July 2009
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Anita Roddick is the famous founder of The Body Shop. She is a British immigrant who made it large in the United States of America. She was born in 23rd October, 1942 and was a human rights activist and earned further accolades for being a social activist.
She had been an environmental campaigner per se. Roddick was initially named as Anita Lucia Perilli and was born in an Italian immigrant community in Littlehampton, Sussex. Prior to the beginning of the Second World War, her family escaped from Naples.
The Body Shop is a high end cosmetic company that is widely acknowledged throughout the world. The company retails beauty products and combines it with ethical consumerism. The company happens to be the first in the world to proscribe the practice of using ingredients on animals with the objective of testing them for safety on human skin.
It also is the first company to endorse fair trade business while dealing with the third world countries. It was first opened in Brighton in 1976. Their manufactures were the basic ones initially, as they focused on just fifteen products. Today, the complete range of Body Shop comprises of more than three hundred products.
During 1997, she was the most enthusiastic campaigner for Body Shop and styled the iconic Red haired size 16 doll. It had a certain resemblance with Barbie. There was a new strategic positioning with respect to ethical communication. The icon was created by Host International.
In the year 2004, Body Shop was found to have 1,980 stores with 77 million customers all around the world. On 17th March 2006, Body Shop was purchased by L’Oreal for 652 million pounds. Roddick was a serious activist and a campaigner for Greenpeace and The Big Issue. She also founded an organization called Children on the Edge.
It is a charitable organization that works for providing aid to the less privileged children in Eastern Europe and Asia. She was accorded the title Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003.
Body Shop was started by Roddick with the objective of arranging proper sustenance for her two daughters and herself after her husband Gordon Roddick was off to America. They had also invested in a restaurant and a hotel after their marriage. While she was traveling around the world, she had generated certain ideas regarding business and was inclined to put them to test. After six months, she opened her second shop. Gordon joined the business after his return. In 1991, she had her venture comprising of over seven hundred branches and she also received the World Vision Award for Development Initiative for her achievements.
Written by Admin on July 14th, 2009 with no comments.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger is an immigrant from Austria and is currently the thirty-eighth governor of California. Beyond being the handsome demolisher in Hollywood films, he is an astute politician and a successful businessman too. He was born on 30th July, 1947. Basically, he is an Austrian body-builder. At the age of fifteen, he went for weight training practices and came at the forefront of media glory at the age of twenty-two when he was awarded the title of Mr. Universe.
Then, for seven times in a row, he won the Mr. Olympia contest. There are several books and articles accorded to him on the subject of body building and sports.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in Thal, a small village in Austria. His father was a police chief. In 1965, he served the Austrian army. He moved in to America at the age of twenty-one, in September 1968. There are reports of his being an illegal immigrant due to certain discrepancies in his visa during the late quarter of the 1960s. Since he started off his career in films, he was known as a Republican and came forward with his political views on a lot of sensitive and controversial subjects.
After he arrived in the United States, Schwarzenegger tried his hand out in business. Prior to beginning his career in Hollywood, he was already a successful businessman, rather a millionaire by the age of thirty. They were accredited to some of the most profitable business ventures and intelligent investments.
There was a body-builder by the name of Franco Columbu and Arnold was pretty close to him. They joined hands in 1968 for a bricklaying business venture. It was a flourishing venture due to the marketing savvy nature of the duo. And after the Los Angeles earthquake in 1971, the demand for their products increased manifold. The profits generated in this business venture were later used for the initiation of a mail order business. They sold body-building and various fitness related equipments along with instructional tapes.
Schwarzenegger accumulated the profits generated from this venture and coupled them with the winnings earned from the body-building competitions to invest into real estate. He purchased an apartment building for $10,000. This was followed by further investments in various other real estate companies. He made several other judicious investment decisions by investing in restaurant business and a shopping mall in Ohio. There is an investment firm which now enjoys his investment; it is the Dimension Fund Advisors.
