22.3.06

JD's Lending No-No's #2 and #3

Read JD's Lending No-No's #1a and #1b. The focus today is on what can be gleaned from a lender presentation.
Lending No-No #2a: Don't loan to companies who will need to control costs, if they have no connection to actual real world cost controlling.

Examples:
  • I was recently in an Italian city for a meeting. The company I was there to see indicated that the best way from the Aeroporto to the meeting was by taxi, so I trusted them and took a taxi. It was €80. I later found out that there was a €5 shuttle express that would have taken me with half a km of the meeting and would have taken about 10 minutes more. These are the people charged with cutting costs in a large industrial company that operates in a cyclical sector that saw several competitors file for bankruptcy only a few years ago.


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