The web is nothing if not a democratizing force. It has turned us into active investors with low-cost commissions from online accounts and free access to vast amounts of financial data. It lets us compare flight fares and gadget prices; and sites like eBay have helped turn us into retailers. It has humbled media giants by letting readers respond with comments and publish their own thoughts on blogs. Most recently, thanks to Facebook and Twitter, that self-publishing phenomenon was an important tool in bringing democracy to countries like Tunisia and Egypt.

But there is one area where democratic impulses of the web still aren’t welcome, where the playing fields are still unfairly uneven, and where an elite group of entrenched interests still reap benefits while the rest of us are excluded. Perversely, it’s an area at the very heart of the web industry: the ability to buy and sell shares in the hottest web startups like Facebook, Twitter and Groupon.

These private companies will go public, but they are taking their sweet time about it. A Groupon IPO “may happen this year,” Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing unnamed sources. When it does, it could be worth $25 billion. Facebook, mulling an IPO in 2012, could trade at a few times that value. Both companies could offer some of the best investment opportunities to come around in years. But small investors — and the vast majority of Facebook and Groupon’s customers — are being shut out.

That’s too bad because there is a huge demand for ownership in these web 2.0 leaders, from large and small investors alike. But even as hedge funds and wealthy investors line up to buy into Facebook in private rounds or on secondary exchanges like Sharespost, the small investors remain excluded for two main reasons.

The first is that the SEC bars ownership in privately held companies to accredited investors — those who make more than $200,000 in salary or have a net worth above $1 million. The rule is both well-intentioned and sound, limiting retail investors to publicly traded companies that are required to disclose data on their finances and operations.

Which brings us to the second reason. Successful and profitable companies that are ripe for trading on public stock exchanges are fighting against an initial public offering, selling round after round of venture investment so they can stay under private control. It’s Silicon Valley’s version of prolonged adolescence, the supposed trend of young people living with their parents into adulthood.

The SEC has another sound, well-intentioned rule for private startups: once a company has more than 499 shareholders it needs to publicly disclose its financial results. Although the rule doesn’t require a company to trade publicly, it’s ends up prompting many companies who’d just as soon stay private to file for IPOs.

Because web companies use stock and option packages to lure in top engineering and management talent, they tend to get to 500 employees fairly quickly. Google GOOG held off on filing for an IPO, but took the plunge in April 2004 once it had more than 500 shareholders. Being public meant disclosing data and holding quarterly calls where analysts grilled the co-founders, who were clearly uncomfortable with the new exposure. And it opened Google to intense pressure to jump through new hoops like meeting targets for its net profit or preventing margins from declining. But it also allowed Google’s users to share in its financial success.

Two and a half years ago, when Facebook was nearing that 500-shareholder threshold, it asked the SEC for an exemption to the securities law. The SEC granted its wish. Had Facebook ended 2008 with 500 shareholders, it would have had to file for an IPO or disclose financial results four months later. But thanks to the exemption, Facebook’s employees — and insider shareholders — have grown, while its stock is traded only on secondary exchanges.

And so instead of IPOs, we are seeing huge private investment rounds. Facebook raised $500 million in January from Goldman Sachs GS and others, on top of the $678 million it had raised previously. Such large rounds are usually seen in capital expenditure-intensive industries like solar manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and IT networks, not in the web, where startups tend to launch cheaply.

Increasingly, these mega-rounds of private money are becoming common. Groupon, which employs 3,000, raised $500 million in late December. Zynga, with 1,500 employees, is reportedly close to a $500 million round. So is Groupon-rival LivingSocial. There are, of course, good reasons to stay private. Facebook, like Google and many startups before it, faces keen competition and doesn’t want to open up its financial books for competitors to see. Moreover, no company relishes the quarterly earnings game, which often requires companies to cut back on investments in long-term projects in the name of boosting short-term profits.

But there are just as many complications when companies raise money privately for too long. Public companies must disclose carefully vetted data, which private investors of late rounds might not enjoy. Individual investors clamor for private shares, leading to elaborate and questionable schemes like Goldman’s aborted plan to allow prized clients to invest in Facebook. This week, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority warned of a wave of scams targeting would-be investors in private web companies.

Facebook, Groupon and other web companies staying private during their growth years aren’t affected directly by these problems, but their image could be. Alongside all the financial considerations behind an IPO, there used to be another consideration rooted in principle: Companies went public to share their success with customers. Sadly, the fastest-growing web companies today don’t want to share their success with us. Only Facebook users who make more than $200,000 a year can buy Facebook stock -– and that’s if they’re lucky.

At the core of this widespread insistence to stay private is a whiff of hypocrisy. The web companies that champion democratic ideals through their technology — and that profit richly from them -– are refusing to embrace those same ideals when it comes to their stock.

Summary: Facebook, Twitter, Groupon -- hot Internet startups are using private financing to grow like never before. Why do they trust the social graph to be the backbone of their business model but not of their statement of ownership?


Between Monday's defense-optional event in Boston and Wednesday's tractor pull in Motown, the Suns were able to generate some national attention.

And this had nothing to do with Eric Bledsoe's proclamation that this year's interpretation of his beloved Kentucky Wildcats could defeat the winless Philadelphia 76ers. (Right, the very Sixers who will be gunning for Bledsoe and the Suns on Friday night in Philly.)

Anyway, the Suns-related hubbub to surface this week was propelled into existence by a report from The Sporting News that informs us Goran Dragic's anticipated Phoenix reenlistment should not be rubber stamped.

As noted in TSN's piece, it's early and Dragic certainly should have strong motivation to re-sign with the Suns after opting out of the last year of his current contract.

It should be noted the story arrived after The Dragon had scored between 18 and 22 points in five of Phoenix's last six games. So, what gives with the timing? Well, it's probably a solid bet the sources referenced had (at least) an indirect connection with Dragic's representation (Bill Duffy Associates, an agency with plenty of big-time clients).

And with the arrival of Isaiah Thomas -- and his seeming commitment to making most of the available plays himself -- this may be a not-so-subtle reminder to the Suns's hierarchy of what could happen if last year's third-team, All-NBA guard isn't more involved in the offensive process.

It's highly doubtful any of this can be directly tied to Dragic; even though he recently expressed (let's call it) disappointment at the offense's lack of (let's call it) rhythm due to an abundance of dominant ballhandlers on the floor at the same time, Dragic isn't someone prone to launching even low-level prattle about a venue change.

Then again, heat-of-the-moment inquiries often lead to interesting remarks.

While it's true he and several Suns teammates are living with higher expectations this season and taking time adjusting to the rotational experimentation by Coach Jeff Hornacek, there are some interesting numbers to consider.

Through 12 games, Dragic has produced 184 points, making 73 of 152 field-goal attempts (48 percent), with a 12-of-38 success rate (31.6 percent) from 3-point range in 32.3 minutes per game.

Through the Suns' first 15 games last season (remember, he missed games 4-6), Dragic scored 209 points, making 72 of 154 shots, with a 3-point mark of 12 for 39 in 32.7 minutes per game.

Therefore, we might want to at least downshift on the notion that Goran is completely lost or overlooked.

What we can consider is a drop in assists -- from 83 at this time last season to 39 now. Does that suggest Goran has gone rogue in a contract year?

The answer is no, although there have been times -- after not seeing the ball for a while -- he has squeezed off a round when an extra pass was a more viable option. But there's been a lot of that going around.

The difference in those assist numbers translates to Dragic being required to play off the ball more often; that's a function of Thomas taking a bite out of the available perimeter minutes and attacking the rim like a player bent on proving himself to the basketball world on every possession.

After teaming up with Gerald Green to rescue the Suns in the fourth quarters of some early victories, Thomas recently has seen his participation fall commensurate to his inability to make shots.

What he, Dragic and the rest of the Suns must realize is that rather than Hornacek being required to make everyone happy, it's their responsibility to put a smile on the coach's face.

To keep Hornacek happy, moving the ball in the half-court, pushing the ball into the frontcourt after the opposition scores (that one's for Bledsoe) or providing greater focus and effort on defense should be required.

Attention to details beyond scoring while playing for each other is what will translate to winning, and winning makes everyone more marketable. Track the contractual upgrades made by several of Michael Jordan's role-playing Chicago Bulls teammates.

But a more reasonable template to follow can be found in San Antonio, where the Spurs' system of sharing minutes and the ball last season resulted in the league's best record and another championship.

When you look at the per-game minutes for the Spurs, they were slightly lower last season than most of the Suns' big guns are playing now. (It should be noted that some of the average minutes logged by reserves were skewed by Coach Gregg Popovich's belief in sitting key players for entire games.)

As a model that's tracked by most NBA teams (including the Suns), however, the San Antonio mandate of doing your job and focusing on winning would serve here.

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While it's true that a mantle loaded with O'Brien Trophies makes it easier for Popovich to achieve a team-wide buy-in, it doesn't mean selflessness isn't required to reach the pinnacle in the first place.

Establishing roles for rotation players isn't easy when there's little distinction between the skill levels of so many Suns. Before waving bye-bye to Dragic, it might be wise for Suns fans and national observers to allow a larger chunk of the season to occur.

And if things don't go swimmingly, Goran just might decide he can operate more efficiently somewhere else. Although the market for him could be busy, the teams listed in this week's TSN story were the Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets.

For now, those teams employ shooting guards ranked No. 1 (Kobe Bryant) and No. 8 (James Harden), respectively, among NBA players for usage rate.

Greener grass may not be more enjoyable than Arizona sand.

Follow Randy Hill on Twitter

Summary: Suns' success with new lineup combinations will likely play a large role in determining Goran Dragic's willingness to shop around during free agency.


