Quarter 4 - Week 6

C.K. Prahlad passed away this weekend. The person who brought our attention to the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, and who campaigned and spoke eloquently on the topic tirelessly left our world at the age of 68. On Sunday morning, our prof spoke to us about this, and for two minutes our class stood in silence, in respect for the man who drew the world's attention to the strength of the poverty stricken masses. I am sure that students in management institutes worldwide gave him the same mark of respect, and personally I can't help but be awestruck at the respect he commanded.

In comparitively lesser news, we had our second and last three-day session for this quarter, yes, that's right Fri, Sat and Sun. So essentially, we've completed seven quarters. This week saw a change in profs for the CorpFin subject, more on that later.

OperMan - Well, nothing really stood out. This was more about inventory management and how and when to keep safe stock, or in regular parlance, buffer stock at optimum levels to ensure lowest possible costs. Really, nothing so important in my opinion.

CorpFin - Our prof just shifted since we've embarked on Act II of our elective. This prof seems very different from our first prof. He somehow managed to bring some liveliness to one of the most boring subjects I've ever studied. We recapped a bit into the first quarter to discuss balance sheets and P&L statements. We then went on to discuss the Miller-Modigliani principle. And the rest I have to read. However, I know most of what we skipped in the Website,so I think I could explain that.

A firm's beta, is the risk premium of the individual stock, above the safe Treasury bills/G-secs. Meaning, if u were to take the stock in the firm, it has a risk/cosy of capital associated with the general tendency of the market as a whole, and another part that is associated with the unique risk of that stock. So this way, we can calculate betas of a bunch of stocks in a portfolio. It was interesting to see the connections between betas.

MPPO - Performance management and appraisal. A lot of people felt that the current system seemed inherently flawed. A lot of discussion of what happens in our companies, and the advice also seemed similar. Too much theory, wish there was similar takeaway.

An abrupt post, but when you have a lot to study, efficiently prioritizing everything, well there's so much to do. The actual jumps now will begin this week. Time for me to and prepare for the quisses. Until next week....