to avoid publicity. That's not a complaint you could make about Alchemy Partners' John Moulton - I fondly remember his Ali G impersonation, back in the Venturedome days ('Ali G' was a popular TV comedy character of the time), while interviewing himself about his much-reviled bid for MG Rover.

Anyway, he's back in the news, raising hackles with a gloomy speech at the more usually bullish 'Super Return' conference in Munich. As the FT reports:
"The industry needs to prepare for bad news," warned John Moulton, founder of Alchemy Partners, in his opening address as a handful of trade unionists waved "locust" placards and distributed anti-buy-out leaflets outside Munich's MOC centre.
"Parts of our industry were behaving just like the US subprime mortgage lenders," said Mr Moulton, a renowned industry doomsday forecaster.
"The quality of what we were doing went down, there was no checking and we used false numbers," he said [...]
"We really ought to expect returns of the industry to tumble," said Mr Moulton.

Gloomy, but hardly unrealistic. It'd be hard to argue that the top end of the private equity market hasn't been building itself a bubble in recent years, fuelled by cheap debt and the weight of new money pouring into the class. The cheap debt's gone now, slamming the brakes on new deals and leaving many over-leveraged existing investments in deep lumber.

The weight of money coming in is still there, though, and it's still looking for a home. I've recently been writing a couple of articles on the European mid-market for Private Equity International, and the folk in that market are a lot more optimistic. There's some problems from the credit crunch, but not nearly as bad as at the big LBO end. And everyone's claiming they were aware of the risks of the recent debt bubble, of course - the head of buyouts at 3i described the generous conditions as "beyond the levels of common sense... a dangerous place for a banking market to be". Many partners are seeing potentially rich pickings in the more troubled economic times ahead, and those out raising new funds over the crunch period say there was no loss of appetite from their own investors.

At the venture end, things are looking shakier. 3i's announcement that it's pulling out of earlyish deals (reported here at Real Business) is hardly unexpected, but might be symptomatic of a wider shift. The rate of new deals in the very-recently-hot areas of clean technology, which I've been tracking over on my Clean Ventures blog, certainly seem to be slowing.

Interesting times ahead...

Crain's on the skyline

The first edition of the new business paper Crain's Manchester Business hit the stands today. I've not been over the hills to get a copy (having finished my xmas shopping early for once, I'm trying to avoid urban centres for the while), but the online version is looking good.

Interesting choice of lead story, on problems in Manchester's city centre residential market - or Nightmare on Oldham Street as they head it. The editor's column, from my old boss Steve Brauner, pontificates further. These problems of over-supply and a very weak resale market are hardly unforeseen, and I've written about similar issues here before (see various posts under the regional label. They're not limited to Manc either - Leeds is probably as bad, or worse, and Sheffield is trying to deal with the problems before they develop.

Anyway, best wishes to Steve and the gang for making Crain's a success. As How-Do's reported, the Manchester Evening News and Newsco Insider have been stepping up to fend off the new entrant, though at least Newsco hasn't been playing as dirty as they did with the ill-fated North West Enquirer. One assumes that Crain's heavyweight US backing will help it last rather longer. New blood in the regional market has to be good.

'Climate hoax' advocates hoaxed

News, via Reuters, of an entertaining hoax on a certain group of conspiracy theorists -
A hoax scientific study pointing to ocean bacteria as the overwhelming cause of global warming fooled some sceptics on Thursday who doubt growing evidence that human activities are to blame.
Laden with scientific jargon and published online in the previously unknown "Journal of Geoclimatic Studies" based in Japan, the report suggested the findings could be "the death of manmade global warming theory".
Sceptics jumped on the report. A British scientist e-mailed the report to 2,000 colleagues before spotting it was a spoof. Another from the US called it a "blockbuster".

A wee bit of investigation finds that the supposed journal site is registered to one David Thorpe, who comics geeks of a certain age will remember as the creator of Doc Chaos, and is now apparently an environmental journalist.

Nice work, AuThorpe! Though next time it might be an idea to use an anonymous site registration service to help keep the joke going a little longer. Still, it seems to have put the wind up the wingnuts anyway.

UPDATE, Friday pm: Thorpe's acknowledged his involvement, but says he didn't write it himself:
I did not write the content of the site. Someone else did. I designed the site because I was asked to by someone who knew I would be sympathetic to the joke. I appreciate it looks as though I wrote it. I even wish I had written it, because it's very funny. But I didn't.
Fair play.

UPDATE, Monday 12/11: Thorpe's written an extensive and elegant blog post about the reasons for and response to the hoax:
What the hoax showed is that there are many people willing to jump on anything that supports their argument, whether it's true or not.
What we wanted to emphasise is that it's necessary to achieve scientific validity using the peer-review model. Proper climate science makes every attempt to do this, and is a constantly evolving and self-refining process, as all science is.
So, when commentator posted on my blog - sarcastically - "....And we do all have to go with the "scientific consensus" don't we?" - I can only say, if we haven't got the scientific consensus then what have we got?
Meanwhile, Nature snares an interview with the still-anonymous author of the fake paper:
Its purpose was to expose the credulity and scientific illiteracy of many of the people who call themselves climate sceptics. While dismissive of the work of the great majority of climate scientists, they will believe almost anything if it lends support to their position. Their approach to climate science is the opposite of scepticism.