GREAT SALT LAKE CITY, Utah Territory, Friday, Dec. 30, 1859.

On Christmas day the city was thrown into quite an unusual excitement by a fight among the Danites. BILL HICKMAN, their notorious leader, and LOT HUNTINGTON, who has heretofore figured as first lieutenant of the band, became engaged in a quarrel, in a house on Main-street, in regard to the division of their stolen property. From words they soon came to blows. HICKMAN drew his knife and attempted to stab HUNTINGTON, but he threw him off and retreated to the street, HICKMAN following him up. When they were both in the open air, HUNTINGTON drew his revolver and fired; the shot struck HICKMAN's watch and glanced downward, taking effect in the fleshy part of the thigh, inflicting a very severe if not a mortal wound. Several others of the party then drew their revolvers and commenced firing, some at HICKMAN, others at his antagonist. Some forty or fifty shots were fired in all, but no one was injured, but the two leaders. HUNTINGTON received a slight flesh wound in his leg, but he stood his ground, though the odds were largely against him, until he had emptied two revolvers. He then retreated up the street, and took refuge in the house of one of the brethren. HICKMAN was carried home by his friends, and it is thought that his wound will prove fatal. This street fight assumes a greater air of importance when we reflect that the Danite band has always been regarded as the strong arm of the Mormon Church. It has been the instrument used to do the dirty work. When persons became obnoxious to the saintly authorities, the Church itself could cut them off from its immaculate body; but then a proper regard for the welfare of their souls required that they should be at once literally cut off before the iniquities of the Gentiles could contaminate them. Then the kind offices of the Danites were required to sever their windpipes. But their many bloody exploits are too familiar to the public to require recapitulation here. Though the Mormons have attempted to conceal their crimes, murder will out, and many of their bloody deeds have been recorded and published. Worldly interest is the only consideration that binds a large majority of the Mormons; and as HICKMAN's Danite band offered great inducements in the way of public plunder, its numbers were very large, and his power almost rivalled that of BRIGHAM himself, and hence a growing jealousy has for a long time existed, but they did not dare to cut him off from the church. He knew too much, and had too many desperadoes like himself under his control. But now that his wounds are likely to prove fatal, the wish universally expressed by the Mormons is that he should die, and it is rumored that they have even gone so far as to cut him off from the Church. This at once illustrates their readiness to take advantage of every circumstance, for, it HICKMAN dies, they not only get rid of him, but to the initiated, it is a repudiation of his bloody crimes. The Valley Tan has not made one word of comment upon this fight. Great surprise has been expressed at its silence, but the editor assured me that such is the state of society here, and the character of the parties concerned such, that if he published any statements whatever in relation to the affair, his press would not only probably be destroyed but he himself would be in great danger of secret assassination. It is not necessary to make any comments upon such a state of society.

The Governor's Message has already reached the States. It was received very coldly by the brethren, and it is not presumed that the Legislature will pay any special regard to his suggestions. Nor does it please the Gentiles, though there is no feeling of disappointment on their part, for they did not expect much; they find no particular fault with that which he has said, but rather with what he has left unsaid.


There’s something very fishy about the weekly options market. Is it time to reel in the bad guys?

It was 3:48 p.m. on Friday April 29 and traders who had purchased Apple AAPL April 29 $350 “calls” — options that gave them the right to buy Apple shares in blocks of 100 for $350 per share — were sitting pretty. The stock was trading around $353.50 and those calls were worth more $350 apiece (the difference between the price of the stock and the so-called “strike price” of the option times 100).

Then, in an extraordinary burst of trading — exacerbated by the rebalancing of the NASDAQ-100 scheduled for the following Monday — more than 15 million shares changed hands and the stock dropped below the $350 strike price just before the closing bell. Result: The value of those calls disappeared like a puff of smoke.

For people who follow Apple — investors and speculators alike — it was sickeningly familiar turn of events, one that has its own language and terms of art. The tendency for an underlying stock to close at or near an option’s strike price at expiration is called “pinning.” And the point at which a stock will close to the greatest detriment to anyone holding options at expiration is called max pain. There are websites, like optionpain.com, that will chart, free of charge, the max pain point for any stock for which options are traded.

Conventional wisdom has it that Apple’s shares have been pinned to the max pain point nearly every Friday since weekly options trading began. Based on the stock’s closing prices over the past two months, it certainly seems that way.

In the graph below, we’ve charted eight weeks of daily closing prices indicating how much higher or lower they were than the strike price of the calls nearest to that Friday’s close (marked in red).

As you can see, the stock tends to gravitate toward the red closing strike price, either by moving down (reducing the value of the calls) or moving up (doing the same to the “puts,” options that give the holder the right to sell a stock at a certain price).

Note that the daily chart tends to mask minute-by-minute changes. For example, you would never know, looking at the tiny red bar at April 29 in the chart above, what happened to Apple’s share price in the last few minutes of trading that day.

There’s a whole library of academic research documenting the max pain phenomenon. Perhaps the most famous is a 2005 study in the The Journal of Financial Economics that the New York Times reported on the following year. The authors, working at the University of Illinois, examined five and a half years of stock trades and found the pattern charted at right. The percentage of securities that closed within a few cents of the strike price of one of their options was too great to be attributed either to chance or to normal hedging activity. The shares, they concluded, had been manipulated.

For the record, manipulating a stock in this way is illegal. The operative language can be found in Section 9 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934:

“It shall be unlawful for any person, directly or indirectly, by the use of the mails or any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce, or of any facility of any national securities exchange, or for any member of a national securities exchange—

h. To effect either alone or with one or more other persons any series of transactions for the purchase and/or sale of any security registered on a national securities exchange for the purpose of pegging, fixing, or stabilizing the price of such security in contravention of such rules and regulations as the Commission may prescribe as necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for the protection of investors.” (emphasis ours).

How is this manipulation being accomplished? Who is doing it? And why aren’t they being punished? Those are very good questions, which we’ll try to address in subsequent articles.

Summary: There's something very fishy about the weekly options market. Is it time to reel in the bad guys? It was 3:48 p.m. on Friday April 29 and traders who had purchased Apple April 29 $350 "calls" -- options that gave them the right to buy Apple shares in blocks of 100 for $350 per share…


Authorities in the Bahamas have detained the wife of an Australian podiatrist found stabbed to death at the couple's home.

Phillip Vasyli died in the wealthy Old Fort Bay community on New Providence Island after being stabbed once in the chest. A worker found Vasyli's body and alerted police.

Police spokesman Stephen Dean says no one has been charged and police are still investigating a possible motive.

Vasyli established three podiatry clinics in Sydney and later founded an orthotic footwear company that sells Vionic with Orthaheel Technology products in the US, the UK and elsewhere.

Vasyli also ran a non-profit organisation with his wife, son and daughter to help improve the health of those living in poor communities, according to the company's website.

It is unclear how long Vasyli had lived in the Bahamas. He was fond of posting beach scenes on Twitter and was a big fan of mixed martial arts.

A Twitter photo of Phillip Vasyli with his son Aron. (supplied)

Do you have any news photos or videos?

Summary: A well-known Australian podiatrist has reportedly been stabbed to death in his Bahamas home.


In July 1988, somewhere around the release of Crocodile Dundee and the launch of Prozac, an art show was staged in London's Docklands that has entered modern art history as a cataclysmic happening on a par with the Cabaret Voltaire and the Salon des Refusés (the exhibition held in 1863 for works that had been rejected from the official Paris Salon, including Manet's Déjeuner Sur l'Herbe). Organised mainly by Damien Hirst with support from Carl Freedman (now a gallerist and curator), the artist Abigail Lane and the late Angus Fairhurst, Freeze was, Hirst has said, 'the kind of exhibition that everybody says they saw and hardly anybody did'.

Few people, and certainly not the press, could be shagged to hack down to the Surrey Docks, wherever that was, to see boxes and light bulbs made by twentysomething Goldsmiths College art students - or, to put it in art lingo,' survey the new tendency'. Gilbert and George were the newest tendency that the galleries could cope with at that particular moment, the recession being on.

Hirst, then 23, was advantaged by more front than Brighton. As he subsequently told writer Gordon Burn: 'I'm not afraid of meeting somebody and them being shocked and going, "Oh fuck, he's just a little twat from Leeds, really."'

He also had part-time jobs with a market research company and at Anthony d'Offay gallery. The first taught him how to blag stuff on the phone, while the second provided the all-important art world connections - the names that needed to be attracted to see the work, notably the Royal Academy's Norman Rosenthal, the Tate's Sir Nicholas Serota and collector Charles Saatchi.

These three, and a few others, were presented with a selection of items whose cohesion, if there was one, lay in the fact that Goldsmiths did not differentiate between painting and sculpture ('It's just like , you go there and you can do anything,' Hirst said in 1992) - and this resulted in a dominance of confident mixed-media work. Furthermore, the students were receiving advice - and important avuncular encouragement - from tutor Michael Craig-Martin, whose art heart lay in the Duchamp 'joke' - aka Neo-Conceptualism.

The nostalgic palette has become more brightly hued thanks to the fact that time has proved these artists to be what Craig-Martin, with justifiable pride, remembers as an 'extraordinary group'. Hirst's career has been stellar, while many of the others were nominated for or won the Turner Prize, and most have pieces in public galleries all over the world. Only Stephen Park (and possibly Steven Adamson) deviated - Park now enjoys a career as a stand-up comedian, and no one seems sure about Adamson's current whereabouts.

Angus Fairhurst's name, though familiar on the art scene, entered households this year when he was found hanged in a suicide that had the carefully planned characteristics of the emotionally charged Situationist statements that had marked his life. He made the silk rope by hand and died on the day that his show closed at Sadie Coles gallery.

