A huge thank you to everyone who supported my CEO Sleepout for Vinnies last week, both for your dollars and your well wishes. 

The event itself was highly moving and highly successful. 

Moving, in that we heard from a number of current and former Vinnies “clients”, the homeless, about their stories of hard luck and in some cases, redemption, and successful in that we broke all fundraising records and targets. 

Nationally the tally so far is up over $2.6M, with over $950K coming from Sydney CEOs for Vinnies in NSW. 

And personally, thanks to all of your support (and a very generous last minute contribution from the CCH Australia Community Investment Program), I raised over $19K (so far), putting me in the top 10 on the leaderboard. 

So thank you all again so much for your support of Vinnies and of me personally. 

And, FYI, while it wasn’t terribly cold, I only managed about 3 hours of sleep on the concrete slab!

Best,
- Dave

David A Lampert
Chief Executive Officer
Wolters Kluwer Asia Pacific

In a couple of days’ time, I’ll be joining over 600 CEOs across Australia and sleeping outside for a night at the St Vincent de Paul CEO Sleepout, an event designed to raise money and consciousness around the issue of homelessness in Australia.

Surprisingly, even in such a prosperous country as Australia, there are over 100,000 homeless people, the majority of them women and children. 

Money raised in the CEO Sleepout helps Vinnies provide not only food and shelter but also critical social services and job skills that help folks get back on their feet.

I slept rough for Vinnies last year and raised over $8,000 from over 75 contributors, and have set myself a goal to surpass $12,000 in 2010. 

Thanks to the generous support of many I am already over $9,500 as of today, so I’m getting close to my goal. 

Of course I am soon to leave Australia for another position with the company in New York, so this will be my last CEO Sleepout here in Sydney.

I am pleased and proud that representing WK Asia Pac and CCH Australia at the Vinnies CEO Sleepout will be one of my last official acts in my role here.

If you’d like to learn more about the CEO Sleepout, and Vinnies, you can go to http://www.ceosleepout.org.au.

If you’d like to contribute, type lampert where it says “Search CEOs” and have your credit card handy. 

Every little bit helps!

If you have already contributed, thank you so much for your support. 

Your contribution will make a huge difference to those less fortunate.

 Thanks again for everyone’s support.

Best,
- Dave

David A Lampert
Chief Executive Officer
Wolters Kluwer Asia Pacific

George Soros is back in the news warning that the financial world is relentlessly hurtling headlong into a bigger boom and bust than the GFC.

The continuing lack of effective financial market regulation, the spiraling trade balance between countries, gloomy employment prospects in most countries and the looming Greek crisis are getting uncomfortably close.

Soros has been consistently questioning the reasoning in high circles of finance that the ‘magic of  markets’ has the wherewithal to correct itself and that the efficiency of the markets is a bastion of stability.

Well, nothing seems to have changed for the better with regard to the regulation of markets - we’ve only seen stimulus packages.

The regulators believed that the financial markets had the ability to reach equilibrium and that behavior in the market place was predictable just like under the laws of natural science.

In his famous book “ The crash of 2008 and what it means” Soros refers to his favorite ‘theory of reflexity’.

According to this theory, prices cannot only be determined by assuming that the markets are efficient (and that they will reach an equilibrium) but also by considerations such as bias and expectations of market participants.

He argues that bias of market participants has the potential to influence the course of events, which in turn can change the bias of other market participants.

The spiraling decline in the value of securities and derivatives (especially synthetics such as the CDS’s) is a good example of reflexity at work.

There are a few reported observations by Soros that may well be considered  here in Australia:

1. The package negotiated for the rescue of Greece should be levying only concessional rates of interest. Higher rates would invariably lead to greater problems in the future. Similarly if a business is in a cash flow difficulty lending should be at a reduced rate so that the threat of insolvency does not make a comeback;
2. The ‘oligopoly’ of the four largest banks in the United States should be broken up (the number of ‘oligarch’ banks in the US  sounds familiar); and
3. Implementation of the ‘Volcker rule’, according to which banks should not be allowed to take part in owning hedge funds and private equity operations.

Paul Volcker (“Slay the inflation dragon”) was succeeded by Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Reserve in the Unites States.

Click here for SMH article “George Soros issues stark economic warning”, 15 April 2010.

