Suck it up

So we all know that a good MBA doesn’t come cheap (No kidding right?) This reality hit me again today when I had to pay $165 for my Taxes in Finance textbook. Not even good old Amazon.com or Half.com could save me this time. Used copies of the book were going for just 20 bucks less on these sites. Plus, I could not afford the shipping time. On top of that the professor has promised us Pop Quizzes. Pop Quizzes? I haven’t heard about those in a really long time. I considered dropping the class for a few minutes but then I decided to suck it up. You bet I will not be writing a single letter in the book throughout the class. I’ll have to keep it very pristine so I can still extract a lot of value out of it when I sell it back online.

Blackstone IPO?
I normally do not comment on markets events here but a Private Equity IPO? Do does words even go together? I heard this and kept wondering …Ok let’s take a several companies private by telling them it’s much better not to have to deal with compliance costs of Sarbanes-Oxley, Analyst Calls, Quarterly Earnings etc..But let’s now turn around and sell part of our own company to the public. Does Blackstone really need to raise money by selling equities? Probably not. One thing is sure, some people that are already happy will be even happier at Blackstone if this goes through. It may also start a new trend. Let’s see how KKR and the rest of the gang respond. I called a classmate going into Sales and Trading for the summer to discuss this. While I was still busy talking about how this will affect future LBO deals, spin offs and wondering which valuation techniques will be used and the values they'll throw out, all he could think of was how to make money out of the IPO now!