Met an old college friend yesterday at a Starbucks near my office. I saw faces from my firm that I recognized but didn't meet anyone I knew personally.
My friend used to work at a division of a large investment bank that planned to invest in infrastructure - the hot investment sector along with the alternative energy. Unfortunately they were in the process of raising $1 billion when the credit crisis hit the market. Obviously they were not able to do so and had to lay-off people. Supposedly it happened to him in August. I was quite surprised to hear that because I thought his group had already raised the money. Anyway, I had not seen him since last year and it was good to catch up with him.
His message was that it was tough out there. He went to a very prestigious business school in the United State but he said he gets e-mails almost everyday from his b-school chums who are getting laid-off. He is counting on his personal network as well as head hunters but the latter were saying absolutely nothing available at the time. He said he was pretty flexible in terms of the what he wants to do and where. He exploring anything from entrepreneurial venture to infrastructure investment - supposedly one his b-school chums have created a 2nd largest drug store chains in India - and in the US as well as in his native country. He said that he had opportunities in his native country when he visited there for couple of months but they were not financially rewarding (when he said the actual number, I thought they were very good).
I told him the reasons why I got laid off and why I didn't miss the work. I also let him know about my hobby of maintaining an economic blog of my native land. He encouraged me to leverage the blog solicit money from donor organizations to make a living - supposedly someone he knows it doing that at the World Bank - but I was not persuaded. He was blissfully unware of the challenges. Moreover, I told him that that way of making a living is not me. Ideally I want to be a private investor with a think-tank of the side.
Me and my chatted for couple of hours exchanging information about our mutual friends and talking about international politics.
