Byline: By armand limnande section: Section mm; Column 0; T: Men's Fashion Magazine; Pg. 76 Length
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URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: WEALTHY PEOPLE (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); HISTORY (78%); REAL ESTATE (77%); DEATHS & OBITUARIES (90%); WORLD WAR II (73%); FINES & PENALTIES (62%); CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS (64%) COMPANY: PAUL RAYMOND ORGANISATION LTD (58%) GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (91%) ENGLAND (91%); UNITED KINGDOM (91%) CATEGORY: Business and Finance PERSON: Paul Raymond LOAD-DATE: March 8, 2008 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Paul Raymond, entrepreneur. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ASSOCIATED PRESS, 1988) DOCUMENT-TYPE: Obituary (Obit); Biography PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 1016 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Retooling for a Changing Telecom Landscape BYLINE: By JULIA WERDIGIER SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; SATURDAY INTERVIEW; Pg. 2 LENGTH: 897 words DATELINE: LONDON Competition is fierce in the European telecommunications industry, where companies are vying for customers by undercutting each other on prices for services like broadband while trying to keep up with new technologies. Some phone companies, including Britain's biggest, the BT Group, face an additional challenge in trying to replace some of the revenue they have lost as customers have dropped traditional fixed-line phone service. Some analysts say BT is in an especially difficult situation because it does not have a mobile phone business to help offset that decline. But the chief executive, Ben Verwaayen, is betting that services like customized applications for corporate clients and advising companies on their networks can generate profit growth. As part of that plan, he has started to replace some of BT's traditional fixed-line phone engineers with technology ''wiz teams'' and plans to invest more in training and hiring. Mr. Verwaayen, 56, spoke recently about how he expects the industry to change from one that focuses on gadgets and hardware to services, the war for talent and acquisition plans. Here are excerpts from that conversation: Q.The market is moving quickly, customers are becoming more demanding and competition is fierce. In an environment like that, how do you gain an advantage over your rivals? A. What we sell now is very different from what we sold five years ago. We don't sell telephony or sending faxes anymore. What we sell now is a collaboration of different services. We provide what we call experiences and not just sell the hardware. I believe the world is moving into the next phase, where customers will much less distinguish between fixed and mobile services but will look more for the most innovative service for any given application. That's why we focus on services and providing a social networking capability. Q.Your main engine for growth is your services business, where you currently generate more than a third of total sales. Where do you see the biggest challenge with that approach? A. It's innovation. The reason to buy products is more and more that little level of innovation you get offered on top of the machines or gadgets you buy. While for companies in the connectivity business the challenge is to cut costs and prices, for us the gamble is can I keep innovating? Q.How do you make sure you do? Do you spend an increasing amount on research and development? A. You don't need to have a massive corporate innovation group but you need smaller groups scattered around the organization and very close to your customer base. About 50 percent of our revenue today is from things we didn't sell four or five years ago. When making investments, it is important to make them as neutral to any specific application as possible. Q.Like many other former phone monopolies, including Deutsche Telekom, BT needed to transform itself by moving away from the shrinking fixed-line business toward new products and services to remain competitive. How difficult is that? A. The challenge is how, in a company where everybody was born with a screwdriver in their hands, do you now start distributing keyboards. The innovation and the changes all happen on the software layer. The hardware layer simply is too expensive and changes take too long. Q.BT is currently in the middle of a cost-cutting program that includes reducing positions on the traditional hardware side of the businesses while hiring staff for the services operation. How does that make the people with the screwdrivers feel? A. They have to prove their value again because their world is more than ever about productivity. The screwdriver is not gone, but while in the past the screwdriver world would decide, now the people with the keyboard have the prime seat at the table. But if you look at our costs, it's the other way round. The bulk of it is still in the screwdriver world. So the key to any successful investment strategy is to understand talent. Q.How difficult is it to attract that talent? In December you bought the Singapore-based Frontline Technologies for about $140 million to expand in Asia. Most of your larger rivals have identified Asia as an area for future growth. How fierce is the war for talent there? A. Very, very fierce. Talent is the differentiator. It's where we put our money and our resources. If you don't open your mind and offer more than just good pay in that environment, you lose out. That is the biggest challenge to corporations, and we have to adapt to the talent's needs by being flexible and offer schemes like working from home. The type of people you find in BT now is massively different than just some years ago. Q.BT