Read a post in VentureBeat about how VC's are upset about the fees that major i-banks like Goldman Sachs charge small companies for IPO'ing. They feel that the larger banks have traditionally demanded large fees (e.g. $7M in a $100M IPO), while smaller banks in the syndicate that do most of the work get a much smaller piece of the fees. Reminds me of the research I saw last fall about how IPO's from the large investment banks (based on the league tables) actually perform worse than those from smaller investment banks.
So there's rich, and then there's super rich. I recently read an article in the WSJ about the top 400 taxpayers based on income. Pretty incredible statistics. Those top 400, or what they call the "Fortunate 400", pulled in $85.6 billion in income in 2005. That's over $200 million each ... in one year! Here's a quick graphic to drive that home: Very impressive. There's all the obvious jaw-dropping statistics to go with that. For instance, to make the cut to be in the 400 you had to pull in at least $100 million. With an average of $200 million, that means there's people pulling in well over that number. Obviously, quite crazy numbers, and generally speaking not necessarily anything to be concerned about. I'm all for capitalism. But one of the more disheartening statistics was that adjusting for inflation, the minimum income to make the cutoff into the Fortunate 400 has nearly tripled since 1992. That's probably not a good sign as I imagine that...
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