Word: retailing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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RISKY BUSINESS The clubby world of venture capital has gone retail. Recently a closed-end mutual fund--the meVC Draper Fisher Jurveston fund--began trading on the N.Y.S.E., allowing investors to bet on the kinds of long shots VCs do. The focus of meVC is on private and pre-IPO companies. But VCs get big cuts, and with annual fees of 2.5% and 20% on realized gains, you'd better pray one of the 12 tech companies it's invested in becomes the next Cisco...
Lily Kanter, 35, is the sort of "ordinary" multimillionaire that Microsoft has churned out by the thousands. She has worked five years for the company, most recently as business manager of its San Francisco retail outlet, as her stock doubled and redoubled. Yet she lives an ordinary life in most ways, ferrying her three dogs around in a seven-year-old Ford Explorer that she calls the Stinkmobile. "How many cars can you drive at one time?" she asks. "How big a house do you need...
...other deregulated parts of the nation, where retail electricity rates are frozen for a few more years, price isn't the problem yet. Instead, providers are having a tough time just supplying enough juice, as air-conditioners and other appliances consume electricity at an alarming pace. Silicon Valley, home to the energy-hungry new economy, has already experienced rolling blackouts. The situation across California has got so precarious that state officials are offering cash payments to big corporate users that conserve energy during a crunch; database power Oracle has spent millions to build its own generators. New England...
...places like the Parndorf Designer Outlet, east of Vienna, just as they can in Michigan or New Jersey, for huge savings on brand names like Nike and Gap. "BAA McArthurGlen is the pioneer of pan-European outlet shopping," says Clive Minihan, director of the Credo Group, a developer of retail and new-media business in London. Pioneering has paid off. BAA McArthurGlen has grown from scratch to a sizable (revenues of $472.3 million in the fiscal year ending March 31) behemoth that must now contend with upstart rivals trying to match its accomplishments...
...openness of doing business in America, Europe's zoning procedures are often lengthy, land is costly and red tape plentiful. "In the States, real estate is location, location, location. In Europe, it's politics, politics, politics," Kaempfer wryly notes. His initial plans are almost always opposed by local retailers who fear loss of trade. It took four years of court squabbles, which set his company back $15 million in design and legal fees, before Kaempfer was cleared to break ground this summer on a 309,000-sq.-ft., 100-store suburban Berlin mall. Kaempfer understands local concerns but calls them...