Connie Loizos

No one is publicly accusing anyone of helping himself or herself to a prized 23-year-old watercolor caricature of investor Warren Buffett from the Omaha Press Club, but it’s certainly looking like that’s what has happened, alas. The painting, which portrays a wild-haired Buffett standing in a sea of money and holding a Berkshire Hathaway annual report that reads […]

Are you a team-oriented manager who is committed to diversity and has experience dealing with multiple and diverse (and often warring) constituent groups? If so, good news: The California Public Employees’ Retirement System just announced that its search for a new CEO is officially underway. Qualifications for the job include: Broad and extensive management experience in a […]

In the midst of what's been repeatedly referred to as the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, people are questioning the sanity of home shopping right now -- while at the same time becoming more obsessed with depreciating home prices.

It’s hard to feel sorry for Hank Greenberg, who turned A.I.G. into one of the world’s biggest insurance company giants before getting the boot in 2005, during an accounting scandal. Still, watching his glorious mountain of money quickly disappear, it’s also hard not to experience an emotion that distantly borders sympathy right now.

Less than one day after billionaire investor Warren Buffett announced he was snapping up $5 billion in preferred shares of beleaguered bank Goldman Sachs, he has announced that Berkshire Hathaway, his insurance and investment company, is also looking to purchase "a couple" units of insurer AIG. (Can you hear the hallelujahs on Wall Street?) Links after the jump...

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) just announced a temporary pullback of shares of four financial institutions in its Securities Lending Program: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, State Street, and Wachovia. “We want to do our part and help mitigate the current instability of the market and any potential adverse short-selling impact on these important […]

At a breakfast discussion in New York earlier this week, Universal's Jeff Zucker, Sirius Satellite Radio's Mel Karmazin and Quadrangle's Steven Rattner offered their perspectives on the M&A market (Rattner was especially bearish, saying there's zero market for big media acquisitions right now). Rattner and Karmazin also told the moderator, Portfolio editor-in-chief Joanne Lipman, that venture-backed digital media assets have grown "way, way" overvalued, and that neither of them would pay $15 billion for Facebook, or $10 billion. Lipman didn't ask if they'd pay $5 billion, its current valuation (I wish she would have). Watch a clip after the jump.

This is a very funny write-up. I've never before heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, but I'll definitely remember his name now.

I know. I said I wasn’t going to post another episode of Jesse Draper’s show, and here I am, posting another episode of Jesse Draper’s show. Let me say two things about that: first, it’s a very slow news week in venture land. I sense that most VCs are either celebrating the start of their […]

Attero, a start-up based in Noida, India, is one of the latest recipients of an uptick in attention to India-based companies. The company just raised $6.3 million from NEA-IndoUS Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson to build a 100,000-square-foot recycling center that will dispose of used electronic equipment, like old computers, televisions, and cell phones, in […]