Alibaba, a lost Hollywood icon, Ray Rice: Second Look
New views on the week's top talkers:
In Alibaba, a reflection of Google
With Paste BN's fine coverage of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s initial public offering on queue, I'm reminded of another hot Internet IPO that recently celebrated its 10th anniversary – Google Inc.
As a staff reporter at CBS MarketWatch back then, I had keen interest in covering the deal because we all used Google in our day-to-day reporting, plus I'd met Google co-founder Sergey Brin a couple of times. An approachable guy who didn't mind explaining in plain English how the company's breakthrough Internet search technology worked, Brin stopped by the newsroom years before the company would go public. He didn't seem at all interested in the topic of an IPO, but instead mentioned that he'd bought an early version of the Toyota Prius — a modest purchase considering his level of success in Silicon Valley.
Google kept the financial press guessing when it finally filed its IPO with the phrase, "Don't be evil" included in the formal prospectus. While its growing bottom line set it apart from the dot-com casualties of the Nasdaq crash in 2000, investors still felt a bit burned. Just ahead of its stock market debut on Aug. 18, 2004, Google drastically cut its price range to stoke interest. Once out in the public market, the stock performed well with a solid gain in its first day of trading. And it's never looked back with a roughly 14x rise in a decade. It was a privilege to work on the Google story with a great CBS MarketWatch team led by current Paste BN Editor-in-Chief David Callaway.
Hopefully, the much larger Alibaba IPO will go down as another healthy deal that provides sustained growth for retail investors in big cap stocks. The blockbuster stock offering amounts to a bet both on continued economic growth in China and the abilities of its charismatic founder, Jack Ma. It could fall flat down the road if Alibaba fails to deliver profit growth in line with Wall Street's enhanced expectations. But like Google, Alibaba offers a relatively solid track record of success going back several years. It's a huge Chinese company with a name derived from The Arabian Nights raising up to $21 billion in the U.S. stock market. You don't get much more global than that. Deals like this don't come around very often. It's a milestone for our current economic times.
Steve Gelsi; Montclair, N.J.
An iconic villain
Richard Kiel, who played one of the most iconic villains of all time, recently passed away. Portraying Jaws in a couple of James Bond movies with his steely teeth, he had one of the nastiest bites around, someone you definitely didn't want to mess with.
His height and metal teeth made him easy to recognize and hard to forget.
Kenneth L. Zimmerman; Huntington Beach, Calif.
Lessons from Rice
Why are Ray Rice's high school and college pulling his jersey and other honors? They should leave them up and at the end of the display explain how all this hardware does not make you a man of character, and explain that even if you have God-given talent as an athlete you still need to develop skills to cope with adverse situations.
These schools should explain that success on the playing field does not equate to success in the real world.
They should add a display case to show alums who weren't athletes who have made a mark in their communities, such as doctors and lawyers, teachers, carpenters and mechanics.
We put way too much emphasis on athletes in this country. We want to increase scholarships for athletes but what about trainers, managers and other members of sports teams?
Rice is a product of the environment we have created.
Al Tamberelli; Aurora, Ill.