'It annoys me when the press says that Angus was less successful than say Damien or Sarah [Lucas],' says Abigail Lane. 'What they actually mean was that he was not as rich...'

Twenty years ago they were all, as Craig-Martin puts it, 'insanely young'. The keen merchants who did make their way to the London Port Authority building were treated to the sight of a pile of crumpled metal by Sarah Lucas, a door painted by Gary Hume, light bulbs switching on and off by Angela Bulloch and tiny pencil drawings by Richard Patterson. 'I felt reasonably confident in them,' says Patterson, 'insofar as you can be confident in an isolated set of six drawings, but I didn't feel confident about the idea of showing. It was premature for me. Everyone else seemed more intent on doing their growing up in public... I remember some poor bastard doing a performance in the exhibition space where he buried himself naked in a mound of earth with only a breathing tube. After about 15 minutes the mound started to twitch and they had to dig him out. He was getting hypothermia. Awful really.'

Mat Collishaw's Bullet Hole - a cibachrome on a lightbox which showed a head being fractured by a bullet - was to become one of the seminal images of the Young British Artist movement. It also gave the name to the show (according to the catalogue, 'the title comes from Mat Collishaw's lightbox, dedicated to a moment of impact, a preserved now, a freeze frame'). Collishaw recalls that a dealer offered him less for Bullet Hole than it cost to make. 'I said I'd rather let it rot in the car park - which is exactly what it did. Saatchi bought a remake 10 years later.'

Ian Davenport, then 21, enjoyed the first success as he was immediately taken up by Leslie Waddington, by whom he is still represented.

Hirst, generous to his friends, devoted his considerable energy to the hanging and promotion of Freeze - gathering both the money needed for the exhibition as well as sponsorship for a well-designed and professionally written catalogue.

His own contribution to the show took the form of some painted boxes stuck in a pattern on to the wall, and the first spot painting - also painted on to the wall - which remained there for two years.

'People have said that Freeze was about making money,' Craig-Martin says, 'but it wasn't. Nobody could have bought the spot painting... it was about being young, about being excited about what they were doing, and getting people to see their work.'

Hirst himself has said that a collector wanted to buy the boxes as one installation, but after attempting to pin them together with gold paper clips he smashed the thing up for being, in general, too annoying.

Carl Freedman was an old friend of Hirst's from Leeds.

His input, though supportive at the Freeze show, gelled in 1990 with the warehouse shows Modern Medicine and Gambler, held at a former factory in Bermondsey. Charles Saatchi sponsored the former to the tune of £1,000 and subsequently bought Hirst's A Thousand Years - a glass box containing a rotting cow's head, thousands of flies and an electric fly killer. 'I could understand how art acquired a monetary value, though I don't have any in-depth knowledge of art itself - this Damien supplied,' says Freedman. 'I had studied anthropology at university, and my first reading of the contemporary art world was as an exchange system of economic signs. Damien and I lived together at the time, and both fed off each other's area's of knowledge. We shared a youthful sense of unbounded ambition.'

They were both admirers of the Saatchi Collection, and it was that scale and ambition they set out to emulate. 'I think we shared the same goal - to make London a place where contemporary art could thrive and have the same vitality as cities like Cologne and New York (at that time London was somewhat of a backwater). We went different ways when Damien decided he wanted to spend more time making Damien Hirst the centre of the international art world - which on some levels he has achieved.'

While Freeze alone cannot be credited with launching the YBAs on the world, it did, as art critic Peter Timms put it, 'start an inexorable process of change'. For the first time, younger artists were taken seriously, and as the recession lifted and wealth infused the culture of ideas, art became stock and this new group began to be taken very seriously indeed.

Hirst again: 'Everything in the whole world is worth what anyone else is prepared to pay for it. And that's it. Simple.'

Career-making shows were subsequently held at the Saatchi Gallery (then in Boundary Road, north London) and the Serpentine Gallery, but the Salon des Refusés moment did not arguably arrive until the 1997 Sensation show at the Royal Academy. Then the mob got involved, and the YBA phenomenon entered the mainstream. An almost instantaneous and characteristically British backlash culminated in the jaded archetype of Birch's 'Young British Artist' comic strip in Private Eye, while the feeling of ennui is encapsulated by Stephen Park's comment: 'By the mid-Nineties I had lost count of how many friends had won or been nominated for the Turner Prize. I had shared a bed with at least three of them and genuinely lost interest. In the Turner Prize, I mean.'

Says Richard Patterson: 'The YBA thing has to rank as the silliest of all names. Certainly not a movement. I suppose it is a kind of licence to show tits and arse more than anything.'

Nobody, least of all the artists, is pretending that the work shown at Freeze was great; they mostly recall cleaning the space, being bossed about by Damien, and the irritation of fellow students who had been excluded from this court.

Richard Patterson remembers thinking that Hirst's was 'solid student work - neither good nor bad, but intelligent and honest. He was fearless. Some of the others, myself included, were dealing with what it meant to inherit postmodernism - it seemed a shitty fate. Those that didn't know what postmodernism actually meant were free to bang out whatever they saw fit and have never looked back.'

Stephen Park: 'I remember it as a kind of sociological experiment in which Damien played the alpha baboon. It was all about body language and status games. I also remember trying to persuade a group of us that Sarah Lucas's sculpture was not good enough to be included...'

Abigail Lane, whose starched white collars were arranged on the wall like flying ducks, remembers sitting in a white space in an administrative block to which 'nobody came'. But Freeze was professionally presented, with proper money and a catalogue; the artists had taken the initiative, and though subsequent successes sometimes strained friendships, 20 years later, Lane says, there is still a loyalty between them.

She herself, though not richly remunerated by her work, is happy and living in Suffolk with a new baby, Eric. She likes working and, installations being her metier, was recently pleased to arrange a circus artwork, For Your Pleasure, in the shop Matches in Marylebone High Street.

Hirst's slipstream is not something one would wish on anyone; and, though most of the Freeze artists still enjoy a respected presence in the art world, they have also learned to become philosophical, growing with themselves and in their work.

For a time, Richard Patterson gave up making art after Freeze: 'My stopping seems conspicuous in retrospect because many of the others became so successful so fast. I thought it was philosophical to not make things for a while, though in truth I simply wasn't in a head space where I could make art at the time. I was still going to see shows and openings and thinking about art. You don't really "give up" art once you've started. Fiona Rae persuaded me to hurry up and start painting again. The truth is, you're only as good the last painting you've made, so I'm grateful to her for the kick in the arse. I wanted to draw a line under that part of my life and then start a life as an artist. Why would this not be a struggle? Look at De Kooning, for instance. For many of the others in Freeze it was more seamless, and I envied them that at the time. They'll have their reassessment moments later maybe. Rehab, even. It's part of being an artist.'

'Being involved in Freeze helped my career,' says Lala Meredith-Vula, 'It always appears in my press biography with the fact that I have represented Albania in the Venice Biennale. I went my separate way from the group, though. It was not intentional to leave them, but I followed my own interests as an artist and went back to my roots to live in Kosovo for a few years.'

'The real point of being an artist is to have time to play and to decide for myself what I value,' says Stephen Park. 'I live in Devon. It's beautiful here. I stay creative. I make drawings. I perform. I write. When no one's looking I sing and dance, too. I rarely stop to envy the others. I especially don't envy Angus.'

THE 16 ARTISTS: WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

STEVEN ADAMSON It's not known what Steven Adamson does now. He is thought to be living in south London

ANGELA BULLOCH Born in l966 in Canada, she works in sculpture, installation and sound. She was nominated for the Turner Prize 1997, and her l998 West Ham - Sculpture for Football Songs is owned by the Tate. She continues to exhibit across Europe and her most recent solo show, in Germany last year, entitled Are You Coming Or Going, Around? was an installation that offered 'terrestrial and extraterrestrial perspectives on the moon, the earth and other parts of the solar system in different media'

MAT COLLISHAW Born in 1966 in Nottingham, he is currently represented by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York and Haunch of Venison in London. His most recent exhibition was an installation at Spring Projects, in north London, called Deliverance - a new large-scale projection using phosphorescent imagery

IAN DAVENPORT Born in 1966 in Sidcup, he was nominated for the Turner Prize in l99l. In 2006 he completed Poured Lines: Southwark Street, a 50m painting which is permanently installed beneath the Western Bridge on Southwark Street. He is represented by Waddington Gallery

DOMINIC DENIS Was listed in the catalogue but did not show work

ANGUS FAIRHURST Born in l968 in Pembury. Committed suicide on 29 March 2008. A close friend of Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas he is remembered for being a kind and supportive friend, generous with his ideas. Represented by Sadie Coles, his most recent solo show finished on the day he died. Was also included in high-profile group shows such as In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida at Tate Britain, with Lucas and Hirst in 2004

ANYA GALLACCIO Born in 1963 in Paisley, she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2003. Uses organic materials such as fruit and vegetables and flowers, which means that the pieces tend to whither and rot. She now lives and works in London and has had solo exhibitions at Tate Britain and the Ikon Gallery as well as across Europe. Her most recent exhibition was Comfort and Conversation at Annet Gelink Gallery in Amsterdam

DAMIEN HIRST Born in l965 in Bristol, Hirst grew up in Leeds. A sensational career has been marked by what his former tutor Michael Craig-Martin calls an, 'elaborate game with money', culiminating this year in the £50m sale of a diamond encrusted skull entitled For the Love of God

GARY HUME Born in 1962 in Tenterden, his early work featured life-like representations of hospital doors which were sold to Charles Saatchi. In the early Nineties he turned to painting in gloss paint on aluminium. He represented Britain at the 1999 Venice Biennale, and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1996. He was made a Royal Academician in 2001