has made 27 small- to medium-size acquisitions in the last three years. Many recent ones were in the technology sector in the United States. Are you planning to continue that growth strategy? A. You can expect us to continue with such acquisitions because we've not only found interesting applications through them but also talent pools. The whole debate that I'm seeing around the world today that the U.S. is losing out to the East is wrong. It is the talent that will win no matter where that talent is based. In India, where 26,000 people are working for us, it's not lower costs that we are after but the fact that the market there has entrepreneurial people. URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: TELECOMMUNICATIONS (92%); WIRED TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (90%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES (90%); TELECOMMUNICATIONS SECTOR PERFORMANCE (90%); BROADBAND (78%); BUSINESS FORECASTS (78%); WIRELESS INDUSTRY (78%); RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT (78%); WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (78%); COMPANY PROFITS (71%); PRODUCT INNOVATION (68%) COMPANY: BT GROUP PLC (90%); DEUTSCHE TELEKOM AG (58%) TICKER: BTA (LSE) (74%); BT (NYSE) (90%); DTE (FRA) (58%); DT (NYSE) (58%); DEU (LSE) (50%); 9496 (TSE) (58%); BT (LSE) (90%) INDUSTRY: NAICS517212 CELLULAR & OTHER WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS (58%); NAICS517110 WIRED TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (58%); SIC4813 TELEPHONE COMMUNICATIONS, EXCEPT RADIOTELEPHONE (58%); NAICS517210 WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (EXCEPT SATELLITE) (58%) PERSON: BEN VERWAAYEN (71%) GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (58%) UNITED KINGDOM (78%); ENGLAND (58%) LOAD-DATE: March 8, 2008 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY SUZANNE PLUNKETT/BLOOMBERG NEWS) DOCUMENT-TYPE: Interview PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 1017 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Correction Appended Late Edition - Final
John Doerr, the venture capitalist, is adding an incentive: his firm is putting up $100 million to invest in the work of those programmers. At an event Thursday at Apple headquarters, Mr. Jobs announced a low-cost software development kit that outside programmers can use to create programs for the iPhone, much as they now write the vast majority of the programs created for the Macintosh. Until now, iPhones have officially been able to run only the limited assortment of applications that Apple includes. (Some buyers have modified the phones to add unauthorized software.) ''We're very excited about this,'' said Mr. Jobs, who also announced that the company was adding features to make the iPhone more appealing to business users. ''We think a lot of people, after understanding where we are going, are going to want to become an iPhone developer.'' Sharing the stage with Mr. Jobs, Mr. Doerr announced that his firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, had established a $100 million venture capital fund for iPhone entrepreneurs. Called the iFund, it is the largest fund the company has created for a specific technology. ''The potential for iPhone is huge,'' Mr. Doerr said. Matt Murphy, the Kleiner partner overseeing the fund, said he expected the fund to last two to three years, after which the company might decide to add more capital. Mr. Jobs said Apple would offer a developer kit for $99 that would allow programmers to create everything from games to business programs. On Thursday, Sega and AOL demonstrated applications they created for the iPhone using the kit. The programs that are created will then be available to iPhone users exclusively through a new service on all iPhones called the Apps Store, an aspect of the plan that may discourage some developers. Apple will keep 30 percent of the sale price. Mr. Jobs said that Apple would offer only those programs that it approves, rejecting pornography, for example, and programs that might not provide adequate security for users. He argued that developers would benefit from Apple's being the sole distributor because only Apple could give third-party programs such wide exposure to customers. All iPhone users will be able to browse the available programs directly from their devices. Customers will also benefit, he said, from Apple's weeding out of malicious programs. ''We can track the developers and we can tell their parents,'' Mr. Jobs said, joking about the demographic profile of many Apple entrepreneurs. In an attempt to lure corporate customers, Apple executives also announced that the iPhone would be able to work directly with Microsoft's Exchange software, allowing it to interact closely with corporate networks and e-mail systems in much the way that BlackBerry devices do. Apple said Genentech and Nike were among the companies that were already taking advantage of this feature. The new business abilities will be added to the iPhone in June and will come to existing owners in a free upgrade. The software will include extensive security features, like the ability to lock and erase the system remotely in the event of loss or theft. ''The majority of the objections I.T. managers have had about the iPhone have been addressed today,'' said Van L. Baker, an analyst with Gartner Inc., referring to corporate information technology managers. ''It's a very valid and robust device, and for that reason it's a viable platform for the enterprise in competition with the BlackBerry and others.'' But attracting a huge following among corporations is something Apple has not been able to achieve with the Macintosh, and it remains to be seen whether the iPhone will take sales from the BlackBerry, the popular business communicator sold by Research in