A costly case of miscommunication

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

A recent con­ver­sa­tion drove home how easy it is to cross wires when com­mu­ni­cat­ing with exist­ing and prospec­tive clients.

I was talk­ing to a suc­cess­ful lawyer who I’ve known for many years. He has been man­ag­ing his own money but mar­kets over the past years per­suaded him he should look at the pos­si­bil­ity of work­ing with a finan­cial advisor.

He men­tioned that he had sat down with one advi­sor (as it hap­pens an advi­sor I know quite well) for ninety min­utes, had enjoyed their con­ver­sa­tion and been lean­ing to the pos­si­bil­ity of work­ing with him.

His only con­cern was this advisor’s strong empha­sis on junior resources (“Moose Pas­ture Mines” was how my friend described these stocks) that he saw as being too risky for some­one in his six­ties. As a result, he had decided not to move for­ward with this advi­sor and had can­celled a fol­low up meet­ing that had been set up.

Know­ing the advi­sor in ques­tion as I do, this just didn’t sound right. I called the advi­sor, men­tioned I knew the prospec­tive client he’d talked to — and asked for his take on the conversation.

It turns out, that in the last five min­utes of a ninety minute con­ver­sa­tion, he’d men­tioned that he’d suc­cess­fully used flow throughs as a vehi­cle to help clients save taxes .… And yes, he had told my friend that these flow throughs did con­sist of junior resource stocks.

I did ulti­mately get this advi­sor and my friend back together for a cof­fee to clear the air on this — and we iden­ti­fied the source of the mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The very last thing they’d talked about when they met was the flow through share oppor­tu­nity — and by leav­ing this to the end of the meet­ing, this was what the prospec­tive client walked away remembering.

There are two impor­tant lessons for advi­sors from this.

First, in struc­tur­ing agen­das for meet­ings with exist­ing and prospec­tive clients, be sure that you end on the right note — often advi­sors will leave the least impor­tant item to the end of the agenda.

And sec­ond, you need to be sure to sum­ma­rize what you’ve cov­ered at the end of every meet­ing (and ide­ally recap this in a short email imme­di­ately after­wards.). You can’t assume that peo­ple you meet with will remem­ber all the things you cov­ered — you need to ensure that you take two min­utes at the con­clu­sion to sum­ma­rize the key points you talked about.

You can never elim­i­nate the chances of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion — but you can reduce them.

One way to do that is to be sure you learn from the mis­takes this advi­sor made — and end every meet­ing on a strong note and take the time to sum­ma­rize what you covered.

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Making your case to prospective clients

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

In early August, I got a call from an investor in Toronto in response to my reg­u­lar col­umn in the Globe and Mail, ask­ing if I could rec­om­mend an advisor.

In talk­ing about her sit­u­a­tion, this woman explained that she and her hus­band were both in their mid thir­ties with one child, owned a house in mid town Toronto on which they were aggres­sively pay­ing down the mort­gage, both had good jobs and had saved about $500,000 — so not huge clients but ones that would be a fit for many advisors.

After spend­ing a bit of time try­ing to under­stand exactly what she was look­ing for, I sug­gested that I iden­tify three advi­sors that might be a fit for her needs, that she could talk to and then make a deci­sion on whether one of those three was a fit for her.

Three advi­sors who took a pass

I emailed six advi­sors in Toronto who I thought might be a fit. At some point, all had approached me about the pos­si­bil­ity of get­ting intro­duc­tions to new clients.

In each case, I pro­vided some back­ground on this client and asked if they’d like to have their names put for­ward — under­stand­ing that they would be one of three advi­sors who I’d be recommending.

In one case, I got an out of office email response that this advi­sor was away until Sep­tem­ber 7 and that on urgent mat­ters I should con­tact his assis­tant. (Remem­ber this was early August.)

In a sec­ond case, the advi­sor got back the same day, thank­ing me but say­ing that her min­i­mum asset level for new clients  is $1 mil­lion — but that she’d be happy to be con­sid­ered in the future for prospec­tive clients who had at least $1 million.

