How Much Extra To Move Jobs?

That's the conundrum I have been faced with this morning, following another headhunter call. Of course, the salary levels they claim are usually best-case and designed to hook you into taking it further. This one dangled the prospect of an extra £50,000 increase in my base salary if I moved.

However after about 5mins deliberation, the answer is going to be 'no'. It is certainly tempting from one perspective, but one problem is that the bank in question is terrible: without naming names, one of those suffering from merger pains, combined with being incompetently run for years - hence is on government life support and has made huge losses.

Most of all though, there is more to this than just money. Let me just reassure you that there is no loyalty for the bank, or love for the 'unique team culture' - every bank spouts waffle about it being a giant family and that they are the best. Unfortunately the brutal culling of staff in the last year merely illustrated the fallacy to those corporate clones too stupid to see it before.

Working for yourself is the only place to aim for in life. So yes, an extra £50k now would be nice, but the cost is all of the hassle and risk of a new job. When I factor in work on my business ahead of the launch later this year, I realised what is much more important to me. At present I have got time to work on this almost daily, but that could easily change with a new boss on my shoulder, and needing to forge a reputation at a new place.

Anyway it's an interesting question, and highlights to me how my priorities have changed so significantly since I mentally made the jump towards my aspirations being out of the sector.

Although not yet announced, Pershing Square are about to submit a counter-offer on the DIP financing. It is unsurprising because without the innovative equity conversion option they had included as the DIP financier, they lose a valuable hedge against their significant existing holdings. This will be good news for GGP again, as any competition around terms of financing benefits the firm - I am just hoping to see the equity conversion option dropped, but matching the other loan terms with a lower interest rate is a more likely sweetener.

Otherwise Reuters reported last week that Simon Property Group have raised more capital in another significant stock offering. They cite the reason being for "general corporate purposes", but pointedly there is no longer a denial of interest in future acquisitions, just citing timing.

Due to the market saturation (in the US) of mall owners, all of the REIT's need to expand their market shares through acquisitions. As such, and despite denials, Westfield are also lining up to compete with Simon and Vornado (who have openly admitted interest) for any asset sales that GGP decide to put out there.

As with DIP financing, it is much better to have competition in a sale like this. On an unrelated rumour, the Court will reconvene tomorrow to review the DIP financing options and progress further. For now this is a side show to the bigger issue relating to creditors and the SPE inclusions discussed in my last post.

A Change Of Perspective

"Woe betide thee, who has a desk move imposed upon them and loses a spectacular City window view and privacy, to face an office cupboard with a sign reading 'Restricted Access Area' while surrounded by irritating colleagues on all sides"  The Emerging Investor

Having been pulled onto this tedious Hedge Fund confidence-boosting initiative at the bank, I was duly forced to move desks to sit with the new team this week. Quite why is beyond me, as I was only sitting about 20 yards away from them before, and in this digital age we mostly communicate through email, communicator and conference calls anyway.

The bank being as tight as it is, rather than paying for the desk/equipment movers to come in, they left it to me to spend 1.5hrs crawling around on my hands and knees to unplug and switch PC's - all while avoiding the mouse traps down under the desks (we have a problem with rodents - both human and otherwise).

I'm mostly not pleased because I was happily working on my site on the quiet at work as I haven't been too busy recently, and the wireframes for the Functional Spec are rather too visible to pass as financial work.  Now I might even have to do some work for my money at this rate.

Anyway it's not all bad news, as the actual site design has been progressing very well, and I am confident that within the next week or so I will have it sufficiently completed to approach vendors.  They are in for a grilling given that part of my daily job is managing incompetence, and I expect nothing less from them with the build.

There is nothing of interest happening yet regarding GGP, besides Vornado being confirmed as a major potential front runner in buying any GGP assets put up for sale, and having raised sufficient capital to make reasonable offers.  Also following on from my last post regarding GGP including CMBS subsidiaries in its Chapter 11 filing, which has major ramifications for the credit markets; unsurprisingly a challenge is being mounted by one of the groups who would be adversely impacted.

The creditor meeting in a fortnight from now should prove interesting, but this is going to be a slow, lengthy process in which patience is the biggest strength any investor can show.

Next time I am going to move back to investing, which will be especially useful for those interested in shorting. It is a question I have been asked by several people recently, and is actually much easier than you would think. Anybody with a standard broker account can do it today, and I will outline how and some of the options.