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History is Created by Entrepreneurs
Thomas Pitt (5 July 1653 – 28 April 1726), was born at Blandford Forum, Dorset. In 1674, Pitt went to India with the British East India Company, however he soon began trading for himself as an 'interpoler' in defiance of the East India Company's legal monopoly on Indian trade. Upon his return to England he was fined £400 for his actions, although by that time Pitt was already very wealthy and could easily afford the fine. He then proceeded to buy the manor of Stratford and its surrounding borough Old Sarum. With that acquisition he gained a seat in the House of Commons, as that was a rotten borough. It was a purchase that would have a significant effect on British history, as the seat would pass to Pitt's rather influential descendants.
Pitt returned to India, and eventually was hired by the British East India Company. He bought out the Nawab of the Carnatic region, in order to save Madras, his base of operations.
As the President of Madras
Thomas Pitt became the President of Madras on 7 July 1698 and remained in his post till 1709. In 1698, a new Company called English Company Trading to the East Indies was floated by English merchants with Tory affiliations with a capital of 2 million pound sterling. In August 1699, one John Pitt arrived at Madras and claimed that he had been appointed as the Governor of Fort St George by the new Company on behalf of the Stuarts.
However, the Government in England passed a stern order that the authorities were to receive orders from no one save those appointed by King William III of Orange.
On 4 December 1700, the Government of Fort St George banned cock-fighting and other traditional games regarding it as the foremost reason for the poverty of the inhabitants of Madras. His term of office is known as the 'Golden Age of Madras'.
Family
He was married in 1679/80 to Jane Innes. He had at least four sons and two daughters. His grandson, by his older son Robert, was named Thomas Pitt. But perhaps Thomas Pitt's most famous descendant was his great-grandson (through William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham) - William Pitt the Younger, who went on to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the early 19th century.
Pitt's diamond
Pitt is most famous for his purchase of a 410 carat (82 g) uncut diamond acquired from an Indian merchant named Jamchund in Madras in 1701. The merchant had purchased the diamond from an English sea captain, who had, in fact, stolen the diamond from a slave. The slave found the diamond in one of the Golkonda mines on the Kistna River and had concealed it inside a large wound in his leg. According to another version, the diamond had formed an eye of some Hindu idol and was stolen therefrom.Pitt bought the diamond for 48,000 pagodas or £20,400, and sent it back to England in 1702 with his eldest son. For two years from 1704-1706, the jeweller Harris laboured in London to hew a 141 carat (28.2 g) cushion brilliant from the rough stone. Several secondary stones were produced from the cut that were sold to Peter the Great of Russia.
After many attempts to sell it to various European royals, including Louis XIV of France, Pitt and his sons went with the diamond to Calais in 1717. With John Law* acting as agent, it was sold that year to the French regent, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans for £135,000, becoming one of the crown jewels of France. Today, "Le Régent" as it came to be known, remains in the French Royal Treasury at the Louvre, where it has been on display, since 1887.
Properties
With the money received for his famous diamond, he now began to consolidate his properties. Besides Mawarden Court at Stratford Sub Castle and the Down at Blandford, he acquired Boconnoc in Cornwall from Lord Mohun's widow in 1717, and subsequently Kynaston in Dorset, Bradock, Treskillard and Brannell in Cornwall, Woodyates on the border of Wiltshire, Abbot's Ann in Hampshire (where he rebuilt the church) and, subsequently his favourite residence, Swallowfield Park in Berkshire, where he died in 1726.
Extracted from Wikipedia - http://www.wikipedia.org/
The Crocodile Hunts in the River
Wednesday 20th of April 1966, to all intents and purposes, started as a normal day in a normal run of the mill kind of week. Bob Hope had presented an Oscar to the producer of The Sound of Music, and a plot to kill President Nasser was uncovered in Egypt. All of this, however, was far removed from Sam Garrett in his inner-city world of downtown Cleveland. Unbeknown to Sam, Wednesday was to become singularly the most important day in his life.
