Venture capital firm Polaris Partners has begun raising its seventh fund, Fortune has learned.

The target is $400 million, which represents a small bump from the $375 million that the bi-coastal firm raised for its sixth fund back in 2011. At the same time, it remains much less than the $1 billion that Polaris raised for Fund V in 2005, or the $900 million it raised four years earlier for its fourth fund.

Polaris appears to be maintaining its overall “generalist” investment strategy, which includes both early-stage and growth equity investments in technology, healthcare and consumer companies. One change, however, is that firm co-founders Jon Flint and Terry McGuire now are referred to as “founding partners,” while a group of four younger professionals are listed as “managing partners.” That latter quartet consists of Dave Barrett, Brian Chee, Amir Nashat and Bryce Youngren.

A Polaris spokeswoman declined to comment on the fundraise.

In other Polaris news, the firm recently added former ODesk CEO Gary Swart as a venture partner. You can read Fortune’s Q&A with Swart by going here.

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Summary: Veteran venture capital firm returns to market with a $400 million-targeted fund.


Dell Inc. has now been private for more than one year, thanks to a $24.9 billion buyout by company founder Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake. Tomorrow the tech giant will unveil what it’s been up to in the interim, and it gave The NY Times a sneak peek:

The new Dell has software, equipment for data storage and computer networking, services and sensors. It is developing software that measures facial expressions, voice tone, even how we individually swipe key cards. There is a device that can make a hotel room’s digital television into a secure corporate computer. A Dell tablet is the world’s thinnest and lightest, the company says, with a four-million-pixel screen and a three-dimensional camera. And, of course, there are lots of new personal computers.

To be sure, we’re also likely to hear a lot about how none of the above would have been possible were Dell still a publicly-traded company, needing to justify its R&D spend each quarter to fickle Wall Street analysts. And I’m not here to argue the point, particularly given that Michael Dell invested billions of his own money on that very thesis.

Instead, I just want to note that tomorrow’s presentation will tell us virtually nothing about whether or not Dell is a healthier company than it was one year ago.

Sure, we might “ooh” and “ahh” over a few things, and hear from tech analysts how they’ll sell like cronuts. But we won’t know the cost basis for that innovation (or for planned innovation that didn’t make it to the stage). Nor Dell’s top line financials, bottom-line financials nor what percentage of free cash-flow is going to pay off debt. All we know are cherry-picked product adoption press releases from the company, and third-party estimates about sale volume.

Remember, Dell didn’t just pull its stock from the Nasdaq — it also structured its leveraged loans in a manner that allows the company to avoid most other public reporting requirements. In other words, we know less about Dell than we do many other large companies that have been taken private. Moreover, Dell has less impetus to return to the public markets than do many of its ilk. Michael Dell is the majority shareholder, and also wealthy enough to buy out Silver Lake and the other minority co-investors, if he so chooses.

The new Dell may, or may not, be better than the old Dell. We just don’t know. Which is exactly how Michael Dell wants it.

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Summary: We have no idea if new Dell is doing better than old Dell.


Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan remain on Nusakambangan island. (9NEWS)

An expert witness has argued for the death row challenge of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran to be heard in an Indonesian administrative court, testifying it is the correct forum.

The court last month threw out a challenge against the rejection of clemency for the Bali Nine pair, determining the decrees by President Joko Widodo were not within its jurisdiction.

The men sentenced for heroin smuggling in 2006 have no other legal avenues left and have resorted to the administrative court appeal to spare them from the firing squad.

Otong Rosadi of Ekasakti University on Monday gave his opinion in support of the challenge.

The law expert said in his opinion, all "products of the law" can be reviewed, even clemency, which he argued was not purely a matter of presidential prerogative.

The constitutional rights of the president were still a product of the law, he said.

"The legal product is the presidential decree and a presidential decree rejecting or granting clemency, it's a state administrative matter," he told the court in Jakarta.

"The forum to challenge it is the state administrative court."

Sukumaran and Chan have appealed Joko Widodo's decision to deny them clemeny. (AAP)

Mr Otong maintained this view under questioning from lawyers for the state and judges, who asked if other constitutional rights of the president could also therefore be challenged in the administrative court.

Lawyer for Chan and Sukumaran, Leonard Arpan, said he was confident Mr Otong's evidence was strong.

"I think the expert has delivered all the statements that were required," he told reporters.

Both sides are due to give their conclusions on Wednesday for a decision soon afterwards.

If they are given the chance, lawyers for Chan and Sukumaran will argue President Joko Widodo didn't properly assess their case - including their rehabilitation - before refusing clemency because they are drug offenders.

Several of the 10 prisoners in line for Indonesia's planned simultaneous mass execution are pursuing court action.

Indonesia's Attorney-General HM Prasetyo has committed not to execute them before their legal avenues are exhausted, and has ordered those cases before the Supreme Court to be expedited.

The 10th prisoner, Filipina Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso, will soon join the others on Nusakambangan island as her bid for a Supreme Court judicial review was rejected last week after a matter of days.

Mr Joko and Prime Minister Tony Abbott were photographed speaking on the sidelines of the state funeral for Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore on Sunday.

Mr Abbott has been keen for another chance to speak with Mr Joko again regarding Chan and Sukumaran's fate.

Indonesia's Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir says they did not have time for a meeting, however.

He didn't know what the leaders discussed in passing.

"While there, the president's time was very tight and we didn't arrange any meetings with other heads of state while in Singapore," he told reporters in Jakarta on Monday.

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Summary: The appeal of Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan's denial of clemency will continue in a Jakarta court on Monday.


When Anthony Watson left his job at Nike in December, it captured a lot of headlines. Not only was a rising star executive leaving a Fortune 500 company after only 10 months, but his reasons for leaving fascinated people. Watson, who joined Nike as its CIO in April 2014, was unhappy in the Portland area, Fortune first reported. He is from London and is young, single, gay, and used to urban social life. He experienced a “culture shock” while living in Portland and working in Beaverton, where Nike NKE is based.

Now Fortune has learned where Watson will land next. After taking a few months to examine his options, the 40 Under 40 alum is joining a banking startup called Bitreserve. He will be its president and COO.

The company, founded in the last six months, transfers deposits of the digital currency bitcoin into other currencies and allows customers to send and receive money anywhere in the world for very low fees. A promo video calls Bitreserve “a next-generation money service built on top of bitcoin,” but goes on to describe the volatility of bitcoin, and says that Bitreserve, “solves bitcoin’s volatility problem by enabling you to hold bitcoin denominated as stable, real-world value.” The site currently offers eight currencies: dollar; euro; pound; franc; yen; yuan; rupee; and peso. It also offers commodities—for now, the metals gold, silver, platinum and palladium.

That latter feature was particularly exciting to Watson. “What I think is so revolutionary here is that it can allow you to trade in any commodity,” he told Fortune in an exclusive interview. “Right now it’s metals, but it could be cocoa beans. The broader vision is much bigger than digital currencies.”

Watson’s background is in banking—prior to Nike, he was CIO of Europe, Middle East, and global operations at Barclays. While at Nike, he longed to get back into the banking world in order to help change what he sees as an unjust financial system. “I was itching to make an impact,” he said. “I wanted to do something that is valuable for people broadly, not just in one industry. And what Bitreserve is looking to achieve really democratizes finance. It’s going to help people all over the world. The financial system is inherently unfair—it’s always the richest who have access, and the poorest don’t have access, or when they do, they have to pay astronomical rates.”

Bitreserve charges a 0.45% fee for BTC to USD conversions. The company also stresses transparency—it created a public web site that shows exactly how much money is currently in Bitreserve wallets ($1.43 million) and the currency breakdown (63% bitcoin at the moment). Bitreserve is growing fast: it has 35 employees at five offices and has raised $14.6 million in funding.

While Watson is getting a top job at a young startup, Bitreserve is getting an experienced star who is also an outspoken gay rights activist and GLAAD boardmember. That’s something that Bitreserve founder and CEO Halsey Minor says played a big part in the hire. “I think we’re perfect for him and he’s perfect for us,” Minor said. “Our business is money, and he has an extraordinary amount of experience and success in banking. But also, our ethos is inclusion. He’s a leader in social inclusion. So from my standpoint I don’t think we could have found anyone better.”

Minor was the founder of CNET CBS and a cofounder of Salesforce CRM and is one of the bigger business names to have jumped into digital currency. And yet he is not exactly a bitcoin believer. Whereas most in the bitcoin space fervently refute those who dismiss bitcoin as “fake money,” Minor readily says that the point of his company is to help people turn bitcoin into “real money.” Bitreserve had to begin with bitcoin, Minor says, “because then I didn’t need a bank license to start it. What bitcoin does is allows for the creation of financial institutions without having to go through the traditional financial system, which is the great magical beauty of bitcoin. But what you can expect from us is that in the not-so-distant future, you can put money in with many paths. We’ve taken the idea of bitcoin and applied it to the world consumers already live in, rather than trying to force consumers into a new world that has high risk.”

To be sure, Nike, the country’s leading sports apparel giant, and Bitreserve, a digital currency startup that is less than a year old, couldn’t be more different. And Minor acknowledges, “There appears to be some sort of implied suspicion around [bitcoin] and around anyone doing anything new with money in the U.S. That doesn’t exist in the rest of the world. There’s a desperate need in the U.S. to change the attitude toward new financial systems.” Watson knows the perception that some have of digital currency, and it doesn’t concern him. “I’ll be surprised if bitcoin is here in five years,” he said. “It’s a means to an end. The value of bitcoin isn’t the currency, but the technology. I think once the world becomes more accustomed and attuned to the platform of bitcoin, the noise will go away, and the currency will go away too. The real transformation is the idea of taking all barriers down and having it be ubiquitous. Whatever currency or commodity you want to transact in, you can, and you can do it for free. That’s pretty revolutionary.”

