CARLO AND OLIVIA FRANZBLAU: family harmony.

Photo by Victor Junco/Tampa Tribune

A Well-Tuned Life

At age 13, Carlo Franzblau (MBA ’88) was given the lead in his summer camp’s musical production of Bye Bye Birdie on the condition that he not do any solos. Ever since, when moved to song, he’s never been quite sure if he was on key or on pitch. So he founded Carry-a-Tune Technologies, a company that sells software products that use the fun of karaoke to help people improve their singing — and, no doubt, their self-image.

It happens that self-worth is an important theme in the Franzblau home as well. A principal of Thompson & Co., a leading catalogue publisher and direct marketer in Tampa, Florida, Franzblau likes to keep closely involved with his 11-year-old daughter, Olivia. He wants to help her as she navigates adolescence, an age when girls’ self-esteem is often undermined by cultural images. “I don’t want my daughter to have that negative experience,” Franzblau told the Tampa Tribune (September 23, 2004). “I want her to go through this time of life improving her level of self-confidence.”

Black

Photo Courtesy Fitdeck

Deal Me In

Have you heard about the latest must-have exercise equipment? Your local gym doesn’t have it, and that’s just fine with its inventor, Phil Black (MBA ’02), who’d rather see it in your shirt pocket. Black, a certified personal trainer and former Navy SEAL, has created “FitDeck,” a deck of 56 shuffleable playing cards “featuring 46 diagrammed calisthenics (including stomach crunches, the ‘bear crawl,’ and six kinds of push-ups) that can be done at various skill levels,” the Baltimore Sun (December 17, 2004) explained.

Black said FitDeck (www.fitdeck.com) offers a great regimen for business travelers or for everyday conditioning. “People find it empowering knowing they can get a great workout by using nothing more than their own body weight.”

Simmons

Photo Courtesy Simmons & Co. INTL.

Desert Dust-Up

Oil and water don’t mix. That truism about elements at odds could also serve as an analogy for Matthew Simmons (MBA ’67), who’s sometimes known as a petroleum-industry contrarian. But it’s the hard science behind the old familiar saying that lately has Simmons “raising a ruckus in the oil patch,” said Barron’s (November 29, 2004).

Simmons is chairman of Simmons & Co. International, a Houston investment bank active in the energy sector. As part of a small group invited to Saudi Arabia in 2003, he noticed that Saudi producers had to “strip” water that had mixed with the crude, often an indicator of a depleted well, since oil usually rests on top of water. “When you start getting water in crude, it’s like an elderly man with hardening arteries,” said Simmons, who believes Saudi Arabia’s reserves are significantly smaller than what the country claims. “We are,” he declared, “living with an energy illusion of the highest order.”

Simmons, who is writing a book on the subject and has spent the last two years researching Saudi technical data, has also called for more transparency from the petroleum industry worldwide. The Saudis, for their part, dispute Simmons’s assessment of their reserves, citing, among other sources, the U.S. Geological Survey.

REYNOLDS: Weak dollar cuts both ways.

Photo by Sabina Louise Pierce/New York Times

Gaining Currency

To illustrate the global impact of fluctuating exchange rates, the New York Times (December 11, 2004) focused on two small, family-owned manufacturers, one located in Germany and the other in the United States. For Pennsylvania’s Markel Corporation and its CEO Kim Reynolds (MBA ’79), the weakness of the dollar is a good thing: It makes Markel’s products — insulated wire and tubing for cars — attractive to buyers from Europe where locally manufactured goods have grown pricey due to the euro’s strength. The weaker dollar has meant that exports now supply 40 percent of Markel’s revenue, compared with 5 percent five years ago.

“We can’t let ourselves get too excited,” Reynolds cautioned. “Our gains in Europe are not large enough to make up for our losses in Asia.”

SOHN: playing it safe in 2005.

Photo by Mel Melkin/Los Angeles Times

A Star in LA

His star power is such that he’s been called “the Korean version of Alan Greenspan,” and indeed, when Sung Won Sohn (PMD 35, 1978) was named president and CEO of Hanmi Financial Corporation in Los Angeles, it was front-page news in his native South Korea, the Los Angeles Times reported (January 4, 2005). Sohn had previously worked for thirty years at Wells Fargo, rising to the position of chief economist at the bank, America’s fifth largest.

Sohn is known as one of the nation’s most accurate economic forecasters. “The mantra in 2005 should be caution,” he told the Associated Press (January 1, 2005). “Stay in the stock market, but be on the defensive side because the economic recovery is almost four years old.”

Lighting It Up

Last December, David Wilkins (MBA ’90) admired the brilliant skyline of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor, with its color-changing buildings and holiday lighting. “I love when nighttime comes,” the former investment banker told the Rocky Mountain News (December 24, 2004). Wilkins has more than a casual interest in lights, especially since 2002, when he acquired American Lighting, a specialty lighting company in Denver, Colorado. The firm sells its products to lighting showrooms, restaurants, amusement parks, and casinos as well as to cities, landscape contractors, and retailers.

“Outdoor lighting used to be a one-season event,” Wilkins noted. “Now most customers want to leave lighting up year-round because it signifies a special event.” Wilkins is excited by the prospect that more American cities may come to look like Hong Kong and thrilled to be involved in the lighting industry as an entrepreneur: “It’s very rewarding to actually make a tangible product and build a strong brand name.”