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-” In the end, the devil usually wins. Caution, maturity and doing the right thing are old-fashioned ideas.” Oaktree’s Howard Marks talking to Finanz und Wirtschaft.
–The Italian NPL Market – the Mergermarket/PWC assessment.
– “I have more fight than anyone needs for any job, I said. I’ve come a long way, from a mud hut in the rainy season in a part of the world you only know as a basket case of misery…..I’ve been beaten black and blue my whole short life and I’ve made it here. Have I got the fight? You tell me.” James Wood at the New Yorker writing about the best novel of the year (so far): Zia Haider’s “In the Light of What We Know”.
–“Não tenho medo do fracasso. De fracasso em fracasso, a gente aprende. Tudo o que não fiz no cinema fiz em quadrinhos. As pessoas que fazem uma única coisa vão à lona quando fracassam.” ,Alejandro Jodorowsky at 85.

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May 7, 14 2:04 PM

-The Journal of Structured Finance Articles: “Analyzing Brazilian ABS: FIDCs” and “Pricing Brazilian ABS to Trade in the Secondary Market: Benefits from Assimilating Best Pricing Practices” by Vernon Budinger.
– “Banks are going to slowly look more and more like utilities,” Novogratz said.
–“Every year you need to start from scratch again,” Quemada said. “Life at a small boutique is really tough.”
–“Life will be harder for traditional active-fund-management companies. Their market share is being eroded by the ETFs at the bottom and by private-equity and hedge funds at the top”
– A brilliant New Yorker article on Soylent, the food-replacement start-up – full of quotables: ““This is life—a walking chemical reaction” ,“Most ideas, you can claim, are not new….Often, they just haven’t been executed or marketed right.”

São Paulo, abstract wall painting at RB Station,Praça da Bandeira,República – a former electrical substation turned into art gallery.

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Apr 7, 14 1:29 PM

-‘Apollo Global, the private equity and distressed debt specialist co-founded by Leon Black, is starting a unit to primarily buy investment-grade and high-yield corporate debt from Latin America and Asia‘.
– Fantastic piece by Alex Preston on Michael Lewis’ ‘Flash Boys’.
-Not so new, but still amazing – according to market researcher Euromonitor, Brazil, overtaking Japan as the World’ second largest beauty market, the Forbes take.
-On how Mies van der Rohe was commissioned to design the Seagram Building by (among other reasons) paying a compliment to Le Corbusier, a brilliant article in the London Review of Books by Christopher Turner.
-‘We should honour Pascal, and the long line of pessimistic philosophers to which he belongs, for doing us the incalculably great favour of publicly and elegantly rehearsing the facts of life‘.

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Mar 24, 14 7:28 PM

-Home Equity Loans or , in Portuguese, CGI (Crédito com Garantia de Imóvel) are poised to grow at least 40% p.a. in Brazil as per Valor Economico.
– A new Michael Lewis book, ‘Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt’, apparently about High Frequency Trading will be out March,31st (UK cover below).
-Kierkegaard said: “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,” The FT on The Joy Of Stress.
–“We believe the cider category continues to be emerging and growing”

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-OSX Bond restructuring approved by the board – no haircuts, coupon goes from 9.25% to 13%, a PIK ‘consent fee’ of 2.5% and mandatory pre-payment if OSX-1 or 2 are sold, more here.
-‘There’s an uptick in [restructuring] activity and we expect that to continue through the rest of this year and next’, Brazilian distressed at The Wall Street Journal.
-Real Estate Cos. in the radar of Brazilian Distressed Debt investors,
-McKinsey&Co’s ‘New credit-risk models for the unbanked’
– Start-Up Chile is a program of the Chilean Government that seeks to attract world-class early stage entrepreneurs to start their businesses in Chile. The program provides US$40,000 of equity-free seed capital, and a temporary 1-year visa to develop your project for six months.

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Sep 3, 13 8:34 PM

–The Rohatyn Group became one of the largest emerging-markets-focused private-equity funds in the world, with more than $7 billion in assets under management after it acquired Citi Venture Capital International from Citibank,
–Something Ventured – PBS’ brilliant documentary on early Venture Capitalists,
– Gladwell rephrases the Ten-Thousand-Hour-Rule:”…in instances where there are not a long list of situations and scenarios and possibilities to master—like jumping really high, running as fast as you can in a straight line—expertise can be attained a whole lot more quickly…In cognitively demanding fields, there are no naturals.”
-“I’ve done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not.” Fran Lebowitz, always on point,
– “and may you always remember that obstacles in the path are not obstacles, they are the path.”

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Jul 30, 13 8:52 PM

– “The days are long gone when “emerging markets” could be seen as a single asset class”
-Hyperbole,hyperbole: “The Death of an Asset Class?” by Keynes’ euthanasia of the rentier, no less – by GMO’s James Montier
– “Google plans to make real-time translation devices that will translate language for simple conversation across language barriers.”
– Lisbon architect Nuno Simões’s series of staircases and walkways at an historic cave near Évora, Portugal (via Dezeen).

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Jun 5, 13 7:03 PM

-New regulation (and recapitalization) will bring “tremendous mispricing between the different levels of the capital structure” in Banks: Blue Mountain’s James E. Staley.
–Recent trends in Latin American High Yield Offerings,
-“Prepackaged Bankrupcy/Restructuring” in Delaware – “The Curious Case of the European Vodka Seller” by The New York Times,
– Last week: Mary Meeker’s Annual Internet Trends Report: mobile momentum,wearables and China -main slides mentioning Brazil below – mobile, mobile….,
– A brilliant review of one of Paris’ worst restaurants (via @GeorgesJanin) : ” Why do they continue to come here?….The only rationally conceivable answer is: Paris, Paris exerts a mercurial force field….it defies judgment.”