In a way, Watson represents a growing number of workers that refuse to sacrifice personal life for their career. They value work-life balance, and won’t move anywhere just for a job. When he left Nike, Watson realized that he will only be happy living in big cities like New York, Los Angeles, or London. Now, he will live in Los Angeles but travel constantly (mostly between San Francisco and London). Bitreserve has offices in San Francisco, London, Portugal, Shanghai, and Charleston, South Carolina.

“Millennials don’t want to or need to work in one big concrete building in one location,” Watson said. “That’s not how the world works anymore. Some people want to work remotely from home, some want to work from a coffee shop, some want to work at an office. People perform their best when they’re happiest and content in their personal lives. I could have been happy working for another big company, and working in another city than L.A., but this gives me the opportunity to live and work in multiple cities.”

What’s next? Naturally, television. Watson says he has been asked to do a reality show in Los Angeles. He’s thinking about it. “I probably won’t have the time to do it,” he said, “but it’s flattering.”

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Summary: Anthony Watson left Nike because he didn't feel happy in the Portland area it calls home. Now he's headed to Los Angeles, where he'll work for Halsey Minor.


Kenya's interior minister has admitted that intelligence was ignored and the security response botched regarding the Islamist massacre of nearly 150 people at Garissa University College in April.

"There was lack of co-ordination on the side of the officers, there was intelligence that this place was going to be attacked," Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery told a parliamentary committee on Thursday.

Nkaissery said security should have been "beefed up" but was not, and that once the attack began a "lack of co-ordination" undermined the response.

Militants from Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab rebels killed 148 people during the assault on the university in northeast Kenya on April 2. It was the group's deadliest attack to date.

The intelligence and security failings are reminiscent of Kenya's botched response to the 2013 attack on Nairobi's Westgate mall, when prior intelligence was ignored and a lack of co-ordination led to the Kenyan army and police firing on each other.

Appearing before a parliamentary security committee, Nkaissery - who was appointed interior minister in December after his predecessor was sacked following a series of deadly al-Shabab attacks - defended his ministry and instead blamed regional and county security officials for the failings.

Earlier this month two civil servants and seven police officers were suspended pending investigation into suspected negligence.

Nkaissery also said that because the busy university hostels were "congested" and had grilles on the windows it was difficult for students to escape and for soldiers and a specially trained police unit to get inside the buildings, meaning more lives were lost.

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Summary: The Kenyan government has admitted there was intelligence that the Garissa university was going to be attacked and security should have been tighter.


WASHINGTON— One point that Americans often boast about to foreign guests is how our country has assimilated different ethnic groups that at first glance seem irreconcilable. Fleeing political repression and religious persecution, these individuals have endured the most difficult of hardships to enjoy the freedom we have to offer.

At one time, most immigrants' first task was to learn English. This is no longer an accepted fact. Many public sc hools now use bilingual education as a method to bring new citizens i nto the fold of Americansociety. Which is fine, provided that the pro gram adheres to the original concept of bilingual education: the use of the immigrant's native language as a transitory tool that wil l accelerate the processof learning English.

However, many bilingual programs have veered from this mandate, and now use the native language to teach subjects other than English. This deviation from the original concept results largely from the Carter Administration's efforts to expand on the ''Lau'' guidelines, which came out of the 1974 Lau v. Nichols decision by the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs argued that their Chinese-speaking children were being denied equal access to education because they could not understand courses taught in English. As a result of this decision, in which the Court found for the plaintiffs, school districts were admonished to focus their attention on the needs of non-Englishspeaking students. However, the former Administration pushed to create a binding set of ''Lau'' regulations, which would have resulted in school districts being forced into compliance under the threat of withdrawal of funds. Although the regulations were not put into effect, the problem caused by variants of bilingual education linger.

More and more young immigrants are having their entire curriculum taught to them in their native language. The longer they are instructed in the native tongue, the more difficult it becomes for them to learn English in their later years. By allowing this to continue, we are delaying the immigrants' entrance into the mainstream of society.

The use of bilingual ballots compounds this problem. Made possible by the 1975 amendments to the Voting Rights Act, bilingual ballots were intended to bring more non-English-speaking people into our political system. Jurisdictions in 30 states are now required to provide bilingual ballots to their immigrant citizens, and California's 39 affected counties must print ballots in Chinese, Spanish and and American Indian.

This policy conflicts with the explicit requirements for naturalization as a citizen, which state that an applicant must be able to ''read, write and speak words in ordinary usage in the English language.'' Are we telling immigrants that they must know English to become a citizen but that they don't need it once naturalized? These crossed signals that we are sending to immigrants have made our immigration and citizenship requirements vague and unclear.

We must make it clear to everyone that America does have an official language. To that end, I have introduced a constitutional amendment that would make English the official language of the country. The amendment contains provisions that would eliminate the costly and conflicting problem of the bilingual ballot, and return bilingual education programs to their original purpose. The amendment would not scrap all bilingual programs, nor would it prohibit foreign-language requirements in schools or colleges. I strongly believe in learning more than one language, and feel our tendency toward monolingualism has put us at a disadvantage in the international business community.

I have received an overwhelmingly favorable response to my amendment, and many letters of approval have come from former immigrants who have told me how important learning English was to them in settling here.

Our strength and creativity has always come from the diverse talents of ethnic groups, and in no way does my amendment attempt to stifle these rich human resources. What it attempts to do is prevent a growing split among ethnic groups based on their native languages. With each trying to become more powerful than the other, the function of language could change from a means of communication to a tool of cultural assertion. Such a struggle for supremacy could have catastrophic consequences. S.I. Hayakwa is Republican Senator from California.


The nine-digit ZIP code the Postal Service intends to introduce next June 1 is two numbers too long to fit in most people's shortterm memory, claim researchers who study memory processes. This means that looking up a new ZIP code in a directory, closing the book, walking to a desk and writing the number down on an envelope is beyond the mental capacity of most people.

''The short-term memory is like a bucket that can hold seven gallons,'' according to W. Ronald Salafia, professor of psychology at Fairfield University. ''If you load it with nine gallons, the bottom falls out and you lose everything.''

The short-term memory ceiling of seven discrete bits of information was first reported nearly 25 years ago by George Miller in the journal Psychological Review, and has since been validated ''thousands of times,'' Dr. Salafia said.

Dr. Miller read aloud lists of random numbers or letters to subjects who tried to ''read back'' the information to him from memory. The subjects had no problems with blocks of two, three, four or five items, but their recall sometimes broke down at six or seven.

Nearly all subjects missed frequently when trying to re-create an eight-or nine-item list, and on the rare occasions when a subject faithfully reported 10 or 11 items, the success was due to patterns in the numbers or letters that had some association for the subject, such as a home address or a birthdate.

Memory processes seem to be situated in the brain's limbic system - which also mediates emotions - and function by as yet unidentified chemical processes, Dr. Salafia said. In addition to the short-term memory, which can hold seven items for 10 to 20 seconds, humans have immediate and long-term memory storage. 'All or Nothing'

The immediate memory, identified experimentally by G. Sperling in 1963, retains information for only one or two seconds - long enough for a listener to make sense out of a sentence by remembering how it began, or for a typist to transfer information from the eyes to the fingertips. Long-term memories, on the other hand, are thought to persist forever, although they cannot always be retrieved.

''Not only do all normal brains have the same short-term capacity,'' Dr. Salafia said, ''but it seems to be an all-or-nothing phenomenon. When something is lost from short-term memory, it is lost altogether.''

The prodigious memory powers displayed by some individuals almost always entail long-term memory, which has a seemingly limitless capacity.

As for absorbing the nine-digit ZIP code, Dr. Salafia suggests stretching the short-term memory with these three mnemonic devices:

- Focus attention on the number. Any distraction precipitates a dumping of the short-term memory.

- Rehearse the number. Like the name of someone you've just met, you'll lose it immediately if you're not actively thinking about it.

- Reduce the number to seven information chunks by ''packing'' it. In other words, if three of the digits happen to be your telephone area code, for example, you can turn the three into one familiar figure.


A film series for children and young people that may also interest older movie lovers is soon to begin at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville.

Judy Garland in ''The Wizard of Oz'' at 1 and 3 P.M. Saturday will be followed Oct. 3. by George Pal's ''The Time Machine,'' adapted from H. G. Wells's science-fiction novel.

''King Solomon's Mines'' will be shown Oct. 17 and ''Treasure Island,'' made in 1934 with Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper, is on the Dec. 15 bill. From November through May the attractions include ''Drums Along the Mohawk'' with Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert; ''The Mark of Zorro'' with Tyrone Power; Mickey Rooney in ''The Adventures of Huck Finn''; ''Ivanhoe'' with Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Taylor, and Errol Flynn in Rudyard Kipling's ''Kim.''

Children under 8 years of age must be accompanied by an adult. The screenings will be in the Performing Arts Center of the campus at Glen Washington and Kimball Avenues. Admission is $1.50 for all ages. Call 337-0700, ext. 412 for more details. BERRIGAN POETRY READING

During the years that his anti-Vietnam War activities received considerable attention, it was sometimes overlooked that the Rev. Daniel Berrigan had more than a dozen published volumes of verse, prose, essays and fables to his credit.

The now 60-year-old Jesuit priest will read from his poetry at 7 P.M. Thursday in Reisinger Hall at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville.

In the early 1970's, with his brother, Philip, Father Berrigan served two years in Danbury Federal Prison for his part in a protest break-in at the Catonsville, Md., draft office. He is now appealing another sentence of from 3 to 10 years for a similar break-in at a nuclear-missile plant in Pennsylvania.

The reading is free. For more information, call 337-0700, ext. 412. AID FOR STRAYS

Finding someone who can love and care for a three-legged cat is characteristic of the work done by a Westchester group called Just Strays, headquartered in five volunteer foster homes where 60 cats are temporarily housed. ''Traditional animal shelters are not the a nswer,'' said Carole Davis, president of the nonprofit organizatio n. ''Grown animals are usually destroyed because they are considered unadoptable, and those that are not put to death tend to pick up add itional medical problemsfrom the crowded conditions. These days there are more strays than ever because so many landlords won't allow pe ts.''