MICHAEL LANDY Born in l963 in London. In 1992, Landy started an association with Karsten Schubert by making Closing Down Sale for his gallery, an installation made up of a number of objects in shopping trolleys labelled 'BARGAIN'. In 2001 he made Breakdown, in which he destroyed all his possessions. In 2003 he chaired the judging panel for the Beck's Futures art prize

ABIGAIL LANE Born in 1967 in Penzance. A solo show at Karsten Schubert was followed by exhibitions at Victoria Miro Gallery and abroad. In October 2003, with Bob Pain and Brigitte Stepputtis, she launched the art and design company Showroom Dummies. An installation by Lane will be on show in Matches, Marylebone High Street, from 11 June

SARAH LUCAS Born in 1962 in London, Lucas is seen as one of the more provocative contemporary female artists, and her work is exhibited all over the world. Her first two solo exhibitions in 1992 were titled 'The Whole Joke' and 'Penis Nailed to a Board'. In 1993, she and Tracey Emin rented a retail space in east London, The Shop, where they made artworks. She is now represented by Sadie Coles, where she most recently contributed to a Films exhibition. Her most recent solo show was at the Frans Hals Museum in the Netherlands

LALA MEREDITH-VULA Born in 1966 in Sarajevo, her work is in collections all over the world. From 1989 she has lectured at various colleges in the UK, US and Kosovo. In 1995 she set up the first photography department at the University of Tirana, Albania, and in 2000 a photography department at Pristina University in Kosovo

RICHARD PATTERSON Born 1963 in Leatherhead, Patterson is represented by Timothy Taylor Gallery, which recently presented his new sculpture Black Narcissus/Ellwood, L-word: Culture Station (Zipper) 1B, composed of rectilinear maple plywood planes and aluminium plate. He currently lives and works in Dallas with his wife, gallerist Christina, and plans to show at the Goss-Michael Foundation next year. 'The foundation is dedicated to showing Britart. There is a great opportunity for showing Brit stuff here if it is done thoughtfully. If it's not, it'll be a kind of "Carry On YBA" sort of caper in a very hot and sweaty location'

SIMON PATTERSON Born in 1967 in Leatherhead, the younger brother of Richard Patterson, he was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1996. His London Underground map adaptation The Great Bear was purchased by Saatchi and shown in the Sensation exhibition. The National Maritime Museum is currently showing The Undersea World and Other Stories - an anthology of Patterson's works. He is represented by Haunch of Venison gallery

STEPHEN PARK Born in l962 in Edinburgh, Park works as a comedian and stand-up poet as well as an artist. He is one of the hosts of a regular poetry/cabaret event in Totnes called One Night Stanza. Since 1987, Stephen has been working on a series of abstract drawings. They are made with Indian ink, gouache and typewriter correction fluid on Fabriano paper

FIONA RAE Born in 1963 in Hong Kong and moved to England in 1970. She was nominated in 1991 for the Turner Prize, and in 1993 for the Austrian Eliette Von Karajan Prize for Young Painters. In 1992 Rae was commissioned by Tate Modern to create a 10m triptych, Shadowland, for the gallery's restaurant. She is now a Royal Academician as well as being a Trustee of the Tate Gallery. Her new paintings can be seen in a current show at Timothy Taylor Gallery

Summary: In 1988, in a dingy Docklands warehouse, 16 young artists took part in a show organised by a student called Damien Hirst. The rest is art history


FORTUNE — Dell Inc. DELL this morning announced that it has agreed to be acquired for $24.4 billion, or $13.65 per share.

The purchasing group would include private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, company founder and CEO Michael Dell and an investment firm that manages Michael Dell’s money (MSD Capital). No specifics yet on how much each one would provide.

Microsoft MSFT also would provide a $2 billion loan. This is fairly surprising, given that Microsoft had been assumed to be participating on an equity basis. In a statement, the software giant said:

“Microsoft has provided a $2 billion loan to the group that has proposed to take Dell private. Microsoft is committed to the long term success of the entire PC ecosystem and invests heavily in a variety of ways to build that ecosystem for the future. We’re in an industry that is constantly evolving. As always, we will continue to look for opportunities to support partners who are committed to innovating and driving business for their devices and services built on the Microsoft platform.”

A broader debt financing package, believed to be worth around $15 billion, was committed by BofA Merrill Lynch BAC , Barclays Bcs , Credit Suisse cs and RBC Capital Markets.

MORE: Why Microsoft ‘loaned’ Dell $2 billion

Dell shares had been trading around $11 per share before reports surfaced earlier this month of a potential buyout. They closed trading last Friday at $13.63 per share, before slumping back down to a $13.27 per share close yesterday. In general, today’s agreement provides a 25% premium to trading just before news of the pending deal leaked, but just two pennies over where shares traded just two days ago (which, I guess, means traders priced the deal almost on the nose). Not surprisingly, we’ve already begun to see “investigation” press releases from plaintiff’s attorneys.

Over the past year, Dell shares have traded as low as $8.69 per share and as high as $18.36 per share.

The agreement includes a 45-day “go-shop” period, during which time Dell can solicit superior offers. Don’t expect that to happen, however, given the lack of other private equity interest and Michael Dell’s alignment with the Silver Lake group. Moreover, the agreement would require the rival bidder — not Dell — to pay a $180 million termination fee (or $450 million if they came in after the go-shop period expires).

If completed, Dell would become the largest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis, and one of the ten largest LBOs of all time.

Some have suggested that the deal could trigger a rash of new mega-buyouts, but the consensus seems to be that Dell is a special case. First, the cash requirements were eased by the personal fortune and existing share capital of Michael Dell, who would control the company post-buyout. It also didn’t hurt that a giant tech incumbent with loads of cash — Microsoft — had a vested interest in keeping America’s second-largest PC maker afloat.

Then there was the massive financing package, which was largely enabled by Dell’s existing debt structure and its massive cash stockpile that could be used as collateral. Plus, of course, the macro interest rate environment that would apply to all potential deals. No specifics yet on how the cash is being utilized, as much of it is currently overseas and could create significant tax implications is brought back stateside.

On the other hand, it would be fair to say that Dell has caused private equity firms to take a new look at other undervalued tech companies, albeit not ones quite so large.

Sign up for Dan’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com

Summary: Dell going private for $24.4 billion.


In Google’s sci-fi future, your alarm clock’s volume will adjust automatically based on how deeply you’re sleeping – as tracked by your watch and pajamas. Apple’s vision of what’s next is a phone app that remembers – without being asked – where you parked your car.

On Tuesday, both companies were granted patents for their respective ideas. Legal marketplace SmartUp first spotted the filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office.

Google’s patent coincides with the rise of activity trackers and smartwatches that already track the sleeping patterns of people wearing them. According to the filing, the patent is for a wearable device, like a wristband or clothing with sensors stitched in, that help adjust alarm clock settings based on the user’s “sleep state.” The device would use “heart, respiration, or pulse rate, body movements, eye movements, ambient, and the like” to determine whether to dismiss, leave, or reschedule the alarm.

The idea, originally filed by Google in 2011, isn’t exactly novel. Some of Jawbone’s UP devices and Fitbit’s trackers let users set their wristbands to automatically vibrate when the technology determines the best time based on their sleep cycle. Even some apps, like Sleep as Android for wearable devices that run on Google’s Android Wear operating system offer that functionality.

With that said, there’s still some skepticism around wearable devices’ claims of accurately tracking sleep patterns. They merely infer that you’re sleeping based on your movements and heart rate. But that isn’t entirely accurate. The tracker I’m currently wearing, for example, reported that I slept for only a couple of hours last night when in fact I slept about six hours.

But in any case, it will definitely be interesting to see what Google GOOG does now that it’s armed with the patent. Should other activity tracker makers worry?

Meanwhile, Apple’s patent to help you find your car come after a lengthy approval. The company originally filed its application in 2013, and it first surfaced last year.

The patent is for “vehicle location in weak location signal scenarios,” meaning that it would use techniques other than GPS or cell signal to locate the person’s car. Instead, the document describes having the driver’s smartphone automatically detect when the car is parked (the phone is not moving anymore, it’s no longer connected through wires or Bluetooth signal to it, etc.) and remembering the location and time.

The application, which includes a diagram of Apple’s AAPL headquarters as an example illustration, doesn’t specify the scenarios when the service would be useful. But this method could come in handy in parking structures and underground garages where smartphone signals can often be very weak.

But as always, it’s entirely up to the company to actually turn a patent into a real product or actually enforce it against other companies. Keeping track of your car could remain your own responsibility, unfortunately.

For more on patents, watch this Fortune video:

Summary: The two tech giants have been granted patents for products aimed at the sleep deprived and forgetful drivers.


05/15/2015 AT 04:30 PM EDT

stood quietly in a Boston courtroom, fidgeting nervously. He cracked his knuckles repeatedly.

The jury of seven women and five men filed into the courtroom; they did not look at the man whom they had previously convicted of 30 federal counts for his role in the

, Tsarnaev had little reaction when the jurors

The courtroom was packed with victims and family members. Bill Richard, the father of slain 8-year-old Martin, used a headset to listen to the verdict, because his hearing was damaged in the blast. The Richard family has

the death penalty for Tsarnaev.

Dressed in a dark blazer and light-colored shirt, Tsarnaev stood quietly as the sentence was handed down. Among other things, the jury unanimously decided that he had shown no remorse for the killings. They also agreed that he had acted in a "heinous, cruel and depraved manner."

Two jurors agreed with the defense that Dzhokhar's older brother, Tamerlan, was the mastermind behind the bombing and that Dzhokhar had just followed along.

