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.
Each year, the Harvard Crimson surveys Harvard seniors, asking them a variety of questions about their future plans of employment and their time at the revered institution of so-called higher learning. This year, the survey produced several interesting results, in addition to some disappointing results, as well as some disturbing results. In any case, first let's talk about the interesting results. As you can see, in the bar graph below, consulting and finance are still big draws for... Read More >
Good morning. So, there's this kid who was born in Hell's Kitchen in the 1940s, and this kid makes it out of high school but doesn't make it to college, because, well, back then few kids from Hell's Kitchen made it out of high school alive, much less with a college acceptance letter in their fists. And this kid, he wants to be in pictures, which is to say the movies, and so he does some acting, all nothing parts, thug, bouncer, tough guy, he's not much of an actor to tell the truth, and so... Read More >
With the proliferation of the virtual marketplace and crowdfunding sources, it's not surprising to learn that today it's easier than ever to start a business and get it funded. It's also not surprising that since there are more new businesses than ever, there are more failed businesses than ever, too. But what is surprising (at least to me) is that studies show that failure doesn't equal learning experience in the startup world. In fact, failure isn't an indicator of future success but of... Read More >
I live in Brooklyn, and this past weekend, at my local independent bookstore, where the titles that typically move are those written by the many novelists who live in the outer borough, front and center in the store window and on the checkout counter was the new, Bible-thick, nonfiction title Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by French economist Thomas Piketty. Capital, if you haven't heard, has been receiving a ridiculous amount of praise. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has... Read More >
There's a very good chance that right now you're seated in a swiveling, ergonomic chair on wheels, staring at a computer screen, reading these digital words within three or four flimsy chest-high walls, just beyond which is another person who's seated in a swiveling, ergonomic chair on wheels, staring at a computer screen, reading other digital words within three or four flimsy chest-high walls, just beyond which is another person … and so on, and so on, and so on. That is, there's a good... Read More >
If the Roman Catholic Church were a public company, its share price would have doubled in the past year and its CEO would now be in a strong position to ask the board for a raise. This is more or less what The Economist implied last week when it published an article called "The Francis Effect," comparing the Pope to great turnaround CEOs "such as IBM's Lou Gerstner, Fiat's Sergio Marchionne, and Apple's Steve Jobs." The subhead of the article reads, "About to take over a crisis-ridden... Read More >
Three years ago, just after the Deutsche Bank-owned Cosmopolitan hotel and casino opened in Las Vegas, I spoke with a Vegas insider about the German bank's big Sin City bet (you can read part of that conversation in a previous post here). And last week, just after news broke that Germany's largest bank had put the Cosmopolitan up for sale, I caught up with the same Vegas insider (who's worked and lived on and around the Strip for nearly 15 years) to ask him, among other things, why the... Read More >
This past Easter Sunday marked the third anniversary of the death of Chris Hondros, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated photojournalist who was killed in 2011 while on assignment in Libya. Hondros, who spent most of his career documenting war, took photographs that according to Mother Jones are "critically important in our understanding of what's going on in the world [and] critical in getting people to pay attention." Earlier this month, Powerhouse Books published a book of Hondros' photos and... Read More >
Earlier this week it was revealed that Google, which already occupies 750,000 square feet of office space in New York, is on the hunt for 600,000 more. The tech firm wants the space to house another 3,000 employees in New York. When I mentioned this to a coworker, she joked: So, does that mean I should work on my resume? Perhaps it does, I replied, and it also means that you better lock-in your lease as fast as you can, because 3,000 more Googlers in Manhattan (and Brooklyn) can only mean... Read More >
Today we celebrate Tax Day with the release of the latest Vault Accounting 50, a ranking of the best accounting employers to work for in North America. Recently, we asked more than 10,000 accountants to rate their peer firms in terms of prestige; we also asked them to rate their own firms in numerous workplace categories, including culture, work/life balance, hours, compensation, training, overall satisfaction, and business outlook. And in this year's Accounting 50-which takes into account... Read More >
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