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August 23,2001
Headlines--- Internet Commerce Financials Reports a Profit Comdisco to Come out of Bankruptcy Early Next Year eLessors Networking Association (eLNA) To Assume: Technology Conferences From Lessors.com Last Fed Prime Rate Decrease Expert Say Japan on verge of recession Equipment Leasing Association News Highlights EXCLUSIVE--- Bob Homans on Where Nigerian E-Mail Comes From!!!! ### denotes press release ____________________________________________________________ ICF Reports Profits!!!! Internet Commerce Financials Announced. reported that revenue for the second quarter 2001 was up 11% compared to the second quarter 2000, to $13.0 million. Gross profits for the quarter were $5.9 million, an improvement of 2% over the same time period in 2000. Year-to-date revenue is $27.0 million, which is a 14% increase over the first six months of 2000. Gross profits for the Company are $11.2 million for the first and second quarters. This is a 13% increase over same period in 2000. ( Hey, this is big news in the eLessor world. Most have gone out of business, or are going out of business, or are just a web site, and here is one making a profit!!! editor ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Car Survey I drive a 2000 Mercury Mountaineer Sport Utility Vehicle. I love it so much, I even wrote a song about it, blatantly plagiarizing Tom Petty: "You don't have to live in your SUV" Jim Fleming nationalbusinesscredit@yahoo.com _____________________________________________________________ ### ################ ################## ########### eLessors Networking Association (eLNA) To Assume Technology Conferences From Lessors.com Atlanta, GA, August 23, 2001 - Lessors.com, Inc. today confirmed it expects to relinquish hosting it's technology conferences for the equipment leasing industry to the new eLessors Networking Association, schedule to be launched in early 2002. The eLessors Networking Association (eLNA) will be introduced at next weeks Funding Resource Conference in Atlanta. Additional information about the eLessors Networking Association will become available from the eLNA Web site at www.elessors.com. #### Alan J. Zeppenfeld has been assigned by Leasing News to write a story on the conference. He will be writing an overall view, plus interviewing attendees. This is a new effort to cover leasing conferences, especially leasing association conferences. Fred St. Laurent, who is also a speaker, will be taking digital pictures, that we will put on line, and also giving us his comments. Jim Fleming will also be writing covering news for us. We are developing “stringers” as they say in the trade, free lance semi-professional writers who have specific assignments in their domain. We hope to do this for all leasing association conferences. editor. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Highlights from: *********** The E-Leasing Newsletter is SPONSORED by: ********** Nassau Asset Management Recovery and Remarketing Specialists 1(800)462-7728 or 1(800)4-NASSAU GO HERE>>>>>> http://www.nasset.com WE GET RESULTS!!!!!!!!! Servicing The ELA for more than 10 years!!!!!! ************************************************************* ****************************** 7. ELA Lease Accountants Conference--the Premier Event for Lease Accounting Professionals ****************************** September 10-12, 2001. Marriott Waterfront Hotel, Baltimore, MD Whatever your level--beginning accountant or seasoned professional - this conference has something for you. If you are an accountant, CFO, controller, tax manager, treasurer, finance director, or responsible for financial reporting activities in any way--this conference will be beneficial to you and your company. Come and learn from the experts: -Practitioner tips -Lease accounting and financial reporting: current & emerging issues -Updates on the latest FASB standards -Lease accounting fundamentals review -A glimpse into the developments of global accounting rules -Unparalleled opportunities to network with industry peers! For further information go to http://www.elaonline.com/events/2001/leaseaccts/ Or call Jeanne Lund at (703) 516-8366 ****************************** 8. Get the 2001 ELA Survey of Industry Activity Immediately! ****************************** The 2001 ELA Survey of Industry Activity (SIA) is now available at the click of a button. After you purchase the SIA in the ELA Store, you will have the option of downloading the report as a pdf file. This allows you to receive the report immediately. The 2001 Survey of Industry Activity captures virtually every measurable characteristic of a leasing operation, from new business volume to portfolio performance to profitability ratios--and much more. To make smart business decisions regarding your leasing operation, you need to access the Survey. Go to the ELA Store on ELA¹s website http://www.elaonline.com/ELAstore/ to order your copy of the 2001 Survey of Industry Activity today! (Responding companies have already been sent their complimentary copies.) ****************************** 9. "When the Going Gets Tough..." ****************************** "When the Going Gets Tough..." ELA 40th Annual Convention October 28-30 Boca Raton Resort & Club Now more than ever, you need information, ideas and contacts. Get Going and register TODAY for the ELA 40th Annual Convention. Remember, "When the Going Gets Tough"...the Tough Don't Stay Home! Business is waiting for you in Boca! Complete convention information now available online at http://www.elaonline.com/events/2001/AnnConv/ __________________________________________________________________ Comdisco Wins Approval of $450 Million Bankruptcy Credit Line By Jeff St.Onge, Bloomberg Comdisco won a bankruptcy judge's final approval of a $450 million credit line to fund the technology services and Internet investment company's Chapter 11 restructuring. The amount of the financing was reduced from $600 million because Rosemont, Illinois-based Comdisco's financial situation has recently improved, according to the company's bankruptcy lawyer. Comdisco, short for Computer Discount, sought Chapter 11 protection from creditors last