But in the end, that wasn't enough to spare Tsarnaev's life. He will be remanded to a maximum security federal prison in Indiana, where he will stay until he is put to death by lethal injection.

His lawyers are expected to appeal the sentence.

Summary: The convicted terrorist stood quietly as the verdict was read


Microsoft is reportedly working on a next generation email app that will strip away subject lines, greetings and signatures, and display only the text users need for a rapid fire conversation.

Microsoft has not formally introduced the new messaging app, though an announcement labeled “Microsoft Confidential” did briefly crop up on its public website, which was spotted by Twitter user @h0x0d on Tuesday. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment on app.

The announcement described a new mobile app called “Flow,” which was designed “for fast, fluid, natural conversations.” The app enables the user to draw Outlook emails into a new display, reminiscent of an instant messaging window.

“Only conversations started in Flow and their replies show up in Flow,” reads the announcement, but the thread will also be stored in the user’s Outlook account, potentially replacing scattered email chains with a tidy stack of messages.

The app would give Microsoft a unique entry point into a fiercely competitive market for instant messaging services, such as Slack and Microsoft’s own Yammer. Rather than “kill” email with instant messages, Flow appears to marry the two forms of communication. And that’s a match Microsoft is eager to make if it wants to ensure Outlook doesn’t get left behind in the craze for chattier communications.

Summary: "No subject lines, salutations, or signatures”


''WHEN my parents moved to our old neighborhood, they got to know people when they were all wheeling baby carriages up and down the street,'' said Donna Lyons of Rye.

That is not the way it's done at her parents' new home, Water's Edge, a 76-unit luxury condominium in Rye, or at many of the other condominium developments in Westchester.

Newcomers at condominium developments are welcomed and introduced today with newsletters. The newsletters range from a few mimeographed pages turned out by volunteers to glossy brochures with photographs and biographies of the new families.

The newsletters not only introduce newcomers but also keep people in touch over the years. They serve as a combination bulletin board and local newspaper, reporting the winners of golf tournaments and tennis matches and the births of children and grandchildren. And they introduce residents to the staff, alert people to parking and security rules and tell of expansion plans or facilities.

Some newsletters run condolence messages, but none runs obituaries. Judith Desrochers, who edits the Heritage Hills newsletter in Somers, said there had been ''no interest'' in obituaries, and Frances Napoli, editor of the Jefferson Valley Condominium newsletter, said ''residents can read those in the local newspapers.''

Families moving into condominiums sometimes find that they are among the lures used to attract new buyers. Donna Lyons's parents were featured in the Water's Edge newsletter in an article headed ''First Move-In Family Appreciates the Carefree Life at Water's Edge.'' The article will be distributed along with other promotional material at the condominium's sales office.

The Fountainhead, a cooperative of 108 town houses in Scarsdale, recently issued its first newsletter, which included a page of photos of ''new move-ins.''

''It's a good selling tool,'' said Marje Fogel, public relations director for the development. ''It's like a testimonial, like movie actors' pictures at a restaurant or visitors at a resort.''

''People want to know what their new neighbors look like,'' she went on, ''and they want to move into a place where they will feel at home. We don't run everybody's pictures in the newsletter. We try to balance it, so it will represent all types of residents - singles, family, senior citizens and so on.

''We balance it according to race and religion, too. We wouldn't use a page with everybody of the same race or religion, because it would give a wrong impression.''

Heritage Hills in Somers has been publishing a monthly newsletter for seven years and has a ''Welcome Newcomers'' column. The monthly printing is 5,000 copies, and the readers include former residents and potential buyers.

The advertising in newsletters ranges from bifocal contact lenses to estate planning and tax shelters and includes restaurants, home furnishings, airport limousines and beauty salons. The announced activities include bridge, golf and Bible club, as well as crosscountry skiing, paddle tennis, dances, concerts, art shows and theater parties.

''High Points,'' the newsletter at a 500-unit condominium in Hartsdale, has been published for six years, most of that time by residents, and it is financed by advertising. It is published every two months, and its last issue had 28 pages. Its lead story welcomed newcomers, listed activities and had an out-of-season warning that hanging bathing suits or laundry and barbecuing was forbidden on balconies.

The ''High Points'' newsletter is a source of contention between its editor for the last six years, Henry Themal, and the board of directors, because of Mr. Themal's editorial complaints against the board.

Not all residents are impressed with the value of newsletters as a get-acquainted tool. Carol Senal, a Fountainhead resident, said she had ''not met a single human being'' after being featured in the newsletter. She said that if she was a potential buyer, she ''would not be impressed just because the paper can show that a bunch of people live there.''

Miss Lyons, on the other hand, said people not only got acquainted through the newsletter but also knew their neighbors better than they would in a single-family house in a suburban neighborhood.

''This is community living,'' Miss Lyons said. ''You live so close. You see people at the pool and in the garage. People come here from Texas and California, and they don't know anybody. Once your picture is in the newsletter, people stop by and say hello.'' Amawalk Elisha Purdy Rd. 9-room, 3-bath brick/frame Cape $112,500 Built 1966; dark room, 1 acre; taxes $2,678 Dobbs Ferry Treetop Lane 6-room, 2 1/2-bath town house $122,000 Garden, skylight; $297 monthly Eastchester Andrew Rd. 7-room, 2-bath frame Cape $96,000 Built 1955; playroom; taxes $2,018 Elmsford Old Country Rd. 6-room, 1-bath garden apartment $67,000 Pool, club house, exercise room; $184 monthly Mamaroneck Greacer Point 8-room, 3 1/2-bath Tudor/Norman $185,000 Built 1927; sunroom; taxes $4,914 Scarsdale Anderson Ave. 7-room, 2-bath frame Colonial $105,000 Built 1924; deck, near station; taxes $1,275 White Plains Bilton Rd. 6-room, 2-bath ranch $85,000 Built 1957; alarm system, 3/4 acre; taxes $2,056 Yorktown Heights Baldwin Rd 10-room, 4 1/2-bath frame Colonial $152,000 1967; greenhouse, pool, 2 acres; taxes $4,453 Sales in Other Areas Weston, Conn. Lyons Plain Rd. 4-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath Colonial $246,000 1859; guest house, 2.7 acres; taxes $3,558 W. Long Branch, N.J. Summers Ave. 3-bedroom, 1-bath Cape Cod $70,000 Built-in bookshelves, fireplace; taxes $1,117


ONE of the most unusual Christmas greetings in many a year - the ultimate in family newsletters - has just arrived, or is en route, to 626 homes across the country and abroad. It is a slim paperback book called ''Live a Year With a Millionaire!'' and is written by Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, a man who refers to himself as an ''alleged'' millionaire but doesn't expect anyone to take the alleged too seriously.

The 94-page volume is a narration, in simple, almost stream-ofconsciousness prose, of the year 1979, as lived by Mr. Whitney and his wife, Marylou. The monthly account of trips, houses, children, friends, breakfasts, lunches, dinners and parties is interspersed with observations and homilies.

The book was written, as Mr. Whitney notes at the end, ''to show young people that they need not dread getting over 60 years old,'' and to tell people 60 or older that there are ways to remain active and cheerful ''as long as the dear Lord wishes.'' If the account is to be believed, and there is no reason to doubt it, Mr. Whitney, who is now 82 years old and was then 80, has been leading not only an active life but what might be called a frenetic one. The pages are punctuated with shuttles between Kentucky, Lake Placid, an Adirondack lodge, Saratoga, New York City, Florida, Switzerland and Majorca. The journeys, hundreds of them, were somewhat eased by the fact that in each of these places, other than Switzerland, the Whitneys have homes, fully furnished (in at least two of them, the king-size beds are mentioned several times) and, in most cases, staffed with loyal retainers.

Lest anyone think, ''Well sure, that's fine for the rich, but -'' Mr. Whitney's homilies include a bit of advice about getting on in financial affairs. Money, he admits, is important, ''and this country of ours allows us to work to improve our finances.''

''So my advice to you would be to go to work to improve yours,'' he wrote, ''as I have done through the years, to improve mine.'' There is no advice on how one can get the original finances that can then be improved, but the book is, after all, a Christmas greeting, not a self-help manual. Suffice it to say that Mr. Whitney, the son of Harry Payne Whitney and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, took the silver spoon with which he was born and finessed it into a golden bowl. He was one of the founders of Pan American World Airways, Marineland in Florida and the Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company in Canada. He was also a producer of the films ''Gone With the Wind,'' ''A Star Is Born'' and ''Rebecca.'' His association with the motion picture industry led to his meeting his wife, who was then appearing in a movie called ''Missouri Traveler'' and whom he married in 1958.

Mrs. Whitney, who is referred to as Mary by her husband, is credited with a good deal of her husband's cheery outlook on life. She is, he says, a terrific decorator, a marvelous cook, an indefatigable worker for charitable causes and an all-around wonderful person. She is also, he observes at various times, ''beautiful'' and ''young.''

''There has been much said about the correct years separating man and wife,'' he says at the end of the book, as December 1979 is drawing to a close. ''I admit that there is no set rule on that subject. I am some years older than Mary and, to date, we have had 22 years of happy married life.''

The reasons for the happiness, he submits, are four essential ingredients. They are ''(1) good sex relationship, of course (2) mutual friends (3) similar way of life pattern and (4) sense of humor.''

What is a typical day in the life of a millionaire? Well, at random, here's a day in February. The Whitneys flew, via Executive Jet, from Saranac Lake, N.Y., to Whitney House in Lexington, Ky.