Motion of Waterloo, Ontario. ''It's a better device and platform that does more things than the BlackBerry,'' Mr. Murphy said. If people have been questioning whether the iPhone is a business tool, the integration with Exchange ''takes the issue off the table,'' he said. The iPhone is already the second most popular smartphone after the BlackBerry, with a 28 percent share of the market, but its inability to communicate with corporate computer systems running Microsoft Exchange has hindered its growth in that market. URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: COMPUTER PROGRAMMING (90%); SOFTWARE MAKERS (90%); VENTURE CAPITAL (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (89%); MALICIOUS SOFTWARE (78%); SOFTWARE PIRACY (73%); ELECTRONIC MAIL (65%); POPULATION & DEMOGRAPHICS (61%); MARKET DEMOGRAPHICS (50%); MOBILE & CELLULAR TELEPHONES (90%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (90%) COMPANY: APPLE INC (92%); KLEINER PERKINS CAUFIELD & BYERS (68%); MICROSOFT CORP (50%) TICKER: AAPL (NASDAQ) (92%); MSFT (NASDAQ) (50%) INDUSTRY: NAICS423430 COMPUTER & COMPUTER PERIPHERAL EQUIPMENT & SOFTWARE MERCHANT WHOLESALERS (92%); NAICS334112 COMPUTER STORAGE DEVICE MANUFACTURING (92%); NAICS334111 ELECTRONIC COMPUTER MANUFACTURING (92%); SIC5045 COMPUTERS & COMPUTER PERIPHERAL EQUIPMENT & SOFTWARE (92%); SIC3572 COMPUTER STORAGE DEVICES (92%); SIC3571 ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS (92%); NAICS511210 SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (50%); SIC7372 PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE (50%) PERSON: STEVEN JOBS (94%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (56%) GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (90%) CALIFORNIA, USA (90%) UNITED STATES (90%) LOAD-DATE: March 7, 2008 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH CORRECTION-DATE: March 17, 2008 CORRECTION: An article in Business Day on March 7 about Apple's efforts to encourage programmers to write software for the iPhone referred incorrectly to the cost of its developer kit. The kit is free; it does not cost $99. (The company is charging $99 for the right to distribute finished programs to iPhone users.) GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Apple's chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, left, and the venture capitalist John Doerr at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. (PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL SAKUMA/ASSOCIATED PRESS) PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 1018 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Builders and Homeowners Under Strain BYLINE: By KATIE HAFNER; Katie Hafner reported from Yuba City in December and did additional reporting in San Francisco. SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1 LENGTH: 1473 words DATELINE: YUBA CITY, Calif. When George P. Dunmore started his business in Sacramento in the early 1950s, World War II was over and the building boom was on. Over the next several decades his company, Dunmore Construction, along with other respected builders, took the tabula rasa that was California's Central Valley and etched it with entire neighborhoods filled with well-built ranch houses on trim lawns. Mr. Dunmore lived through his share of lean years, of course; that is the rhythm of the home construction business. But for the most part, his company prospered. His son Sidney got into the business. And Sidney B. Dunmore's boys followed him. But by the time Mr. Dunmore died last October, at age 89, his son Sidney found himself caught in the middle of a real estate collapse. Overextended and pursued by a long line of creditors, the company bearing the family name, Dunmore Homes, was sold to a New York corporation owned by a Sacramento-area mortgage broker for $500, including the assumption of liabilities totaling more than $250 million. Two months later, the new owner filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code. A bankruptcy court in Sacramento is left with the task of untangling a web of transactions, affidavits, property transfers, loans and liens that have come to symbolize the real estate crisis not just for Dunmore Homes, but for an entire industry. Beyond that, George Dunmore's widow, Ruth, 84, is contending that her two grandsons -- who had also started real estate development companies carrying the Dunmore name -- forged her signature on bank loan documents and pressured her, according to documents filed in a California state court. The story of the Dunmores is the story of the nation's housing crisis writ small, familial and mean: three generations of home builders who got rich from the go-go years of the California real estate boom, only to fall victim to the housing bust. And it is a tale of greed, hubris and denial of economic reality. Dysfunctional families, of course, can be found in every business, but the bursting of the housing bubble in the Central Valley, where there was once so much money to be made, accentuated any problems this family might have had. Not only was George Dunmore a fair businessman, friends and acquaintances say, but he was an avowed family man as well. Of Mr. Dunmore's three children, Sidney, now 53, showed the most interest in taking up the family trade. After years of apprenticing under his father, the younger Mr. Dunmore started his own firm, Dunmore Homes. