Vault Blogs / Contributor Network / Posts by Derek Loosvelt
Derek Loosvelt is Vault's senior finance editor. Derek has a BS in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA in creative writing from the New School. His writing has appeared in several online and print publications. Previously, he worked in investment banking as an M&A analyst and associate.
At the age of 12, Marcus Lemonis, star of CNBC's "The Profit," owned a lawn cutting business that made $1,000 a week. At 22, without any prior political experience (other than a summer internship on Capitol Hill), Lemonis ran for a state seat in Florida and nearly beat a three-term incumbent. Not long afterward, Lemonis joined AutoNation, the largest car retailer in the country, and quickly rose the corporate ladder. Then came a pivotal meeting with one of the most famous car men in... Read More >
"If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative." "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." These quotes of failure (from Woody Allen, Thomas Edison, and Samuel Beckett, respectively) have been popularized for a reason. And that reason is failure is the route to success. That said, failing stinks. And... Read More >
This past week several men and women put in performances of their careers @Sochi2014. Americans Sage Kostenburg and Jamie Anderson put in fine final runs to take gold in men's and women's snowboard slopestyle, respectively. The Japanese nineteen-year-old Yuzura Hanyu skated a world-record short program on his way to take gold in men's singles. The speedskating men and women of the Netherlands dominated the ice, picking up all kinds of golds, silvers, and bronzes. And a previously unknown... Read More >
Before I address AOL CEO Tim Armstrong's public justification for scaling back his firm's 401(k) plan on rising health care costs such as those associated with "two AOL-ers that had distressed babies that were born that we paid a million dollars each to make sure were O.K.," I'd like to make a few observations gleaned from my two decades as part of the so-called American workforce. The first: people are typically paid commensurate with the amount of stress their job requires; that is, on... Read More >
At the close of 2013, New York-based Kramer Levin-which ranked No. 22 in Vault's latest rankings of the top White Collar Defense firms-represented the former SAC Capital trader Michael S. Steinberg, who was convicted of insider trading and now faces up to 85 years in prison. And two weeks ago, Goodwin Procter rested its case on behalf of another former SAC trader, Matthew Martoma, who was subsequently convicted of two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy and now faces up to... Read More >
Although Wall Street punished Twitter earlier this week for its slow new-user growth-following Twitter's first earnings release as a public company, its share price plummeted 18 percent-the social media site regained more than 8 percent of its market value in trading today. And so, it appears that TWTR has the following new user, among others, to thank for joining its growing (albeit not fast enough) network of micro bloggers: @SochiProblems. Incidentally, this satirical account, just two... Read More >
Today, the New York Times published an op-ed entitled "Detroit's Immigration Solution," which criticizes the plan that Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has to fix the down-but-not-out Motor City. Snyder has proposed "to attract 50,000 [immigrants] over five years using a visa program for people with advanced degrees or exceptional abilities in the sciences, arts or business." According to the Times, the plan is "strange," "unsettling" "oddly defeatist," and "limited," "reinforc[ing] the... Read More >
It's too bad that JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon isn't among the increasing number of CEOs who tweet, because I would've loved to have read his 140-character blast after he received an $8.5 million raise last week for his 2013 efforts (a/k/a cutting deals with the Feds, keeping his options in the money, etc.). In any case, below is a handful of other prominent CEOs who posted prominent tweets in the past week. 1. There's some very messed up messy business currently going on in the area of the... Read More >
Dear Mr. Polk, I read (re-read) your January 18, 2014 New York Times op-ed, "For the Love of Money," with great interest and even greater admiration. Currently, I'm a third-year college student at a school in Boston (☺), and, like the young Sam Polk, before he realized that he was addicted to wealth, I, too, am very enthusiastic, to say the least, about pursuing a career on Wall Street. Which is the reason I'm writing you today. Although I know that you are a very busy man (I know that you... Read More >
Although 70 percent of the American workforce now works shoulder-to-shoulder in football-field sized rooms without anything as much as an iPhone-thin wall separating their desks, studies continue to show that open-office plans are detrimental to employees' concentration, productivity, creativity, stress level, and job satisfaction, not to mention their health. The following is an excerpt from a January 7, 2014 New Yorker article called "The Open-Office Trap" written by Maria Konnakova: In... Read More >