Assessment of establishment and operations under market conditions for a public equity fund

The government of Slovenia established a publicly funded venture capital fund in order to provide start-up finance for small companies. The fund was meant to fill in the market gap in early-stage equity finance supply. The fund is co-financed from EU structural funds and has to comply with strict regulation regarding possibility of market distortion from such measure. The objective of the study is to give a straightforward answer whether the public fund will behave within the equity market conditions or will impose an unloyal competition to the existing privately financed funds. In accordance to this, an evaluation is given advising that the public fund should not be regarded as a state-aid measure

»Ne le kruh, tudi vrtnice!«

The book contributes new insights to the research in the field of anthropology of (post)socialism, culture of consumption, gender and memory. It is based on the testimony of interlocutors who offer an insight into the “structure of the feeling” of the socialist era through the practice of consumption, from which on the one hand the complex economic and political dynamics and diverse disciplinary regimes are being reflected and the understanding of power, resistance and emancipation on the other. Author establishes critical distance towards the approach, which discusses socialism as a totalitarianism and shows that socialist policies were not simply dictated from above, but negotiated between the state and its citizens. The female consumer in socialism did not only respond to social barriers and obstacles of history, but she also actively co-created social time. By studying how consumers interpreted and created mutual connections between material objects, moral reputation and (self)respect, the book also shows certain specific elements of Slovenian and Yugoslav development of the European countries after the Second World War.Knjiga prispeva nove uvide k raziskavam na področju antropologije (po)socializma, kulture potrošnje, spola in spomina. Temelji na pričevanju sogovornic in sogovornikov, ki ponudijo vpogled v “strukturo občutenja« socialističnega obdobja skozi prakso potrošnje, iz katere se zrcalijo kompleksne ekonomske in politične dinamike ter raznoliki disciplinski režimi na eni strani in razumevanje moči, upora in emancipacije na drugi. Avtorica vzpostavi kritično distanco do pristopa, ki obravnava socializem kot totalitarizem in pokaže, da socialistične politike niso bile preprosto diktirane od zgoraj, ampak izpogajane med državo in državljani/državljankami, pri čemer pa se ženska potrošnica v socializmu ni zgolj odzivala na družbene prepreke in ovire zgodovine, ampak je aktivno soustvarjala družbeni čas. S preučevanjem tega, kako so potrošniki in potrošnice interpretirali in ustvarjali medsebojne povezave med materialnimi predmeti, moralnim ugledom in (samo)spoštovanjem, knjiga pokaže tudi določene specifične prvine slovenskega in jugoslovanskega razvoja evropskih držav po 2. svetovni vojni

Financial instruments and the fall of LTCM

Finančno podjetje Long-Term Capital Management je bilo ustanovljeno februarja leta 1994 s kapitalom v višini 1,25 milijarde dolarjev in je močno zaznamovalo finančne trge v devetdesetih letih 20. stoletja. Podjetje je delovalo kot sklad tveganega kapitala in je pri trgovanju uporabljalo natančne matematične modele. Sklepali so predvsem posle z razponom med cenami finančnih instrumentov, med katerimi sta bila najpogostejša konvergenčno trgovanje z obveznicami in trgovanje z delniškimi pari. Ker so razponi med cenami praviloma zelo majhni, so trgovali z visokim finančnim vzvodom. V prvih letih poslovanja so dosegli velik uspeh, nato pa je prišlo do dveh finančnih kriz, ki jih modeli podjetja niso bili sposobni predvideti. Med krizama so se razponi med cenami začeli večati, trgovalci podjetja LTCM pa so pričeli posegati po vedno bolj tveganih trgovalnih strategijah, kot je trgovanje z volatilnostjo, kar je podjetje pripeljalo na rob propada. Propad sklada podjetja LTCM bi zaradi njegove velikosti in vpletenosti številnih svetovnih bank povzročil globalno finančno krizo, zato se je v situacijo vpletla ameriška centralna banka Federal Reserve in skupaj z vodilnimi wallstreetskimi investicijskimi bankami pomagala likvidirati sklad tveganega kapitala podjetja LTCM. V delu diplomskega seminarja predstavimo podjetje LTCM, njegove trgovalne strategije, njegov uspeh in propad.The financial firm Long-Term Capital Management was founded in February 1994 with a capital of 1.25 billion dollars and had a significant impact on financial markets in the 1990s. The firm operated as a hedge fund and used precise mathematical models in their trading strategies. They focused mainly on spread trading, the most common of which were convergence bond trading and trading in equity pairs. As the spreads between prices were usually very small, they were traded with high leverage. LTCM achieved great success in the first years of trading, but then two financial crises occurred that their models were not able to predict. Between the two crises, spreads between prices started to widen and LTCM traders started to resort to increasingly riskier trading strategies, such as volatility trading, which brought the firm to the brink of collapse. The collapse of LTCM’s fund would have triggered a global financial crisis due to its size and the involvement of many banks around the world, so the Federal Reserve stepped in and helped liquidate LTCM’s hedge fund with the help of Wall Street’s leading investment banks. In our thesis we present the firm LTCM, its trading strategies, its success and its collapse