Freelance rates guide

Fellow Calderdale NUJ chap Andrew Bibby has released the latest edition of his Freelance Ready Reckoner. This is an essential tool for any freelancer (journalist or otherwise) as it breaks down typical staff salaries into equivalent daily rates, and provides recommended freelance daily rates that take your overheads into account.

As Andrew explains:
Many freelances fail to adequately appreciate when pricing their work that they are responsible for a range of costs which, were they working as an employee, would be covered by their employer. These include office equipment costs, premises costs, sick pay, pensions, holiday pay, insurance and various other costs. When pricing their services, it is useful for freelances to take into account what the comparable cost would be for employers if they used their own employees instead.

To download the Ready Reckoner as a handy PDF (56kb), click here.

Bad Business

Sad news for tech journalism - the New York Times reports that the venerable Business 2.0 magazine is likely to be shut down by its owners at Time Inc ('venerable' here means that it survived the post-dotcom tech crash and more or less thrived since). The readership's been pretty stable in recent years, but ad revenue has plummeted, apparently following a particular piece of management stupidity -
Current and former Time Inc. employees point to what appears to have been an ill-advised move this year to combine the advertising sales teams of Time Inc.’s finance and business publications, which include Fortune, Money, CNNMoney.com, Fortune Small Business and Business 2.0.
Consolidated under a single banner, Time Inc.’s Business and Finance Network (or Tibfin, as it is known inside the company), Time sales representatives stopped pitching the distinct appeal and audience of Business 2.0 to focus on the larger titles like Fortune.
That often turned Business 2.0 into an afterthought; big advertisers like Microsoft and Intel were offered discounts on other Time Inc. business titles if they would also buy pages in Business 2.0.

Sharing ad teams over disparate titles is a pretty common tactic (though far from ubiquitous) at smaller publishers, but I'm quite surprised to see it at this level. Still, it'll hardly be the first time that bad management decisions have scuppered a good title. My sympathies are with all the journos affected.

Serial thrills

The new issue of Real Business is now out, including a feature by myself on the strategies and psychology of serial entrepreneurs. You'll have to get the mag to read it, as the online version has been somehow horribly mangled, starting and finishing rather abruptly mid-par.

Part of the feature was looking at the climate in the UK for serial entrepreneurship. It's heartening to hear that the successful guys are pretty happy with the financial, cultural and regulatory state of affairs, despite the incessant whinging from the CBI, IOD, etc, about 'red tape'.

I also liked, in the same issue, this piece by Charles Orton-Jones on family brewers, part of a special section on family firms.

Clean Ventures blog

I've just launched a new blog, Clean Ventures, focusing specifically on clean technologies and cleantech venture capital. There's a number of US blogs on a similar theme of course, but I'll be doing it from a UK and European perspective. I'll be documenting VC deals in cleantech companies, new research and analysis on the sector, and policy news of interest; pointing to emerging technologies, companies and services; and exploring issues such as the possible investment bubble in listed cleantech businesses, and what that might mean for companies and investors. It's starting out quite modestly, but I'm aiming to introduce new services and content as things develop.

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed an increasing number of posts on cleantech and related concerns in recent months. If you've found these interesting, I hope you find the new blog to be a welcome addition to your personal blogosphere - and if you've not been that interested, it's also good news as there'll be less of that here.

Tech buyouts and bubbles

Here's a feature I wrote recently for Corporate Financier (the magazine of the Corporate Finance Faculty of the ICAEW), as a handy downloadable PDF. It's looking at M&A activity in the tech sector, examining what's driving the current high level of deals, and asking whether there's any risk of another tech bubble. There's also some nice pictures of balloons.

The feature also ties in with a couple of bits of original research I'm currently working on as part of my Master's in Economics & Finance. The first is an event study for the Industrial Organisation module, which is focusing on a deal mentioned in the feature - Sage Group's acquisition bid for Norway's Visma, which was trumped by a rival bid from HgCapital. The main question is whether the market saw the failure of Sage's bid as damaging its prospects, as potentially reflected in the group's share price.

The second is my dissertation, which I'll be working on over this summer. My proposal (yet to be formally accepted, and subject to modification) is an analysis of recent market behaviour in the clean energy sector, with an eye to identifying behaviour characteristic of a speculative bubble. As I briefly mention in the CF feature, the public markets are currently showing a strong appetite for clean energy and related businesses, and there has been some talk that there's a bubble developing (for instance, see this report from Forum for the Future). I'll be doing a little number-crunching on that question. More as it happens.

