Jonathan Grinnon

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Mike Grinnon: 10 Years Later

(Baltimore Sun photo by Kenneth K. Lam)

March 21, 2012|By Don Markus | The Baltimore Sun

If there was a trivia game about the history of Maryland basketball, Mike Grinnon would likely be a stumper to the question: who is the only men’s player in school history to play on both a national championship team and an ACC tournament champion?

Grinnon was a little-used freshman during the 2001-2002 season that culminated with Maryland’s NCAA men’s basketball title. Though his playing time increased marginally over the next three years, Grinnon is remembered for the free throws he hit to help beat Duke in Greensboro, N.C., as a junior.

What Grinnon recalls more is the defense he played in overtime against Duke guard J.J. Redick.

“The personal highlight of my career was absolutely that game, but contrary to belief, the more exciting moment for me was that I had to guard their leading scorer for every second of overtime and he did not get one shot off,” Grinnon said. “Personally that was more of an accomplishment than hitting the free throws.”

Grinnon said that he watched Maryland’s loss to Duke in the 2001 NCAA semifinals in Minneapolis on television, but didn’t understand the magnitude of that defeat (a game in which the Terps led by 22 points) until he got to College Park that summer.

“It was so amazing to see that the goal and the mission of the team was the same – it was to win a national championship,” Grinnon said. “Anything other than winning a national championship was really failure.”

In the preseason workouts, Grinnon was handed a T-shirt that read “Atlanta, Ga., 2002 National Champions”.

“I still have it to this day. We’d work out in it every single day,” Grinnon said. “The leadership that Juan Dixon portrayed and Byron Mouton showed was so remarkable.”

Grinnon did not play in either of the Final Four games, but he has vivid memories from that weekend in Atlanta.

“Kansas almost blew us off the court in that semifinal game,” Grinnon said. “When Coach Williams called that timeout, and it was probably before the first TV timeout we were down eight or 10 points to start, in that huddle, he didn’t say a word. We all just sat there and composed ourselves. It was almost a silent timeout with no words being expressed. We came out and took it from there. That was kind of something special that stuck out in my mind.”

Then came Monday night against Indiana.

“The thing that sticks out in my mind is just being in the locker room before the national championship game and the nerves,” he said. “It was like silent and everyone was so focused. No one was really talking to one another. It was so surreal.”

Grinnon came to Maryland out of St. Dominic’s High on Long Island with hopes of becoming a starter with the Terps, but he never averaged more than the 11 minutes a game he played as a senior. Grinnon is realistic about the way his career panned out.

“Always throughout my career I had the mentality that I was going to be a prime-time player,” he said. “I know some people might think otherwise, but I always went out there to be competitive and have a major impact on the team. I knew I was going to have to earn my stripes because I was playing behind some future NBA players. I knew with Byron [Mouton] graduating, there was going to be the tremendous opportunity to get playing time after my first year. ”

It didn’t happen, as Gary Williams had perhaps his best recruiting class ever coming off the two straight Final Fours.

“The teams that I played on those four years were some of the best teams in the program’s history, so I was playing with and competing against some really good talent,” Grinnon said. “There was a lot of talent that came in on the teams after me — Nik Caner-Medley, Chris McCray, D.J. Strawberry, Mike Jones — that had a lot more potential to elevate their game to the next level than the role player that I was.”

Grinnon, who graduated with a degree in communications in 2005 and manages a staff of financial planners for New York Life in Tysons Corner, has no regrets.

“Do I think things could have played out a little bit differently? Sure, but at the same time Coach Williams was definitely fair with the way he treated me,” Grinnon said. “I had a very special and unique relationship with Coach Williams and the coaching staff.”

Jonathan Grinnon

Source: http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/terps/tracking-the-terps/bal-mike-grinnon-10-years-after-marylands-national-title-20120320,0,2194064.story

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

How to Improve Your Credit Score: 11 steps - wikiHow

Monday, March 5, 2012

Where to Stash the Cash?

As safe havens for short-term funds disappear, companies weigh whether to assume some risk in return for a modest yield.

Vincent Ryan

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With his statement in January that the federal funds rate will stay near zero through 2014, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke clearly hopes that investors will bite the bullet and start taking some risks. The government wants banks to lend, institutional investors to roll the dice on equities, and corporations to spend.

There’s one group, though, that Bernanke shouldn’t expect much from: CFOs and treasurers investing their companies’ short-term funds. Although companies have huge cash cushions, they are in no mood to start aggressively investing the portion not needed for operations, capital expenditures, or dividends and buybacks. The market meltdown of 2008 and the current European debt crisis have made them leery of securities issued by questionable counterparties (such as European banks), with maturities of more than a few days, or traded in a market considerably less liquid than U.S. Treasuries.

In fact, low interest rates and the resulting flat yield curve are actually reinforcing the conservative strategy. “Yields across the board are so low that to grab a decent uptick in yield you really have to increase the risk,” says Lance Pan, director of research for Capital Advisors Group. Some CFOs are content with virtually no yield as long as the counterparty risk is low or the instrument is U.S. government-backed.

Data from consulting firm Treasury Strategies shows that as of January, U.S. companies had 38% of corporate cash in checking accounts, 23% in money-market funds, and 12% in money-market demand accounts (MMDA). Only 17% of the instruments they held had a maturity of longer than one month (see charts, below).

