Youth Crime Reduction Through Enterprise Development

In 2008 alone, the country lost .7 billion in oil profits due to militant violence in the oil-rich but volatile Niger Delta region1. A Presidential Technical Committee report to the Nigerian government attributed the fiscal loss to armed militant activity on oil installations that resulted in shutdowns and spillages. The conflict has significantly hamstrung oil exports - the country's prime revenue earner - from 2.6 million barrels in 2006 to a current figure of just 1.78 million barrels. The human component of this economic tragedy is even more appalling: at least 1,000 lives lost and an additional 300, including 44 foreign oil workers and businessmen, taken hostage.

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The Nigerian government considers four of the nine states in the delta region as conflict zones, and foreigner travel to these locations is strictly restricted. The 70,000 square km area, a mainstay of the country's economy, accounts for 85% of state revenue2. Armed insurgency in the region traces its roots to a perceived sense of neglect by both oil companies and the national government, a sentiment that is corroborated by empirical evidence. Despite its strategic and economic significance, human development indices for the Niger Delta region are starkly behind national averages. Further, the pollution resulting from oil and gas prospecting have decimated indigenous sources of livelihood like fishing, and brought home disease, malnutrition and high fatality rates, besides serious environmental repercussions.

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The localize symptoms in Niger Delta are however only part of the problem. Poverty remains endemic despite the billions flowing into the national coffers. Successive government policies in the last century failed to include the wide majority of Nigerians; 76 million of whom are officially classified below the poverty line, while an astounding 35% of the population continues to live in abject poverty3.

Poverty however exacts an inevitable social toll, and for an impoverished people, crime is often an easy step from deprivation. Although reliable independent data is hard to come by, Nigeria has a massive unemployment rate that adds thousands of new graduates to its list of jobless each year. The country's prominent 'This Day' newspaper reports in a September 2007 story that Nigerian youths constitute half the population, 95% of which is unemployed4. By the government's own admission, over 70% of the population was unemployed that year. The figure has since been slashed to just below 29% to coincide with recent independent World Bank findings. Even at this rate however, over 40 million Nigerians are currently jobless. Significantly, policy changes effected after 1999 have done little to assuage the situation, largely because of a misplaced focus on capital-intensive ventures that generated few employment opportunities. The situation was made worse by acute infrastructural shortages, forcing hundreds of factories and informal sector industries to lay-off workers.

Consequently, youth crime has steadily been on the rise, fed by decades of under-investment in the social sector, together with deficient poverty-alleviation and ineffective unemployment-reduction initiatives. Over the years, billions in annual oil revenue pouring in to the country hiked the bar of its economic and social aspirations, resulting in a climate of criminal proclivity.

For a nation with millions of jobless youths, the gross outcome has been a surge in violent crime by individuals and gangs, including frequent muggings, assault, burglary, carjacking, extortion and kidnapping. Fraud is an especially huge criminal sub-sector here. In fact the US State Department specifically warns Nigeria-bound travellers to be wary of innovative scams hatched over the Internet that pose the risk of both financial loss and personal danger.

Over many years of political and social turmoil, the accumulation of small crimes has transformed Nigeria into an established transit point on drug routes headed for European and North America. Due to its strategic location, the country has also emerged as a centre of massive economic corruption and criminal activity. Since 1999 however, a climate of renewed collaboration with international law-enforcement agencies has resulted in substantial crackdowns on syndicated criminal activities across the country. A notable achievement in this regard has been a national initiative against drug money laundering, which resulted in Nigeria's removal from the Financial Action Task Force's list of non-cooperative countries in 2006. However, the country's commitment to fighting economic crimes continues to be monitored.

The mix of poverty, inflation and unemployment in Nigeria has created a situation where opportunities for gainful employment are scarce, and criminality is often a means for survival. The same holds true for large parts of sub-Saharan Africa where legitimate opportunities are shrinking. Across Nigeria, the highest incidence is of property crimes, relating to survival - burglary, armed robbery, cheating etc. Inherent flaws in the criminal justice system only add to the problem. Tackling law and order is especially difficult due to the existence of a triple criminal justice system, which includes a Criminal Code, a Penal Code (based on Islamic edicts) and Customary Law, some of which are informal and unwritten.

