The weekly newsletter for everyone interested in barter--the world's most versatile business tool!

April 23, 2002

AllBusiness.com Shutting Down

AllBusiness is vacating their Townsend Street offices in San Francisco at the end of April. The barter division (BigVine) was shuttered last fall, and most of the remaining staff at AllBusiness was let go in January. In March rights to distribute their e-mail newsletters were purchased by American City Business Journals. Reportedly, three people have been maintaining the web site.

AllBusiness merged with BigVine.com, the first of the VC-backed barter dot-com companies, in November 2000. Investors in the combined company included Kleiner Perkins, American Express, and buy-out firm Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co.

Corporate Fraud Is A Cultural Phenomenon

According to University of California, Irvine, Professor Henry Pontell, one of the world's leading white-collar-crime experts, corporate fraud-the non-war story of the moment--is a cultural phenomenon. And it's more costly and more reflective of ordinary American life than bank robbery, drug use, or almost any other crime that doesn't involve a gun or a terrorist.

Pontell says that American culture is such that the accumulation and pursuit of wealth is a primary goal, and it's not so big a jump to say that it's part of our lifestyle.

And, Pontell points out, corporate America best step up to the plate and be part of the solution. If we continue to ignore it, or see it as someone else's problem, the nation will keep paying a heavy price.

A similar story by John Ellis in Fast Company, May issue, page 116, titled "Wall Street's Den of Thieves," is about the whole culture of dishonesty on what we call Wall Street. Ellis says a gigantic crisis of confidence is approaching unless Wall Street, the SEC, and the political community get their act together...which he isn't betting on.

San Antonio C & V Bureau Using Alamo Barter To Attract More Business

Victor Castano Jr., CEO of Alamo Barter, has been awarded a $360,000 contract to manage the San Antonio Convention and Vistors Bureau barter account for tourism. Castano will be trading local hotel rooms for print and radio spots in cities around the country that fit San Antonio's target demographics.

Where Are They Now. . .

Greg Pavlov, previous partner of Barter Business Network in Reno with Chris Haddawy (highlighted last week), will soon be back in the barter business. After he left BarterTrust he hooked up with a technology company in Las Vegas, waiting for his non-compete clause to run its course.

Now he's moving forward in the establishment of United Trade Network, a new trade exchange in Las Vegas. Pavlov says he'll be opening in mid-May, and looks forward to putting his knowledge and energies to work in an industry he loves.

• Art Goehring's TradeCorp, a 1,500 member exchange based in Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati markets, reports that up to 10% of the company's $12 million trade business consists of real estate deals. Commercial real estate leases are being bartered in properties in greater Cincinnati where the office vacancy rate is 14.4% and industrial space is over 10% vacant.
  
  
• Corporate profitability is stalling the advertising rebound, according to the Zenith Optimedia Group. Advertisers are still wary of investing in new ad campaigns without accompanying profits. The same lag occurred during the last advertising recession, at the beginning of the 1990s. Whatever money does flow back into advertising this year will go into TV, and a lesser amount into radio and outdoor advertising.
  
  
• American companies have built the fastest computers for most of the past decade, but have been blown out of the water by the recent announcement of the Japanese. It's a computer (formally dedicated last month) so powerful that it matches the raw processing power of the 20 fastest American computers combined!

  Occupying the space of four tennis courts, the assembled machine has 640 specialized "nodes" which are in turn composed of 5,104 processors made by NEC. It has achieved a computing speed of 35.6 TRILLION mathematical operations per second!
  

• Do you know how to use trade dollars on a real estate investment to avoid paying capital gains...without "rolling-over" the property on a tax-free exchange? You can.

  The answer to wisely, and legally, using trade dollars to lower your tax liability and many other strategies can be found in BarterNews' FastStart Barter Program I. This information could be worth thousands to you. (PS: The answer to the above information is found on page 200.)
  

• Russian President Vladimir Putin is putting all of his personal authority behind proposals to ease the financial and bureaucratic burdens facing the small-business community in Russia. At present, the small business sector in Russia accounts for only 11% of Russia's gross domestic product, one-fifth of developed world levels.
  

• Gemstar's stock dropped 37% on April 2nd to a 3 year low because of accounting disclosures. The sell-off was sparked by company revelations that it had booked $21 million in barter revenue in 2001, and another $59 million in accruals it has yet to collect from an expired licensing deal.

  (Members of the commercial barter industry should be distressed by these reports, i.e. mention barter deals and the stock price drops. We have a long way to go to "educate" the marketplace on the value of barter, sadly there is little being done on this front.)
  

• This Issue's Glossary of Terms:

  Agent:
  Someone who represents and acts for someone else. Because of their limited capacity, it's important to learn the extent of their authority.

  Alligator:
  A term for property that has expenses and operating costs more than its income...money must be added to break even.