Suhail Rizvi. You may be asking, “Who is that?” just as I do, and you most probably couldn’t even search him up because this mysterious man employs a person to clear his Wikipedia entry and his pictures from the Internet. So who exactly is him? Rizvi, the founder of New York private equity form Rizvi Transverse Management, will be one of the biggest winners from Twitter going public in the following weeks. With the previous mention of a company going public from private with providing the IPO during last class, I found this news related and interesting.

The 47 year-old financier had quietly invested in Twitter with a 15% stake at a cost of $1 billion. These shares are known to be distributed among several other investors, but any other details such as the size of Rizvi’s personal stake are not disclosed. Other than Twitter, Rizvi had been active in matchmaking private investors with the microblogging site; before that, he was focused on deals of Hollywood that includes buying and selling the film studio behind the “Twilight” series.

Despite keeping in his low profile, Rizvi is “not to be underestimated. His approach to traditional media as well as technology has put him in a great position,” as said by Jeremy Zimmer from a competitor company of ICM, an agency Rizvi had dealt with.

Source:

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/suhail-rizvi-poised-to-score-big-with-twitter-ipo/426508-11.html

“Everyone is doing pumpkin this fall”, said Gordon, a restaurant franchisee advisor from a consulting group.¹ Starbucks’ seasonal product pumpkin spice lattes had been introduced for ten years till now, and has been favored by the customers. The fact that it is only available for a limited period of time raises its demand.

This fall, McDonald’s is catching up with the seasonal coffee market and will be launching the product of McCafe pumpkin latte that costs almost half of that of Starbucks’. McDonald’s targets at Starbucks’ crowd, hoping to lure the customers into purchasing its pumpkin spice latte and grab some of the success through imitation.

McDonald’s is not the only one going with the pumpkin trend. Tim Hortons, Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme also joins the craze of the pumpkin seasonal marketing. However, the success of these imitations is not ensured, as consumers are given a greater choice with various substitute products; this tests Starbucks’ brand loyalty especially in its pumpkin latte. What will be the consumer’s preferences? And will the popularity of pumpkin continue?

Sources:

¹http://business.financialpost.com/2013/09/24/mcdonalds-pumpkin-spice-lattes-target-starbucks-crowd/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/falls-secret-ingredient-for-drink-sales-pumpkin/article14196595/

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/can-mcdonalds-pumpkin-spice-latte-burger-kings-satisfries-and-other-copy-cats-compete-cm281688

Recently, BlackBerry is again hit by trouble with its investors. The company was sued by one of its shareholders, accusing a mislead in the state of the company’s future with its BlackBerry 10 smartphone line. Instead of noting the investors in BlackBerry 10’s actual performance in the market, they claimed the company to be “progressing on its financial and operational commitments.”¹ This paints a misleading positive picture of the company and is considered to be deceiving, since “in reality, The BlackBerry 10 was not well-received by the market,”² as stated by the lawsuit. There was even a layoff of around 40 percent of its total workforce.

All shareholders who bought BlackBerry’s stock from Sept 27^th 2012 to Sept 20^th 2013, a period in which the company’s state was misrepresented, were to be represented by this class action suit. It was until Sept 20^th this year that BlackBerry finally discloses its loss and layoffs, which undoubtedly resulted in a significant fall of its share price.

With the rise of touch screen smartphones, BlackBerry is consistently challenged and troubled with innovating differentiable products that attract the market. Along with the unwillingness to reveal its undesirable performance, BlackBerry is failing to adapt.

Sources:

¹ http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/blackberry-hit-with-shareholder-lawsuit-1.1913852

² http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/blackberry-hit-with-securities-shareholder-class-action/article14713440/