Youth crime is currently one of the biggest hurdles on Nigeria's road to accelerated economic development. One of the government's core priorities, in the context of long-term developmental goals, remains the mobilization of its substantial youth population to lead an enterprise revolution. Nigeria's emerging leadership has in principle at least awakened to the urgency of implementing fundamental initiatives concerning the creation of new jobs for sustainable and inclusive growth. For Nigeria, entrepreneurship development is a social as well as an economic imperative. The following aspects require critical consideration as part of any concerted government effort in this regard:

* In the contest of Nigeria's troubled past, maintaining political stability and authority of democratic institutions are critical to the success of any worthwhile youth revival initiative.

* Improvement in per capita income, standard of living and related human development indices through implementation of informed social and economic policy changes.

* Effective poverty alleviation programs that focus on enterprise development as a viable means to legitimate prosperity. Mobilization of the youth workforce to promote rapid entrepreneurial development in rural and urban areas alike.

* Massive overhaul of the education system to correctly address local realities. Focus on vocational and skill development programs that translate to practical job opportunities.

* Rehabilitation programs for Niger Delta militants and other criminal elements that focus on equipping them with practical skills and leveraging their economic potential.

For a country beset by a bewildering array of problems, piece-meal measures can hardly be effective in the long run. Hopefully, Nigeria has at least started taking positive steps.

In June this year, the government of President UM Yar'Adua announced a declaration of amnesty for militants in the Niger Delta region. The proclamation acknowledges that militancy arose out of the state's inability to meet the aspirations of the local population, and the need for sustainable development in the Delta states. It goes on to add that most of the militant are "able-bodied youths whose energies could be harnessed for the development of the Niger Delta and the nation at large5."

As is the case with most seemingly intractable problems, the problem of Nigeria's youth crime also contains its solution!

Youth Crime Reduction Through Enterprise Development

By Peter Osalor FCCA, CTA Partner Peter Osalor and Co Chartered Certified Accountants and President, www.Success in Your Business.com.

ENTERPRISE

Setting Up Google Places - Ensure You Set Up a Brand New Account For Each Enterprise Listing

When setting up your Google Places account it really is crucial to understand that there is no strategy to transfer this account to someone else. For those who sell the organization or have any other reason to desire to transfer control of the account to yet another person, you are going to will need to shut down the listing and start over unless you're willing to permit that particular person to have access to all of your other Google organization and/or private information. This means losing all of your reviews and citations. Clearly this could be a large loss.

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Thus, Don't enable your marketing consultant, advertising agency, or any other outside company to create your listing in their account. They could possibly wish to do this for comfort. You'll want to develop this listing inside your Google Account. Having said that, should you need to move your advertising and marketing to another entity, they are not going to let you or that entity have access to their total Google Account. So you'll be forced to start over.

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Do not use your private Google Account or the Google Account of yet another business you personal or control to generate your listing. See the reasons above.

DO Generate a brand new Google Account for every single small business that you own. This way you will be in a position to transfer control of the account to a new owner without losing any of the work that has gone into the creation of the account.

You'll want to use this thinking with regard to all local search engine listings such as MerchantCircle, HotFrog, YellowPages.com, Yelp, Yahoo, Bing, and others.

Setting Up Google Places - Ensure You Set Up a Brand New Account For Each Enterprise Listing

For more information on how you can listed your business in google places visit Google Local Unleashed and discover the right way to make profit.Visit Google Places Unleashed Now!

ENTERPRISE

How to Get a Lowe's Discount Coupon

Lowe's gives customers a 10% off coupon who are moving. You can get this coupon at the Lowe's website. It is sent in the mail, however, and can take a few weeks to receive. You can also go to your local post office and ask for a moving coupon book that contains several coupons for home improvement.

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Lowe's will match any competitors price or coupon so if you have a Home Depot sales advertisement you can show it to the cashier at Lowe's. You can use the price match with any coupon. Home Depot coupons can be used at Lowe's also.