How-do, Nick

My old mucker Nick Jaspan bounces back from the collapse of the North West Enquirer with a new regional media networking venture How-Do. The Media Guardian reports:
The portal will target workers in public relations, press, marketing, broadcast, advertising, design and digital media in the same region covered by the North West Enquirer, which folded after just five months.
How-Do will also be a gateway to nearly 200 blogs written by north-west professionals drawn from the media, marketing, broadcast and design industries.
The website will carry daily industry news, features, profiles of companies and major industry figures and blogs.
Mr Jaspan and a team of freelance journalists will compile and edit content.
"There is so much happening across the region within the media and creative sectors that trade publications and the regional press cannot accommodate it all. We plan to cover breaking news, the deals and the gossip together with in-depth analysis and expert comment," Mr Jaspan said.
"We also want people working in these sectors to actively contribute, helping us to showcase all the fantastic creative and commercial work being produced across the region."

Cleantech feature

I've just received the latest copy of 3i's iSight magazine, which focuses on various technology areas which 3i sees as interesting. This one is the first to focus on the emerging area of clean technology. From the blurb:
Clean technology is poised to become one of the biggest creators of wealth and employment in the 21st century. Encompassing energy, air and water treatment, industrial efficiency improvements, new materials and waste management, the products and services which fall under the 'cleantech' banner are playing an increasingly large part in the global economy - with corresponding opportunities and rewards for venture capital investors.
According to one widely-quoted study, the cleantech market is predicted to grow from $25 billion in 2000 to $186 billion by 2012. At the halfway mark, it's certainly entered the mainstream of venture capital investment. In 2006, total venture investment in North American and European cleantech topped $1 billion per quarter for the first time, according to figures compiled by Cleantech Venture Network (CVN)

I wrote the lead article, introducing the cleantech sector and looking at the opportunities and strategy for venture investment (and, inevitably for such a contract publication, explaining why 3i are ideally positioned to back the best companies). The mag is available as a PDF download from here.

Brass numbers

Some peculiar spin on a new Barclays "white paper" on the national distribution of the wealthiest individuals. The document notes:
We can also examine wealth on an aggregated county level, which again shows that London reigns supreme as the hub of the UK’s wealth. However, the list of the top 10 counties still presents a couple of surprises, including Yorkshire where people are better known for taking caution with their money.

Newspaper reports tended to follow that line, with the Yorkshire Post, for example, reckoning:
areas traditionally seen as less affluent have also made it into the map's top 10, with Yorkshire in third place at 6.1 per cent and Lancashire in sixth (3.8 per cent) behind home counties Surrey (5.8 per cent) and Middlesex (4.8 per cent).

While the Guardian today asks:
Why is Yorkshire so wealthy?
There is a branch of Greggs the bakers at Leeds-Bradford airport. The very presence of competitively priced sandwiches and pies in the vicinity of international flights carries a powerful subtext: "Four-quid sarnies and little boxes of sushi may be all right for them flash buggers flying from Manchester, but here in Yorkshire we like to look after our brass."
...
Ask any of the paupers in Surrey, Middlesex and Lancashire, lorded over by Yorkshire in the wealth league table, and they will undoubtedly say it is because Yorkshire people never spend any of the damn stuff.

Such stereotyped comment may or may not be entirely fair (I'll keep my penn'orth on that safe in my pocket), but the Barclays statistics hardly require such ponderings. Yorkshire is a big bloody county - in all, about 5 million people, 8.3% of the total UK population, about the same as Scotland. With just 6.1% of the "country's wealthiest people", we're actually punching below our weight in rich buggers. Not so much of a story there, really.

The real question isn't so much "Why is Yorkshire so wealthy?", but 'Why do the critical faculties of so many journalists fall apart when faced with some basic statistics?"

Ten years before the masthead

This week marks my 10th anniversary as a working journalist. In the first week of January 1997, I began work as a lowly production assistant (soon after, reporter) at the Belgravia offices of Chemistry & Industry magazine. I'd completed my journalism training in early summer '96, but after spending the summer travelling Europe, it took a few months to find a job.

Wisest move since then was getting out of London, for a better-paying job back up north. Given the gross regional imbalance of the British media industry, that was no mean feat - and definitely the best move in terms of quality of life, especially once I made a second hop from Manchester back to Yorkshire.

Not the wisest move, from a career progression point of view, was joining an internet start-up aimed at the hi-tech VC market in March 2000. Still, it was fun while it lasted - and having an inside view on the bubble and burst meant becoming a dotcom casualty later that year wasn't exactly unexpected. That also laid the ground for a lot of the freelance work I've been doing since.