A cou­ple of days later I got an email back from a third advi­sor say­ing that if I wanted to put his name for­ward and rec­om­mend him, that he’d be happy to talk to this client but that he had no inter­est in being one of three advi­sors and hav­ing to par­tic­i­pate in a “beauty con­test”, as he put it.

Putting your best foot forward

I asked each of the three remain­ing advi­sors for a one page overview with some basic back­ground, sum­ma­riz­ing their approach and the ben­e­fits to clients of work­ing with them, with the view to for­ward­ing this to the prospec­tive client so that she and her hus­band could have some back­ground on the advi­sors before con­tact­ing them.

I got vir­tu­ally the iden­ti­cal response from all three advisors.

In every case, the answer was that they didn’t have a one page sum­mary that could be for­warded to a poten­tial client — instead they sent me links to var­i­ous documents.

One advi­sor included an arti­cle she’d writ­ten, another included an arti­cle that had been writ­ten on him. A cou­ple included links to client tes­ti­mo­ni­als and an overview of their team. Two sent links to a sum­mary of their process. And one included an overview of what clients could expect.

I sent each email to the prospec­tive client exactly as it was sent to me — I sim­ply for­warded on the infor­ma­tion that I was pro­vided with.

Com­mu­ni­cat­ing your case to prospects

I have four take­aways from this experience.

First, none of the three advi­sors seemed to have an infor­ma­tion pack­age that could be read­ily emailed to prospec­tive clients. So my first con­clu­sion is that if acquir­ing new clients is one of your busi­ness objec­tives, you need to have an effec­tive infor­ma­tion pack­age assem­bled and close at hand.

Sec­ond, as part of that pack­age, advi­sors need to have a one page cover sheet that sum­ma­rizes back­ground on them and their firm and that also pro­vides a sum­mary of the other doc­u­ments that are included in the package.

Third, advi­sors need to ensure that their infor­ma­tion pack­age looks professional.

That obvi­ously means no typos, but beyond that all of the ele­ments of the pack­age should have a con­sis­tent graphic iden­tity. When I looked at the back­ground infor­ma­tion that these advi­sors sent me, in two out of three cases there was huge diver­gence in the look of the dif­fer­ent  ele­ments that they had for­warded — dif­fer­ent  type styles, sizes and colours.

Finally and most impor­tant, advi­sors need to make the con­tents of this infor­ma­tion pack­age as con­crete, spe­cific and dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing as possible.

When think­ing about the rea­son to work with you, prospec­tive clients won’t be impressed by gen­er­al­i­ties — rather you need to pro­vide a tan­gi­ble, fact based ratio­nale for why some­one should give you their business.

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Tags: 1 Million, Beauty Contest, Best Foot, Couple Of Days, Early August, Email, Globe And Mail, Introductions, Investor, Jobs, Mid Thirties, Mid Town, Mortgage, Names, Page Overview, Prospective Clients, Toronto, Urgent Matters
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Tech every advisor needs – Part 2

Saturday, September 25th, 2010

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Listen before you leap into social media

Friday, September 24th, 2010

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Guidelines for investors selecting a new advisor

Sunday, September 19th, 2010

Recently, we’ve seen lots of media cov­er­age about the num­ber of investors who are rethink­ing the rela­tion­ship with their advi­sor. Research stud­ies indi­cate that some­where in the vicin­ity of 10% of investors say they’re likely to switch advi­sors or firms in the next twelve month, up from 6% a year ago.

In early June, I wrote a col­umn in the Globe and Mail titled “Tak­ing the time to find an advi­sor may be your best invest­ment”.  While directed towards investors, it’s also impor­tant read­ing for advi­sors talk­ing to clients think­ing about a move — the arti­cle out­lined four key points that investors con­sid­er­ing a change in advi­sors should bear in mind. Don’t rush the process

Given its impor­tance, choos­ing the right finan­cial advi­sor is a deci­sion that shouldn’t be rushed. Some­times in the past, investors have selected the first advi­sor they spoke to or made a deci­sion based on an advisor’s glitzy office and appar­ent suc­cess — and then regret­ted this deci­sion afterwards.

When look­ing for an advi­sor, most investors begin by ask­ing peo­ple they know for sug­ges­tions. And while a refer­ral from some­one they trust cer­tainly increases the odds things will work out, just because an advi­sor is a good fit for a friend doesn’t mean they’ll be right for them.