The recent removal of his left kidney and the TB eating away at his lungs, failed to dissuade him from taking a drink or further abusing his body with drugs. That afternoon was the wrong day and the wrong time to stop for a drink. He took it at his usual haunt, the Manhattan Tap Room. It was a place he often frequented to relax and conduct business as a ‘Numbers’ runner.
The Numbers was a lottery game with a six hundred-to-one chance of winning. The idea was to guess the combination of numbers the New York stock market close would be that day. The game was popular among poor African Americans and as such became sardonically known as the ‘nigger pool’. Bets were customarily placed at semi private venues commonly known as taverns. Runners carried money and betting slips between the various betting parlours and the headquarters of Sam's boss was New Corner Tavern at seventy and eighth Cedar. A Runner’s business operated on credit and Sam had not been to the HQ for a while. His debts remained unpaid.
As Sam relaxed at the bar a man walked in, a big man, 6 ft two and broad. An argument over money quickly developed between Sam and his six foot two creditor with a seven stone advantage. The commotion spilled into the street but there was to be no fight. Lightweights don’t fight heavyweights they plead with them. And that’s what Sam did.
Blows rained down on Sam as he begged for mercy. But there was no let up. A crowd formed around the two, but the gun being used to pistol whip Sam was persuasive in keeping everyone at bay. Their pleas for leniency fell on the deaf ears of the goliath stomping on Sam’s head. He stomped so hard he left shoe prints on Sam’s cheeks. It was only the eventual arrival of routine patrolling, plain clothed policemen with guns drawn, that brought the beating to a halt. With the assailant’s gun safely out of reach on the boot of a car and his extra large hands in hand-cuffs, the officers felt they had their man under control. But even the handcuffs and two arresting officers, didn’t stop the big man giving poor Sam one last parting kick to the head. His Semi-conscious victim groaned “I’ll pay you back...”
But Sam would never pay back the debt he owed because on 25th of April at 11:15 Sam Garrett died on a hospital bed.
His skull and brains had been shattered. The public beating had achieved its end. The signal was out on the grapevine and the message was clear ‘this is the second man I’ve killed so pay your debts to me or else’. The ‘big’ man would go from being the central banker for Cleveland’s Numbers racket, to one day taking-over a sports based business (boxing) known for aggression both inside the ring and out. His name was Don King and his destiny was to become the most successful boxing promoter in history bar none. Why? Because he had the right ‘phenotype’ suited to the landscape in which he hunted.
Predators - Driven to Hunt Till Exhaustion
Tetsuya Ishikawa is a Japanese born investment banker. He attended the prestigious Eton College before reading philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University.In the midst of the global credit crunch he was made redundant. But he wasn’t a victim of the credit crunch. In fact, he was a victim of his own success. Ishikawa takes readers to the coalface of the recent global meltdown in his book How I Caused the Credit Crunch. He had worked for leading investment banking institutions such as Goldman Sachs before being made redundant by Morgan Stanley in 2008.
In the book he tells a story about how he was placed next to a board member during a training programme about their
fixed income business. The board member, who was much older, began reminiscing about his pre-teens business. The German speaking, Swiss banker, explained how his father worked for the Bank of International Settlements (BIS). This institution is the central bank’s central bank, founded in 1930 to help countries avoid bankruptcy. Their job is to ensure central banks around the world have sufficient cash available to bail-out their economies. The banker’s father was directly involved in the creation and implementation of BIS policies. The board member explained as a kid he began lending his playmates money and charged them interest on money he had borrowed from his father for free. Business was good and he had lots of takers. Unfortunately that led to problems of liquidity. He eventually ran out of cash to lend. Additionally, he had to endure lengthy pauses awaiting lent monies to be repaid. The repaid cash provided the liquidity for the new loans.
The banker decided to sell on his loans to twins who lived up the road. But it wasn’t with a margin. They gave him the value of the loan, and he got the cash he so desperately needed to make more loans. However, income from the old loans was now lost. The twins had that income. In time the problem sapped his enthusiasm and he gave it up. It was sad because his earning power as a nine year old brought him great kudos among the girls. To the envy of his male peers he was able to lavish the little girls with treats and gifts.