As a freelance, I've got myself a good niche in venture capital, particularly with regards to technology and state intervention. It's pretty rewarding intellectually and, when the work's coming steadily, financially (getting near a grand a day for quick editing work on behalf of a big investment house has definitely been a highlight). The odd commission from Nature and Financial Times have added some impressive heft to the CV, and allowed me to answer the usual party question 'So who do you write for, then?' with something that won't send them off in a daze. And being flexible enough to spend time on some non-commercial work for Fortean Times, Strange Attractor Journal, Ballardian.com et al has been personally satisfying - and I'll always be proud of my occasional billing as Gentleman Cosmologist in Bizarre.

2007 might see some changes. For the past couple of years, I've been studying part-time for a Master's degree in Economics and Finance at the University of Sheffield. That finishes this summer, with a dissertation on a topic which will not be too far from some of the issues raised in this blog or in my work elsewhere. That, perhaps, may lead to other things. Watch this space.

Lessons in PR

I don't do much straight PR work, and a recent experience reminded me why.
A couple of weeks ago, I got a message from an old friend who now works at a small PR agency. Could I write a quick case study for one of his clients?
It seemed an easy enough job to fit in, and we agreed a fair price. The client was an ICT services sort of thing (I'm being vague to protect my friend's interests, so lets call them Company X), and wanted a profile of one of its customers showing the benefits they were getting from their wonderful system. The chosen customer had agreed to talk, and was waiting for the call.
Except that over a period of several weeks, the director at the company failed to respond to my many calls and messages asking for an interview on behalf of Company X. Maybe he was very busy. So my PR bunny chum found another customer, who had apparently also indicated he was happy to talk.
This time, I got to speak to the designated director on the second call, which isn't bad going. I explain I'm working with Company X, writing a promotional case study, and keen to hear about his company, how he's using X's products, and the benefits he's seeing.
"I'm not someone you want to talk to," he says. "They've been a bloody nightmare." A brief but heartfelt description of non-working products and non-existent support followed.
I apologise and promise to pass his concerns back to the company, and ring off before I start laughing at the daftness of it all. Hell, I might not be getting paid for the job now, but at least I got a good chortle out of it.
It seems like a fairly basic lesson in PR, really. If you're involving your clients in your own marketing efforts, make sure that they are actually happy with you. PR comes a very distant second to actually delivering on your business offer to your clients. And that, I think, is why I really don't do much straight PR work.

Freelancing pains

Perhaps the most infuriating thing about freelancing is the irregular nature of the workflow. Basically, it seems to exhibit marked bunching behaviour - either you've got next to nowt to do for weeks on end, or you're rushing to complete four jobs at once and having to turn down desirable commissions because you just won't have the time to do them justice.

Today, for instance, I've had to turn down two potential commissions worth a healthy few grand total, because I just wouldn't be able to fit them in alongside work I've already committed to, university commitments, and all the usual Yuletide rushing about. It's always painful to turn stuff down (particularly because the profoundly post hoc nature of freelance payment means you're often at your most broke when you're busiest, and most particularly because I had to put the car in for some costly and unforeseen work today), but I'd be letting myself and my clients down more if I took a commission only to turn in rushed and bodged work.

On the upside, I've taken my first commission from a new client who found me via this blog. I know a few journalists (not least in the local NUJ) who are more or less hostile to blogs, but I think this shows their value to freelances as a way of marketing yourself and your work.

Also on a cheery note, last night we saw Northern Broadsides's excellent production of 'A Man with Two Gaffers' (aka Goldoni's 'A Servant of Two Masters', in a new translation by Blake Morrison) down at Dean Clough. Hugely entertaining stuff - if not quite a pantomime, it wasn't far off, and I mean that in the best possible way.

Betts off for urban economies

The Star also reports on Sheffield MP Clive Betts' response to a new report from the government's Communities and Local Government quango:
Academics say despite massive amounts of public funding to improve business, productivity and earnings in the north, it has only managed to make things worse.
They said no city north of Derby has an economy that is performing better than the national average, according to the report which was commissioned by the Government.
And Sheffield is in the bottom five places when it comes to recording new patents - a measure of inventions and breakthroughs in industry.
But Sheffield Attercliffe MP Clive Betts rejected the report and said business was booming.
"Go around Sheffield and look at the new private sector investment going on. There's new businesses in the Lower Don Valley, new residential accommodation in the city centre and the New Retail Quarter which are massive private investments.
"Look at companies in my constituency such as Forge Masters, which has taken on 42 new apprentices and expansions at the business park at the airport," he added.

Can't help feeling that Betts is being a wee bit daft. Wonder if he's actually read the report, 'The Competitive Economic Performance of English Cities' (downloadable here)?

(Actually, I doubt the Star journalist read it, as all the factoids are recycled from a typically idiosyncratic story in Daily Mail. By 'idiosyncratic', I mean either massively dishonest or stupid. The Mail says:
The damning report - commissioned by the Government - suggests public spending at levels once associated with the Soviet bloc have done more harm than good. It told ministers: "The overt policies followed so far and the unintended consequences of others have either failed to close this gap or actually made it worse"
which omits the crucial qualifier from the report for many decades - ie, the problem long predates the current Labour government, contrary to the Mail's implication. The problem is lack of investment, particularly from the private sector, not too much public investment. Utter bullshit from the Mail, and sloppy idle journalism from the Star.)

