Back in 1999, I traveled to Moscow with a group of powerful business people and government officials. The most powerful of them all was Sandy Weill, CEO of Citi at the time.
Sandy was a man of action. It was almost inevitable that he would hate Moscow. The lines … the waiting … dealing with the slow-moving Russian bureaucrats…
>When Sandy wasn’t squirming, he was scowling…
That is, until talk turned to his proudest accomplishment – Citigroup.
He grew it into a global financial powerhouse. And he talked confidently of leaving the world a lasting legacy.
Nobody could foresee at the time that Citigroup would instead turn into one of the world’s biggest busts.
Last week, the government took up to a 36 percent position in Citi. It was either that or letting the banking behemoth fail.
The economy is on a rampage. If tight credit, falling asset values, and weakening demand can bring down big powerful banks, think what it can do to smaller and weaker companies.
The government can’t save everybody. Bankruptcies spiked by 14 percent last year. That was just a taste of what’s going to happen this year. I expect the bankruptcy rate to double.
After earning his Masters from the London School of Economics, Andrew has enjoyed a 25-year business career that has taken him around the world. He’s been involved in infrastructure in Indonesia, port development in Russia, road construction in Malaysia and environmental services in China. He’s also authored six books on the global markets, including China’s Oil and Gas Industry, and The World Coal Market.
Andrew has spent his entire career evaluating companies and appraising investments and he is a proponent of the idea that a healthy portfolio is not dependent on flourishing markets. He specializes in identifying deep value companies with a solid margin of safety as well as income investments with a strong potential for capital gains. He has also become a leading expert in utilizing Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) to profit from rising and falling market sectors.
Andrew is currently the Editor-in-Chief of three monthly investment research services – INCOME,Red Flag Insider, and The Wealth Advantage. He resides in Delray Beach, FL and Catonsville, MD, with his wife and two children.
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