Written by Admin on July 13th, 2009 with no comments.
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Vinod Khosla had emigrated from India to make it big in the Silicon Valley. He is an Indian-American venture capitalist. He is one of the co-founders of the Sun Micro-systems and was born in Pune, India. In 1986, he became a general partner of the venture capital firm, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers.
Khosla happened to realize his inherent attraction for technology, at the age of fourteen when he came across the Electronic Engineering Times. Here there was an article stating the founding of Intel. He decided to pursue technology as a career, and attained the degree of Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering, IIT Delhi, India.
This was followed by a degree of Masters in Business Administration from Stanford Graduate School of Business and Masters in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He got together with his Stanford fellows Scott McNealy, Andy Brchtolsheim and Bill Roy who had a UC Berkeley master’s degree and laid the foundation of the Sun Micro-systems in 1980. He also founded the TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) and worked as a guest editor for a special issue of Economic Times.
In his versatile career, Khosla has also been a part of some of the most extraordinary failures that had hit the business circle in the recent times. They include Asera, Zambeel, Dynabook, and Excite, to name a few. He also made an investment in a micro-finance NGO in India, SKS, Micro-finance. The poor women from the rural India are aided by this program as they stand to receive small loans. Apart from Sun Micro-systems, Khosla is also the founder of the Daisy Systems. He has offered his expertise in the founding of several other companies like Nex-Gen, which is now been purchased by AMD, @Home Network, Juniper Netwoks, Cerent, Corvis and LS9. He is also a board member of quite a number of companies.
He has received several acknowledgments for his contribution in the business field. He had been a finalist in the World Technology Award in 1999 and held the honorary chair for the Donors Choose San Francisco Bay Area Advisory Board.
In 2004, Vinod Khosla founded his firm, called Khosla Ventures. It is primarily a venture capital firm that is involved in the computing, mobile, silicon technology, the internet and other clean technology sectors. This particular sector is termed as Cleantech. They deal with investments in the bio-refinery sectors for energy, bio-plastics, solar, battery and several other environmental friendly technologies. The company is based in Menlo Park, California.
Written by Admin on July 11th, 2009 with no comments.
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John Arnold Bredenkamp was a Zimbabwean millionaire who immigrated to America and made himself a successful businessman in the land. The Casalee Group happens to be his foundation. He was born in Kimberley, South Africa and relocated to Rhodesia as a child along with his family.
His education was carried out at the Prince Edward School, Harare. He is of a Dutch lineage and was registered as a citizen of Rhodesia in 1958. It is said that he had lost his Zimbabwean citizenship ‘by default’ in 1984, which was soon restored to him. There has been a persistent confusion regarding his nationality as he possessed South African, Zimbabwean and Dutch passports. He was also the captain of the Rugby Union International, of the team of Rhodesia.
Following his graduation, Bredenkamp joined Gallaher Limited, an international tobacco company which mainly functioned as a leaf buyer. In the year 1968, he was transferred to Niemeyer, Holland. Here he was promoted as a leaf director. In 1976, he left Gallaher in order to lay the foundation of his own Casalee Group of Companies.
It was registered in Antwerp, Belgium. There were reports that the Casalee operation was involved in the sale of Rhodesian tobacco on the different markets of the world, but it followed a process that evaded the UN sanctions. It was originally a leaf tobacco merchant company that also did some amount of general trading. It founded the mechanism of counter trade and indulged in barter deals too. Within a period of sixteen years, Casalee emerged as the fifth largest tobacco merchant in the world. It is also the largest non-American leaf tobacco company.
The Casalee Group is indeed a large network of branches that are strewn across Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Greece, India, Russia, Spain and Thailand to name a few. And of course, the American branch in Winston-Salem. In 1993, the company was sold to Universal Leaf Tobacco, the largest leaf tobacco company in the world. This made Bredenkamp think about expanding his business interests to other various areas of interest.