The report itself is a solid investigation into various aspects of city and regional economic development, with a wealth of info and ideas for anyone interested in such (which we all are, right?), and touching on a lot of issues I've written about previously. The report takes Sheffield as a case study alongside Cambridge, Derby and London. While it's not beyond criticism, the stats which Betts objects to are fairly unarguable, even if the brief summaries given in the Star story are less than entirely helpful (the report said 31 out of 56 cities lagged behind the rest, apparently. What?)

The report's introduction notes:
Sheffield provides an example of a traditional manufacturing based economy that has suffered from de-industrialisation. Although there have been some improvements over the last ten years, the city’s economy is still locked into past economic forms that can be seen as hindering its competitive advantage.
The local economy has traditionally been dominated by manufacturing industry, specialised in a restricted number of sectors, primarily related to the steel industry. [...] there is still a dominance of manufacturing industry, and some local opposition to diversification, identified as a force for continuity. Other barriers identified include few entrepreneurs to take forward ideas, the limited markets served by the city, and a lack of willingness on the part of the private sector to push for diversification.
[...] there are still concerns over the predominance of a risk-averse culture within Sheffield, and a lack of entrepreneurial skills which may hamper the development of this competitiveness driver and so prevent upgrading of the urban economy in the future.
As a result of these issues the data for Sheffield’s key economic indicators paint a difficult picture in terms of competitiveness and economic performance. Sheffield’s industrial heritage has left deep scars in terms of the economic structure of the city, which has been slow to adjust to new economic and technological forms. Local strategic decision-makers are keen to encourage new institutional and economic forms. Despite this the history of the pathdependent nature of the local economy cannot be ignored, and the fortunes of the city cannot be turned around overnight.
which seems fair to me.

The section specifically looking at Sheffield, as a case study of a 'de-industrialised' city, introduces a number of initiatives I've written at length about before, such as AMP, Finningley and the city centre redevelopment. A comment about the fine line between Sheffield's much-praised 'villagey' feel and a parochial susceptibility to negativity sounds about right, as does this about the city's manufacturing elders:
It should also be noted that in a city such as Sheffield, where manufacturing industry has traditionally been strong, the industrial elites associated with traditional manufacturing sectors are perceived as having a powerful role and considerable influence, particularly through the Cutler’s Company. Respondents suggested that their culture and background do not always sit harmoniously with the innovating new sectors that are contributing to drive the city’s economy; this can be a constraining factor for innovation in the city, as a force making for continuity, and not embracing change.

Overall, it's realistic and pretty positive about Sheff and its prospects. There's still plenty to be done, but the report is in no way as negative as Betts' soundbites would suggest.

More generally, the report points to the lopsided distribution of venture capital firm head offices (243 in London, 42 in Manc, 36 in Leeds and 35 in Brum, apparently) as an indicator of the failings of the knowledge-based economy outside the South East: There is therefore a distinct regional and urban dimension to the equity gap, in those small and new firms in the regions and cities outside the [South East] that find it difficult to access finance for investment, including venture capital. However, as I've written previously, there's mounting evidence that the equity gap no longer persists. (As I explore in a recent article in Corporate Financier, the gap may now be in corporate finance advice rather than funding per se.)

There's also some interesting findings re economic health and general quality of life, which run counter to some claims:
The concept of quality of life is a much abused idea. It has often been used for political purposes with scant regard to its clear and consistent definition or the available empirical research that seeks to clarify what it means to citizens. All too often it has become one of the promotional tools employed by city agencies with the main aim of making their particular location attractive to global capital [...but] there is no necessary connection between the standard of living enjoyed by residents of a city and the economic performance of its economy.

Cambridge, meanwhile, is generally seen as an exemplar of a knowledge-based cluster, but it faces some of the same problems (which I wrote about a few years ago here) as Sheffield -
Tough containment policies are seen to limit potential investment and economic growth in both Cambridge and Sheffield. In both cases restrictions on the land and building available for high-tech and other forms of knowledge intensive industries has hampered their development. This has restricted rates of change.

All mouth and trousers

Like any journalist, I'm generally concerned with words, phrases, and their meanings. Generally, I write what I mean to say. If an editor or sub-editor tries to change what I wrote into something that I didn't mean, I get annoyed.

One minor but deeply aggravating example is if I use the delightful expression 'all mouth and trousers' (as I did in this feature for Real Deals on the Northern private equity market a few years ago) only to have some gormless sub in London try and change it to 'all mouth and no trousers'.