Just Strays will occupy a booth at the Valhalla Lions Club Flea Market from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. today at the Kensico Dam Plaza, offering skis, boots, bindings, golf carts, glassware, jewelry, antiques and household items. All proceeds will be used for the rescue and care of the animals and for educational work among young people.

''Foster parents'' are provided with food and litter, but are expected to pay $30 for males and $40 for females to cover the cost of neutering, worming and shots to prevent disease. ''The fee would be $70 and $80 at a private veterinarian,'' Mrs. Davis said.

The Animal Welfare League in Valhalla, Animals by Choice in Thornwood and 10 participating veterinarians carry out the medical aspect of the program.

People wishing to adopt or to become foster parents may meet with the animals in any of the five foster homes. ''At present we have no dogs,'' Mrs. Davis said. ''It's more difficult to place dogs in foster care.''

For more information, call 4 28-7969 or 939-7253. ON THE WILD SIDE

The Greenburgh Nature Center on Dromore Road, Scardsdale, also runs a foster-parent program - but for infant animals from the wild. High school students are needed to volunteer a few hours weekly to help feed and care for the animals until they are mature enough to be released.

Birds, squirrels, raccoons, skunks and other creatures are taken to the center in greater numbers than the staff alone can handle, although staff members will provide guidance and food to volunteer helpers.

To sign up or obtain more information, call 723-3470. ELEGANT TABLES

An opportunity to acquire a piece of Haviland china personally autographed by Frederick Haviland, senior vice president of the prestigious company that bears his name, will be availabale to those who attend his Neiman-Marcus seminar on table settings at 11 A.M. Tuesday in the White Plains store. China pieces may also be taken in for identification and appraisal.

The grandson of David Haviland, the American founder of the Limoges manufacturing company, Frederick Haviland was born and educated in France, then returned to the corporation's headquarters in Manhattan. He retains his American citizenship and lives in a pre-Revolutionary house in Somers, N.Y.

There is no charge for any of the programs, but reservations are suggested for the Haviland seminar. Call 428-2000, ext. 2304. 'BEOWULF' PUPPETRY

''Beowulf,'' the Old English legend about a Geatish (Scandinavian) warrior-hero that is often part of the high school or college curriculum, is now available to small children in puppet form.

The Rod and Rose Puppet Theater will present a tragi-comic interpretation of this ancient tale at 2 P.M. Saturday in the New Rochelle Library.

Amy Silberkleit, Michael Schiffer and Rhonda Fregoe, puppeteers who manipulate three-foot rod puppets with unusually expressive faces and body movements, will conduct a question-and-answer period following the performance.

The library is in downtown New Rochelle on Memorial Highway, between Main and Huguenot Streets. There is no admission charge. 58th YORKTOWN FAIR

The Yorktown Grange Fair enters its final day today as it completes its 58th annual weekend fair amid a series of colorful exhibits and diverse entertainment. Over the years, the fair has maintained the rural characteristics of the area's former agricultural economy while adding rides and entertainment for all ages.

This year's livestock and crafts exhibits, along with produce and floral shows, are expected to be the largest to date. Small and large livestock, including goats, hogs, cows and horses, and large numbers of pigeons, poultry and rabbits are among the featured animal exhibits being provided mainly by local Four-H club groups.

Other attractions today include blue grass music by the Horse Country band at 1 and 3:30 P.M., square dancing at 2 P.M. and Paula's German band at 6 P.M. There will also be a pie-eating conte st today at 3 P.M. Food of all varieties will be on sa le.

Because of limited parking at the fairgrounds, free bus-shuttle service will be available today from 11 A.M. to 10 P.M., leaving from the Boces Technical Center on Pinesbridge Road and shopping areas in town. Admission is $2.25 for adults, $1 for children under 12. Parking at the Rochambeau Park fairgrounds, on Moseman Road, is free. Eleanor Charles


Virtually all major tournaments throughout the world, and some that are not so major, publish a daily bulletin giving results, news and a selection of the most interesting deals. This concept was introduced by the great Dutch player-writer, Herman Filaski, at the 1955 European championships in Amsterdam.

Since then, European championship bulletins have invariably been of high quality and popular with enthusiasts in many parts of the world. The bulletins at the 1981 European championships, scheduled to begin in Birmingham, England, July 11, will be edited by Phillip Alder and will follow in this tradition. Readers wishing to subscribe should send $20 to Anne Staveley, Rhu-Na-Bidh, Shieldaig, Strathcarron, Ross-Shire, Scotland.

The host country will be hoping to repeat the double victory it scored in the recent Common Market championships in the same city. The British women's team is particularly strong, and has a highly talented individual performer: Nicola Gardener, daughter of a former European champion, Nico Gardener. Miss Gardener, a reigning European champion, held the South cards on the diagramed deal, which helped her team win the Common Market title.

After one spade by West has been doubled and raised, many players with the South hand would be content to bid three hearts. Admittedly, the spade queen is unlikely to serve any purpose, but the two aces are a potent factor and the aggressive jump to four hearts is not unreasonable. Spade Ace Is Led

West led the spade ace and shifted to the club queen. South won with the ace and tried a diamond to the queen. This lost to the king, and the return of the spade jack was ruffed in dummy. Things went from bad to worse when the club king was ruffed by East. When another spade was led, South thought carefully.

West was known to have begun with at least nine cards in the black suits, and needed a red jack to have a plausible opening bid. It would have to be the diamond jack for the contract to have any hope at this point, so South ruffed the spade lead with the heart queen.

She cashed the heart king and finessed the ten successfully. She then drew the missing trump and took a diamond finesse. Since the jack then fell under the ace, the two club losers disappeared from the closed hand and the game was made. In the replay, the same contract failed by three tricks after some poor declarer play. NORTH S 6 H K Q 8 4 D A Q 10 9 C K 5 4 2 WEST EAST S A K 9 8 4 S J 10 5 3 H 6 H J 9 5 3 D J 6 2 D K 8 5 3 C Q J 10 8 C 7 SOUTH (D) S Q 7 2 H A 10 7 2 D 7 4 C A 9 6 3 Both sides were vulnerable. The bidding: South West North East Pass 1 S Dbl. 2 S 4 H Pass Pass Pass UF248 We t led the spade ace.


PHILADELPHIA THERE are years to remember and years to forget. Wilbert Montgomery isn't sure which this one is. Montgomery is the star running back of the Philadelphia Eagles, the one who must succeed if the Eagles are to beat the Oakland Raiders next Sunday in Super Bowl XV in New Orleans. If Montgomery stays well and runs well, he thinks it will be a year to remember.

''Otherwise,'' he said, ''it hasn't been great.'' It sure hasn't. First, he suffered a painful hip injury on his left side, and in retrospect he thought he returned too soon. Then came a hyperextension of the left knee. Then a left groin pull. Then a twisted left knee. Then a bruised left side. He missed four games and most of a fifth.

Why all the injuries to one side of his body? ''I usually run to my right on outside plays,'' he said. ''When I turn upfield, the pursuit comes from my left. All these injuries happened that way.''

Injuries like that are enough to give anyone a headache. ''Headache?'' he said. ''I have those, too. I had my bell rung twice. Against Dallas, I was knocked out and missed half of the game. Against Minnesota in the playoffs, I was knocked dizzy and missed a couple of series.

''The worst part when you're injured is that you're an outsider on the other side of the fence looking in. You're unable to help your teammates. I feel great now. I'm having my best games now. They depend on me a lot. I've got to contribute.''

They depend on him more than a lot. This is Montgomery's fourth year in professional football. As a 1977 rookie, a sixth-round draft choice from Abilene Christian, he did not become a starter until the final game and ran for 183 yards all season. In 1978, he ran for 1,220 yards, in 1979 for 1,512 yards. This year, slowed by injuries, he ran for 778 yards.

Last season, his running and pass receiving accounted for 40 percent of the Eagles' offense. This season, the number dropped to 20 percent.

Now, said Montgomery, the past means nothing. All that counts is next Sunday. ''We're not going back to the Super Bowl every year,'' he said, ''so we've got to make the best of the opportunity. You have to get yourself in the right frame of mind to win the game. You can't make mistakes. It's not like having a car accident, where you call the insurance company and everything's all right.

''If you go to New Orleans and don't win, you've lost your chance. This is a fun-and-games thing, but the preparation is serious. You have to put all else aside.''

Obviously, Montgomery had put all else aside. He is a serious man of 26. His voice was soft and even, and his words seemed carefully thought out. He had just come from a meeting of the Eagles' offensive unit, and soon he would leave the warm locker room for the chilly artificial turf of Veterans Stadium, where the offense would work on new plays for the Super Bowl.

''Oakland is coming in the same way we are,'' he said. ''They're cocky and they have a winning attitude, an attitude that says, 'I don't care, we're the best.' Well, we think we're the best. We beat them once this year. We think over all we're a better team. We think we can do things on offense they can't do and we think we can score more ways than they can.

''It won't be easy. They've got the biggest defense in the game. Their linebackers could be down linemen on most teams. Matt Millen is how big - 260 pounds? - and he's a linebacker. Ted Hendricks stands 6-7 and he's a linebacker. He could be a defensive end.

''That size creates a problem. We'll probably have to use doubleteam blocking a lot and take away strength from somewhere else to contain those monsters up front.

''The defense can intimidate you by giving you a hard lick. If it bothers you, you may relax and decide not to take a beating the next time you have the ball.

''It should be the other way around. You want to make them feel it. If a guy is going to hit you, you've got to explode into him. The only time we can take our frustrations out is blocking them or putting our heads down when we are about to be tackled.

''If you can punish them, they'll remember. Maybe a guy will think twice before hitting me. Maybe he'll try to contain me, slow me but not stop me, and wait for help. That's O.K. with me. I'll get more yards that way.''

Those are brave words for a more-or-less little man. Montgomery is 5 feet 10 inches and 195 pounds, solid and blocky, but he does not look dangerous. Not until he plays.

