I’ll just give you my opinion as I don’t think there is a black or white answer to this question, but what got me thinking is the recent decision by Honda to let go of its much praised Formula racing team.

It was purchased by the world’s second richest man, Carlos Slim. On the surface, this is what it looks like to me. Owning a sports team is a lot more a hobby than anything else. Honda has said it would save over $300 millions. Now sure, winning had the potential of perhaps brand enhancement and maybe indirect sales but $300 millions? Was it perhaps nothing more than a little toy?

How about baseball teams like the New York Yankees or the Montreal Canadiens? In good years, they are able to bring in a profit of course. But they also have tougher times and it seems difficult to imagine that the reason they are in the business is to make money. Pro teams often are more about the passion of a specific owner than anything else. Does it just so happen that once an owner makes so much money in a business, he is ready to enter a business for the simple reason of having an extra adrenaline knowing that his team is playing for the highest awards possible?

Some of the most famous teams are currently for sale as their owners struggle with the finances. The Chicago Cubs, perhaps one of the 5 most famous sports teams has been for sale for a few months now but has not received any serious offers. If it was a wise business decision, you’d think that even in the current environment there would be some good offers.

Of course, there have been some great stories as well. The NY Yankees for example were purchased by George Steinbrenner for $10 millions in 1973 but are now worth $1 billion according to Forbes magazine, a brilliant investment no matter by what measure.

What is your opinion about all of this?

Wow, talk about different times. Only a few months ago, employees in the financial world and elsewhere were mostly planning what would happen to their 2008 bonus. When they were created, bonus and other incentives were created in order to benefit shareholders. How? Simply by creating extra motivation for employees to generate more profit which would in the end get extra return for the shareholders.

But somewhere along the way, things got lost, especially in such sectors as financials. In some ways, it became less about the performance and more about simply doing the job. And it also became more of an added salary than about anything related to performance. At some point, a bonus became something related to the number of years of experience and something that employees expected and even included in their budget.

That drew things way further than anyone could have imagined giving managers no reason to use caution in their decisions and no reason really to look into the interests of the shareholders. The problem was that it became such an exageration that the system eventually collapsed with banks and other firms taking on too much risk to be able to sustain any downturn of their assets. Say what you want about the actual crisis, about how it is unique and was unpredictable. But you would the best firms in the business to be able to sustain such a crisis, no matter how unique it was. Were the bonuses the cause of it all? No, they certainly were not. But looking into them gives you a good idea of the unique culture that existed on Wall Street and in many other sectors.

A bonus should be given according to performance of course. But it should also be given with the interest of shareholders in mind. Credit Suisse had a creative way of getting it done as it has decided to pay the bonus this year by giving out portions of the illiquid assets to its employees, using about $5 billions to do so. In order to profit from them, employees will have to remain there for a long time and this will also help Credit Suisse in its task of deleveraging. Seems like a win-win right? I think it’s creative and certainly an interesting way to get it done.

Other companies such as Google are getting smashed for lowering their bonus. Sure, employees went from getting about 1000$ on average (although other reports say some employees received up to 20-30K) to getting a mobile phone this year. But with the stock going down so much, isn’t it normal that shareholders AND employees share the downfall? I just think a bonus should be a reward for performance, of the employee and of the company, not something to take for granted as was too often the case in recent years…

The numbers are out for the performance of Hedge Funds for the month of November according to Credit Suisse/Tremont Hedge fund index. The main headline is a global performance of -4,15% for hedge funds which brings it to -19,04% YTD, a bad performance yes, but still much better than equity indexes (major global indexes are down 46% on average in 2008)

In November, only 3 type of hedge funds actually were able to come out with a profit. Of course, the “Short Bias” funds did well, generating a 3,04% return, not very surprising given the market movements. Then managed futures also performed well getting a 3,22% return, the highest in November. The final winner of the month was the global macro category, up 1,54%.

On the bottom, we can find fixed income arbitrage at -5,60% and a crazy return of -40,45% for equity market neutral, which sounds insane and is difficult to understand really! Apparently, 3 of the funds in the index were invested in the Madoff fraud and have thus recorded returns of -100% for the month… talk about a tough time for those investors.

While many funds are being hit with redemptions, one of the few categories doing a lot better is global macro funds. “If you look at the performance of hedge funds, global macro guys have shown the best performance. Certainly, wealthy people have taken notice,” said Quincy Krosby, chief investment strategist for Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. Many reasons are behind it but one of those is certainly that while it is unclear what is happening to single markets or single securities, trading on a global view is a lot clearer to many funds. Another important reason is that these funds are generally very liquid. They will usually be trading only the most liquid products in each asset class which has been a huge advantage this year as many illiquid funds have had a lot of problems dealing with redemptions from investors that created even more downward pressure on the fund’s returns.

These funds have seen many extremes depending on a correct or incorrect view of the economy but a lot of what has happened was anticipated by those who predicted either a recession or even a depression. Strategies of short commodities, long US dollar, long government bonds have been good examples of great sources of returns for these funds. And one of the more recent ones seems to be short GBP! Of course, the challenge for these funds will be timing their re-alignment in the anticipation of an economic return. It should make for a very interesting year in 2009 for investors and managers of these funds!

This subject has been discussed over and over and there are certainly many different ways to view the issue. A little look back. US automakers of course had a huge amount of time to establish a big lead as they experienced the invention of the modern car and were for a long time the only producers in the most important market, the US.

Fast forward a few decades, and the US automakers started to get competition from Japanese automakers. Toyota and others had at first a big advantage in the way that they produced cars, they simply had a superior producing system and that helped the Japanese cars gets a US market share but not big enough for the US automakers to have financial problems.

As time went by and pollution effects became more known as well as with the increasing costs of gas, suddenly the cars made by American companies were not only more expensive but did not represent what the US consumers were looking for putting the GM and Ford’s of this world in double trouble.

Finally, a deep recession like the one we are currently living through was the final knock that has now caused the current problems.

Ford, GM and Chrysler (now owned by private equity group Cerberus) have now gone to the US government asking for a bailout of their own. They were hoping to get the money as easily as the financials had received it but that did not happen and they are now getting grilled as they try to defend their requests.

I have to say that I think it’s very justified for the government to ask tough questions in this case. Sure, a failing of these companies would have very devastating impact on the US economy but the problem is that giving money to companies who are not competitive because of both their costs and their products seems like just extending what seems to be inevitable, the bankruptcy of one or two of these companies. And so they have been asked to come up with specific plans to diminish their costs (including union concessions on pay) as well as plans as to how they will change to become more competitive.

One of the major problems of course if they do not get a bailout is that over half of US consumers have said they would not buy a car from a company under bankruptcy and so even the fear of that happening that currently exists is creating an environement even worse than other carmakers and when you see that even mighty Toyota is struggling, it is easy to imagine how tough it must currently be to make a few sales.

Last week, the congress voted and declined to grant the much needed bailout mostly on fears that the voters did not want it to get through. They did ask the unions to make important concessions which the unions did not accept… Now the President himself will need to get involved in seeing this bailout through.

Should they get the money? Absolutely, but only once they can provide a detailed plan on how they will become competitive, and not until that happens. If for some reason (such as unions) that is not possible, then no, I would not give the money to a company that will be asking for more a few months from now…