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Dunmore Homes expanded. The company formed more than a dozen subsidiaries throughout the state, with more than two dozen developments, many of them catering to first-time home buyers in need of subprime and nonconventional loans. The company eventually built a total of 22,000 homes. The region was one of the fastest-growing real estate markets in the country. In Sacramento County, from 2000 to 2005, the median price of homes more than tripled, to $385,000, according to DataQuick Information Systems. ''It was the type of market that floated all boats,'' said Greg Paquin, president of the Gregory Group, a real estate market research firm in Folsom, Calif. ''Builders, buyers, investors: everyone was happy.'' For Sidney Dunmore life was good. His own opulent home -- all 12,000 square feet of it -- is in Granite Bay, an affluent Sacramento suburb. He also has a $2 million 4,600-square-foot second home in the resort town of Palm Desert, Calif. Then, in late 2005, the housing slowdown hit the region, falling squarely on the corridor south of Sacramento, from Modesto to Merced, where the Dunmores had once been so successful. Builders began offering incentives to move homes as if they were cars on a dealer's lot: low-interest financing, free appliances, anything to make a sale. By last year, the subprime mortgage industry was in crisis, credit had dried up and the younger Mr. Dunmore became no less reflective of an era than his father was of his. ''I think Sid always built a nice product, but he was always very aggressive,'' Mr. Paquin said. Delbert Rapini, a longtime Sacramento contractor who said he was an admirer of George Dunmore, said, ''Sid had it made, but he acted like an idiot'' by extending himself too far. Mr. Rapini, who does not do business with Sidney B. Dunmore, said that Mr. Dunmore would have been well advised to remember that downturns in real estate are ''all part of a cycle that happens every 10 or 12 years.'' Mr. Dunmore refused several requests for an interview. By last August, the company had halted construction altogether, leaving vast tracts peppered with partly finished homes. At one new ghost town in Yuba City, which is north of Sacramento, the scene looks as if construction workers just picked up and left. Some homes are mere frames, barely suggestive of a dwelling. Dunmore's rapid expansion may have been unwise, analysts say, but it was not unusual. ''Any builder, even the best-capitalized builders, drank the Kool-Aid and bought too much land and loaded up at the peak,'' said Ivy Zelman, a home building industry analyst. Ms. Zelman, who said she had no direct knowledge of Dunmore Homes, said she believed that the company might have taken on ''way too much risk and just assumed values would go up.'' ''I imagine that's what they were thinking and didn't have good disciplines in place.'' John Slaughter, a spokesman for Dunmore Homes who left the company this week, recalled how ''so much happened with the mortgage industry, and prices dropping, and all the foreclosures.'' ''It got to where we were a private company, competing with the large billion-dollar companies that could continue to reduce prices, and we just couldn't compete with that,'' he said. In September, Dunmore Homes changed its name to DHI Development and sold its assets for $500 to a New York entity called Dunmore Homes Inc. The new Dunmore Homes is owned by Michael Kane, a Sacramento mortgage broker. He declined to comment. Mr. Kane got not just the assets, but debts amounting to more than $250 million owed to a lengthy list of creditors that includes banks, contractors, landscapers, electricians, plumbers and paving companies. Mr. Dunmore's creditors cried foul over the sale, as well as the bankruptcy court filing in New York, a continent away. Mr. Dunmore apparently had his reasons for the quick, cheap sale. According to court documents, by declaring his losses in the sale of the business, Mr. Dunmore is due a 2007 tax refund of approximately $11 million -- money that he will use to pay off an $11 million obligation to Dunmore Homes. ''He couldn't have financial gain without showing a loss,'' said James Curran, a lawyer representing Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of America, which has a separate lawsuit pending against DHI Development and Mr. Dunmore to recover $9.65 million. ''He went into bankruptcy for a reason, and it was to capture those losses for his financial gain.'' In December a federal judge in San Francisco granted Travelers a writ of attachment against both of Mr. Dunmore's homes. Meanwhile, William M. Niemi, the former president of Dunmore Homes, has sued Mr. Dunmore, contending, among other things, breach of contract. ''It's about as horrible as it could be,'' said Howard Nevins, a lawyer who represents Hemington Landscape Services, which, according to legalpapers, is owed $827,941 by Dunmore Homes. ''There just appears to be inadequate resources to get creditors paid.'' In January, a bankruptcy judge in New York agreed to have the case moved to California. ''It seems like the company is in a shambles, but Sidney Dunmore is still alive and well,'' Mr. Curran said. ''I'm sure we haven't seen the last of Mr. Dunmore or Dunmore Homes.'' Indeed, the real estate vein runs deep in the Dunmores. People close to the family say that Sidney Dunmore keeps his distance from his two sons, Sidney and Jeremy, now in their 30s. Their company, Dunmore Capital, a real estate venture firm, has troubles of its own. Umpqua Bank, based in Oregon, is suing the two for repayment of several million dollars in loans. The bank named Ruth Dunmore, their grandmother, and the estate of George Dunmore in that suit. Umpqua Bank points to them as cosignatories for the loans. But in her cross-complaint to that suit, the elderly Mrs. Dunmore says the two young entrepreneurs ''embarked on an aggressive and unending campaign to, among other things, scare, pressure and manipulate'' her. The booming real estate business in the Central Valley has ground to a halt, but another business is booming here. For Mr. Nevins, whose specialty is bankruptcy law, ''it's been very busy.''
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