month after sinking $3 billion into startups that failed to repay loans or turn a profit. The company listed $7.52 billion in assets and $6.74 billion in debts in its bankruptcy filing. Comdisco now has more than double the cash - around $400 million - than when it filed for bankruptcy, said John W. Butler Jr., a Chicago attorney representing the company. "With final approval of the $450 million credit line, Comdisco is approaching $1 billion in available cash, which should be more than sufficient to operate the company's worldwide businesses," Butler said. The credit line - approved by Judge Ronald Barliant of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago - will be provided by banks led by Citigroup's Citibank unit, J.P. Morgan Chase's Chase Manhattan Bank and Heller Financial. Comdisco's European operations, which aren't operating under bankruptcy, will have access to $100 million of the credit line. Barliant delayed until Aug. 30 consideration of procedures for the possible auction and sale of Comdisco's leasing division. International Business Machines has withdrawn an objection to the proposed auction. IBM is expected to bid for all or part of Comdisco's leasing business, which includes a lease portfolio valued from $4 billion to $5 billion. Comdisco also has been in talks with General Electric's GE Capital unit over the leasing business, the Financial Times and the Chicago Tribune have reported. Comdisco has said it expects to come out of bankruptcy in the first quarter of next year. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Car Survey OK, here's mine. I drive a 1988 Paid-For 4-door and a 1994 Paid-For 4x4. Bob Teichman, CLP Teichman Financial Training 3030 Bridgeway Sausalito, CA 94965 Tel: 415-331-6445 Fax: 415-331-6451 e-mail: BoTei@aol.com "Providing education and training to the equipment leasing and financing industry." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- June minutes show Fed members expressing belief rate cuts nearing an end ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON – Several members of the Federal Reserve argued at their meeting in June that the Fed's aggressive effort to spur the lagging economy with reductions in interest rates could be drawing to a close, according to minutes of those discussions released Thursday. The Fed minutes, for the June 26-27 meeting, showed the central bank was beginning to worry whether it was running the risk of overdoing its interest rate cuts and sowing the seeds for inflation troubles. Despite those concerns, the Fed went ahead and cut rates on June 27 for the sixth time this year. That rate reduction was followed by another rate cut Tuesday. However, both of those reductions were smaller quarter-point moves. The June rate cut was approved on a 9-1 vote, marking the second time that someone dissented. In the latest case, William Poole, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve regional bank, objected, saying he was concerned that money supply was already growing so rapidly that inflation could become a problem. At the previous meeting in May, Thomas Hoenig, president of the Kansas City regional Fed bank, had dissented, indicating he favored a smaller quarter-point move rather than the half-point rate cut voted in May. The Fed's first five rate cuts this year were by a larger half-point each, representing the central bank's most aggressive credit easing moves in 19 years. The minutes of the June discussions showed that various officials on the Fed's interest-rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee believed the central bank had to be careful and not overdo the credit easing. "In the view of a number of members, the committee might well be near the end of its easing cycle," the minutes said. "At the same time, several emphasized that they did not want to rule out further easing later if warranted by the tenor of incoming economic information." The Fed cut rates by a quarter-point on Tuesday, pushing the federal funds rate, the interest that banks charge each other, down to a seven-year low of 3.5 percent. Many economists say the Fed could cut rates for an eighth time at the next meeting Oct. 2. The central bank left the door open for such a decision by adopting a policy directive indicating officials were still more concerned about economic weakness than inflation. However, the minutes of the June discussions showed a growing sentiment that the central bank probably had done all that was needed to boost the economy and keep the country out of a recession. The Fed minutes noted that Fed rate cuts work only with a lag to spur growth. The central bank also noted the economy would be getting a boost from the nearly $40 billion in tax relief approved by Congress for this year. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Japan on verge of recession REUTERS TOKYO -- Evidence that Japan's economy shrank from April to June mounted yesterday as government indices showed industrial and construction activity dwindling, underscoring the task ahead for Japan's reformist prime minister. The all-industries index, effectively a supply-side proxy for gross domestic product, tumbled 1.9 percent from the previous quarter -- its first quarterly drop since 1998 and largely within economists' forecasts. The index shows Japan still skating close to recession, its fourth in a decade. Revisions to GDP figures last week showed the economy growing in the first quarter of the year, but many economists doubt this will continue over the summer. "The trend remains on the weak side toward the summer months," said Yoshito Sakakibara, senior economist at Merrill Lynch. "We are expecting negative GDP into the third quarter (July-September)." "If we have negative growth in the third quarter, that will spell out recession this year," he said. The main culprits behind the index drop were sluggishness in industrial output and a big drop in construction activity. The figures come as a bad omen for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who faces the tough task of pushing ahead with painful structural reforms in the face of steady price falls, slowing global growth and a stock market hovering near 17-year lows.
