Back in June, it looked like Bank of America had a rare win on its hands: a proposed settlement with trustee Bank of New York to the tune of $8.5 billion, meant to restore the damage done by faulty mortgage-backed securities financed by BofA's Countrywide division. Come October, the settlement fell apart because investors (among many other vocal groups, too) didn't feel the figure was high enough. $8.5 billion, not enough money? Yikes. That's a scary indicator for banking in general, but also for BofA considering it is more than the institution made in the last four years combined. The collapsed deal is another low-point in a rough year for the bank and CEO Brian Moynihan. At least he axed those $5 debit card fees.
85亿美元都不够花了
2011年6月，美国银行(Bank of America)眼看就要取得一场罕见的胜利：它计划以大约85亿美元的资金，与受托人美国纽约银行(Bank of New York)达成和解，旨在挽回由美国银行子公司Countrywide提供资金的不良抵押证券所造成的损失。然而到10月份，因为投资人(以及其他众多意见团体)认为85亿美元不足以解决问题，导致和解最终破裂。难道85亿美元还不够多吗?没错!总的看来，85亿美元对银行业来说是一个惊人的数字，而考虑到85亿美元超过了美国银行过去四年盈利的总和，这一数字着实令人吃惊。美国银行和CEO布赖恩·莫伊尼汉2011年流年不利，而这次和解破裂则意味着又一低谷，但至少布赖恩还是做出了取消5美元借记卡费用的决定。
The hottest CEOs are very, very young
Facebook. Twitter. Groupon. Zynga. LinkedIn. Yelp. The list keeps growing, but the ages don't. Mark Zuckerberg (impending Facebook IPO: shooting for a $100 billion valuation), no longer a new name to anyone, is still only 27. Andrew Mason, CEO of Groupon (which raised $700 million for its IPO), is 27 as well. Zynga, which went public in December, is helmed by Mark Pincus, who even at 45 is on the young side for what was, until recently, the prototypical American blue-chip company CEO. (Think Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, 82, ex-Ford CEO Alan Mulally, 66, or ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, 60.) Let's face it: the biggest, buzziest business news is continually coming from companies that are helmed by people who listened to Green Day in middle school.
商界当红炸子鸡都是小年轻
Facebook、Twitter、团购网站Groupon、社交游戏公司Zynga、商务社交网络LinkedIn和点评网站Yelp都是如今炙手可热的科技公司，而且这份名单还在不断扩容，但这些公司掌门人的年龄却没有呈现上升的趋势：马克·扎克伯克(Facebook即将进行首次公开募股：估值有望达到1,000亿美元)不再是个籍籍无名的名字，而他2011年只有27岁;Groupon的CEO安德鲁·梅森(首次公开募股筹资7亿美元)2011 年也是27岁;Zynga公司于2011年12月上市，马克·平卡斯是这家典型的美国蓝筹公司的CEO。虽然他已经45岁，仍然是较为年轻的CEO。【想想吧：美国保险公司伯克希尔·哈撒韦公司(Berkshire Hathaway)的沃伦·巴菲特已是82岁高龄、福特公司(Ford)前CEO艾伦·穆拉利已经66岁了，埃克森美孚公司(ExxonMobil)CEO雷克斯·蒂尔纳森也60岁了。】面对现实吧，如今商界的重磅新闻都是来源于这些新生力量，而他们的掌门人都是些听着绿日乐队(Green Day)的歌曲长大的年轻人。