The 'no trousers' version, I have found, is a much more recent bastardisation of the original, which has become predominant in London and the South of England. It loses the precise eloquence of the original. I assume it's by confusion with phrases such as 'all talk and no action' (or, another favourite, 'fur coat and no knickers'), but such confusion only seems to demonstrate the failings that the original phrase mocks. 'Talk' and 'mouth' may be metonyms, but 'action' and 'trousers' certainly ain't - and if you think they are, that might say something about you.

Nevertheless, the bastardised form continues to crop up in the London-based mass media, causing me no small degree of irritation and chuntering at each occasion. In a perhaps quixotic attempt to reverse this trend, I've launched a new campaigning blog to promote and preserve the original.

It might seem a rather minor concern to some, but it is an issue that has inspired deeply-felt and loudly-expressed exchanges of opinion in the past. I hope that all who read this blog, and my work elsewhere, will support this cause by using the expression in its traditional and more eloquent form as often as possible.

RB goes manbag

The latest edition of Real Business just arrived through the letterbox with a somewhat smaller thud than usual. This is actually the second edition of the mag since its overhaul, though for some reason I didn't get the first - that featured the glamourous David Cameron as cover star, while this one has the scarcely less ubiquitous Stelios (no second name required).

First impression - it's so wee! The new format is an innovative one for a business mag, being slightly shorter and wider than a US comic book - very noticeably smaller than the usual A4-ish size, but larger than the 'handbag-sized' women's titles like Glamour. I can only call it 'manbag-sized'.

The content's still great, though. I particularly enjoyed the article by Rebecca Burn-Callender and Philip Blyghton on 'secret entrepreneurs' who do their best to stay out of the spotlight (and well away from journalists in particular). I've had dealings (or rather, tried to) with a few like that.

There's also another Deals article by myself, this time on development capital. The smaller format means this covers six pages rather than the four of previous articles, which makes it seem pleasingly chunky. On the other hand, the layout seems rather messy, with box-outs and case studies competing with half-page ads for space - newspapers such as the Guardian which have switched to a smaller format have also had teething troubles with adapting design and layout.

But on the whole, a successful transformation by editor Adam Leyland - who's now transformed himself with a move to the editorship of The Grocer, one of the top jobs in B2B journalism. Best wishes to him.

Bubble 2.0

It's front page news in at least one mainstream paper that Google is lining up to buy YouTube for up to $1.6 billlion

And yesterday, the news came through that MySpace founder Brad Greenspan is having a hissy fit about having sold his company to the Murdoch empire for only $580 million, as it's clearly going to be worth $20 billion in a year or two.

The signs are becoming ever clearer that we're already some way into a second internet bubble. Like last time, all the justifying blether is of targeted advertising and eyeballs. The sense of deja vu is further heightened by the fact that MySpace, say, resembles nothing so much as the web circa 1994, with lots of horribly designed personal sites linking to and copying content off each other. The market might be bigger, but it's still crap.

It's not just the valuations being paid for these nebulous businesses. It's that the deals are being judged as front page news (on a Saturday too). Fingers will be burned, once more.

UPDATE, 10/10/06 - here's a feature from BBC News explaining how This Time It's Different.

Is this cool? Is it?

Bizarre feature in the current North West Business Insider, asking 'Just how cool is Manchester?'.

On the evidence presented here, not very. The first claim, from Colin Sinclair, chief executive of inward investment agency MIDAS:
“The value of Manchester’s cool reputation is enormous for inward investment. The creative, media and digital sector all want to be in the city because of its history as a centre of fashion and music and that rubs off because the professional and financial sectors always want to be associated with cool. Manchester’s got some of the leading specialists in law and accountancy who serve a cool client base and that’s not a coincidence.”
These 'cool' lawyers, according to feature writer Neil Tague, include those famous 'for getting the wealthy or famous off drink-driving charges like Nick Freeman or Jeanette Mille'. Getting the powerful off drink-driving charges doesn't make you cool - it makes you a bit of a cunt.

The rest of the article isn't much more inspired. While there's certainly a debate to be had about the image associated with, and promulgated by, major cities, the property developers. PR bunnies and bankers being talked about here - though a key part of any city's economic life - are hardly most people's idea of 'cool'. In many cases, the phrase 'all mouth and trousers' seems more appropriate.

Worrying about whether you're seen as cool is a sure sign you're not. As another Manchester philosopher said: The cool people know who the cool people are.

Mind you, Leeds isn't much better. Sheffield, on the other hand, just knows...

Enquirer folds

Sorry but hardly unexpected news has come in that the North West Enquirer has gone into administration. This from Hold the Front Page -
Managing director Nick Jaspan told HoldtheFrontPage the move meant going forward with the newspaper was too much of a financial risk.
He said: "It was more of a risk than it should have been or than any of us wanted.
"The problem was we were hemorrhaging cash in the first few months. We had 18 or 19 journalists and were geared up to a certain level, but advertisers took longer to come in."
A total of 26 staff have lost their jobs.
...
Paid-for sales had been between 10,500 and 12,000 a week, against a target of 20,000. Up to 7,000 copies were also given away each week at airports and through various property firms.
...
[Jaspan] admitted that visibility had been a problem, but said he still supported the idea of a region-wide newspaper.
He said: "I'd try it again without a doubt if I could raise the money.
"I will go to my grave adamant that there is a place for this paper.
"It is very sad and there were a few tears yesterday."