''I don't think my size hurts me,'' he said. ''In a way, it helps because I have quickness. I can do a lot of things. Some big guys can't do a lot. I can slip into cracks. On sweeps, I can hide behind offensive linemen and the opponents can't see me. They can't get the initial pop on me.''

Montgomery is unmarried and, he said, for an unusual reason: ''If you're in the limelight, a lot of females tear at you. That would be unfair to a wife, no matter how faithful you are. If I get married, I would want to be 28 or 29 and about to leave football. I could raise a family then. I don't want anybody or anything to come between me and my family.''

Family unity came from his upbringing in Greenville, Miss. Roosevelt Montgomery was a bricklayer and Gladys Montgomery managed a laundry. They have seven sons and two daughters. The eldest boys are Alfred, who separated both shoulders playing college football; Wilbert, who was injured in his senior year in college, and Cleotha now a wide receiver and kick returner for the Cincinnati Bengals. Three other sons are at Long Beach State and one is in high school.

''My mother didn't like football,'' said Wilbert. ''She thought it was too physical. She didn't like it when we came home hopping and limping, with bruises all over our bodies. So she told us we couldn't play football. We played behind her back and then we tore the sports pages out of the paper so she wouldn't read about us.

''We played football after school. By the time she got home after 6, we were home already. On weekends, we would come home bruised and injured, and she wanted to know why. We said we were at the playground. Eventually, she found out we were playing football.

'''If you want to kill yourself,''' she said, 'go ahead. But don't look for sympathy from me.' She still doesn't like it, but she accepts it now.''

She still worries. But Montgomery cannot worry, he said. Instead, he is a fatalist. ''You know the dangers of the sport,'' he said. ''You take a chance every time you're on the field. Life is a chance itself. You can get mugged. You can get hit by a car. When you play football, you accept the dangers. If you love the game, it's worth it. If you don't think it's worth it, it's time to get out.

''But you've got to look to the future. That's where you'll be in a few years, maybe sooner with one injury. You're not going to play football ther rest of your life.''

Illustrations: photo of Wilbert Montgomery


The New York and the American stock exchanges issued yesterday their latest reports of changes in the shareholdings of officers, directors and large stockholders in companies whose shares are listed on the exchanges. The reports of changes follow: NEW YORK EXCHANGE

-Abe Oberlin, president, bought 26,000 shares giving him directly 992,004 shares. AVNET INC.-Leon Machiz, president, sold 40,000 shares and made gift of 920 shares leaving him 51,710 shares. BARRY WRIGHT CORPORATION-Edward A. Johnson, senior vice president, disposed of by gifts 33,000 shares leaving him 84,169. GCA CORPORATION-Ephraim Radner, senior vice president, sold 12,500 shares leaving him 57,974. GOLDEN NUGGET INC.-Robert R. Maxey, president, sold 39,000 shares leaving him 47,280. PRIME COMPUTER INC.-Edward T. Cuddy, vice president, sold 10,000 shares leaving him 11,038. RB INDUSTRIES-James A. Nathan, director, acquired 36,900 shares including private purchase of 33,300 shares giving him 158,500 shares.

ROWAN COMPANIES INC.-Walter J. Hickel, director, bought 20,000 shares giving him 20,000. SCHLUMBERGER LTD.-David S. Browning, secretary, sold 22,750 shares leaving him 123. TEXAS OIL & GAS CORPORATION-William L. Hutchison, chairman of the board, made gifts of 15,200 shares leaving him 685,756. AMERICAN EXCHANGE

CDI CORPORATION-Christian M. Hoechst, executive vice president, sold 10,000 shares leaving him directly 58,557 shares. WRATHER CORPORATION-Monte E. Livingston, executive vice president, made private sale of 10,594 shares leaving him 57,345.

Summary: The New York and the American stock exchanges issued yesterday their latest reports of changes in the shareholdings of officers, directors and large stockholders in companies whose shares are listed on the exchanges. The reports of changes follow: NEW YORK EXCHANGE   AILEEN INC.


The architect and planner Brian Anson, who has died of a heart attack aged 74, was tireless in his battles for the rights of those whose problems others overlooked or thought insurmountable. He was driven by a profound understanding of, and sympathy for, the underdog.

Brian will be remembered for his role in the fight for Covent Garden in the late 1960s. He lost his job at the Greater London council as a result of siding with local residents against the council's plans to tear down the historic buildings and install a monstrous, car-dominated redevelopment after the relocation of the fruit and vegetable market to Nine Elms in south-west London. It was an epic battle between developer and citizen, a pattern then occurring across Europe, but Brian and a group of friends prevailed against the odds. Had they lost, London today would be a less humane and beautiful city.

Small in stature, but wiry, resilient and endowed with talents that grew over time, Brian was a wonderful wordsmith, a considerable artist, a beautiful draughtsman and a true raconteur and revolutionary.

He was born and brought up in Bootle, the docklands area of north Liverpool. It was a tough area in tough times, yet Brian saw how humour and solidarity kept the community together. He was educated at Bootle grammar school and went on to study architecture at Manchester University. He worked as an architect and planner in Liverpool and Dublin in the mid-60s, then arrived at the Greater London council in 1967 as a deputy principal planner for the Covent Garden design team. He later recorded his efforts to save Covent Garden in the book I'll Fight You for It, published in 1981.

I was first introduced to Brian at the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA), where he was a teacher from 1972 to 1980. Alan Boyarsky, then principal of the AA, asked me to review the work of a couple of their fifth-year students, whose class was being taught by Brian. The students, dubbed "the cabbage patch unit", had been working on a project about planning allotments and the AA was concerned that their work could be seen as inappropriate training for a career designing buildings.

In the end, the students passed, not least thanks to Brian's commitment to their avant-garde approach. Nobody who knew Brian would have been surprised by this. He had always valued forward thinking and activism, and focused his considerable energy on creating an awareness of the difficulties faced by disadvantaged communities.

When Brian was teaching at the AA, he started an architectural unit to deal specifically with derelict areas and their socially excluded inhabitants. His unit at the AA covered a wide variety of projects, including successful campaigns to halt major redevelopment in Ealing, west London, and the village of Bridgtown in Staffordshire. The unit ran a study into the decline of the industry and villages of the Colne valley in West Yorkshire and another in the Afan valley in south Wales, looking at such issues as healthcare and community hospitals, leisure provision, employment and housing.

He became a dynamic force on the Architects Revolutionary Council (ARC), a movement dedicated to community architecture, from 1973, and the Schools of Architecture Council (SAC), a forum for open debate among architecture students, in 1979. His commitment to empowerment was also reflected in his work for Planning Aid in the early 1980s, when he toured Ireland and the UK in the "mobile planning aid unit", a converted VW caravanette, offering consultation and planning assistance.

During this period, he became closely involved in supporting the rights of those living in the Divis Street flats, a grim housing estate in Belfast where the British army had constructed an observation post on the roof and occupied the top two floors. "In all my community struggles, I have never seen anything like it," Brian wrote to me at the time. "The residents asked me to help in their crusade to demolish the place. We found ourselves taking on the British government ... and we beat them after five years."

Ten years ago, the battle to conserve the Hoxton Square area in east London finally got to Brian. He sensed a bitter avarice there – it was not difficult to understand why, when Old Street was all that separated the rundown and depressed area of Hoxton from the richest square mile on the planet.

Semi-retirement in France beckoned, but his sense of justice still drove him on. The socialist element of the French architectural establishment adopted him as one of their own, and he would occasionally give one of his remarkable lectures at their behest. I remember one in particular at the Venice Biennale and another at the Sorbonne.

From 2001, Brian revisited the UK every year to teach at Birmingham University. The module on community involvement that he ran there, with his great friend Mike Beazley, focused on unlocking and sharing the deep understanding that students had about their own communities.

A great friend, leader and teacher, Brian was one of a tiny handful of heroes I have had the good fortune to know. We exchanged letters regularly over the years – he was a marvellous correspondent – about everything from political horrors to daily life, and I shall miss the long conversations over many a beer in dark pubs, discussing the ways of the world and plotting the next revolution. Brian taught me to understand those who suffer indignities at the hands of our society.

At the end of his life, he shared a small cottage in the Dordogne with his wonderful wife, Mary. He talked constantly about what a tower of strength she had been, and about his children, of whom he was very proud.

He is survived by Mary and their sons Conn and Finn. Two daughters, Niamh and Mary, predeceased him.

• Brian Anson, architect, born 26 March 1935; died 22 November 2009

Summary: Architect, planner and tireless battler on behalf of the underdog


Update 6:15pm: Dunkin’ Donuts shares priced at $19, above their price range of $16 to $18.

FORTUNE — America may run on Dunkin’, but investors may want to run away from Dunkin’ Brands when the private equity-backed company goes public on Wednesday.

Valuations for the franchise behemoth look richer than the confectioneries being served up by its flagship brands, Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin & Robbins. The private equity firms that took the company private during the buyout boom hope that this offering will make Dunkin’ look more attractive to prospective buyers down the road. But that could be a tall order given today’s bleak economic climate.

It’s hard to miss a Dunkin’ Donuts when pounding the pavement in New York City or Boston. They are everywhere in the northeastern United States — in fact, there is one Dunkin’ Donuts store for every 9,700 people in the region. In New England, where Dunkin’ got its start back in the 1940s, the company has a 52% market share of all breakfast visits and a 57% market share of all the coffee served up by quick service restaurants.

Coffee, it turns out, is the big money maker for Dunkin’, not donuts or ice cream. Approximately 60% of the firm’s sales for 2010 were generated from coffee and other beverages. The company plans on increasing that number as it focuses the bulk of its advertising on its beverages through campaigns such as “America Runs on Dunkin” and “What are you Drinkin’?”

So the firm is in essence a coffee shop that sells some donuts and ice cream on the side. It plans on doubling the number of stores it has through expansion in international markets and at home in the western U.S. But the money it’s raising in the IPO isn’t going toward that expansion — it’s going toward lowering its crushing debt load.

