I've been reviewing how the first three weeks of 2009 have been going financially across our businesses. I thought I would share with you what I know so far. We had assumed coming into the year that '09 would be substantially weaker than '08 (which, in turn, finished out about 4% below '07 on the revenue line). And so we set our budgets for '09 at what we thought was a very conservative level, assuming that this will be a difficult year for the US economy. It took us something like 7 rounds of budgeting--one lower than the next--to finally get a budget that made sense. (My thanks to all those in our financial area and our controllers/business managers around...

Continue reading "A Slowwwww Start to the New Year" »

Posted by Bill Pollak at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was great to be away in South Africa and Namibia, watching the wild animals, seeing the extraordinary scenery and meeting some incredible people. My family and I had a wonderful time. I highly recommend a visit to that part of the world if you get the opportunity. Thought you might like to see at least one picture from our trip. The leopard (above) was in the Mala Mala Game Preserve. No symbolism to the picture, I promise...my daughter took it and I thought it was a good shot. And I was pretty good--though not perfect--about staying away from computers and email. Harder to do than you might think. I'm still getting back up-to-speed about how our businesses have...

Continue reading "Vacation's Over..." »

Posted by Bill Pollak at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've always liked the first week in January, and rarely more so than I'm enjoying this one. Having made it through all the calamities of 2008, it feels like a fresh start, a clean slate, and a new beginning. Maybe it has something to do with the inauguration of a new, young President in a few weeks, or the fact that the stock market made it through the first couple of days of the new year without doing anything crazy. Or maybe it's that there are so many terrifically interesting news stories to cover, starting with the Madoff saga but including important issues impacting the future of the law firms many of us cover and the continuing ups and downs...

Continue reading "A Fresh Start" »

Posted by Bill Pollak at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)