The Press Gazette notes:
The move was prompted by news this morning that one of the paper's backers had changed the conditions on a £200,000 financing package.

My sympathies are with Jaspan and all the journalists involved.

Blogging Sinclair

My interview with Iain Sinclair (as trailered below) went up last week on Ballardian.com. It's had a pretty positive response from readers and the wider blogpond - Ballardian site editor Simon Sellars reckons it's the site's most popular post in its 18 months of publishing.

It's been an interesting experience for me for two reasons. First, this kind of literary interview is a world away from my usual work, the bread-and-butter writing on business, tech and corporate finance issues. Which isn't to say that there isn't as much enjoyment or stimulation to (occasionally) be had from those areas - or even to say that they're entirely unrelated, particularly with regards to the urban regeneration/redevelopment beat and some of Sinclair's concerns - but it's good to know I can still hack a different furrow. I like having a range of subjects, and this just might potentially lead to other things in the same arena. At least, that's my justification for doing this job gratis, other than getting the chance to sit and talk for an hour with one of my favourite writers, about another of my favourite writers.

Second, this is the first major piece I've written for first publication on the web since blogs became an integral feature of the net - such things were not around back when I was knocking out features for Venturedome.com. It's great to see something being published almost as soon as it's written (well, within a week or so anyway, given that I had to get the photos developed and Simon had to find time to lay it all out) rather than the month or more of most magazine schedules, and to get immediate feedback from readers. I'm particularly proud of the chap who said he'd spent his entire morning reading the interview and checking out the links rather than working. And it's been interesting to see the piece being picked up by other blogs - some of my favourite reads, like BLDGBLOG, Strange Attractor and Mountain7, as well as a few I'm not familiar with but found via Technorati or Google. It's good to see different people zeroing in on different aspects of the interview - whether Ballard was ever SF, the end of psychogeography, or Sinclair's proposed 'Beijing Orbital' project - and very good to see people vowing to read either more Ballard or more Sinclair.

So am I now a convert to the claims that blogs, or the net in its wider forms, can and should wipe out traditional print journalism? No - at least, not until such media can be as easily accessed, stored, and read on the train or in the bath. And I might be conservative in this regard, but as the writer, seeing your words on screen just isn't the same as seeing them on paper.

To wrap up, it seems a shame to waste this unused shot from the Barbican -

Enquirer cutbacks

Sad but not unexpected news from the North West Enquirer, the regional weekly launched this spring by former Newsco honchos Nick Jaspan and Bob Waterhouse. The Media Guardian reports the first round of cutbacks -

Deputy editor Paul Blebta, a former Daily Express night editor, and news editor David Anderson were made redundant after the independent paper, which launched in April, failed to reach its circulation target of 15,000-20,000 copies a week.
The £1 weekly paper, aimed at high income earners in the north-west, sells 10,500-12,000 copies a week.
Additionally, the paper issues about 7,000 free and bulk weekly copies to airlines, which was not part of its original business plan.
...
"The paper is selling but we had to reduce our costs to fit the shape or the paper going forward," said Nick Jaspan, the managing director of the North West Enquirer.

Given the general parlous state of the newspaper industry, it's far from surprising news. The Enquirer's launch was hardly helped by some unprofessional and rather puerile practices by local competitors, but it's a pretty good paper - generally well written and put together, and certainly a much more appealing package than the hidebound Yorkshire Post.

But it's done well to do as well as it has - too many other new newspaper titles die a much quicker death, as seen last month with the short-lived Sportsman. Given the Enquirer's venture capital backers (Northwest Equity Fund and Northwest Seed Fund), I wouldn't be surprised to see a fairly quick sale to one of the big local newspaper groups - though that would risk losing the things that make it a decent paper.

An entrepreneur's guide to exits

Now up at the Real Business site (and, of course, in the printed edition) is a lengthy feature I wrote for them on how to sell your business.

While there's no shortage of advice (of varying quality) on how to start a business, there's rather less advice on how to sell it. For many people who start businesses, it's because it's something they want to do and stay with for a long time. But an increasing number, especially those fuelled by VC money, are starting businesses with the aim of rapidly building value, selling them, taking the bulk of the money out and then doing it all over again. Selling out is both the route to riches and a badge of honour.

The feature was written as sponsored by business sale specialists Cavendish Corporate Finance, who necessarily feature heavily in the piece.