Dunkin has debt — lots of it. It was taken private in 2006 in a leveraged buyout by a consortium of private equity firms — Bain Capital Partners, The Carlyle Group and Thomas H. Lee Partners paid $2.4 billion to buy the company, mostly through borrowed cash, which was then parked on Dunkin’s balance sheet. As with most private equity deals, the hope was to grow the company just enough in order to flip it for a tidy profit in around five years.

And grow it did. From 2008 to 2010, the consortium lowered upfront capital expenditure costs for franchisees to open a new restaurant by 23%, helping to drive store openings at home and abroad. The number of stores across their network grew by 1,615 in 2010, bringing the total number to over 16,000. And since Dunkin’ is nearly 100% franchise-owned, the expansion required limited financial investment from Dunkin’ Brands as the new store development were funded by franchisees.

But while the consortium has been able to grow the business in terms of the number of locations, it hasn’t been able to grow its revenues fast enough to yield the 20% annual returns that their investors are looking for. Since 2007, the first full year the consortium controlled Dunkin’ Brands, same store U.S. sales have been less than stellar, growing at 1.3% in 2007, -0.8% in 2008, -1.3% in 2009 and 2.3% in 2010. From 2008 to 2010, the company generated total revenues of $1.66 billion and an operating profit of around $237 million for a net operating profit margin of around 14%.

But add in the debt payments, and the company’ profit is wiped out, for a total net loss of $208 million.

That doesn’t sound like a recipe for a tasty investment, which is probably why the consortium hasn’t been able to offload Dunkin’ at a price that satisfies their investors. Normally, private equity would completely exit its position in an IPO, but in this case, the consortium is holding on to around 75% of the company. At $17 a share, the middle of the offering range of $16 to $18 a share, the company will raise around $378 million, which implies a total valuation for the company at around $2.1 billion, around $300 million less than what the PE firms paid five years ago.

The members of the consortium recently paid themselves $500 million in a special dividend, which ended up as debt on the company’s books, so the IPO proceeds will essentially go to pay for that little kicker. After the offering, the company’s debt burden would fall to $1.5 billion, saving it around $40 million a year in interest payments.

But even with the reduced debt load, is Dunkin’ worth the $16 to $18 a share that the consortium is asking? Based on that valuation, the company would have a price to earnings ratio of around 80 times its trailing 2010 earnings – higher than most tech companies during the first dot-com bubble and far higher than most today. But factor in debt savings from the money raised and the price to earnings ratio should fall to the mid to lower 30s.

That still seems expensive compared to its competitors like Starbucks SBUX and McDonald’s MCD , which currently trade at 17 and 28 times earnings. Dunkin’s price points are more like McDonald’s and it doesn’t sell the higher-end coffee products that allow Starbucks to charge a premium to their customers. While the company’s growth strategy is ambitious, it is unclear it can capture enough high-margin customers in new markets to justify trading at a premium to Starbucks.

After all, Dunkin’ controls the New England market primarily because it was born there ages ago, not because it’s such a superior product. Getting people in Houston, Seattle or Beijing to put down their Shipley’s donuts, Starbucks lattes or their oolong tea for some Dunkin’ products would be tough. Such an expansion would require a lot of investment in advertising by the parent company, eating away at whatever little profit it is able to generate each quarter.

Despite the heady valuation, the consortium is betting that the equity markets will come to their aid. Brokers tell Fortune that the deal is oversubscribed at this point, which could mean it will price at the higher end of the range. But like a sugar high, Dunkin’s price could crash hard after the euphoria of the first bite wears off.

Summary: The Dunkin’ Donuts IPO is expected to be hot. But like a sugar high, Dunkin’s price could crash hard after the euphoria of the first bite wears off.


FORTUNE — Say what you want about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act — and it’s rare to hear anything positive said about it — but since it was enacted in 2002, the routine incidence of corporate fraud has diminished. On an almost weekly basis during the early 2000s, monolithic firms like WorldCom and Enron, along with scores of lesser firms, proved to be dreams built upon mere vapors. Those wild and crazy days have long receded from investors’ memories.

Did Sarbanes-Oxley outlaw fraud and imbue corporate America with enlightened honesty? Of course not. For all players in the financial reporting arena, the Act simply raised the stakes for acting badly. It mandated changes for auditors that made their oversight more painful by putting them under the thumb of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. It required companies to install basic accounting controls that allowed earlier detection of aberrant behavior and made life harder for fraudsters — in total, demanding the kind of infrastructure nobody really cares about when they’re high on the thrill of building a company through deal after deal.

The stakes were painfully raised for CEOs and CFOs, who now had to certify in the financial statements that they’re responsible for establishing and maintaining such controls, and that those controls ensure that material information about the company and its subsidiaries gets to the right officers within the firm. There probably isn’t a CEO or CFO in the country who hasn’t flinched at least once when signing that certification — and that requirement is probably making Citigroup’s CEO Michael Corbat grind his teeth down to the gumline.

MORE: Citi CEO says employees broke the rules

Citi’s C fourth-quarter after-tax earnings restatement of $235 million didn’t matter according to the market: The stock closed a mere six cents lower on Friday when news broke of the scandal at the bank’s Mexican subsidiary, Banamex. Yet the announcement contained a couple of peculiarities, one related to Sarbanes-Oxley, and one that shows how companies need to go beyond that law’s requirements.

Thus far, Citi has ascertained that the fraud amounted to $400 million of bogus receivables financed by its Banamex subsidiary for Oceanografia S.A., a Mexican oil services company, ostensibly to help speed up cash flow from OSA’s customer, Pemex, the Mexican state-owned oil company. This accounts receivable financing program took place over several years — but Citigroup apparently became suspicious only when it learned of OSA’s suspension from bidding on new Pemex contracts. If the SarbOx-style internal controls were in place to ensure that material information in the firm was getting to the right officers, should it really take years to find out that $400 million of receivables are worthless?

Sarbanes-Oxley provided disincentives for managers to behave badly, but there’s an incentive issue at work in the Citi episode that counters good internal controls. The company’s press release notes that while Banamex’s airy loans amounted to $400 million, the pretax charge was reduced by “an offset to compensation expense of approximately $40 million associated with the Banamex variable compensation plan.” In other words, some Banamex employees could earn a 10% bonus for making poor loans and keeping them on the books, or maybe even by making loans out of thin air. Evidently there was an incentive at work to present false financial information, and not enough of a disincentive to prevent bad behavior.

MORE: Why Google should acquire Tesla

No doubt, Mr. Corbat will make some very visible examples of the managers who allowed this to happen. It’s hard not to expect this kind of thing to erupt again, though — maybe at Citi, maybe at another giant bank. These banks push the limits of the span of control that managers can actually handle. They’re not just too big to fail — they might be too big to manage, too.

Jack T. Ciesielski is president of R.G. Associates, Inc., an asset management and research firm in Baltimore that publishes The Analyst’s Accounting Observer, a research service for institutional investors.

Summary: Trouble at the big banker reminds us that the 2002 law did some good.


(Poets&Quants) — When Robert’s image pops up on a screen on the wall, all eyes in the room are transfixed on the handsome 30-year-old Brit who is applying to the MBA program at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

The eyes belong to the seven members of the school’s MBA admissions committee who sit, like film critics, to judge the candidate’s video performance. Robert is in a dark suit, with a blue shirt and red tie. He comes across confident and articulate, doing nothing at least to put him in the reject pile.

“Hello there,” he says in his clipped British accent. “So how do I like my colleagues to see me? First of all, I’d like them to see me as somebody who is fun and outgoing, who is good to work with and can actually introduce some fun into stressful working environments. I think some of the most valuable activity I’ve done has evolved around when we were able to break down some of the social barriers between inter-department teams to enable us to work more effectively together.”

Welcome to the brave new world of MBA admissions.

Rotman, which required applicants to answer two pre-recorded questions on video last year as a pilot, is now introducing them as a screening tool for admissions. Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management said on July 29 that it would also require a video component to its MBA application this year. Kellogg joins Yale University’s School of Management, which is also going to the videotape for this upcoming MBA application season.

Other B-schools are dabbling in video, but most still offer alternatives to camera-shy candidates. The University of Texas’ McCombs School of Business and NYU’s Stern School of Business both accept video responses to questions that allow candidates to choose from several different answer formats, including the traditional essay. UCLA’s Anderson School of Management offered a video option last year, but scrapped it when some students didn’t have access to the necessary technology. Most recently, the admissions team at Europe’s INSEAD has hinted that the school may introduce video interviews in its upcoming application cycle.

Some admissions officials hope that requiring applicants to answer unexpected questions on video will show candidates unscripted and unrehearsed. That’s become increasingly difficult at a time when applicants are increasingly hiring admissions consultants to sharpen their resumes, polish their essays, and coach recommenders.

Already, some consultants are responding to the change by offering coaching to help applicants with the video prompts. Chicago-based consultant The MBA Exchange says it is adding a “video specialist” to its team to provide guidance and feedback to applicants as they plan for video-based interaction with their target schools. “His academic and professional credentials span theatre, psychology, and multimedia communication, enabling us to advise clients on both content development and authentic delivery,” says Dan Bauer, CEO and founder of The MBA Exchange, which plans to offer video coaching at no extra charge to clients who pay for the firm’s “comprehensive” consulting package.

For a business school’s admissions staff, the use of video also can save time because it’s often used as a replacement for written essays, which take longer to read and assess. “It is easier and it provides a little bit more variety than just sitting down with a static application,” says Niki da Silva, director of MBA recruitment and admissions at the Rotman School in Toronto.

“We found it incredibly helpful,” she adds. “It really allowed the admissions committee to bring more objectivity to the process.” Usually, only one member of the admissions committee will interview an applicant when he or she is presented in committee. With video, every member of the panel can see the applicant in action. “It’s been helpful to identify superstars and to make some of the tough decisions.”

At Kellogg, MBA candidates will have several minutes to answer a spontaneous, randomized question on a Skype-like screen. “We felt like this was a great opportunity to meet our applicants from wherever they might be in the world,” says Kate Smith, Kellogg’s assistant dean of admissions and financial aid. ”We felt that we were past the tipping point in terms of video technology and comfort with it – most applicants would have used Skype or FaceTime.”

