You’re the Boss Blog: In Defense of Business Brokers

Want to have more productive meetings? Sure you do. Ex-Microsoft Windows boss Steven Sinofsky just posted a long blog that tells you how.

It is hard to get definitive answers to important questions about lending, but the author - a new contributor to You're the Boss - hopes to help.

Pump-and-dump schemes are a-OK in Hong Kong—if you give your bosses a heads up. The Securities and Futures Commission found that on 25 occasions from March 2009 to March 2010, Mr. Cheung bought stocks through an undisclosed account registered in his wife’s name and, shortly afterward, published newspaper columns talking up those stocks…. Licensed brokers…

(Reuters) - William Brodsky, who transformed CBOE Holdings Inc from a member-owned exchange into a for-profit company best known as the home of Wall Street's favorite fear index, has unexpectedly announced he will step down as chief executive in May. Brodsky, 68, will be succeeded by President and Chief Operating Officer Edward Tilly, 49, CBOE said on Wednesday. Brodsky, who has run the operator of the oldest and largest U.S. options exchange since 1997, is expected to become executive chairman. ...

Trevor Lwin and Bruce Moszcelt are part of a new breed of corporate financiers/entrepreneurs: both are still relatively young, both have acquired considerable experience by working in the mid-market advisory area for a dealer and both are keen to use those talents to buy, with a group of external investors, a small privately-owned business. It seems like traditional private equity. But the focus of the two, who worked together at BMO Capital Markets for about a decade and who recently formed Gestalt Equity Partners, differs in two areas:

My very favorite request from the requests thread: I would like to see The Great Matthew Yglesias American Road Trip of 2011. Spend at least a month driving around the country, seeing the sights but also talking with journalists, policy-makers, ordinary people, and anybody else of interest who might deliver some insight into their local situation. I think this would be a nice way to get some more perspective on the country, and also we the readers would benefit from you sharing the insights and new perspectives you get.