He explained to Ishikawa how the problem was solved: Banks would now sell their loans on at a profit and then lend the new money they had earned out again. This cycle could be continued and was—excessively.It was Salomon Brothers who led the way back in 1978 with the first mortgage-backed securities (later there would be others like CDOs and MBSs)[1]. It worked as follows; Individuals who wanted to buy a house, for example, could be given a loan in the form of a mortgage on which interest was paid each month. Banks would then put thousands of these individual mortgages into a tranche, get them rubber stamped with a quality rating, and then sell them on to
investors including other banks.
In retrospect, the wizen old board member reflected, this was the solution he needed some decades earlier as a nine year old entrepreneurial banker. The rating agency would give a rating of; AAA or AA or A or BBB. “AAA” being a really safe bet, and BBB meaning pretty safe bet, with lots of variations in between.
With new money to lend and multi-million pounds in bonuses to be earned selling tranches, the investment banks went crazy. How “easy in” interest rates to tempt borrowers, accompanied by property developers and property investment companies, with their ‘little to pay up front-up front’ schemes (again easy in, or even in for free) buying options. TV programmes with stories of individuals making heaps of money on the side or giving up the daily grind of a 9-5 to work for themselves as a property developer, didn’t help.
The stampede to take advantage of low rates and “flipping” (buying, developing and selling on a property) led to dreams of avarice. But the concoction led to ever increasing property prices, creating a property bubble.
The bubble finally burst and the values of the properties plummeted. The result; the loan/investment in many cases were now greater than the value of the security/house. The trenches of properties structured as investment grade instruments became known colloquially as “toxic investment.” Tetsuya Ishikawa was at the forefront of selling such products bringing the world to its knees.
[1] Note. A MBS is mortgage-backed security an asset-backed security or debt obligation that represents a claim on the cash flows from mortgage loans, most commonly on residential property. A CDO is a Collateralized Debt Obligation. A type of structured asset-backed security (ABS) whose value and payments are derived from a portfolio of fixed-income underlying assets (such as property). When property values suddenly fell banks became inadequately capitalised causing an undermining of confidence in the banking system inside and outside the banking industry. This in turn limited the amount of money banks were prepared to lend each other. The lack of competitively priced money on the market meant there was little money or credit (credit crunch) available to lend on or provide the public and business with which in turn caused a recession. The mortgage backed securities were given AAA status relying on mathematicians algorithms and simulations derived from historical performance data.
Random Events - The Harder You Work The Luckier You Get
A world famous art collector began experiencing some problems opening a gallery to satisfy his passion for art. The collector was maniacally driven and completely consumed with his gallery project. Needless to say, the delays in the opening, were a great source of frustration. Those surrounding him suggested he create a website featuring the art he owned.
This now became his central focus. The site was produced but often crashed when overloaded (didn’t have enough servers). A ‘techy’ was brought in on a week’s long contract to sort out the problem. It took him a couple of days. The ‘techy’ had no idea who this world famous art collector was (he had not lived in the UK for very long) so when the collector asked him to come back and look at some other issues it was just another job.
The technical person was responsible for a revolution that took place in the property market. He created the platform that allows property to be searched for on the internet and branches all over the country could share data. He now applied the same thinking to the art gallery website. The art collector’s site became Google’s top 500 searched sites worldwide.
Excited with the news from Google he called from his basement office to notify the boss who was at the top of the building to break the news. After receiving the news the art collector says, "thanks" and immediately hangs up.
Later that day ,when most other employees had left the building, he came down to the basement (where our techy is located) and asked the techy to sit with him, and set about bestowing his knowledge.He explained; he was one of the world’s richest men and a world famous art collector (he didn’t make his money from art). He reassured the ‘techy’ that getting to 500th was an achievement but being 500th was not a reason for him to celebrate. He would when the site was number one.
With that this technical chap gathered himself and realised that the new goal to be number one was his fuel to the next level.
The business became so popular Google tried to buy it. It was eventually sold for several tens of millions. The art collector could not foresee the development of searching on the internet. Had the brick and mortar gallery been ready, he would have been tens of millions worst off. But passion and hard work simply helps with the 'probability' of getting lucky.
COMMING SOON...
A story about one of the world's richest men, guns, security guards. You never know who you're surrounded by!