''After unpacking, down to the sun porch, our favorite spot, and I start to relax. James, Louella and Mary Ann (staff) are there to greet us. Delicious dinner of fried chicken, green peas, salad and freshly baked cake. After dinner, Mary and I played miniature pool and then cribbage. Our poodle, Bee Bee, and both cats, Lady Blue and Nosey, happy to be with us. Outside, Bear, our golden Labrador, guarded the house. Talk, talk on our good luck and things we accomplished in February. Tuesday, awoke at 7:45 (our regular time here) to a brilliant, dry, sunshiny day, not a cloud in the sky. I went to the atrium, did my exercises, swam and then showered, and felt full of pep. Good, big breakfast, then to my office.''

Leave out the the commuting between two of seven residences, the Executive Jet, the staff ready and waiting, the atrium and getting ready for a short spin to Palm Beach, and you don't even have to be a millionaire. Unpacking, fried chicken and animals are every American's birthright.


''ONE evening Calvin Coolidge took a short walk around the White House with Senator Selden P. Spencer of Missouri. As they were returning, Spencer pointed to the Executive Mansion and said facetiously: 'I wonder who lives there.' 'Nobody,' said 'Silent Cal' glumly. 'They just come and go.' ''

Thus begins Paul F. Boller Jr.'s preface to his ''Presidential Anecdotes,'' as easy an introduction to the history of the Republic as one is likely to find anywhere. Tall tales, short tales and one fat tale (see below) abound in this entertaining volume, which Oxford University Press will publish next fall.

Horatio Greenough's huge marble statue of Washington, presenting him as an old Roman, stripped to his waist, with a toga draped over his knees, balancing a sword, and sitting on a Roman chair, raised a great storm when it was unveiled in the Capitol Rotunda in 184l. ''Our people,'' said architect Charles Bulfinch, ''will hardly be satisfied with looking on well-developed muscles when they wish to see the great man as their imagination has painted him. I fear that this (statue) will only give the idea of entering or leaving a bath. If I should give my advice, it would be to send the statue to Athens, to be placed in the Parthenon with other naked great men.'' ANDREW JACKSON, 1829-37

Jackson's fights usually involved his beloved wife Rachel. Rachel was unhappily married when Jackson first met her in a Nashville boarding house; and when her first husband left her to seek a divorce, she and Jackson married. Two years later they learned that there had been no divorce after all and that Rachel's former husband was now suing for divorce on the ground that his wife had been living in sin for two years. As soon as the divorce came through, the Jacksons were promptly remarried; but there was much malicious talk around town about Rachel's ''adultery.''... Charles Dickinson, a wealthy young Nashville dandy, was the best pistol shot in Tennessee, and when Jackson took him on he considered himself practically a dead man. But he did not flinch from what he considered his duty. When Dickinson, during a quarrel over a horse-race wager, profaned the ''sacred name'' of Rachel, Jackson challenged him to a duel. The two men met across the Kentucky line, and eight paces (twenty-four feet) were measured off. ''Are you ready?'' asked John Overton, the second. ''I am ready,'' said Dickinson. ''Fere!'' called Overton, in his country accent. Dickinson raised his pistol quickly and fired; but because of the loose coat Jackson was wearing, the bullet fractured a rib instead of piercing the heart. ''My God!'' exclaimed Dickinson, ''have I missed him?'' Jackson then raised his pistol slowly and squeezed the trigger; but the hammer stopped at half-cock. He drew it back, aimed again, and this time killed Dickinson. ''I intended to kill him,'' he said afterward. ''I would have stood up long enough to kill him if he had put a bullet in my brain.'' ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 18 61-65

Lincoln laughed at himself as well as at other people. When Senator Stephen A. Douglas called him a ''two-faced man,'' Lincoln said: ''I leave it to my audience. If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?'' WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, 1909-13

Taft's size may have had something to do with his style. Tall and heavy (though well-proportioned), he was the biggest man ever to occupy the White House. He weighed between 300 and 350 pounds most of the time and had to have a special bathtub constructed for him when he took up residence in the White House. Once, when he was Governor-General of the Philippines, he cabled Secretary of War Elihu Root from Manila: ''Took long horseback ride today; feeling fine.'' Root at once cabled back: ''How is the horse?'' When he visited the Panama Canal, shortly after its completion, his engineer host saw fit to reinforce a dining-room chair with steel. Taft was grateful; it gave him a great feeling of security, he said during his visit. He was, people said, the politest man in Washington: on streetcars he would rise and give his place to three women. FRANKLIN D.ROOSEVELT, 1933-45

When Roosevelt was thinking of giving Joseph P. Kennedy a position in his administration, the latter said he would like to be ambassador to England; he was intrigued, he said, by the idea of being the first Irishman to hold that post. Roosevelt was so amused at the idea that he almost fell out of his wheelchair. ''Joe,'' he said, ''would you mind stepping back a bit, by the fireplace perhaps, so I can get a good look at you?'' Puzzled, Kennedy did so. Then Roosevelt said, ''Joe, would you mind taking your pants down?'' Astonished, Kennedy undid his suspenders and dropped his trousers. ''Someone who saw you in a bathing suit once told me something I now know to be true,'' said Roosevelt. ''Joe, just look at your legs. You are just about the most bowlegged man I have ever seen. Don't you know that the ambassador to the Court of St. James has to go through an induction ceremony in which he wears knee britches and silk stockings? Can you imagine how you'll look? When photos of our new ambassador appear all over the world we'll be a laughing stock. You're just not right for the job, Joe.'' ''Mr. President,'' said Kennedy, ''if I can get the permission of his majesty's government to wear a cutaway coat and striped pants to the ceremony, would you agree to the appointment?'' ''Well, Joe,'' said Roosevelt, ''you know how the British are about tradition. There's no way you are going to get permission, and I must name a new ambassador soon.'' ''Will you give me two weeks?'' begged Kennedy. Roosevelt finally agreed to that. Kennedy pulled up his pants and left. Within two weeks he returned with the permission he sought from the British government, and Roosevelt made the appointment. JOHN F.KENNEDY, 196 1-63

Catholicism was still an issue when Kennedy tried for the Presidency; so was the fact that his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was enormously wealthy. ''I'm not against the Pope,'' said Harry Truman, who at first opposed Kennedy's candidacy. ''I'm against the Pop.'' LYNDON B.JOHNSON, 1 963-69

At lunch once, Bill Moyers was saying grace, when Johnson bellowed: ''Speak up, Bill! I can't hear a damn thing.'' Moyers looked up and said quietly, ''I wasn't addressing you, Mr. President.''... Another tale had it that on a visit to the LBJ ranch, Germany's Ludwig Erhard told Johnson, ''I understand you were born in a log cabin, Mr. President,'' ''No, Mr. Chancellor, I was born in a manger.''


CAIRO, April 23— Publication of the autobiography of President Sadat's closest friend has created an uproar here because it contains allegations of financial misconduct by a former Prime Minister and by two daughters of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The book, ''Pages From My Experience,'' is by Osman Ahmed Osman, a self-made millionaire contractor whose company built the Aswan High Dam. Mr. Osman is now a Deputy Prime Minister with broad powers and complete access to President Sadat. One of his sons is married to a Sadat daughter.

The book, whose first edition of 65,000 copies sold out quickly, is now unavailable but the scandalous passages have been published in the Egyptian press.

Mr. Osman's memoir named no names but his descriptions of the people involved in the financial mischief were such that Egyptians were able to indentify them almost immediately.

Those identified have since written angry letters of denial to Cairo newspapers and threatened to sue Mr. Osman. Mr. Sadat has ordered a special committee of Parliament to investigate the charges and denials. The committee, which one Government official said would be mired for a long time in closed hearings, is to begin its inquiry next week.

One of Mr. Osman's charges was that President Nasser's daughters had paid only $8,600 for houses worth about $140,000. The charge has been denied by Ashraf Marwan, a former Sadat favorite who is married to one of President Nasser's daughters. Mr. Marwan, speaking for the Nasser family, said he planned legal action ''to stop all defamatory charges reflecting on our honor and reputation.''

Mr. Osman also charged that a former Prime Minister of Egypt was involved in a real estate scam in which Cairo property was sold at a fifth of its value to non-Egyptian interests in exchange for shares in business ventures.

The former Prime Minister, Abdel Aziz Hegazi, has said he will document his innocence before the committee of Parliament investigating the matter. Mr. Hegazi served as Mr. Sadat's Prime Minister from 1974 to 1975, when he was dismissed without public explanation.

Financial chicanery and skimming is not at all rare in Egypt. What makes this case interesting is that it is being given an airing in the Government-controlled press, which normally avoids reporting about scandal and corruption.

Mr. Sadat commented on the book controversy in this week's edition of May, a newspaper the President created last month. Mr. Sadat said he had not read Mr. Osman's book until after excerpts appeared in the press. ''Then I ordered an investigation immediately,'' he said.

Mr. Sadat said that ''agitators'' had erroneously informed the Nasser family that ''Sadat is the one who asked Osman to write what he wrote.''

''The Communists and agitators have not stopped rejoicing because they think Osman has fallen,'' the President went on, ''and they think it means the fall of the whole system because Osman is a relative of Sadat.''

In the interview, Mr. Sadat said he could not comment on his friend's book ''until the matter comes before the law-making authorities.'' He said he planned to ask the Cabinet to consider some sort of censorship of books written by public officials.


''COTTON Patch Gospel,'' a new musical with songs by the late Harry Chapin, is a down-home retelling of the New Testament, a kind of cracker-barrel turnabout of Alec McCowen's ''St. Mark's Gospel,'' or a ''Jesus Christ, Good Ol' Boy.'' The show, which moves the Gospels from Gethsemane to Georgia, opened last night at the Lambs Theater, a cozy bandbox of a stage in the former Lambs Club. Drawing its inspiration from Clarence Jordan's book ''The Cotton Patch Version of Matthew and John,'' the evening is as cute as calico and as sweet as sorghum. A little of it goes a very long way.

