Have I changed?

Took the personality type test this morning. Got the following. Fairly sure that this is different from the ratings that I have registered in the past. when I have come in as ISTJ. The 87% Judging level remains constant though.


Do Gooder- ESTJ

53% Extraversion, 47% Intuition, 60% Thinking, 87% Judging



Rules are rules, right? They are there to be followed and an upstanding citizen like you would not even consider breaking or even bending the laws a little.
That's all very fine and dandy, though it doesn't make you the most fun person to be around. In fact, many would find rolling around naked in a barrel full of drawing pins more fun than being around you.

The word "stiff-necked" comes to mind. You take your responsibilities very seriously and have very little patience for anyone who doesn't.

You can be incredibly demanding and critical, somewhat akin to a teacher who is also incredibly demanding and critical. Oh, and that's another thing. Your imagination is sorely lacking. So much so that it's virtually non-existent. Well, you have no time for creativity with all these rules to follow.

At least, your rigid values ensure that you're always honest... which means you have no qualms telling your wife that, yes, she really does look fat in that dress. Don't expect many relationships to last very long.

So far, we've established that you're bland, inflexible, offensive and no fun at all. Kind of like a bag of salt-lacking potato chips, a year past its expiry date, with a bold phrase insulting your mother printed on the front. But less fun.

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www.okcupid.com "Brutally Honest Personality Test".

Children in a land of sharks

The pension furore over your favourite banker and mine, Fred Goodwin (demise first predicted here btw, while the rest of the press were predicting that he would stay because the alternatives were worse) seems to have failed to emphasize the point that Goodwin has acted in his own best interests and the Treasury has shown that politicians are no match for capitalists when it comes to making deals.

When the pension deal was initially announced (probably, and super-ironically, leaked by the government in an attempt to deflect attention from its added liabilities to RBS) the government claimed loudly that it was unaware of the whole thing. Within hours this had unravelled -- Goodwin wrote a letter pointing out that Lord Myners not only knew about the deal, but he also approved it.

Hurried change of tack by govt after (I assume) fraught conversations between Darling, Myners and Brown, which may or may not have included the phrase from Brown to Myners "you incompetent prick! What do you mean 'you took their word!"?". The new line from Myners was that he was led to understand that there was no choice on the matter, and that the government was not a stakeholder in RBS at the time.

This is disingenuous to say the least. Signing a contract on someone else's say-so was called "naive" by Peston. "Fucking stupid" would be more my terminology. To claim that the government wasn't a stakeholder at the time is even worse. The deal was signed after the government had said that Goodwin had to go as a condition for a rescue.

As Peston observes, Goodwin has stitched up Myners like a kipper. A senior lawyer was present when the soon-to-be-famous phrase "contractual obligation" was used.

"Lord Myners was informed by Sir Tom (McKillop, then RBS chairman) that Sir Fred would walk away with a pension pot valued at £16m - and that this was a contractual obligation.

Lord Myners felt he couldn't challenge an arrangement that therefore seemed obligatory - though presumably he now wishes that he had done.

The question that now arises is what did Sir Tom mean by "a contractual obligation" - since it is now clear that the board had discretion not to give Sir Fred £650,000 per annum aged just 50."

The government is shouting loudly about legal action, but Goodwin seems to have pissed all over them. Despite my poor opinion of him as a business strategist or banker, I have a sneaking admiration for his ability to show politicians and civil servants what things are like in the real world, outside their fancy offices, free parking spaces and (of course) tasty final salary pension schemes. "You're dealing with the big boys now, Myners. Now go back to your office and have a cry".

+++++++++

The market continues to be fascinating. William Hill announced a 1-for-1 rights issue at 105p a share, something like a 650% discount. It also announced that it would not be paying a dividend. Result? Share price (already up 50% since October) outperforms the market. As written in an earlier post, this is mainly relief at William Hill apparently having solved their debt refinancing problem. In other words, concerns about the feasibility of refinancing is, in many cases, outweighing the subsequent concerns about equity dilution and the requirement for more cash. This would seem to indicate that there is a "wall of institutional money" that is waiting for these deep discounted issues at fundamentally sound companies. And one can see why. When money was freely available, equity investors just got the scraps of shit. Now that the banks won't lend, equity buyers get much tastier morsels. Some of these offers are absolutely stonking. The Hill offer might dilute earnings on existing shares to 3%, but the earnings on the new shares more than compensate for that. And, in addition, net debt gets reduced by 25%. Gimme gimme gimme.

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