He affected these primarily through the Breco Company registered in Zimbabwe. Now, the manner in which Bredenkamp got himself involved in the commercial affairs of the country is pretty interesting. During the Bush War, in the 1970s, he was involved in the finances of the Rhodesian armed forces. He used this opportunity to broker the export sales of the Rhodesian products, primarily tobacco. He then used the money generated for the purchase of the military equipments. Though they reportedly busted the UN sanctions, they were not illegal under the Rhodesian law. His transfer of the operations in Belgium contributed to the sustenance of the Zimbabwean economy in the times of crises during the 1980s. He later built a personal fortune of $1billion.
Written by Admin on July 10th, 2009 with no comments.
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Life insurance is an unfortunate necessity in life if you’re the primary means of support for your family. “What would happen to my family if something were to happen to me?” is a question that weighs heavily on many people’s minds. Enter the concept of life insurance. Should you kick off unexpectedly, your family is protected. It’s one of those things that you simply have to pay for. But, like most things, there’s no reason to pay more for life insurance coverage than you have to.
Life insurance is a gamble between yourself and the insurance company. And it’s a grim bet at that. The insurance company is betting that you won’t die while they’re covering you, and you’re betting that you will. It’s not a bet that you want to win, and not a bet that you want to lose by spending an inordinate amount of money on your coverage.
The Secret Word is ‘Term Life’
The life insurance industry developed a way to stack the deck in their favor some time ago. Understanding that, with the exceptions of unforeseen accidents and unexpected sudden illnesses, people generally die when they’re very old and improving medical technology is extending life expectancy all the time. With these things in mind, the industry developed term life insurance.
Term life insurance does exactly what its name implies: covers you for only a specific period of time, or term. It may be ten years, twenty, thirty, or more, depending on the policy. The insurance company wins the bet if you live through the entire term. They basically increased the odds in their favor. Everybody dies, but not everybody is going to die in the next twenty years. The thing is; term life insurance costs less than traditional whole life coverage. In fact, it costs a lot less.
If you need life insurance coverage, you really don’t need it until you’re eighty or ninety years old, right? You need it during the time in your life when your family would suffer financial hardship if you were gone. By purchasing term life insurance you can save a bundle and then take the money you save and invest in savings, IRAs, mutual funds, stocks and bonds, whatever the amount will allow, thus preparing for your future and your family’s future more securely than ever before.
Written by srini on July 9th, 2009 with no comments.
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Mary Ellen Pleasant was an African immigrant who lived during the era of 1800s and happened to be the first black millionaire businesswoman in America. She was born as a slave in Augusta, Georgia on 19th August, 1814. She was rescued from slavery when she was a girl of just nine years and arrived at New Orleans.
Here she learnt to cook and gradually developed an immense interest in the art of cooking and the various intricacies related to the activity.
She happened to carry out endless experimentation with seasonings, spices and her dishes happened to be the talk of the town. They were accorded legendary status.
She was a complete illiterate woman and at the age of twenty, she arrived at Boston to become an assistant to a tailor. Here she met a rich mulatto contractor and merchant by the name of James W. Smith and he went on to become her husband. The couple relocated to Virginia and got engaged in rescuing slaves.
They also offered their guidance towards the building of the underground rail-road. James had inherited a plantation in Virginia and the slaves that he had purchased from slavery were put to service out here.
Following his death in 1847, Mary was left with a massive fortune of $45,000 in the form of bonds which she later got exchanged for gold. She was then briefly married to a man called James Pleasant and soon after she decided to relocate to San Francisco. There was a unique bid performed at the dock in 1852, where a congregation of millionaires joined in to bid for her culinary acumen. Her dishes and spices were near legendary.
Pleasant did not participate in the bid and went for an elaborate investment in building a business empire. This comprised of restaurants, real estates, boarding houses and mining ventures. She bought a plush area at 920 Washington Street which soon emerged as the most loved boarding and dining site in San Francisco.