Just as in any impor­tant deci­sion such as buy­ing a house or switch­ing jobs, to increase the odds of get­ting this right, investors need to gather lots of infor­ma­tion and dig deep before deciding.

Given the poten­tial impact of this deci­sion, it’s essen­tial for investors to take their time. In the col­umn, I sug­gested investors tell an advi­sor they’re talk­ing to that they’d like to sit down for a cou­ple of in depth dis­cus­sions before decid­ing if they want to work together.

Gath­er­ing information

Dur­ing these meet­ings, the first objec­tive for investors and advi­sors is to gather facts that will allow them both to get a sense of whether this a good fit.

It helps if investors are clear on the infor­ma­tion they’re look­ing for — based on recent con­ver­sa­tions with investors and advi­sors, I’ve devel­oped a list of 25 ques­tions that investors can draw from, in nine dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories such as under­stand­ing your invest­ment phi­los­o­phy, the role of finan­cial plan­ning in your prac­tice, the team that you have sup­port­ing you, how you’re com­pen­sated and what you’ve advised clients over the past twelve months.

Some­thing for both investors and advi­sors to con­sider in this fact find­ing process is to write down a list of things you’re look­ing for before­hand. After an ini­tial meet­ing, you can com­pare the answers you got to this list.

A full list of the ques­tions investors can draw from in a con­ver­sa­tion with a poten­tial advi­sor can be found at the bot­tom of this arti­cle, or go to the bot­tom of the arti­cle at: http://​www​.the​globe​and​mail​.com/​g​l​o​b​e​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​o​r​/​i​n​v​e​s​t​m​e​n​t​-​i​d​e​a​s​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​s​/​e​x​p​e​r​t​s​-​p​o​d​i​u​m​/​t​a​k​i​n​g​-​t​i​m​e​-​t​o​-​f​i​n​d​-​a​n​-​a​d​v​i​s​e​r​-​m​a​y​-​b​e​-​y​o​u​r​-​b​e​s​t​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​m​e​n​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​1​1​6​9​3​84/

Get­ting a read­ing on chemistry

Once you’ve got a han­dle on basic facts, the sec­ond issue for investors and advi­sors alike is get­ting a read­ing on chemistry.

For investors, are they com­fort­able talk­ing to you? Do you ask good ques­tions? Do you really lis­ten to their answers and appear truly inter­ested in their sit­u­a­tion?  Do you talk in plain Eng­lish and use terms that are easy to under­stand?  Do they like you as a per­son and feel they could be absolutely open with you? Finally, do they get pos­i­tive vibes and feel that they could be con­fi­dent in the advice that you provide?

Under­stand that the deci­sion to work together is a mutual one

It’s not just investors who are mak­ing judge­ments  — advi­sors should also be get­ting a read­ing on investors and whether they’ll fit into their prac­tice. A point I made in the col­umn was that the best advi­sors can pick and choose and are dis­cern­ing about who they work with.

In the col­umn, I talked about a num­ber of ques­tions an advi­sor might be look­ing to answer:

Is the investor really seri­ous about enter­ing a rela­tion­ship with an advi­sor they can trust and about stick­ing to their plan?

What’s their his­tory of stay­ing the course when we hit bumps in the mar­ket? Are you look­ing at pan­icked calls about going to cash every time the mar­ket drops a few hun­dred points?

How real­is­tic is the investor about the level of risk required to achieve the returns they’re look­ing for? Do they have the emo­tional equi­lib­rium to deal with mar­ket volatil­ity? When things go wrong, is there a ten­dency to point fin­gers and look for some­one to blame?

Do they have a his­tory of switch­ing advi­sors every time there’s a down­turn? A trail of past advi­sors or his­tory of com­plaints is a huge red flag

Finally, are they pre­pared to pay a fair price for the advice they receive — or will you be fac­ing never end­ing bat­tles on com­mis­sion lev­els, with the cost of exe­cut­ing trades with dis­count bro­kers as the pri­mary point of comparison?