Kellogg’s applicants will have the luxury of three tries to record a compelling answer. If they bomb the first question, they can discard it and request another one – they’ll receive a different question each time. While it sounds stressful, the admissions team hopes it will lead to more authentic interactions with the more than 5,000 people who apply to Kellogg every year.

”The spirit of the questions is to get to know our candidates on a more personal level in a spontaneous format,” Smith says. “They’re designed to bring to life the person we’ve learned about on paper in the application, including their passions, interests and ideas.”

The video component will not replace Kellogg’s personal interviews – a mainstay of the B-school’s rigorous application process. Currently, second-year students and alumni conduct many of the in-person interviews.

Kellogg, says da Silva, consulted with Rotman a few months ago before deciding to launch the video essay. Rotman claims that even jittery applicants have generally given the new video test a thumbs up. “They thought it was a little daunting but they liked it because they knew that at least they would be able to get in front of the admissions committee virtually,” she says. “It gave them the chance to tell their story, although it was a little intimidating.”

During its pilot year, Rotman didn’t grade the videos. But now it intends to do so. “About 10% to 15% were just not very strong,” estimates da Silva. “Then there was a small percentage, about 20%, that really stood out, largely because of the content and not just delivery.”

Rotman is making some adjustments. During the pilot, a standard question was asked of all applicants and then a second question was randomly chosen from a bank of some 25 queries. Each question required a response no longer than one and a half minutes.

But the element of surprise was sometimes lost when applicants anonymously began posting the questions on message boards. So this year, the standard question has been tossed and the list of questions has been expanded to slightly more than 100—half of them on the candidate’s values and the remaining half on their experiences and interests.

As for Robert, he easily passed his screen test. The admissions committee at Rotman thought him confident and articulate, though it had questions about other aspects of his application, including the fact that he was currently unemployed. So even his stellar on-tape performance didn’t completely sway the admissions staff.

Summary: Northwestern Kellogg has joined a growing roster of top B-schools asking applicants to submit video essays as part of the admissions process.


There’s nothing special about most jokes, says Trevor Noah, who makes his living telling them. In fact, “to be honest,” he says, “most jokes are horrible.”

Noah, the South Africa native who was named in March as Jon Stewart’s surprise successor on “The Daily Show,” hopes to pull out some of his best material when he takes over the host’s chair on the long-running Comedy Central series in late September.

His elation over getting the nod was almost instantly tempered, as you might recall, when some enterprising Twitter scavengers dug up a few old tweets that featured women, Asians, and Jews as the butts of some inelegant wisecracks.

Noah was working in Dubai at the time. He’d received the news about being named Stewart’s successor while in Dubai as well.

Being far overseas for both headlines “was the best thing that could have happened,” says Noah, who performs Saturday at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, N.H., as part of a tour of East Coast venues. “I was removed from everything. The highs and lows were contained.”

Some of Trevor Noah’s more controversial tweets took hackneyed shots at women, Jewish people, and LGBT folks.

He responded on Twitter: “To reduce my views to a handful of jokes that didn’t land is not a true reflection of my character, nor my evolution as a comedian,” he wrote.

Those old jokes were bad ones, he admits, but he’s not apologetic about them. “You just have to have your wits about you,” Noah says in his most proper English, one of four languages he speaks fluently. (His new live show is called “Lost in Translation.”) The uproar he briefly faced was an example of “faux rage combined with crazy mob justice,” he says. “People are very quick to [jump into] a mob, and they don’t even know why they’re jumping in.”

Under Stewart, that kind of herd mentality has inspired one of the reasons for “The Daily Show’s” great popularity. For more than 16 years, the host provided an amusing nightly antidote to the mobs lurching after the latest scandals and political and cultural flashpoints.

As every legend’s successor is obliged to concede, Noah claims that he’ll never really replace Stewart. But he seems plenty confident in taking over the job.

“My goal is to live up to that in a way that’s authentic to myself,” he says. “Finding the truth, and finding the funny.”

In fact, he says, Stewart recently told Noah that one of the main reasons he’s stepping down is that he’d become increasingly despondent over the news he was “reporting.”

“He was frustrated — whether it was [the mass shooting in] Charleston or the war in Iraq, it really weighed down on him. He said, ‘You know what? I’m tired.’

“I’m fresh,” says Noah, who is 31. “I can still see the funny in things.”

Noah established his career in America with a series of one-man shows, including one called “Born a Crime.” In his native Johannesburg, his black mother had to hide the fact that her son was born to a white father.

Long before he had made a name for himself onstage, Noah felt famous. “I was, like, my mum’s number one star,” he says. “She made me feel like a celebrity whenever I walked into the room.”

Not that his new gig means a whole lot to his mother.

“My mum is very weird,” he says. “She doesn’t watch TV. She doesn’t really know much about pop culture.

“Her metric for my success, she measures by how people react to the idea of me in the street. ‘Do you make people feel good after they come in contact with what you do? If so, then good job.’

“She taught me that it really is about how you make people feel, even if it’s one life, in one small way. Sometimes you forget as a comedian — the hustle and bustle, the big picture, TV and the movies — you forget what you have, which is an opportunity to make change in a small way.”

He’s a quick study, having taught himself to speak in various regional dialects around America since he started working over here.

“I grew up doing that — mimicking,” he says. “I grew up in a country that was so diverse. One of the first ways to navigate the whole world of changing democracy was to mimic people.”

In the United States, he says, he’ll try out the local twang when he’s ordering a burger and fries in the drive-through lane.

“If you sound like them, they’ll treat you differently” than if you don’t, he says.

Long before he arrived here, Noah figured out a few things about America by watching syndicated sitcoms — “Roseanne,” “Family Matters,” “Good Times” — on the three main networks his family got at home in Johannesburg.

Just to be invited on as a “Daily Show” correspondent, as he was a few times before being offered the hosting position, was mind-boggling, he says.

“That was such a faraway place for me. I’m a kid that grew up basically in a hut in South Africa.”

Making a high-profile career of comedy in the world capital of weirdness — well, that’s still sinking in.

28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, N.H., Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

Summary: Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” successor says there is nothing special about jokes. In fact, he says, “most jokes are horrible.”


FORTUNE — As far as Apple news goes, the last week has been rife with reports from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg that the company is developing a new, cheaper iPhone. (Certainly, it’s something we advocated for.) But now, Apple SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller has gone on the record as saying that such a device “will never be the future of Apple products.”

Interviewed by Chinese newspaper Shanghai Evening News, and translated by The Next Web, Schiller nixes the idea, stating that doing so would be contradictory to the company’s uncompromising design philosophy. “Every product that Apple creates, we consider using only the best technology available,” he explained. “This includes the production pipeline, the Retina display, the unibody design, to provide the best product to the market.” Schiller further said that even though Apple’s AAPL market share may hover around 20% currently, the company owns a whopping 75% of the profit.

As The Next Web points out, Schiller doesn’t drill down into specifics, just that a “cheap smartphone” will never be the future of Apple products. That still leaves room for interpretation. Schiller suggests a “cheap smartphone” by nature is an poor, inferior product — one Apple doesn’t make. A new iPhone with a somewhat lower price target, just like the iPad mini before it, could still be in development over at Cupertino and very well see the light of day so long as it adheres to Apple’s high standards.

Summary: Apple market head Phil Schiller told a Chinese newspaper the rumors aren't true.


People with closer ties to the survivalist retail world, though say they do expect to see some kind of sales bump. (Early figures from Amazon bear this out; as of Wednesday sales of a type of full-body protective suits were up 131,000 percent and sales for one type of mask had risen 18,000 percent in 24 hours. Amazon does not give actual sales figures.)

Read MoreA closer look at the disease

"I think you're going to see some of those people panicking," said Vic Rantala, former owner of Safecastle, which has been servicing the survival market for over 12 years.

"Those who are most fearful at the moment will be locking themselves into their homes—maybe first going out and topping off their supplies at their local stores, as opposed to ordering products that will be coming through the mail—because to take delivery of something means they have to answer the door."

Officials with the American Prepper's Network say it's premature to be talking about a lockdown, even for the most cautious preppers.

Instead, they say, this is a good reminder to check inventories on things like surgical masks, and perhaps follow the example of some Asian countries, where it's not uncommon for people to wear those masks as they walk around town.

Summary: People in the preparedness community already have the supplies to handle a wide variety of crises, says Daisy Luther, who runs The Organic Prepper blog.


What's left now, though, is a point where the Fed has indicated a desire to tighten at a time when its biggest global counterparts are easing. That's resulted in a firming of the dollar, a looming earnings recession in which U.S. profits are forecast to decline in two consecutive quarters—and could well turn negative for the year—and first-quarter GDP gains that could be anemic or nonexistent.

Read MoreProfit recession: This is what you need to know

"Zero ... is just an unnatural rate six years into a recovery." Boockvar said. "But the problem is that GDP growth hasn't averaged more than 2.5 percent (during the recovery), so they're stuck in this lackluster, mediocre-type growth rate."

Investors have recoiled amid the current conditions.

Outflows from equity-based funds have reached their highest level since the darkest days of 2009, just as the recession was ending and the Fed was kicking its zero interest rate policy and quantitative easing into high gear. The central bank expanded its balance sheet to $4.5 trillion during QE as it bought bonds and injected liquidity into the capital markets.

Read MoreInvestors flee market at crisis-level pace

However, this time the equity outflows are being met with Fed tightening, not easing. In fact, some on Wall Street believe the market has not come to terms yet with just what is about to happen with monetary policy.

Hans Mikkelsen, credit strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, in a note to clients this week issued a warning about the dichotomy between market perception and Fed intention:

Our view that the market is underestimating the rate-hiking cycle is founded most importantly in New York Fed President (Bill) Dudley's speeches suggesting that the Fed wants to tighten financial conditions, which includes raising long-term interest rates...