The musical is largely a solo performance by Tom Key, co-author of the book with Russell Treyz, who also acts as director. The narrative is accompanied by a lively four-piece band of pluckers and pickers. The music repeatedly elevates the evening.

Telling the Christ story as if for the first time, Mr. Key is a hard-working, energetic actor and singer, who looks and acts a little like Dick Van Dyke. With an eager grin, he jawbones his way through this comic-book version of the Gospels until the Crucifixion, when he suddenly becomes somber. Along the way, he plays a multitude of characters from ''Governor Pilate of Georgia'' to Jesus, boy and man, only slightly shifting his manner to accommodate changes in personality. With his flat, uninflected and sincere voice, Mr. Key's Christ sounds like no one so much as another J.C. from Georgia, Jimmy Carter, which may or may not be intentional.

To give you some idea of the evening's stickily satiric flavor, when Jesus is born to ''God and a Georgia girl,'' three angels arrive bearing chili cheese-dogs and Mary begins to keep a baby book. The adult Jesus tours the Bible belt like a soul-saving preacher, falling in with a group of cronies named Jim, Jack, Rock and poor Jud Iscariot. Climbing on top of a table, the actor pretends to walk on water with a cry of ''It's me. Jesus. Look, no skis,'' and feeds 5,000 people with five boxes of Nabiscos and two cans of sardines.

The monologue is filled with food references and Bible jokes. It is also interspersed with some amusing throwaway lyrics (''It isn't easy growing up to be Jesus ... with no steady job and no steady girl'') that make one wish Mr. Chapin had written the book as well as the lyrics.

Mr. Chapin, who died in an auto accident last July, was a prolific and talented popular composer, and some of his songs in ''Cotton Patch Gospel,'' sung straight, are just fine. There is a skein of them in the shorter second act, including ''You Are Still My Boy'' and ''Jubilation,'' that deserves to survive outside of the show's relentlessly folksy framework.

The musicians, known collectively as the Cotton Pickers, are a constant reinforcement. They also join in the singing, periodically turning a whimsical Bible lesson into an exuberant country-western hoedown. Down-Home Divinity COTTON PATCH GOSPEL, based on ''The Cotton Patch Version of Matthew and John'' by Clar- ence Jordan; book by Tom Key and Russell Treyz; music and lyrics by Harry Chapin; di- rected by Mr. Treyz; scenery by John Falabella; lighting by Roger Morgan; musical director, Tom Chapin. Presented by Philip M. Getter. At the Lambs Theater, 130 West 44th Street. WITH: Tom Key, Scott Ainslie, Pete Corum, Mi- chael Mark and Jim Lauderdale.


ClearSlide, a San Francisco-based developer of a cloud-based platform for enterprise sales teams, has raised $28 million in Series B funding. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, and was joined by return backers Greylock Partners and Felicis Ventures. www.clearslide.com TenXer, a San Francisco-based employee productivity platform, has raised $3 million in Series B funding. True Ventures led the round, and was joined by Radar Partners, Khosla Ventures and individual angels. www.tenxer.com

Sophono Inc., a Boulder, Colo.-based maker of implantable, bone-conducting hearing devices, has raised $7 million in Series B funding led by Wexford Capital. www.sophono.com

Rapid Diagnostek Inc., a Hudson, Wis.-based provider of diagnostic tools for veterinarians, has raised $4.6 million in Series B funding, according to VentureWire. TGap Ventures led the round, and was joined by Capital Midwest Fund and return backer NEW Capital Fund. www.rapiddiagnostek.com

NoWait, a Pittsburgh-based provider of restaurant wait-time and availability information, has raised $2 million in VC funding. Birchmere Ventures led the round, and was joined by Sand Hill Angels. www.nowait.com

Sauce Labs Inc., a San Francisco-based provider of web application testing solutions for enterprise developers, has raised $3 million in Series B funding. Triage Ventures led the round, and was joined by Salesforce.com. www.saucelabs.com

Shutl, a London-based retail delivery service, has raised $2 million. Backers include United Parcel Service, Hummingbird Ventures and GeoPost. www.shutl.com

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Summary: ClearSlide, a San Francisco-based developer of a cloud-based platform for enterprise sales teams, has raised $28 million in Series B funding. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, and was joined by return backers Greylock Partners and Felicis Ventures. www.clearslide.com TenXer, a San Francisco-based employee productivity platform, has raised $3 million in Series B funding. True Ventures led the round, and…


The Mortgage Bankers Association expects new home sales growth to be flat in April, but the real story is how far behind the country has fallen behind in terms of catching up to prerecession levels, the organization's CEO and president said Friday.

"We're really way down below where overall homes sales, including new home sales, should be when you look at a prerecession level," David Stevens said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "We're nowhere near where we should be."

The association cut its forecast for new home sales in April from just over an annual rate of half a million to about 487,000. Before the recession, new home sales grew at an annual rate of about 1 million residences per year, Stevens said.

Read MoreWeekly mortgage applications fall 3.5% as rates rise

While the home affordability index has never been better for home buying, he said, consumers are still rebuilding credit after the recession and have less wealth and lower wages.

The regulatory climate in the United States is also creating tighter credit markets, he added.

"I think overall there's a need for Washington to kind of refocus in on what are the impediments being put in the marketplace that's limiting that expansion of credit access to the housing market, again within reason, because you never want to repeat what got us into this recession in the first place," he said.

Summary: The Mortgage Bankers Association expects new home sales growth to be flat in April, a sign of a weak housing recovery.


TOKYO — SoftBank Group’s decision to raise its stake in Sprint Corp. has helped boost shares in the unprofitable US wireless operator by almost 50 percent over the past seven trading days, adding more than $6 billion to its market value.

The Japanese carrier disclosed Tuesday that it had increased its stake for a second time this month, acquiring 16.8 million shares for $73 million. The latest purchase follows an $87 million investment announced last week.

SoftBank’s billionaire founder Masayoshi Son has reiterated his commitment to Sprint as it shows signs of recovery. Son has said he sees ‘‘light at the end of the tunnel’’ for the carrier, which booked losses in six out of the past seven quarters, but a revival may take two years.

Marcelo Claure, Sprint’s CEO, has focused on network improvements, half-price offers, and tablet promotions to lure customers. He’s also cut costs. But the company has been burning through cash. Its cash and equivalents fell $2 billion in the fiscal first quarter, or 2.5 times the decrease in the period a year earlier. And even with the recent subscriber additions, the carrier fell behind T-Mobile US Inc. as the fourth-largest US wireless carrier.

Summary: SoftBank Group’s decision to lift its stake in Sprint Corp. has helped boost shares in the unprofitable U.S. wireless operator by almost 50 percent over the last seven trading days, adding more than $6 billion to its market value.


08/24/2015 AT 09:45 PM EDT

IndyCar driver Justin Wilson died on Monday, one day after suffering a head injury during a race in Pennsylvania.

IndyCar made the announcement at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Monday night, the

On Sunday, Wilson was hit in the head by a piece of debris from another driver's car that crashed into a wall. After being hit, the 37-year-old crashed into an interior wall at the Pocono Raceway.

The British driver was flown to Lehigh Valley Health Network Cedar Crest Hospital where he remained in a coma until his death.

IndyCar reportedly transported Wilson's wife Julia from Colorado to Pennsylvania after the accident. His brother, Stefan, who is also an Indycar driver, reportedly

to get to his brother's side.

"Can't even begin to describe the loss I feel right now," Stefan

on Monday night. "He was my Brother, my best friend, my role model and mentor. He was a champion!"

In a follow-up Tweet Stefan revealed this Justin's organs were being donated. "He never stopped giving & caring for others. Even at this time," Stefan wrote. "He had pre-chosen to donate his organs to help others in need. #myherojw"

Can't even begin to describe the loss I feel right now. He was my Brother, my best friend, my role model and mentor. He was a champion!

He never stopped giving & caring for others. Even at this time. He had pre-chosen to donate his organs to help others in need. #myherojw

According to AP, IndyCar has recently overhauled its rule book in an attempt to keep drivers safe, but the part of the car that flew off and injured Wilson was not a tethered part.

"Motor racing is never going to be 100 percent safe. If it was, there would be nobody in the grandstands," Mario Andretti, a champion driver, told AP. "But we've come a very, very far way in terms of safety. Now this will be looked at and addressed appropriately."

Wilson is survived by his wife and two children.

Summary: The IndyCar driver suffered an injury to the head on Sunday when he was struck with debris from another driver's car


Putin told the forum on Friday he was confident the Asia-Pacific region would remain "the engine of the world economy" despite its current problems.

The forum's attendance reflected Russia's change in emphasis. China's delegation was headed by Deputy Prime Minister Wang Yang. The only high-profile Western participant was Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell.

Speaking on Saturday, Wang said the Far East development strategy outlined by Putin coincided with China's strategy of "north-east rebirth".

""(The) Russia-Chinese partnership will definitely bring generous fruits," he said.

Wang's address to the forum was short and he left immediately afterwards, in the middle of the session, followed by Chinese officials, including Wang Yilin, chairman of the board at China National Petroleum Corporation.

"This was unexpected but this was okay, we managed," said Boris Titov, chairman of the Russian part of the China-Russia Friendship Committee for Peace and Development.

"The first session was delayed and they (the Chinese delegation) had already a briefing scheduled."

A CNPC official, who was accompanying Yilin but declined to give his name, said only: "The schedule has changed."

