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Half of Software Purchases In the Next Five Years Will be Open Source #osbc

May 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Today is the second day of the Computer World Open Source Business conference and it’s big. No really, it’s big. The four main topic areas: Big Data, Big Cloud, Big Legal Problems and Big Money. The conference is being held at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square in San Francisco.

Big Conference, Even Bigger Platform

The conference is targeted at levels of technologists from developers to executives and promises to offer participants strategies for making their businesses more effectively data-driven leveraging open source tools.

Why do we feel there is going to be another Hadoop annoucement out of this?

The two-day conference, which kicked off yesterday, starts early and has a packed agenda. Hourly sessions delve into topics such as:

 

Mobile Apps and Open Source Compliance with OpenLogic, Motorola Mobility and Partner, Choate, Hall & Stewart

Why You Need an Open Cloud Platform to Build a SaaS with Kii Corporation, Software AG, WS02, DLAPiper, CSO and SugarCRM

NoSQL

The keynote address on day one focused on “The Future of Open Source (in the Cloud).” Michael Skok, general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners and chair of the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) 2011 , Red Hat’s CEO James Whitehurst, Cloudera’s CEO Mike Olsen, Acquia CEO Tom Erickson and Adrian Kunzle , managing director, head of firmwide engineering & architecture for JPMorgan Chase, proclaimed that open source is now mainstream. The presentation began with a review of the Open Source 2011 Survey, which included 455 responses made up of 40 percent vendors and 60 percent non-vendors — a change from the surveys of previous years that were heavily vendor-focused.

via Half of Software Purchases In the Next Five Years Will be Open Source #osbc.

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SEC’s CDO Cross-hairs: Now Morgan Stanley…Who’s Next? | Westlaw Business

May 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Morgan Stanley
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With Morgan Stanley now joining Goldman in its cross-hairs, the SEC is taking aim at synthetic collateralized debt obligation (CDO) activity across Wall Street. It was the Street’s version of fantasy football, played by banks from Merrill to Morgan, with much money and little disclosure (according to the Commission). Other parties and enforcement agencies are now playing pile-up as well, with Federal prosecutors in Manhattan and even AIG jumping into the fray – yet the question is on what grounds…

The hunt for inadequate disclosure is spreading wide on Wall Street. Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, JPMorgan, UBS, and Deutsche Bank are all reportedly under investigation for their roles in synthetic CDO transactions. On the surface the allegations seem substantially similar to the SEC charges filed against Goldman Sachs last month.

The Goldman charges focus on allegedly inadequate disclosure of conflicts of interest related to the structuring of ABACUS 2007-AC1, another synthetic CDO. Like fantasy football teams, these securities were built from whatever “referenced assets” the bank desired — giving them more power, and understanding, than usual, and arguably mandating more disclosure as a result.

via SEC’s CDO Cross-hairs: Now Morgan Stanley…Who’s Next?.

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Hogan Lovells Faces Challenge of Managing a Megafirm | National Law Journal

May 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Hogan Lovells is, as of Saturday, a reality — a 2,500-lawyer, 47-office megafirm that spans four continents.

Now, the firm’s leaders have to manage their leviathan and clean up mass of details still facing them: Can they work out their compensation system? Can they build their corporate and finance practices into true power players? Can they forge a culture across a firm with this many lawyers in this many countries?

For months, since Washington-based Hogan & Hartson and London-based Lovells announced the merger, top partners have buzzed around the globe to sell the deal to clients and their fellow lawyers. Tech staffers have worked to pull together management, conflicts and other computer systems. Marketers have scurried to set up new website and sell the brand.

Despite all the work, the question remains: Is Hogan Lovells really a single firm? By traditional measures — sharing profits, a single compensation system and a single partnership — the answer is muddy. For tax and liability reasons, lawyers inside the United States and outside the United States will work in two separate partnerships, and profits will be pooled separately. A single comp system is to be phased in over time. “We’re looking at May 1 not as the finish line, but the starting point for the new firm,” said former Hogan Chairman J. Warren Gorrell Jr., who is co-CEO of Hogan Lovells.

At that starting line, the firm boasts 20,000 clients in about 80,000 ongoing matters; some 700 lawyers doing litigation work; and an instant top 10 ranking in terms of revenue and headcount. Gorrell said Hogan Lovells' work is roughly 35 percent corporate, 25 percent litigation, 15 percent finance, and the rest split between intellectual property and regulatory matters. Common clients between the legacy firms include Ford Motor Co., Barclays PLC, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Iberdrola S.A., a Spanish energy company.

via Hogan Lovells Faces Challenge of Managing a Megafirm.

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Lehman Report Shows Ex-GC’s Fight to the Bitter End | Law.com

March 15, 2010 By

Thomas Russo knows a thing or two about shepherding struggling financial companies through chaotic times. The former top lawyer for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. took on the unenviable task of becoming general counsel for embattled American International Group Inc. in February.

Now Russo’s old life as head lawyer of the collapsed Lehman Brothers is in the news again with the release of a 2,200-page bankruptcy examiners’ report. The New York Times called it the “Wall Street equivalent of a coroner’s report” because it lays out in minute detail how Lehman Brothers used accounting gimmicks to hide the bad investments that led to its demise.

Russo and Lehman’s legal department weren't blamed for the accounting chicanery, according to the report. But it shows that they were involved in negotiations with other financial institutions as the bank fought for its survival.

Russo relayed information between bank officials who were struggling in vain to obtain loans that would prop up the struggling 158-year-old company. Meanwhile, the report said another in-house lawyer drafted agreements with clearing banks that attempted to limit the financial impact of their demands for collateral. Russo declined to comment for this story.

And even as Lehman’s financial situation continued to unravel, Russo wanted to delay planning and preparing for bankruptcy, the report said. That’s because he believed as late as mid-September 2008 that the Federal Reserve would rescue the company.

That never happened. Lehman Brothers filed the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history that same month. And the report laid much of the blame on devastating losses in mortgage-backed securities, along with demands for collateral against much-needed loans by Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The report by examiner Anton R. Valukas also cited the “materially misleading” accounting maneuvers that Lehman Brothers used to hide its precarious financial situation. The report said that one such move involved including collateral paid to clearing banks such as JPMorgan as part of its liquidity pool, so that the bank appeared to have more money on hand than it actually did.

via Law.com – Lehman Report Shows Ex-GC’s Fight to the Bitter End.

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Lehman to Judge: Make the Examiner’s Report Public Law.com

March 10, 2010 By

Lehman Brothers and its lawyers at Weil, Gotshal & Manges sent a clear message this week to the judge hearing Lehman’s bankruptcy case: Make public the full report about Lehman’s demise. In a motion filed Monday by Wei’s Harvey Miller, Lehman says it has cooperated fully with the special examiner investigating the bank's failure and has turned over more than 20 million pages of e-mail.

The examiner in the case, Jenner & Block chairman Anton Valukas, was given full subpoena power to investigate Lehman's epic fall, as previously reported in this space. Issues of particular interest include whether Barclays got a sweetheart deal when it purchased Lehman’s North American operations days after Lehman filed for bankruptcy; how Lehman shifted billions from unit to unit hours before its bankruptcy filing; and whether JPMorgan Chase acted appropriately as Lehman’s main lender, according to Bloomberg and our prior reporting.

via Law.com – Lehman to Judge: Make the Examiner’s Report Public.

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