I’ve had great feed­back on this col­umn from both investors and advi­sors. At some point in the next few days, con­sider set­ting a few min­utes aside to review this list of ques­tions — and think about how you’d answer if a prospec­tive client put these to you.

If you’re inter­ested in read­ing the full arti­cle, click here:

http://​www​.the​globe​and​mail​.com/​g​l​o​b​e​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​o​r​/​i​n​v​e​s​t​m​e​n​t​-​i​d​e​a​s​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​s​/​e​x​p​e​r​t​s​-​p​o​d​i​u​m​/​t​a​k​i​n​g​-​t​i​m​e​-​t​o​-​f​i​n​d​-​a​n​-​a​d​v​i​s​e​r​-​m​a​y​-​b​e​-​y​o​u​r​-​b​e​s​t​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​m​e​n​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​1​1​6​9​3​84/

25 ques­tions for poten­tial advi­sors — This is the list of ques­tions for investors on the Globe website

To investors select­ing a new advisor

Below are 25 ques­tions you could ask a finan­cial advi­sor you’re con­sid­er­ing work­ing with, bro­ken down into nine broad cat­e­gories. These ques­tions were devel­oped based on in depth con­ver­sa­tions with investors who have recently selected a new advi­sor and with finan­cial advi­sors themselves.

This list may seem over­whelm­ing ini­tially but remem­ber, it is unlikely that you will use them all — pick the ones that are the most rel­e­vant for you.

These ques­tions should not be used as a laun­dry list to blast through — to get a good han­dle on whether you and an advi­sor will work well together, exploratory meet­ings have to con­sist of a con­ver­sa­tion, not an inter­ro­ga­tion.  That said, some of these ques­tions can be a start­ing point to learn more about an advi­sor you’re talk­ing to.

It’s impor­tant to note that there are some tough ques­tions on this list and some will require real thought by the advi­sor– seem­ingly sim­ple ques­tions may need com­plex answers. Rather than focus­ing on an advi­sor who pro­vides quick and glib responses, look for some­one who really thinks about your ques­tions and gives con­sid­ered responses.

Gen­eral background

1. Tell me about your­self?  How long have you been a finan­cial advisor?
2. What did you do before you became a finan­cial advi­sor? What made you decide to pur­sue this as a career?
3. What kind of qual­i­fi­ca­tions do you have? Tell me more about those qual­i­fi­ca­tions. What do you typ­i­cally do to each year to stay current?
4. Tell me about the firm you work with? What attracted you to this firm?

Fit and chemistry

1. We all have pref­er­ences in the peo­ple we work with. What’s the most impor­tant thing you look for in a new client? Describe the kind of client you find you work with best?
2. What’s the aver­age asset level of your clients? How many client house­holds do you work with — and where would my port­fo­lio fit in?
3. Tell me about the last cou­ple of clients who left you and took their account else­where. Have you had any client com­plaints to your firm in the past cou­ple of years?

Gen­eral approach

1. Do you typ­i­cally com­plete finan­cial plans for clients like me? What would be cov­ered in this plan? What would the process be to develop this plan?
2. I know that some advi­sors put their pri­mary focus on get­ting the invest­ment process right while some oth­ers also get into issues like insur­ance, tax plan­ning, estate plan­ning issues and retire­ment plan­ning. Where do you fall on this spectrum?

Invest­ment phi­los­o­phy and your portfolio

1. What’s your invest­ment phi­los­o­phy and process?  In your expe­ri­ence, how is this dif­fer­ent from other advisors?
2. What kind of changes would you rec­om­mend in my cur­rent port­fo­lio? Tell me more about about your rea­son­ing for these changes. Which of my cur­rent hold­ings would you sug­gest we retain?
3. I know that some finan­cial advi­sors build port­fo­lios of stocks and bonds for clients them­selves, some del­e­gate this to money man­agers and some do a com­bi­na­tion of the two. Tell me about your approach to this.
4. How do you go about build­ing port­fo­lios or choos­ing money man­agers? To what extent do you rely on research from your firm or out­side par­ties in select­ing stocks and money man­agers.? How do you go about mon­i­tor­ing port­fo­lios or money managers?
5. I under­stand that there are two schools of thought about try­ing to get in and out of the stock mar­ket. I know some advi­sors are fairly proac­tive about mov­ing parts of port­fo­lios to cash if they think the mar­ket is poised for a cor­rec­tion, while oth­ers believe you can’t effec­tively time when to get in and out and tend to be fully invested all the time. Where do you stand on this issue? As well, what’s your stance on mak­ing calls on get­ting in and out of indi­vid­ual sec­tors such as energy?

