24 pieces
Money market funds are not FDIC insured. The one-dollar share price is a target held up by the fund's own holdings, and in 2008 the Reserve Primary Fund missed it and froze withdrawals for months.
A ground lease splits a property in two: the deed to the land and a decades-long right to use what stands on it. The Empire State Building was held that way, and its control fights were contract fights.
A quality of earnings report tests whether reported profit is real, repeatable and collected in cash. It protects a buyer only while the findings can still change the price, as Caterpillar's Siwei write-off showed.
A family bank lends family capital to family members on written terms — an amount, a rate, a repayment schedule and a scheduled conversation — so support is never mistaken for judgment.
Rollover equity in a sale is ownership kept beside the buyer rather than cash at closing. It is worth its headline number only when the security, the forced-sale rights and the tax form all match.
Going back after selling a business is not a plan — it is a signal that the sale settled ownership and left the days unassigned. A return works only when its ending is named before the chair is taken.
Cash settles a sale; stock turns it into an investment in the buyer. Instagram's $1 billion closed nearer $715 million because the share count was fixed and the price was not.
A noncompete signed at the sale of a business is paid for in the price and far more enforceable than an employee's. Its definitions, not the headline number, govern the seller's next years.
Timberland is the rare real asset that keeps adding wood while its owner declines to sell. The feature is the right to wait, and the ownership structure holding the land decides whether that right survives.
A single-family office buys total control at a fixed cost that never stops; a multi-family office shares that cost and some of the control. Bessemer Trust made exactly that trade in 1974.
Municipal bonds are not a safe category; each one is a claim on a specific stream of cash. Detroit's bankruptcy left water and sewer bondholders with their principal while general obligation holders took losses.
A valuation drop is only a bargain when the previous owner, not the market, caused it and the buyer already knows how to run the machine. Snapple's collapse and recovery show how to tell the difference.
A post-exit identity crisis is the vacuum left when the company that answered "who are you" for decades goes with the sale. The test is naming what is due this Friday, and who is waiting on it.
Time-weighted returns strip out deposits and withdrawals to judge a manager's decisions. Money-weighted returns include them, which is what an owner's capital actually did. Neither figure is the whole truth.
An earnout is deferred purchase price, not a bonus: the later payment depends on targets the buyer usually controls. Sellers should value the certain part of a deal as if the deferred part were zero.
Ortega assembled his property collection with cash, held in a family company. For owners deploying sale proceeds, paying outright buys control of the timetable: no lender decides when a building is sold.
Gold produces no cash, so its entire return depends on what a later buyer will pay. After an exit it is best understood as insurance against a loss of trust in money — and judged as insurance, not by what it earns.
Farmland as an investment means owning the ground and leasing it to farmers who already know the crop. Bill Gates bought land and a lease, not a farm to run.
A sale paid in the buyer's shares does not end the founder's bet; it moves it to a company they did not build. What was received, what still has to vest, and whether the stock would be owned on its merits decide what remains.
The most useful questions to ask a wealth manager test three things: how the advisor is paid, what access and terms this household actually gets, and what evidence would prove the advice wrong.
Family wealth stays together only while every adult in it freely chooses to. The Pritzkers pooled a fortune with no way out, and the split arrived anyway — in court, on the worst available terms.
More than a century of evidence rewards holding over trading, but the record turns on what is held. The businesses whose cash flow grew most reliably rewarded the owners who left them alone longest.
A dividend is a decision a board makes, not a promise the business keeps. After an exit the durable question is not what a holding pays today but whether the cash underneath it is still growing.
The allocation decisions made in the first year after an exit shape the long-term result more than the deal terms ever did. The clock starts when the wire clears, whether or not anyone is watching it.