__________________________________________________________________ EXCLUSIVE!!! Where Nigeria Money Comes From---Bob Homans ( Yes, we have quite a collection. What is amazing is it is the same scam, but different letters and appeals, but all the basic theme. And yes, one leasing industry person, the head of his company, said he sent some money a year or so ago, as he originally thought it was legitimate. Where do these letters come from? Bob Homans of Norden Capital says he knows: ) I have a friend, who has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard, whose Ph.D. dissertation was based on his years of studies of the Pygmies. This posed some difficulties for Bob, because he is over 6'3" tall and, as you know, the Pygmies are barely over 5'. Many Pygmies are nomadic, even to this day, so Bob, at well over 6' had to follow these small Pygmies around through these jungle trails, trails that are almost all configured for the short Pygmies, in order to accumulate the data for his dissertation. He told me that the Pygmies move quite fast, when they are on their migrations, causing Bob to have to run after them, all the time in a position where he was half bent over, because the tree limbs, that would not bother a Pygmy, would hit Bob in the head if he wasn't careful Anyway, I am digressing. I recently mentioned to Bob, who now teaches Social Anthropology at UCLA, that I have been getting these e-mails from various Sub-Saharan African countries, concerning these financial scams, and I asked him if he had any explanation. Bob, being a recognized expert in Sub-Saharan African cultures (as is his wife, by the way, who also has a Ph.D. in this area), was the only person I could think of who might give me a rational explanation of all these scam e-mails coming out of Africa. Your newsletter readers might be interested to hear what Bob said to me. Bob said that because of the continual poverty, conflict and disease in Sub-Saharan Africa that there has been a breakdown in civil society and national cohesion, and even a breakdown in national borders. One of the effects of this is that several African tribes have reverted back to their former, nomadic, existence. They just can't survive anymore by staying in one place. Since Bob's specialty was Pygmies, he said that an increasing number of Pygmies were reverting to their former, nomadic existence, in addition to those he studied for his dissertation who never left their nomadic ways. Anyway, back to the identity of this "writer,' that you so astutely alluded to in your e-mail. Bob said that he had heard, from one of his professional colleagues, that one of these tribes, although not the Pygmies, decided to revert to a nomadic existence in the last several years. However, when they decided to go back to the bush, they didn't want to leave their old life completely behind. So, they took apart several Sun workstations and took them with them, into the bush. You can imagine, having watched some of those old movies like "Zulu," a long column of African tribesmen walking through the bush with CPU's and monitors perched on their heads. According to what Bob told me they journeyed to a spot on the bend of the Zambezi River which, as you may know, is a very swift running river (Victoria Falls is on the Zambezi) and it supplies much of the hydro power for Zambia, and some of the other countries along the river's length. In addition to the computer servers they also were astute enough to bring along a small scale hydro system that had been ordered from Real Goods Trading Co., in Ukiah, Ca. of all places. Keep in mind that these tribes people are all former civil servants and professional people, who can no longer make a living in their old jobs and must now go back to a nomadic existence, so many are well educated including a few with advanced degrees. So, according to what Bob said he heard, they set up this hydro system on the Zambezi River, reassembled the workstation, and are now sending out these e-mails, in the hope that a few people are stupid enough to fall for them. Then, once they collect enough money from all the gullible people in the world who received these e-mails and acted on them, they can either return to their former lives, as civil servants or whatever they were doing, or perhaps even emigrate to Western Europe or the US. Bob's explanation is the most cogent I have heard, as to why all of us are getting all of these e-mail. I hope this might be of interest to your readers. You can quote me. -- Bob Homans rhomans@nordencapital.co Norden Capital ________________________________________________________________
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