Monday, October 10, 2005

Penenberg: "But the more Google's stock price kisses the clouds, the more it looks like the search monster may have peaked... you live by advertising, you can die by advertising." 9:11:58 PM   permalink   comment []

A video interview from Saturday night with RTP TV, in which I divulge my just-invented plans for next year's ConvergeSouth, while looking every bit like someone who co-hosted a two-day conference, had a flat tire in the rain after the last session, and was served wine at dinner by a heavy-handed host... Fun moment in the Biltmore Hotel lobby -- as Randall Gregg was shooting this on his teeny lil vidcam, Dave Slusher was across the room finishing an audio spot with Amanda Congdon and Mario Librandi, while Dan Conover snapped it all on his digital camera. 5:03:33 PM   permalink   comment []

Lisa Scheer on JP, BizJournal, 1999: "Now a surge of megadeals in the insurance industry is generating a buzz over whether the Greensboro-based insurer will remain independent, or be stalked by a bigger, acquisition-hungry rival." Boy, stock prices were high back then, huh? But then again, a JP sale at that time would have killed Greensboro, rather than just wounding us. Nice reporting by Ms. Scheer, who in certain non-journalistic situations uses her married name, Mrs. Cone. 3:41:10 PM   permalink   comment []

JP became the company it is (er, was) under CEO David Stonecipher, who arrived in Greensboro in 1992 to succeed longtime hegemon Roger Soles. In mid-'94, I wrote this in Business North Carolina: "But no change wrought by Stonecipher is greater than the concept of change itself, a novelty at a company known for being as solid as a rock and almost as mobile." Said Stonechiper at the time: "You've got to be a certain size to provide better value to the customer and better return to the shareholder. To reach that critical mass efficiently, to move into more of a national role, we've set some very ambitious goals." More from the article, which is not online: "To revive JP, he has tinkered with almost every facet of the company. He has remade top management, enhanced the prestige of the board while cutting its size, redesigned the sales force and armed it with new products. He has undertaken the acquisition of another insurer, purchased radio and television properties and has promised to look for more." Eleven years later, you can't say the Lincoln deal is a surprise. 2:02:11 PM   permalink   comment []

BizJournal: "Though it will no longer host the headquarters, Greensboro will likely see a net gain of jobs from the merger of Jefferson-Pilot into Lincoln Financial, a Jefferson Pilot official has said." That tracks with the revenue math I did earlier. 1:46:12 PM   permalink   comment []

Reader comment: "My family and I just relocated to Greensboro from another state because of a JP job offer. (We love Greensboro by the way.) We haven't yet sold our other house. Two mortgage payments and now a swift kick in the gut with this morning's news. We have no idea what we're going to do. I guess we could always just declare bankruptcy, but only big corporations are allow to do that now." 1:41:07 PM   permalink   comment []

The current N&R headline calls the JP-Lincoln deal a "merger." That's the official terminology, but let's not kid ourselves about this -- Lincoln is buying JP. The Wall Street Journal calls it as it is: "Insurer Lincoln National Agrees To Acquire Jefferson-Pilot." Mergers of equals are rare indeed. In this case, there is a clear buyer and seller. Sometimes, as when the Cone Health System bought Wesley Long, there are political reason for calling an acquistion a merger. Not sure what the point is here. 12:18:55 PM   permalink   comment []

More Slusher: He liked Greensboro, and noticed something important about this event, "how nice it was to actually have black people at a tech conference." 12:02:27 PM   permalink   comment []

The acquisition of JP seems like a terrible blow to Greensboro. We need more corporate headquarters here -- the talent they bring, and also the commitment to local interests that a branch office just doesn't generate. Looks like we'll lose some good people in this deal. That said, Greensboro is slated to be the hub of the combined life insurance operations, which adds up to very significant piece of business -- it appears to be somewhat less than the $4.1 billion total revenue for JP alone last year, but in the same ballpark. (Lincoln reported life insurance revenue of almost $2 billion last year; JP had about $1.8 billion in revenue from its Individual Products unit.) So there is a chance that we'll see a substantial corporate presence here for some time. Still, I feel like throwing up. 11:46:09 AM   permalink   comment []

Amanda Congdon gives ConvergeSouth a nice shout-out on Rocketboom. 11:35:29 AM   permalink   comment []

DarkTimes: Krugman asks, "Will Bush Deliver?" "How sure are we that large-scale federal aid for post-Katrina reconstruction will really materialize?" He says the administration didn't do right by NY post-9/11, and that it's playing politics now. Kicker: "I may be overanalyzing. Maybe the administration isn't deliberately dragging its feet on reconstruction. Maybe its lack of movement, like its immobility in the days after Katrina struck, reflects nothing more than out-of-touch leadership and a lack of competent people." Reading between the lines, I'm starting to think Krugman doesn't think much of this President. Just a hunch. Herbert excoriates Bush for his opposition to McCain on treatment of prisoners. "So who would you expect to remain out of step with this important march toward sanity, the rule of law and the continuation of a longstanding American commitment to humane values? "Did you say President Bush? Well, that would be correct." He doesn't seem very enthusiastic about W, either. 8:28:40 AM   permalink   comment []

Dave Slusher agrees that the vid-blogging session was important, explains a bit about the CVS Hack, and links to the infamous lizard footage. 8:18:30 AM   permalink   comment []

Wall Street Journal on Rove and Plame: Among the problems besetting the White House, the CIA leak investigation appears most threatening...The evolution of Mr. Bush's statements on the CIA leak case indicate how loath he is to lose the man he has described as his political "architect." Early on in the controversy over the disclosure of Ms. Plame's identity, the president vowed to fire anyone involved. Later, after testimony implicating Mr. Rove became public, Mr. Bush expressed a looser standard, saying he would remove aides who committed crimes. Last week, amid speculation that Mr. Rove might face charges from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Mr. Bush wouldn't say whether he would remove an aide under indictment. 8:16:13 AM   permalink   comment []

Wall Street Journal (subs req), page A-1: "Bruised by earlier failures to embrace new technologies, big media companies are rushing into the two-year-old field of podcasting -- audio programs for downloading onto computers or portable music players. The high-stakes goal: grab young listeners, even at the risk of cannibalizing existing audiences or wasting time and money on a technology that may never go mainstream." Right on cue: Yahoo launches podcast site. 8:11:31 AM   permalink   comment []

Jefferson-Pilot bought by Lincoln National. Maybe this is a good thing for Greensboro, but I don't see how, unless Lincoln moves here from Philly. We've known that JP could be sold for a long time now, but this is scary news nonetheless. 8:06:34 AM   permalink   comment []

Thank you, Kevin. You put into words pretty much everything that we wanted ConvergeSouth to be about. 7:58:21 AM   permalink   comment []

Will R has been well-known on the Chapel Hill blog scene for a long time. Now he's running for office, and has finally started a blog of his own. And it turns out that he has a real last name, too (it's Raymond). 7:53:16 AM   permalink   comment []

Jay Ovittore put a lot of work into the music portion of ConvergeSouth, running on caffeine and enthusiasm for days on end. Here's his writeup of the weekend. He quotes our headliner, Alana Davis: "Blogging to me is the real free media. I have a lot of bitchin' to do, so I guess I'm going to have to start a blog." 7:50:10 AM   permalink   comment []