Some Russians fret over their country's increased economic reliance on China -- a process encouraged by the Western sanctions -- but there was no sign of any such reservations at the Vladivostok forum.

"Chinese counterparts ... are interested in investments, in organising joint companies - for them this region is of huge interest," Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov told the state Rossiya-24 news channel.

And before his departure, CNPC's Yilin told reporters that developing ties with Russia was a priority for Beijing because of the desire to diversify its sources of energy.

"China is importing crude oil from other countries, usually via sea, while here we can import oil by land. This is good protection for the security of our country's crude oil imports."

Read MoreA new global war front taking shape in cyberspace

The Russian government has been passing laws to try to attract investors to the area and has designated Vladivostok a free port, a move that eases its visa regime and is aimed at increasing trade and tourism.

Putin promised on Friday to spend state money in the Far East -- some of it via state-backed investment funds. He pledged Russian companies would expand their presence, words backed by a decision of Rosneft, the country's largest oil producer, to invest 1.3 trillion roubles ($19.26 billion) in projects in the region.

"These huge investments by Russian standards, such attention from the government, this says that all of this (the focus on the Far East) is serious," Dmitry Golovanov, chairman at Eximbank, a unit of the state development bank, Vnesheconombank, told Reuters.

But the scale of the task is huge.

Russia's Far East has lost a quarter of its population since the collapse of the centralised Soviet economy 25 years ago and is now home to only about six million people.

One of Putin's ideas is to encourage internal migration: He has promised free land to Russians who want to develop it.

Read More One year on, how's Russia's 'pivot east' doing?

In Khasan, whose population has halved to less than 1,000 people since 1991, a few new apartment buildings have been built in recent years, inhabited by people who have left their former houses to rot. But for some, Putin's promise of a better future for the region cannot materialise soon enough.

Local shops in Vladivostok are stocked mostly with lower-end products tailored for people's modest budgets, road infrastructure is dismal, and there is a lack of housing.

Alexander, a taxi driver born in Vladivostok and the father of a three-year-old, said he had one goal: to move to the European part of Russia.

"I may have hopes for the (Far East) region, but I have no hope that the quality of life will improve."

Ian Ivory, a partner at Golstblat BLP, was equally pessimitic that China would be the savior of the Far East, or indeed Russia.

He aid the Chinese slowdown would hardest affect emerging markets which are providers of raw materials.

"Russia is another classic example that will feel the pain, and China will be a further negative drag on the Russian economy," Ivory said in e-mailed comments.

- CNBC contributed to this report.

Summary: As Russia's economy stutters, its president is turning his attention to the country's Far East, where he hopes Asian money can generate prosperity.


After three wretched sessions, stocks kicked off the session with a rally Tuesday, but quickly erased their gains. Some traders say the selling may not be over.

It's been a gut-wrenching few weeks for the market, with the S&P 500 now down 7 percent from its highs, and few signs of a turnaround emerging. The S&P sliced through its widely watched 200-day moving average on Monday, and the selling accelerated late in the session, as the CBOE Volatility Index zoomed to a two-year high. Late pain led the index to close just below 1,875, the lowest level since May.

Read MoreCNBC Explains: The 200-day moving average

S&P futures are gaining slightly in early trading. As third-quarter earnings season began, Tuesday morning results from JPMorgan, Citigroup and Johnson & Johnson have beaten expectations. Yet traders warn that technical indicators may outweigh good earnings new in the near term.

The selling "may not continue into today—but I don't think it's over," Anthony Grisanti of GRZ Energy wrote to CNBC. "Technicals alone point to a lower market. It looks like we are headed for a 10 percent adjustment."

Notably, the S&P has not suffered a 10 percent correction since summer of 2011. Many have long called such an event overdue.

Read MoreWall Street hopes for a boost from earnings

Summary: It's been a gut-wrenching few weeks for the market, but some market experts say the selling may not be over.


The professional chef and researcher on flavor perception at Oxford University's Crossmodal Research Laboratory, also stated it was "scientifically inaccurate" to think that food's deliciousness just comes down to taste.

Using his own research and previous scientific studies, Michel uncovered that atmospheric sounds like chewing and background noises can potentially influence a burger tasting experience, with more research suggesting we "eat with our ears".

"The formula is a combination of scientific insight and intuition. But more than that, it's about making people more curious about the sensory complexity and richness of eating experiences in general, especially when it comes to such a succesful food as the burger (an über-food, one might say)," Michel told CNBC via email on Wednesday.

Michel argued that taste is just one key component, yet he's calculated how the five "basic tastes" can be perfectly balanced in a burger: 35 percent umami (savory), 25 percent saltiness, 20 percent sweetness, 15 percent sourness, and 5 percent bitterness.

Summary: It’s often said we eat with our eyes, but one food expert suggests that to truly enjoy a burger, you need all five senses.


The subprime mortgage crisis saw several major U.S. financial institutions collapse in 2008, and led to Bear Stearns's sale to JPMorgan Chase. The crisis was triggered by a sharp decline in home prices, which was catastrophic for banks that had loaded up on mortgage-backed securities in the preceding boom years.

"What I learned from the crisis is that as you get older, you get more used to the risks you have seen before—or think you have seen before," Schwartz told CNBC on Monday.

"We saw another cycle coming and we assumed we would be able to handle it, and sometimes what you assume from the past is very different from the future. So it teaches you not to get complacent about the risks you think you have already seen."

Deflation rearing its 'ugly' head

Schwartz also warned that deflationary pressures were the greatest risk facing the global economy.

"Deflation is a very powerful force. It is rearing its ugly head again and we still have not conquered it," he told CNBC.

Waning inflation has proved particularly problematic in the euro zone, where annualized inflation came in at 0.3 percent last month compared to 1.1 percent in the same period a year before.

Like European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, Schwartz said that euro zone countries needed to tackle the problem through fiscal policy, rather than relying on central bank stimulus measures.

"It is a demand issue," Schwartz told CNBC. "I think the monetary policy of the ECB is appropriate; I think they are going to have to figure out other policies, fiscal policies, to get things going."

Clarification: This piece has been amended to reflect that Alan Schwartz is executive chairman at Guggenheim Partners.

Summary: Boosting the housing market could fuel the next credit bubble, warned Alan Schwartz, the former head of Bear Stearns.


Behind a nondescript doorway, down a narrow alleyway off Tottenham Court Road in central London, there are treasures by Lucian Freud and Sickert, Gainsborough and LS Lowry, Van Dyck and Grayson Perry. Next week members of the public are invited to celebrate museums and galleries month by visiting the spectacular national art collection they never knew they owned.

The collection of thousands of works of art is not secret, but it is shadowy.

The Government Art Collection is in the care of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, but its address does not even appear on the DCMS website. The collection has never been, and is never likely to be, assembled in one place. The first illustrated catalogue - covering just the oil paintings - was published only last year by the Public Catalogue Foundation.

Director Penny Johnson has worked there for 10 years but regularly sees works for the first time, and her predecessor, leaving after 20 years, saw one painting for the first time in her last week in the job. The collection originated in the outrageous price of Victorian wallpaper. In 1898 the Office of Works agreed to take responsibility for the motley collection of paintings and sculptures scattered throughout government buildings and the offices of politicians, officials and diplomats.

The Treasury even granted £300 a year to buy art - a good bargain, since it allowed them to postpone renovating many office spaces, "thus saving a good sum in decoration", the official minutes record. Some of the purchases were notably canny. In 1947 they bought a fairground scene by LS Lowry, months after it was completed by a then much less celebrated artist.

Last year another from the same series, Good Friday Daisy Nook, sold at Christie's for £3.7m, a world record. In 1978 they bought an early Lucian Freud, a rather soggy Welsh landscape which few familiar with his later monumental nudes would recognise.

Gradually the purpose of the collection expanded from covering holes in the plaster to displaying and promoting British art, in official spaces around the world. Johnson and her small team now spend months brooding over what to send where: Byron, the very image of a romantic hero in absurdly splendid oriental costume, off to Athens; the Andy Warhol portrait of the Queen to Washington; a Bridget Riley to Cairo, inspired by the colours she saw on her visits to ancient Egyptian tombs; a painting by Carel Weight of a woman reading George Bernard Shaw to Dublin.

At the moment the treasures in the London stores include the Lowry and the Freud, a gigantic early 19th seascape by Nicholas Condy of English and French ships off an unidentified port that Johnson hopes some nautical visitor may recognise, and a sinuous white marble sculpture by Barbara Hepworth. But any of those could have been packed off to a new home by the time the doors open to the public on Saturday week.

Choosing pictures for embassies requires a shrewd political nose as well as an artistic eye: imperial pomp and glory doesn't always go down well in former colonies, nudes are out across the Muslim world, James Duke of York, after whom New York was named, is off to Manhattan rather than George III who fought and failed to keep America, and mainly works by Irish and Anglo-Irish artists including William Orpen and John Lavery hang in the ambassador's residence in Dublin.

The Sickert will soon be off to Brussels: its title, The Integrity of Belgium, means they'll be keeping a watchful eye on the fracturing politics of that country.

The enormous portrait of Robert Peel, one of the largest canvases in the Government Art Collection, will almost certainly be in store for some time.

No justice minister, nor any overseas official, seems to covet a towering image of the then home secretary clutching in one hand the act of parliament establishing the Metropolitan police - his "Peelers" - and a wastepaper basket apparently full of rejected drafts at his feet. The lift had to be enlarged to get the painting in, and a packing crate the size of a bus will be needed to get it out again.

· The Government Art Collection, for public tours on Saturday May 17. Places are free, but limited, and must be prebooked through the Culture Department: gac@culture.gov.uk, phone 020 7580 9120

Summary: Shadowy collection of works includes many in embassies around world