The Nail That Sticks Up Gets....

I remember that fateful day when Hank Greenberg Former Chairman of the colossal AIG Insurance Company started attacking US Attorney Eliot Spitzer implying he was something akin to a "fascist". Well I was far away as the crow flies, but I KNEW what was coming and next thing you see, Mr Greenberg was being investigated for fraud, and subsequently was bounced out of his job amidst great personal embarassment and shame. Despite the fact that, in he end, he was cleared of any wrongdoing, one could see he messed with someone more powerful, and he lost, full-stop. Of course, we shouldn't shed any tears for him as he is, after all, sitting in control of the CV Starr Foundation that owns an ungodly amount ($21 billion??!?) of AIG stock, in addition to the billions he has accumulated of his own.

But this is not about AIG or Mr Greeneberg, but about former MoF official, Yoshiaki Murakami: value investor, corporate cage-rattler, stock-greenmailer, petty thief, and now corporate scafflaw & greedy trader, whose portfolio took a severe hammering today as a result of an investigation into MAC Asset's potential wrongdoing. Many people seem to have issue with Mr Murakami: self-serving managers, squeezed short-sellers, his fund investors, as well as his competitors. But the one he has really offended is Japan Inc., and like the disgraced Livedoor upstart Takefumi Horie found out, there are limits to how much they'll take. For he has challenged entrenched interests and caused (in all truth) some positive changes in the respect (or at least lip service and dividends) that Jap[anese companies heed shareholders, but in this process has disturbed the "wah" of the house of Nippon. But he has wrought these changes in an apparently ill-tempered and undiplomatic manner that has been seen as vulgar (in Japan) to most of the powers that be, in addition to those transgressed.

The markets severe reaction today was perhaps predictable since he has, for parochial interest, NOT been gentle upon "price" in accumulating his positions. I have two observations that I can humbly offer Mr Murakami about today's events. The first is: "Don't break the law when you're breaking the law" (even if this "Law" is the unwritten law of the land know as "custom"). For if you do, they will surely bury you, with what the Miller Brewing Co. used to called "gusto". The second piece of advice is: IF you are going to accumulate very large positions in rather pedstrian and illiquid lines of stock, you had best not be: (1) leveraged (2) be subject to investor calls on capital for an amount of time less than that measured in "years", and (3) Never, never, never, let the market know your positions. If you get caught violating all three at any time, I must say, one might deserve whatever "Mr Market" might deliver...