Princes of the Yen

I was recently reading the book “Princes of the Yen” which contained the interesting concept of central bank “window guidance” where the bank sets targets for banks to lend for each industry. In Japan this led to very rapid growth after the Second World War and shows that centralised policies can be more effective than the free market in some situations. It also shows that equity or bond financing is not needed for success and bank lending can do equally as well. This made me think about central banks in a completely different way with the rate of interest being less important than the quantity of money being lent and the fact that credit can be targeted to either productive industries or to speculative activities. This is a link to the author Professor Werner’s publications if you would like to learn more.

– Richard Emberton, FT MBA 2012

Networking and more

The PPD (Personal and Professional Development) program led by Career Manager Brian Marrinan has brought many interesting presenters to the MBA group. These aim to improve our career and communication skills and make a nice change of pace from our academic studies. PPD sessions have so far included topics such as 16PF (16 personality factors) and Career Leader which have enabled us to profile our strengths and weaknesses, jobs we are most suited to etc.

The best so far in my opinion have been the Networking sessions firstly a session by Kingsley Aikins and Edward Kelly of Networking Matters, secondly a follow up talk from Brian Marrinan to clarify and expand on it. As an example Kingsley and Edward spoke about how to gather charitable contributions for a foundation. Firstly, they recommend researching the people who both would be able to make a substantial donation and would be willing to do so. Kingsley explained that he always finds someone who he knows to introduce him, never does a cold contact and is patient, sometimes waiting for years before asking for a donation for his fund. He allows the potential donor to get involved by allowing him to give speeches and sit on boards and finally has the courage to look directly in his eyes and asks for a large sum of money. This should be very helpful to us as the MBA is all about networking.

Brian Marrinan teaching us about body language and about how different groups form in a room during a networking event

– Richard Emberton, FT MBA 2011/2012