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion

1. How often do you typ­i­cally meet with clients like me?  How long do those meet­ings last? What do you cover in those meetings?
2. How have you been com­mu­ni­cat­ing with clients like me since last fall? What have you been doing dif­fer­ently as a result of the mar­ket events since September?
3. How fre­quently do you call clients like me between meet­ings? How long does it typ­i­cally take to return calls from your clients?

Com­pen­sa­tion

1. In ball­park terms, what would my annual fee be if we worked together, includ­ing fees charged by money managers?
2. How are you paid? What kind of money would you make on my account annu­ally? What would I get for that?

Sup­port

1. Tell me about the team that you have sup­port­ing you.
2. Would you be my pri­mary con­tact or would I be deal­ing with one of them day to day? What kinds of issues would I be talk­ing to them about as opposed to you?

The last 12 months

1. How did you posi­tion client port­fo­lios like mine going into the begin­ning of last year?
2. What kinds of changes have you rec­om­mended to clients since last fall? What kind of advice are you pro­vid­ing to clients like me today? What are you doing to man­age risk in client port­fo­lios in light of how uncer­tain things seem to be these days?
3. With­out get­ting into the actual dol­lar amounts, in gen­eral terms would you be will­ing to share what you held in your own port­fo­lio going into last fall and what your own port­fo­lio looks like today?
4. In your opin­ion, what are the most impor­tant lessons  you’ve learned as a result of the events of the past year?

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The word that defines effective communication

Sunday, September 19th, 2010

Every quar­ter, Mer­rill Lynch com­mis­sions a sur­vey of 1000 afflu­ent Amer­i­cans with invest­ments of at least $250,000.

Among the ques­tions in the last sur­vey in June was the impor­tance of var­i­ous finan­cial advi­sory services.

Here were the top-rated responses from afflu­ent investors:

– Pro­vide proac­tive updates about whether they are  on track with their finan­cial goals (71 percent).

– Be proac­tive with invest­ment advice (69 percent).

– Offer advice on how to max­i­mize a 401(K) (68 per­cent).  (Note: 401Ks are the US equiv­a­lent of group RRSPs, in which com­pa­nies allow employ­ees to invest part of their salary on a tax deferred basis)

– Under­stand the role their per­sonal val­ues play in their finan­cial goals (67 percent).

– Pro­vide holis­tic finan­cial advice (66 percent).

– Help with ensur­ing nec­es­sary cash flow and liq­uid­ity (63 percent).

– Pro­vide sup­port with deci­sions regard­ing Social Secu­rity, Medicare, long-term care, etc. (60 percent).

The impact of proac­tive contact

There are a cou­ple of notable things about this list.

First is the breadth of finan­cial issues on which afflu­ent investors want advice — going well beyond just investments.

And sec­ond, the top two results both related to an advi­sor being proac­tive.

This is con­sis­tent with what I hear from Cana­dian investors.

A busi­ness owner’s take on advice

One of the keys that busy clients look for in an advi­sor is some­one who mon­i­tors their sit­u­a­tion, so they don’t have to.

One mil­lion dol­lar plus busi­ness owner I talked to put it this way:

“I’ve got a lot of balls to jug­gle in my business.

What I look for in all of my pro­fes­sional advi­sors — my accoun­tant, lawyer and finan­cial advi­sor — is that they’re on top of things and will be in touch if there’s any­thing I need to know.

Because I’m con­fi­dent they’re wor­ry­ing about my sit­u­a­tion, I don’t have to be con­cerned that I might be miss­ing something.”

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“The pendulum never stops……”

Sunday, September 19th, 2010

Occa­sion­ally, some­thing we hear sticks in our minds and stays with us.