Direct [updated] link here, but use the link above to go to the main page. There's plenty of other good stuff there, including another look at the progress of the Regional Venture Capital Funds. I've written another Doing Deals feature for the next edition of the mag, exploring the wider dearth of early stage VC in the UK.

Enquirer inquiry

Interesting news about a new regional newspaper coming out of Manchester. The weekly North West Enquirer has announced the core members of its editorial team, including former Yorkshire Post editor Rachael Campey (sacked after a no-confidence vote by the journos working under her); and Bill Hall, previously the FT's man in the north. The Press Gazette first announced the launch back in December.

It's being published by Nick Jaspan and Bob Waterhouse, who I know back from the Newsco Insider days, and backed by the North West Equity Fund (one of the government-backed regional VC funds, about which I've written at length).

Jaspan and Waterhouse sold Newsco to RIM in late 1999. After RIM's acquisition by Johnson, the company floated in limbo for a while before completing its own MBO last year. As far as I know, they've not had much to do with it since. It seems a little odd then to find, while looking for more info on this brave new venture, that all the URLs that one might expect the new venture to occupy - nwenquirer.com, northwestenquirer.co.uk, etc - all seem to have been registered in February, a few days after the funding announcement, by Newsco Insider, and lead to a standard Insider Media Ltd page notable for its lack of reference to the new publication. It's possible, of course, that Insider is managing the Enquirer's online presence, though online operations have never been the strong point of the group. But it does rather suggest some skullduggery - a little opportunistic cyber-squatting on Insider's part, stemming from the fundamental error by the new business of not registering its URLs as soon as possible? If anyone involved would like to clarify the situation, I'd be fascinated to hear from them.

Flying saucer flap

Extraordinary front page story in the Guardian today on the 'discovery' of a British Rail patent from the early 1970s for a nuclear-powered flying saucer. The Telegraph, Times, Independent and Sun also ran with the story, albeit in a less prominent position, while the BBC, Register and sundry other sources have picked up on it today.

It's extraordinary mainly because this really isn't news. This same patent, far from being suddenly 'discovered on the website of the European Patent Office by a student', received wide press coverage just a few years ago (I think as part of a Patents Office publicity push, or something similar - annoyingly, I can't find anything in the various archives). It's been in books. A simple google on 'flying saucer' and 'British Rail' turns up references, such as this one from UFO journal Magonia, going back to at least the mid-80s.

Presumably this is in the papers today because someone, somewhere, has put out an agency story or a press release - many of the stories feature the same quotes from people like Colin Pillinger. But are national newspaper journalists - even science specialists like the Guardian's Alok Jha - really too lazy, ignorant or short of time to do the smallest piece of background research? It's stuff like this that gives journos a bad name.

Angels, dragons and other beasts

Just up at Real Business's site is selected content from the March issue, including a feature I wrote for them on business angel investment. It's a look at the UK angel market, how entrepreneurs can access this valuable source of funding, and what they should expect when they line up to make their presentations. One of the main messages I got from the angels themselves is that it really doesn't bear much resemblance to the BBC's Dragons' Den programme (which, I must confess, I've never managed to watch). It's not that scary, honest.

This should be the first in a regular string of features for the mag's Doing Deals section. I'm currently working on a similar piece on early stage venture capital - the top line being that there really ain't a great deal of it available in the UK at present. I'm finding a few examples that show that it isn't all that bleak if your business is good enough, but it is an area where there's a definite gap of provision, especially if you're not a hardcore tech business (again, though, there are a few interesting exceptions). That'll be in the April issue of Real Business, along with a supplement on selling your business I worked on alongside the chaps at Cavendish Corporate Finance.

Where's my gazelle?

"As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow ponge silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hasiesh and languidly caressing a pet gazelle."
- William Burroughs, from an unpublished essay in an archive now acquired by the New York Public Library.

I'm sure I used to think something similar too. Sad to say...

At the Bevvies

Ventured down to London this week for the annual backslapping of the BVCA Private Equity & Venture Capital Journalist of the Year Awards (and they really need to find a snappier name than that - I suggest 'the Bevvies'). I was shortlisted again in the Specialist category, for the piece on the government-backed RVCFs for Corporate Financier. Didn't win this time, but enjoyed a small degree of reflected glory as the Specialist award went to Grant Murgatroyd for a piece in the same title, and the Outstanding Contribution gong went to Ross Butler of Real Deals (for whom I've written many features over the past five years, and am currently putting together a particurly exciting piece on trends in transaction insurance). Trebles all round! Or, to be accurate, an uncertain number of pints at a local hostelry afterwards.

It might however be a sign of a continuing depression in the PE market that the winners just took home a chunky perspex trophy for their efforts. When the awards began at the turn of the century, winners were heaped with DVD players and digital cameras. By 2002, when I did win, they were onto the perspex doorstoppers. No bad thing, really - when the BVCA and the other sponsoring VCs start dishing out the consumer electronics again, it'll probably be time to start muttering about irrational exuberance.