On Octavia Street, Mary bought a $100,000 mansion where she hosted and entertained the elite of the city. They used to discuss the stocks that they considered profitable and the next day Mary would plan out an investment on those very stocks. The money generated from this venture was used by her for a drive to abolish slavery forever.
She aided John Brown in this endeavor. Brown was finally hanged and Mary managed to escape. In 1848, she filed a racial discrimination lawsuit when she witnessed the manner in which the trolley car operators were manhandled.
This case was a precedent for this social evil that embarrassed America for years to come. Her emergence as the ‘most’ powerful woman led to countless stories building on over the course of time.
Written by Admin on July 9th, 2009 with no comments.
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Most people have bounced a check at some time in their lives. Whether it was done in error or purposely, consumers who have had this happen learned an expensive lesson at the time. Both the bank and the merchant that received the returned check charge hefty fees to the customer that wrote the bad check, making the presumably low cost purchase turn into an expensive nightmare.
Obviously the best way to avoid being assessed overdraft fees by your bank and returned check charges by a merchant is to not write bad checks. By carefully planning your spending and balancing your checkbook regularly, you can avoid the cost and embarrassment that writing a bad check can cause. Avoid playing the “check floating game” wherein you write a check to the grocery store on Tuesday in the hopes that it won’t clear the bank until Friday when you know you’re direct deposit will be in. There have always been too many variables in this game and the “Check 21” law that went into effect in 2004 has sped up check processing considerably. It’s never a good idea to write a check unless you know the money is in the bank.
Bank customers should also make an effort to understand their bank’s methods of processing. Most banks present checks and debits in order from highest amount to lowest. There are two reasons for this, the one they will tell you if you ask, and the real one. What they’ll tell you is that they process this way so that high dollar items like your rent or mortgage check will clear while something minor like a check to the grocery store is returned. The real reason is that the bank makes more money when multiple items bounce. If they can charge you five fees instead of two, they will. Some states have even altered their banking regulations to require that banks process from lowest amount to highest, but they are still in the minority.
Ultimately the activity in your checking account is your responsibility and the best way to avoid overdraft fees is to monitor that activity closely. Take responsibility for yourself and your actions and, if you do bounce a check, don’t blame the bank. Blame yourself, and then make it right with the merchant who effectively didn’t get paid. If you don’t make a habit of overdrawing your account, the bank may refund their fees at least once.
Written by srini on July 8th, 2009 with no comments.
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It’s amazing that the adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” as oxymoronic as it may sound, tend to ring true in most aspects of life. Case in point; in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we are treated to a scene in which Polonius is lecturing his son, Laertes, before the young man embarks on a journey to school. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” the old man tells his boy, offering a piece of advice that is good to this day.
Two of the best ways to save your money in today’s world are to avoid borrowing it whenever possible (use cash instead of credit, pay off large purchases like cars and houses as quickly as you can), and to avoid lending it out to others. Avoiding the use of credit saves money in interest, plain and simple.
Lending is a bit trickier. One downside to establishing any sort of a nest egg is that your friends and family often know how much money you’re sitting on. When things get tough for them, you’re the one they’re going to call. Lending money to friends and relatives is, sadly, a good way to kiss it goodbye.
This may seem like a rather cynical attitude, but it is true nonetheless. Of course anyone would want to help a close friend or family member in need of financial help and this is not to say that you can never do so. Just do it carefully. Don’t allow yourself to be taken advantage of. Make sure the borrowing party understands that you won’t allow yourself to be burned a second time (if they don’t pay you back this time) and that you’re not a bank.
Finally, when it comes to lending money, if you do find yourself not being repaid for a loan to a friend or relative, don’t freak out. There are basically two ways you can approach the situation. If you want to maintain a relationship with the person, let them know that you’re not upset, but you are disappointed. If you don’t care if you see the person every again, you probably shouldn’t have lent the money in the first place, but now you can consider that you paid a small sum to ensure that you never have to deal with them again. It will help keep you sane.