The occasion was the annual volunteer day for Father Chris Riley’s Youth Off The Streets charity which helps homeless and disadvantaged young people.

Staff painted woodwork on the verandas of residences at YOTS’ New Pathways farm, in the breezy Southern Highlands about 20 km south of Berrima. Editors said the work was exhausting but rewarding and well-suited to people focused on quality and with a keen eye for detail!

New Pathways is a residential treatment program for teenage boys aged from 12 to 18 years who have behavioural problems. Often they come from a home environment involving serious deprivation and abuse. A boy may be at New Pathways from one to three years, depending on the capacity for learning and progress.

YOTS volunteer organiser Emily Gray says this is the only program of its kind in Australia. Without it, these boys might be thrown instead into the prison system.

CCH’s relationship with YOTS goes back more than a decade. In that time, dozens of staff have given up a day to help repair and maintain some of the many locations where YOTS does its valuable work. The company treats the day as an ordinary work day for volunteers.

CCH helps YOTS in other ways too, including with free online subscriptions to some of our finance, HR and legal titles.

Special thanks goes to the organisers of this year’s volunteer day - Kate Graham at CCH and Emily Gray, the YOTS volunteer coordinator - and CEO Dave for his wholehearted support, morally, financially and with a paintbrush.

Find out more about YOTS on their website www.youthoffthestreets.com.au.

- CCH Community Investment Program

Editor Ed Carr makes his mark

Last Thursday night I took part in the St Vincent De Paul Society  (“Vinnies”) CEO Sleepout in Luna Park, Sydney. The Sleepout challenged me and other CEOs to experience homelessness for a night to help raise money and awareness of homeless people. Well, it was an incredible experience – inspiring, moving, exciting, exhausting and ultimately fulfilling – all in one night!

We arrived in the rain, registered inside, were given CEO Sleepout logo beanies and then directed back outside, where we were pointed towards a stack of cardboard sheets, told to pick up one or two and find a place to put our sleeping bags down.  After some jostling, most of us found cover under an awning, or otherwise out of the rain, but still outside on a concrete slab.

We gathered up back inside for a series of speeches and presentations for several hours, broken up with dinner by a bowl of soup and piece of bread.  The speeches featured everyone from a local Weatherman MC, to the CEO of Vinnies in Sydney, to government ministers, CEO and Vinnies spokesman and sleepout Ambassador Dick Smith (for those not from Australia, the iconic Dick Smith is an older, Aussie version of Richard Branson, with philanthropy substituted for ego-mania.).  Most interestingly, interspersed with the speeches were four current or former Vinnie’s clients, who bravely got up on stage in front of 220 CEOs, told their stories and in most cases, performed for us (2 singers, 1 playwright/actor).  In between all this we were invited to discuss with our seatmates and a mike was passed around for reflections, pledges and the like. 

I took my turn at the mike to suggest that 220 CEOs could up the ante and dig deeper into our own pockets and put our money where our bodies were, so to speak, and challenged each CEO present to either double their own gift or cough up another $500 (or more), with the goal of going from $500K to $600K in that evening (they had computers and swipe machines set up to accept further contributions).  Not sure if my American ways were too confronting for the local crowd, and we didn’t get to $600K then and there, but did jump $20K in a matter of 30 minutes or so…and the folks from Vinnies were very excited!

After the program ended around 11:15, some folks headed straight to their bedroll while most of us milled around and talked, too keyed up to sleep. By 1:30 am, most were in our make-shift beds, trying to sleep.  So did I?  Not much.  Many of you were worried about the cold or the rain but these were not issues, only too many thoughts rushing through my head combined with the reality of a hard concrete slab.  And I should add, for any MDs in the crowd, that while the sample size was only 6 in my immediate area, I can safely report that 50% of CEOs in Australia have a serious snoring problem!

By 5:45 am when they were supposed to wake us up, more than half of us were waiting for coffee, followed by some morning media, and then back to work.

The event has been crowned a huge success by Vinnies and the local media.  The original goal was to register 100 CEOs and raise $250K.  All in all 220 CEOs slept out and the grand total so far is over $540K.  And there is a lot of interest in taking this beyond Sydney to many other Vinnies cities around the globe.  Donations are still being accepted at http://www.ceosleepout.org.au/donate.

Would I do it again?  You bet!!!