When I was in busi­ness school in the 1970s, my finance prof used a phrase that I often find use­ful in con­ver­sa­tion with clients and investors — espe­cially in mar­kets such as we’re in today.

That phrase: “The pen­du­lum never stops in the middle.”

My finance pro­fes­sor was one of the big names in the field — he con­sulted with many of the Wall Street firms and was fre­quently quoted in the press.

He used this phrase in the con­text of mar­ket val­u­a­tions and mar­ket sen­ti­ment. He talked about the his­tor­i­cal real­ity that mar­kets inevitably swing from one extreme to another, from peri­ods of out­landishly ele­vated val­u­a­tions to ridicu­lously beaten down lev­els, from peri­ods of unques­tion­ing eupho­ria to absolute pessimism.

“The pen­du­lum never stops in the mid­dle” applies in lots of other cases as well.

Look at the market’s and media’s atti­tude to risk and lever­age — a year ago com­pa­nies that used insuf­fi­cient  lever­age to boost prof­its were pun­ished for being “dull and bor­ing”, today even pru­dent risk has become a dirty word. (The most pop­u­lar arti­cle in the online New York Times last week was a piece lay­ing out Cana­dian banks as the model for the global bank­ing sys­tem — a notion that six months ago would have been com­pletely absurd.)

Con­sider investors’ atti­tudes to own­ing resource stocks — where not long ago load­ing up on these was all that many investors wanted to talk about, today they don’t even want to hear about own­ing resources.

This is also reflected in expec­ta­tions on oil prices. A year ago, the “peak oil” the­ory held sway and demand from China and India was going to push oil to $200 by year end. Today we’ve begun to hear about the “peak demand the­ory”, the view that demand for oil peaked last year and we’ll never, ever see demand at that level again.

Recall all the invest­ment fads and “flavour of the day” investments.

And think about the wild swing in con­sumer sen­ti­ment on appro­pri­ate spend­ing that’s taken place in the last lit­tle while– from the norm of lav­ish expen­di­ture to “the new frugality.”

The key point that my finance prof made was that while the stock mar­ket may be effi­cient and ratio­nal in the mid and long term, in the near term the “swing­ing of the pen­du­lum” cre­ates ter­rific oppor­tu­ni­ties for com­pa­nies and for investors who can main­tain their perspective.

That was true thirty years ago … and it’s arguably even truer today

So when talk­ing to investors who are spooked by recent events and dire eco­nomic fore­casts, con­sider talk­ing about the fact that “the pen­du­lum never stops in the middle”.

We may not be all the way to the extreme of despair and pes­simism, but we are almost cer­tainly well past the mid point — and into the area that we’ll look back on years from now and rec­og­nize that the dras­tic shift in sen­ti­ment has cre­ated sig­nif­i­cant value for those bold enough to look past the swing­ing of the pen­du­lum and rec­og­nize it.

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Tags: Banking System, Business School, Canadian Banks, Demand Theory, Dirty Word, Euphoria, Fads, Finance Prof, Finance Professor, Flavour, Global Banking, Market Sentiment, Market Valuations, New York Times, Oil Prices, Peak Demand, Peak Oil Theory, Pendulum, Pessimism, Resource Stocks
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Two Compelling Articles to Send Clients

Sunday, September 19th, 2010

“I’m a huge bull on this coun­try … we won’t have a dou­ble dip reces­sion. I see our busi­nesses com­ing back almost across the board.”  .…War­ren Buf­fett, Berk­shire Hathaway

“GE is now find­ing it prof­itable to build man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vice cen­ters in the United States rather than over­seas, because it is more com­pet­i­tive to do so.”   … Jeff Immelt, CEO, GE

“I am very enthu­si­as­tic about what the future holds” .… Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft

One of the most impor­tant roles for advi­sors is to be an emo­tional anchor for clients … pre­vent­ing the highs from being too high and the lows from being too low.

Today, many Cana­di­ans are pes­simistic about the U.S. and global economies … dri­ven in large mea­sure by daunt­ing head­lines about slow growth, weak hous­ing prices, high unem­ploy­ment and deficit prob­lems in much of the devel­oped world, as well as polit­i­cal dis­cord in Washington.