In terms of short term interest rates we note that the market is pricing in a dramatically slower rate-hiking cycle than suggested by even the new lowered Fed dot plot (a diagram that depicts Fed members' rate expectations).

Thus we have a big gap between the Fed's view and what is priced into financial markets. This difference needs to be reconciled at the tail end of an unprecedented reach for yield trade, on the back of an extraordinary 5-6 years of zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) and QE, a collapse in dealer balance sheets and a much higher proportion of the market in less stable hands of mutual fund and ETFs. At the very least this means that risks are very high, and that we should position defensively against the possible technical headwinds associated with the coming shift in monetary policy.

Compounding the problem is that the Fed is left with precious little in its toolkit to combat any unexpected bouts of weakness. It certainly can't lower rates—though some other central banks actually have gone to negative nominal rates—and another round of QE is unlikely after the Fed just wrapped up the third round six months ago.

Read MoreFed policies have cost savers $470 billion: Study

The Fed, then, is likely to rely on a communications strategy to make the market believe that it's not on a predetermined course. Chair Janet Yellen was set to deliver a speech Friday afternoon that will be closely watched for clues about future direction.

Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, believes the Fed will enact its first rate hike at the September meeting, which is the consensus view now. Dollar strength will moderate, the economy will shake off the first-quarter blues and consumers will propel growth going forward, factors that will combine to allow the central bank to begin raising rates at a gingerly pace, he said.

"Even with a strengthening dollar and the expectation of a rising fed funds rate," LaVorgna said in a note, "monetary policy will remain highly accommodative for the foreseeable future."

Summary: The Federal Reserve finds itself in an uncomfortable position heading into its first rate-hiking cycle in nearly a decade.


Doug Kanter | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Construction of an apartment complex in the Binhai New Area of Tianjin, China

Despite widespread talk of "deleveraging" after a global credit bubble burst in 2008, the world continues to pile on more debt. According to a new study by McKinsey, the world ended last year some $57 trillion deeper in debt than it was in 2007.

The total tab—owed by governments, companies and households—is now more than twice the value of the world's total economic output.

The biggest chunk of new borrowing since 2007—some $25 trillion—has come from governments going deeper into hock. Of the nearly 50 countries included in the analysis, only five—Argentina, Egypt, Israel, Romania and Saudi Arabia—have paid down some of their debt.

Read MoreFinance ministers for Germany and Greece meet

For the U.S., McKinsey figures the total outstanding debt of all households, non-financial corporations, and government comes to about 233 percent of gross domestic product—which ended last year at $17.7 trillion. That works out to a total U.S. debt of a little more than $41 trillion.

Government was the source of that added borrowing (up 35 percent since 2007), while corporations pared debt by two percent and households cut back by 18 percent. U.S. banks shrank their total debt by 24 percent.

Summary: The world ended last year some $57 trillion deeper in debt that it was in 2007, according to a new study by McKinsey.


To be sure, some believe the low bond yields have a more traditional macro-economic cause.

"U.S. bond yields are low because growth and inflation are low, not just in absolute sense, but also relative to expectations," JPMorgan said in a note last week. U.S. economic growth expectations rose steadily from May to December of 2013, and then fell back quickly this year, it noted.

The current economic recovery in the U.S. is the weakest since World War II, it noted.

Read More Are junk bonds losing their 'high-yield' status?

"Lower growth pushes bond yields down, and countries with disappointing growth will see yields falling versus countries with better growth," it said.

But even as yield levels fell this year, they didn't go as low as the year-ago levels as the first Fed interest rate hike is a nearer event, JPMorgan said. In mid-May of 2013, before the Fed first broached the idea of tapering its asset purchases, the 10-year U.S. Treasury was yielding around 1.60 percent.

Like Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan expects bond yields will pick up later this year.

"Relief that the second quarter is picking up from the first quarter, both in the U.S. and globally (ex Japan), is set to put some upward pressure on bond yields," JPMorgan said. But it doesn't expect a big climb in yields until the Fed gets closer to its first rate hike.

—By CNBC.Com's Leslie Shaffer; Follow her on Twitter @LeslieShaffer1

Summary: Bond yields have stymied expectations they would rise and analysts seeking a reason may not need to dig deeper than simple supply and demand.


Aug 20 (Reuters) - Consolidation among U.S. banks, particularly capital-squeezed small- and mid-cap lenders, is set to rise in the next year or two due to persistently low interest rates, RBC banking analyst Gerard Cassidy said.

The increase in deal activity will also be driven by expense pressure from the new regulatory environment, Cassidy wrote in a note to clients.

U.S. regional banks have long complained that capital reforms, intended to rein in the excesses of bigger banks, have placed undue burdens on smaller lenders.

Now, an imminent interest rate hike appears doubtful after the U.S. Federal Reserve's meeting minutes on Wednesday highlighted concern over the state of the global economy.

Cassidy, who is rated 4-star by Thomson Reuters StarMine, said acquisitions by bigger banks, however, are unlikely until late 2016 or 2017 due to the heightened regulatory scrutiny.

Most banking buys so far have been by lenders with less than $5 billion in assets.

This week, BB&T Corp said it would buy National Penn Bancshares Inc for about $1.8 billion, hot on the heels of regulatory approval for its $2.5 billion takeover of Susquehanna Bancshares Inc, a rare large U.S. banking deal since the financial crisis.

Cassidy said lenders that had strong takeover appeal included Republic First Bancorp Inc, Cascade Bancorp , Anchor BanCorp Wisconsin Inc, Capital City Bank Group Inc and Heartland Financial USA Inc .

More than 2,800 deals worth a total $240 billion have been announced this year in the global finance industry, an increase of 8 percent in value terms from the same period last year, according to Thomson Reuters data.

(Reporting by Richa Naidu and Tenzin Pema in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Summary: Aug 20- Consolidation among U.S. banks, particularly capital-squeezed small- and mid-cap lenders, is set to rise in the next year or two due to persistently low interest rates, RBC banking analyst Gerard Cassidy said. This week, BB&T Corp said it would buy National Penn Bancshares Inc for about $1.8 billion, hot on the heels of regulatory approval for its $2.5...


When it comes to investing, these guys have had their fair share of failures.

Self-made millionaires Michael "Rooster" McConaughey and Wayne "Butch" Gilliam, veterans of the oil-and-gas pipeline industry, know what it's like to lose and lose big.

Gilliam and McConaughey are no strangers to making mistakes, but they have found a way of tempering their losses.

"It's kind of like the stock market," Gilliam said. "That's why you diversify. You don't put all your eggs in one basket … some things's gonna go good, some are gonna be in the middle and some are gonna excel. And hopefully at the end of the day, when you add it all up, you know, you're ahead of the game."

Summary: "West Texas Investors Club's" self-made millionaires Rooster and Butch discuss how to prepare for investment failures.


It has been one year since I took part in one of the most surreal and expensive taste tests in human history. No, I didn’t eat a black Périgord truffle seasoned with gold or a bowl of beluga caviar. Last August in London, with 200 journalists and several hulking cameras staring at me, I was one of the two people to taste the so-called Frankenburger: the world’s first lab-grown beef burger, a five-ounce patty grown from cow stem cells that took a Dutch scientist four years of research and $332,000 to create.

Over the past 12 months, I’ve been asked The Question dozens of times, and each time I have given variations of the same underwhelming answer (it was ok; needs more fat). But I have also tried to make it clear that I hoped the burger I tried was just a first draft—the beginning of the meat-culturing age.

But as time has passed and I get fewer opportunities to say “it was one small bite for man, one giant bite for mankind,” I’ve started to wonder: Did that London event mean anything? Will it be just another weird moment in stunt-eating history? Or was it really The Beginning of the Cultured Meat Age?

The most exciting news I heard last summer was not that a cultured beef burger was actually, finally, being made—nor that I would be the guinea pig flown to London to try it. The news that got me most excited was that the mystery man bankrolling the burger was the co-founder of Google with an estimated net worth of $30.6 billion and a history of making sci-fi a reality. As soon as I heard the name Sergey Brin, I instantly thought: cultured beef could really happen.

But wait. Although Brin has nearly limitless resources, he also has limitless, omnivorous interests—everything from driverless cars to adventure space travel to asteroid mining projects. Brin didn’t attend last year’s burger tasting and hasn’t made any public comment on cultured meat for the past year. I wondered whether this was a one-burger-and-done project for him?

Not the case, said Dr. Mark Post, the Dutch scientist who created the cultured beef burger.

“He’s as determined as we are to make this happen,” Post told me, adding that he’ll be traveling to California later this month and firming up a commitment for additional funding with Brin’s foundation.

While Post declined to reveal the specific dollar amount, he said that Brin’s second round of support will increase the size of his team from five to 20. In addition to tissue engineers and food scientists, the larger team will have experts on consumer preferences and on how to get the burger approved by food regulators.

With Brin’s funding, Post said that the 2.0 version of the lab burger will have several major improvements:

More fat. My biggest complaint was that that even fried in oil and butter, by a Gordon Ramsay-trained chef, the cultured beef burger tasted about as dry as a turkey burger. The first cultured beef burger had 20,000 muscle fibers but zero fat cells. It’s fat that gives a burger its critical juiciness. And it’s fat, some believe, that drives our meat cravings. During the next year, Post’s team will focus on growing fat tissue, which is slower and more technically challenging than many assume.

More red meat. Most burger-eaters have never heard of myoglobin. But this protein, whose job is to store oxygen in muscle cells, is what makes red meat red. The first cultured beef burger lacked myoglobin, and if it wasn’t for some coloring additives—a mix of beet juice, saffron and caramel—the burger would have looked more like chicken: yellowish and white. By adding myoglobin, the next burger will not just look like red meat, it will also have a higher iron content.