“In this current environment there isn’t much yield anywhere,” says Lisa Rossi, global head of liquidity management for transaction banking at Deutsche Bank. “Companies are leaving a lot of cash in bank accounts. In their minds it’s one of the more risk-free places to put it.”

Take Netgear. The networking-equipment company has no debt, and its cash and cash equivalents have grown 58% since 2008. But it is conservative when investing its growing bundle of cash. “Our goal is cash preservation, and secondly what we earn on it,” says CFO Christine Gorjanc. “Given the environment we’re in, we’re just not going to do anything risky.”

Fewer Choices
But many companies may soon be forced to move their cash, even if their investment goals or risk appetite or liquidity needs haven’t changed. Thanks in part to new Dodd-Frank Act rules, “the supply of high-grade products that offer attractive yield and relative safety is diminishing,” says Solomon Lee, a portfolio manager at Clearwater Advisors, a fixed-income investment management firm.

There are three ways in which the choices CFOs have will diminish:

(1) As stipulated by Dodd-Frank, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s full backing of non-interest-bearing transactions accounts will sunset at the end of 2012 (barring congressional action). These accounts have been a safe place to park cash. Without a guarantee, however, firms may abandon some banks and move money to those that appear more stable or have less counterparty risk. Without explicit government banking, they may also leave less money in these transaction accounts.

(2) Most of the bank paper issued under the FDIC’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program will mature by the end of 2012, ending availability of a popular instrument that earned some yield. The TLGP let financial institutions issue debt that was backed by the U.S. government. The risk profile of TLGP debt was equivalent to that of U.S. Treasuries, says Clearwater’s Lee, but the debt traded at a significant spread to T-bills. Will corporations go back to 6-month and 12-month T-bills, which earn a paltry 9 basis points and 12 basis points, respectively?

(3) The debt of government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is becoming more risky. Pan describes GSE debt as “the only ‘juice’ left in the cash world,” providing “safety and reasonable yield” for investors seeking to avoid the “uncertain worlds of unsecured financial issuers.” But after 2012, these investments will require more-rigorous credit analysis, because the federal government’s “blank check” to cover Fannie’s and Freddie’s losses will officially end, says Pan. Capital funds for injection into Fannie and Freddie by Washington, D.C., will be limited, to $124.8 billion for Fannie and $149.3 billion for Freddie.

Money-Market Surge?
Where will all the corporate cash that was in these investments go? Money-market fund sponsors hope it rolls into their funds. And, in fact, $83.4 billion flowed into U.S. funds this past November and December, according to Crane Data, the largest two-month surge since December 2008 and January 2009, when the funds reached their all-time peak at $3.9 trillion in assets.

Scarred by the failure of the Reserve Primary Fund in 2008, the money-fund industry has actually benefited from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new 2a-7 regulations. Weighted average maturities are shorter and funds are more liquid. And more visibility into an individual money fund’s holdings has built confidence among investors, says Michael Gallanis, a partner at Treasury Strategies. “Sophisticated investors can look into these funds at a more granular level and better understand the risks and counterparty exposures,” he says.

But it’s not clear that the surge to money-market funds will continue, given the shadows looming over the industry. For starters, seven-day yields are small: the highest earners hit about 25 basis points. Subtract management fees and the yield can almost be wiped out. Fortunately, just about every prime money-market fund has given its clients partial fee waivers to avoid yields from turning negative, says Pan. But those waivers are damaging bank’s earnings.

Then there’s the specter of more regulation. The SEC announced that it will soon unveil a plan intended to make money-market funds more stable; initial response (at press time) was less than enthusiastic. (Check the Capital Markets section on cfo.com for the latest details.)

While investing directly in Treasury securities might seem like a better option, that too can incur costs. Netgear has its invested cash in money markets and Treasuries. But because the company hires corporate cash managers to manage its direct investments in T-bills, the positive difference in yield between T-bills and money funds is consumed by fees. “We’re waiting for cash managers to bring down their fees because they don’t have to do much to diversify our investments,” says CFO Gorjanc.

Changing Channels
Some asset managers and investment advisers think CFOs need to go back to their boards to tweak cash investment policies and practices, because companies that rely 100% on money markets or bank deposits will need other channels for managing liquidity.

One place corporate cash is not likely to go (at least in the short term) is in the debt of U.S. or European financial institutions. Clearwater Advisors thinks that onerous regulatory capital requirements and other regulatory changes, as well as the reduction in explicit government support for institutions, make them too risky.

But the debt of high-quality companies may be an option. With interest rates staying low through 2014, “my assumption is that as Corporate America gets stronger, you may see more investors going into corporate debt because they feel more secure in that market,” says Deutsche Bank’s Rossi.

Clearwater Advisors recommends that CFOs consider revising their investment policies to focus less on credit ratings (as bank regulators have done) and allow treasurers to buy the debt of creditworthy companies that may not have the highest ratings.

As a result of the new leverage ratios in the Basel III global standards on bank capital, companies may even begin to earn some yield from their banks again, says Rossi. Longer-term deposits will hold more weight under the proposed leverage ratios, making them more attractive for banks to hold on their balance sheets and giving banks the incentive to pay more for them. Assuming companies still have a cash cushion, “I’m pretty confident you will see clients go out a little longer with time deposits to get a yield pickup,” Rossi says.

Interest-rate policy is not likely to give corporate savers any reason to cheer over the next two years, but Basel III will. Welcome to the new normal.

Vincent Ryan is a deputy editor, online/mobile, at CFO.

Thursday, November 20, 2008