This pes­simism is ampli­fied by the media cov­er­age given to voices of gloom such as Nouriel Roubini and David Rosenberg.

Pre­sent­ing an upbeat outlook

That’s why a con­fer­ence that took place just last Mon­day gives advi­sors the chance to pro­vide clients with some off­set­ting per­spec­tive on the mid and long term pos­i­tives for the United States.

Speak­ing on Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 13 to 2000 busi­ness and polit­i­cal lead­ers in Mon­tana, War­ren Buf­fett, Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and GE’s Jeff Immelt talked about good news at their com­pa­nies and a pos­i­tive out­look for the future.

Here are two arti­cles on this con­fer­ence that you can send clients, one from Bloomberg and other from Yahoo News:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010–09-13/buffett-rules-out-double-dip-u-s-recession-says-berkshire-units-growing.html

http://​news​.yahoo​.com/​s​/​a​p​/​2​0​1​0​0​9​1​3​/​a​p​_​o​n​_​b​i​_​g​e​/​u​s​_​e​c​o​n​o​m​y​_​l​e​a​d​ers

And here are some of their comments:

War­ren Buf­fett, Berk­shire Hathaway:

“I’m a huge bull on this coun­try … we won’t have a dou­ble dip reces­sion. I see our busi­nesses com­ing back almost across the board … … it’s night and day from a year ago.”

“I’ve seen sen­ti­ment turn sour in the last three months or so, gen­er­ally in the media. I don’t see that in our busi­nesses … we’re employ­ing more peo­ple than a month ago, two months ago.”

“The things that worked for the coun­try through a cen­tury of two world wars, a depres­sion and more — all while increas­ing the stan­dard of liv­ing — will work again.”

“Banks are lend­ing money again, busi­nesses are hir­ing employ­ees and I expect the econ­omy to come back stronger than ever.”

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft:

“There soon will be more tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment and inven­tion than there was dur­ing the Inter­net era and that will help drive busi­ness growth.”

“I am very enthu­si­as­tic about what the future holds for our indus­try and what our indus­try will mean for growth in other industries.”

“We will see new tech­nolo­gies that move beyond the Inter­net to tie together com­put­ers, phones, tele­vi­sions and data cen­ters to cre­ate amaz­ing new prod­ucts. And the pace of inno­va­tion will increase as tech­nol­ogy makes work­ers more productive.”

“All areas of sci­ence today are mov­ing for­ward more quickly. The speed of sci­en­tific break­through is accelerating.”

Jeff Immelt, GE:

“Angry polit­i­cal rhetoric is not help­ful and head­lines are too focused on find­ing neg­a­tive indicators.”

“Busi­ness at GE is improv­ing. Signs across the world show growth improv­ing as evi­denced by a rise in GE’s orders.”

“GE is now find­ing it prof­itable to build man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vice cen­ters in the United States rather than over­seas, because it is more com­pet­i­tive to do so.”

“The U.S.‘s cen­tral chal­lenge will be to speed growth. We need an increase in exports of man­u­fac­tured goods to help com­pete glob­ally. Expan­sion will be fur­ther bol­stered when smaller busi­nesses and con­sumers regain con­fi­dence in banks and are able to bor­row more.”

“We need peo­ple to be able to feel like they’re going to get loans, the process is going to work and that they under­stand the rules.”

“The U.S. is going to need to adjust, though. The econ­omy since the 1970s has been dri­ven by con­sumer credit and a mis­guided notion in build­ing a “lazy” ser­vice econ­omy. Man­u­fac­tur­ing, with an aim to reduce the trade deficit, is the key.”

“The push for an exclu­sively  service-based econ­omy was just wrong. It was stu­pid. It was insane .The future of the econ­omy has to be as an exporter.”

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Tags: Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett Rules, Ceo Microsoft, David Rosenberg, Discord, Double Dip Recession, Economy Leaders, Emotional Anchor, Global Economies, Jeff Immelt, Last Monday, Lows, News Yahoo, Nouriel Roubini, Pessimism, Political Leaders, Positive Outlook, Steve Ballmer, Upbeat Outlook, Warren Buffett
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Thursday, September 16th, 2010

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