The last lecture

I'm currently in the last lecture I expect to take as an MBA student. It's on leadership, leaderless groups and Al-Quaeda. Its odd to think that I've now been taught pretty much everything I'm going to be taught. From now on, I teach myself and learn from others. A week of exams (well one exam) assignment writing, an eight week project, then the final exams and I'm finished.

Its a very odd feeling. The real world is suddenly feeling very close indeed.

Beckham sold for £25m?

Following my how not to negotiate post (below) you could be excused for thinking that I might be a little embarrassed that Man Utd got £25m for Beckham after all. However as ever in the crazy world of football finance all is not as it seems. The headline figure is £25m but this is split into two chunks, part compulsary and part dependent on performance in the champions league.

So, its a £18m deal with a £7m bonus clause. Furthermore the £18m is spread over four years - with about £7m coming in here. The Guardian has the lowdown on all this.

Now this isn't all bad news, Man U will have no problem borrowing against their future income. But if we imagine the deal is being paid in five equal chunks with two of them coming together at the start and you discount at 10% the actual value is...

Year 1 : 7.2m
Year 2 : 3.24m
Year 3 : 2.98m
Year 4 : 2.7m

Or about £16m plus the possible bonus'. Wonder what's going to happen to the share price when the markets open.

If you're wondering why I've developed this sudden obsession with Beckham it's not because I'm a Man U fan - quite the opposite. It's because I've just finished a project on Beckham as a brand, how you might value him and what he might be worth. I suspect that Real have got a bargain, but that's all going to depend on the clauses about using the Beckham image rather than whether he's a £25m footballer. (he's certainly a £16m one)

Skeletons in closets

Or Arabs in cages, its all the same. Lock someone away long enough and even the world's media stops caring. Remember when this was front page news? No-one from CNN or Fox is covering this one. Once upon a time finding out what was going on in Guatanamo bay was all the news cared about - now its old hat.

I actually supported the war in Afghanistan (unlike the one in Iraq) but I sure don't support this.

Meanwhile on the other side of the world

LT-Smash is somewhere in a desert in Iraq, although from some of his recent posts he seems to have moved nearer to civilisation lately. I think he's bored.

He's also been thinking, which is interesting cause it gives the rest of us the chance to see what's going on inside a US soldiers head. As far as this US soldier goes it seems to be pretty sophisticated.

How not to negotiate

As the Beckham transfer saga drags on one thing is becoming clear. Manchester United are going to get far less than they could have done had they negotiated right. A few months ago a figure of £38m was doing the rounds as Beckham's likely price. This was the price Real Madrid would have to pay to get Manchester United to release a star player they were committed to keeping.

However Manchester United were not planning on keeping Beckham. Since extending his contract which expires in two years would entail handing out a multi-million pay rise and involve a signing fee that wasn't an option. Especially if Beckham wants to leave himself, letting his contract expire makes him a free agent and he could effectively name his price in the transfer market so instead of paying Manchester United £38m Madrid or someone else would have found themselves paying a healthy share of that money direct to Beckham. Much as they did when they signed Steve McMannaman from Liverpool as a free agent.

Things went wrong when Man U accepted a bid from Barcelona of £25m. Now they must have known that David Beckham was not about to move to Barcelona, since they're not in the Champions League and this season they failed to mount a half way serious challenge for the Spanish title. Not a suitable destination for the world's most glamourous footballer. Accepting the bid made it possible for Beckham to announce that he felt betrayed and make his eventual exit inevitable.

In theory other bidders like Milan or Juventus should be willing to bid, but it seems that either a lack of funds or the fact that they simply don't want Beckham means they're not going to. Madrid are now in the enviable position of being able to force the price down to rock bottom levels - knowing that Manchester will have to accept it. So from £38m to £25m to an eventual fee of £15m plus a player or two? Its probably even worse than this since transfer fees tend to be over-reported and paid in installments, the real value of the transfer could end up being very small indeed.

Now that's good business

Today's brand strategy class included some information about an absolutely fantastic project undertaken by Hindustan Lever Ltd, the Indian arm of Unilever. Most of the information is summarised here, but I love the way the company went out and created a market by doing things differently and exploiting the way things were rather than throwing their hands up and saying 'there is no decent distribution system for Indian villages, lets stick to the cities.'

When I grow up I want to do stuff like this.

Arghh doublethink

I'm not sure my head can cope with this. Rewriting history while accusing others of doing the same. One day someone will write a fantastic book about how the truth about the war (whatever that was) was negotiated between the media, politicians, armies, pressure groups and governments.

Future plans

Over the summer I plan to come up with a design for whatever the next blog will be which should keep me occupied. In the meantime I'll just have to feel bad that my skills don't extend to producing animation as good as this

Samurai Lapin
Parts 2 and 3.

Yes, that's rabbit in French.