Written by srini on July 7th, 2009 with no comments.
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Everything in life costs money, that’s a given. In our world, however, there are crafty entrepreneurs who have managed to convince people to pay for items and services that are unnecessary. One could argue that a businessman shrewd enough to convince someone to ‘buy the cow when he already gets the milk for free’ deserves every penny he ever made from the idea. Others may say that such activity is dishonest at best and criminal at worst. Regardless, the only one you can blame if you’re paying for an unnecessary service is yourself. Here’s some things to watch out for and, if you’re paying for them currently, stop getting ripped off.
AOL for Broadband
Why would anyone buy this? Besides being infamous for being one of the hardest things in the world to cancel, AOL has made a fortune and become the number one online service by effectively “dumbing down” the internet. People don’t realize that they do not need to use AOL’s inferior interface and browser when using them to connect to the web. AOL, of course, makes no effort to educate their customers otherwise. Now, with AOL for Broadband, they’ve taken it a step further. AOL customers decide to use a cable or DSL high speed connection and pay anywhere from $25 to $35 dollars a month or more to do so. Uncomfortable using simply Internet Explorer or Netscape as their browser, they miss AOL’s interface with its big, friendly buttons and ridiculous email client, so they opt to pay AOL an additional twenty bucks or so to be able to use that interface and have access to AOL-only content (as if you couldn’t find a quilting chat room anywhere else on the web.) Effectively they’re paying for their connection and paying AOL for… nothing. There ought to be a law against this.
This service is just one example in a multitude of costs that people pay unnecessarily. Considering the income that AOL makes from their “fro Broadband” service alone, the price Americans pay for no reason is staggering. Watch for future articles on this subject because you never know if you may be paying for something that you don’t need or don’t need to pay for. You’ll be surprised what else is out there and someone needs to point it out. When the Emperor is in his skivvies, it’s our duty to make everyone aware and tell that man to get some clothes on.
Written by srini on July 6th, 2009 with no comments.
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The hot summer months are upon us. The kids are getting out of school, the ice cream trucks are making their rounds, the beaches are filling up on the weekends, and consumers everywhere are preparing to bite the bullet and face shockingly high electricity bills. It takes a lot of power to run that AC unit up on top of your home, and cooling your house to a comfortable 78 degrees or so when the outside temperatures can range from the 90s to the 100s (depending upon where you live, of course) can cost you a pretty penny. To avoid having your summer electric bills give you a premature heat stroke, there are some guidelines you can follow.
Don’t Turn on the AC Until it is Absolutely Necessary
Exactly when this is depends on your own comfort level and the climate in which you live. People in the desert environments of Phoenix and Las Vegas are running their AC as early as March and April, while those on the East Coast may be able to wait until July. Swamp coolers and fans use much less electricity, so rely on those until you can’t take the heat any longer.
Keep Those Filters Clean
A badly soiled AC filter will cause the unit to work overtime trying to cool your home. Filters should be checked every thirty days and replaced if necessary. Buying an eighty-nine cent filter can save you plenty on the electric bill, so do it when you need to and don’t put it off.
Turn That Thing Off!
If you’re leaving the house for more than an hour, turn the AC off. There’s no sense in cooling the house when no one is home. Additionally, it’s much cooler at night in most places, so turn it off after dark as well. Use a fan if it’s uncomfortable trying to sleep without the cold air.
Insulate!
Before it’s necessary to turn the AC on, check to make sure that all your windows close properly and there are no places where the air you cool can escape your home. Check the weather-stripping on doors and windows as well. When you do turn on the AC, make sure no one has a window open.
Employing these simple steps can help you stay cool in the summer while avoiding getting heated up about the price of your power bill.
Written by srini on July 5th, 2009 with no comments.
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