No more serum derived from blood from unborn cows. By far the biggest issue Post will address in the next year is the growth factor problem, which is more or less a deal-maker or breaker for lab-grown meat. My burger was created from 20,000 strands of muscle tissue grown in fetal bovine serum. It’s not just that FBS, which is collected from unborn cows at slaughterhouses, is inconsistent with the whole animal welfare spirit of cultured meat. It’s that FBS is ridiculously expensive. Some critics, such as synthetic biologist Christina Agapakis, call the high cost of cell culture the fatal flaw of the idea. But Post believes otherwise. He said he’s experimenting with 30 vegetarian and yeast-based growth serums—broths of amino acids, salts and sugars that will mimic hormones and catalyze meat cell growth. He says two cultures are particularly promising.

It’s an ambitious agenda, but with Brin’s backing, the increased staff and growing signs of consumer interest in meat alternatives, Post has radically revised his timetable. When I first visited his lab in 2009, he scoffed at the idea that a cultured meat product would be available in 10 years. But now Post believes a commercially viable cultured meat product is achievable within seven years. He expects to finish his work in a year and a half—and then pass along his work to experts on “scaling up.”

This doesn’t mean we’ll have a cultured beef option at McDonald’s in seven years. Post warns that these first cultured beef patties (appearing in 2021, if his estimate is right) won’t be feed-the-world burgers, let alone cost-competitive with conventional meat. Post envisions cultured meat will begin as a high-end product for people who care deeply about the environment and how their meat is produced (think Prius drivers). If there’s consumer demand, production will increase and prices will fall quickly.

Another reason Post is increasingly optimistic about a commercial future for cultured meat is that his work is getting interest from a different audience. Whereas lab meat used to attract interest from science-minded journalists and connoisseurs of futuristic moonshot ideas, now Post is often giving talks to the food industry’s rank and file, from flavor companies to food additives suppliers. “They’re considering it as a business idea.”

Josh Schonwald is a Chicago-based journalist and author of The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food.

Summary: They may not taste great yet, but scientists, with the help of Sergey Brin, are ready to change that


It’s the newbie against the veteran. Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman met her match today as California Attorney General Jerry Brown declared his candidacy.

The former eBay CEO, whom I profiled last spring in a Fortune cover story called “Can Meg Whitman save California?”, now leads her Republican rivals in the gubernatorial race. But she and Brown, a Democrat who served as governor from 1975 to 1983 and ran for President and can’t resist another campaign, are in a dead heat among voters who plan to vote next November 2. The two tied, with 43% each, in a mid-February telephone survey of likely voters, by Rasmussen Reports.

This race will be intense. A story on Politico today says that Whitman’s campaign is building a major opposition research operation to tar Brown. The tarring will be mutual. When I was reporting the Whitman profile (and accompanying her to her first-ever campaign speeches), I called Anne Gust, Brown’s wife whom I know from her previous life as a top exec at Gap . Jerry Brown happened to answer the phone. I mentioned Whitman, and at that, he launched…lacing his take on her with ridicule and respect for her spending power: “‘I ran a business. I can buy my campaign'” he boomed. “I have zero experience in government. I want to take on the most difficult state government job in America. Therefore, make me governor.’ That’s her campaign.”

Yes, this race is on!

Summary: It's the newbie against the veteran. Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman met her match today as California Attorney General Jerry Brown declared his candidacy. The former eBay CEO, whom I profiled last spring in a Fortune cover story called "Can Meg Whitman save California?", now leads her Republican rivals in the gubernatorial race. But she…


Benjamin Walker and Kaya Scodelario

01/08/2016 AT 04:55 PM EST

Walker, 33, who recently appeared in

star Scodelario, 23, tied the knot over the Christmas holiday after just over a year of dating.

Scodelario took to Instagram to announce the marriage, and share a photo of her wedding cake topper – miniature figures of a man and woman dressed for a wedding, along with a pet French bulldog.

"Happy New Year everyone," she wrote. "Here's to 2016 being filled with love,laughter and cake for everyone! And thank you again @okezzer for making our wedding so special and full of your genius craft skills."

Before the wedding, Scodelario also shared a sweet, PDA-packed picture of herself with Walker from what appeared to be her bachelorette party.

"Marry me," she captioned the shot.

The two got engaged in December 2014 after a whirlwind romance. Walker, who was

's daughter Mamie Gummer, popped the question after just a few months of dating.

A photo posted by Kaya Scodelario-Davis (@kayascods) on Dec 14, 2015 at 7:11am PST

As if the engagement ring wasn't enough, she also took her commitment to Walker one step further when she

on her left ring finger.

The pair started off long distance, with Walker living in New York and the British actress living in her native London, but Scodelario eventually made the move to the Big Apple.

Summary: The two got married over the Christmas holiday after just over a year of dating


Imagine carrying all of your money on your arms. The gold jewelry circling your wrists and forearms is your retirement, collateral for a loan or a rainy-day fund. For many of the 1.1 billion women in the developing world who have no access to financial services, their moneyâwhether the gold on their arms or the cash buried near their bedsâis not protected. Often, itâs not even safe from their husbands.

Women make up 55 percent of the worldâs unbanked adults, meaning they have no access to financial services such as bank accounts or insurance, even as the number of first-time bank-account holders actually has risen by 700 million over the past three years, according to the World Bankâs latest global financial-inclusion report, or Global Findex, released in April.

Despite programs targeted at bringing women into the financial system, “Women face many barriers to accessing the financial products and services they needâmobility constraints, lack of collateral and limited mobile phone ownership, to name a few,” says Mary Ellen Iskenderian, president and CEO of Womenâs World Banking.

Women need privacy, security and control over their financial lives, says Mary Ellen Iskenderian of Womenâs World Banking.

In countries such as India and Pakistan, the number of women who donât have access to financial services is even higher than the average. About 57 percent of women in India and a startling 97 percent of women in Pakistan are unbanked. In those countries, jewelry is one of the only items a woman brings into her marriage that is understood as her property. Still, entering into that union, she risks her husband using her jewelry as collateral for a loan without her knowledge or approval.

âMany times itâs the man who brings in his wifeâs gold for a loan,â says Roshaneh Zafar, founder of the Kashf Foundation, the first specialized microfinance institution to serve women in Pakistan. âGiven the norms of patriarchy in many developing countries, there is fear that women could lose control of the only asset they have. So we may be doing a disservice to womenâs economic empowerment by allowing these loans.â

Kashf suggests a protocol in which any man who offers jewelry as collateral must have his wifeâs consent. âEven this is not a perfect solution,â Zafar says. âDepending on the family dynamic, it would be hard to know how much a husband may be influencing or forcing a wife to sign off on something she doesnât agree with.â

Technology may help solve that problem and others as digital financial services help improve financial security. In fact, mobile moneyâthe ability to access financial services via cellphonesâis largely responsible for the worldwide drop in the number of unbanked people from 2.5 billion to 2 billion. Instead of wearing their money on their arms, women can use their phones quickly and easily to open savings accounts, make payments for utilities and school fees, and send money to relatives.

âWhen technology is used right, it creates a level playing field for women to access financial services,â Zafar says.

Over the years, as microlenders have grown larger and more commercial, women have been left behind.

However, the potential of mobile money first depends on equal access to mobile phones at the starting line, notes Leora Klapper, lead economist of finance and private sector development in the Development Research Group of the World Bank. In South Asia, women are 38 percent less likely than men to own a cellphone.

In Bangladesh, where only about 13 percent of the countryâs 166 million people have a traditional bank account, digital financial services companies like bKash have introduced mobile money to tens of millions of people. Still, only 46 percent of Bangladeshi women own mobile phones, compared with 76 percent of Bangladeshi men. Only 13 percent of Bangladeshi women have used mobile money, compared with 32 percent of Bangladeshi men.

Yet even if women have access to or own phones, illiteracy and innumeracyâthe inability to read numbers and use basic mathâhold some women back. They may have to depend on a man to use the phone. That dependency creates a problem: Women need privacy, security and control over their financial lives, says Iskenderian of Womenâs World Banking. âIf a woman needs to turn to a male in her household to help her make a deposit or learn her account balance, that confidentiality is destroyed.â

Positive change is in the works, though. On the technology front, Kashf and some organizations are implementing programs that teach women how to use mobile money and mobile accounts. Others are working to create smartphone apps that use voice recognition technology and images rather than words and numbers. And for salaried garment factory workers in Bangladeshâmost of whom are womenâresearchers are looking at the effects of paying employees electronically rather than in cash. While results are not yet in, Klapper, one of the study leaders, hopes digital accounts will help women budget better, handle emergencies better and have more stable financial lives.

âTargeted initiatives that show women how financial products can meet their unique needs will help bring them into the financial fold,â says Colleen Learch, director of research for the InterMedia Survey Institute, which has done extensive research on gender differences in financial inclusion. âThis isnât just about increasing awareness or exposure, itâs about giving women a reason to consider these products as something that is âfor them.ââ

But even women who have already entered the financial system through these types of efforts are now being left behind by the very institutions that were started to help them.

When modern microfinance organizations were born in the 1970s, they were largely geared toward women. Using the village-banking modelâbased on informal lending clubs usually run by women for women, and often requiring no collateralâearly microfinance institutions distributed small, low-interest loans to groups of poor women. Over the years, as microlenders have grown larger and more commercial, women have been left behind.

âWhat made microfinance so innovative when it began was that it gave access to finance and credit to women for the first time,â Iskenderian says. âAs the microfinance sector formalized, and institutions look toward bigger loans and bigger returns, the percentage of women served has fallen off dramatically, and the gender gap has grown. The industry has been a victim of its own success.â

With bigger loans, banks want collateral and guarantees of repayment. Women often go into businessesâlike owning hair salonsâthat may make money but donât generate assets that can be used as collateral. âWhen microfinance institutions make decisions based on the size of a business and its collateral rather than on cash flow, women suffer,â Iskenderian says.

By contrast, everybody benefits when women overcome barriers to financial inclusion.

âWomen tend to put about 90 percent of the income they earn back into their family. That means into health, into education, into nutrition, into shelter,â says Cathleen Tobin, director of product development at Womenâs World Banking. âThe more income that a woman controls, the more she is able to further the stability of her family.â

Summary: For many of the 1.1 billion women in the developing world who have no access to financial services, their money is not protected.