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If you go to the Lowe's website and register you will receive coupons throughout the year. They are usually off a purchase. You can sign up at the Home Depot website also and all of your coupons can be used at Lowe's.

Lowe's also has a clearance section where items are marked down every week until most of it is sold. If you see something you are interested in you can ask a sales associate to mark it down further especially if it has been there for awhile. Go to the store frequently and watch the items on clearance. Sometimes if you wait a few more days you will see the price has been lowered. They do not want to have any liquidation so most of the time they will mark it down even more.

Combining Lowe's discount coupons with items already marked up to 40% off clearance price is a great way to save money. You could also buy these items and sell them for full retail price.

Another way to get Lowe's coupons is to purchase them for very little. Your price may be .00 to .00 for 10 coupons or more. This is another excellent way to save.

Lowe's discount gift cards can be purchased below face value too and can also be used with your order.

How to Get a Lowe's Discount Coupon

I am a stay at home mom of three children and I am always looking for ways to save money.

http://www.gotmineforless.com/home-and-garden-coupons/Lowes-coupons

My blog is at: http://www.gotmineforless.com/blog

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Lease Option - Rent to Own Strategies

Here we have four strategies which are fantastic, especially if you currently own negatively geared property. These strategies are so easy to do yourself and here is an example of just how easy it is. There was a gentleman called Jeff. Now Jeff had bought three negatively geared properties from a seminar. These properties had been purchased off the plan and were located in a place called the Docklands in Melbourne. Jeff had become concerned because these properties were not worth what he had paid for them and as a result, he was loosing ,000 a month. We sat down, and went through some of the strategies which I am about to share with you, and he was able to turn these properties around from a ,000 loss a year to a ,000 a year profit. Wow.

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The most common mistake

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What 99% of people do when they go to sell a property quickly is that they discount the price. This is something which is not recommended. When you discount the price of your property, you'll then find that your neighbour, who is also selling his house, discounts his price, then all the other people in your neighbourhood start discounting the prices on their properties and we end up with everyone fighting themselves down into a loosing market.

The solution
Rather than dropping the price of your property, one way you can increase interest in your property is to make it easier for what buyers there are in the market place to buy your property. You can also look at what things you can do to make it more enticing to buy your property as against your neighbour's property. One way you can do this, is through creating 'honeymoon periods' on interest rates.

If a person is ordinarily looking to purchase your property they will most likely be spending anywhere from 7 to 7.5% on interest rates. What if a buyer could purchase your property and only have to pay 5 or 6% interest? Perhaps even 4% for the first six months? This is the same as what the banks do. They create 'honeymoon periods' or 'honeymoon rates' which means that the person who comes to buy your property will find it easier to move into your property today than someone else's because they are moving in at a discounted interest rate.

It works this way: The seller can list the property with a real estate agent if that's what they want to do, and when the agent sells it, the seller makes a concession to the buyer's lender at settlement for whatever the amount was that you gave away in interest. So if you marketed the property at a 4% or 5% interest rate, then when the buyer goes to the bank to get his loan, the bank then needs to be compensated for that loss of interest. Despite this, you will find that when you transfer that discount over at settlement, the amount you are required to pay to compensate this lower interest rate will be considerably less than the amount you would need to discount the property by in order to sell it.

The Perks

This is becoming a more popular method to move properties quickly, as a lot of people realize that if they can buy your property now for 4% interest, then maybe they can also continue the payments on their car. They may even decide that by going into your property now, although it is only a low interest rate for only a short period, it gives them time to pay some other debts off, or they can spend the money they would have saved on some new furniture. Whatever they decide, it makes it easier for people to move into your property and the price does not become the issue. You will also find that if you charge the maximum retail price for your property and give people a subsidized interest rate to get into it, buyers would rather purchase your property than buy the property next door, where the guy has dropped the price by 30, 40 or 50 thousand dollars because, although your neighbour has dropped the price, it does not affect the buyers monthly payments by a whole lot.

A little less now, can mean a whole lot later

Delayed gratification will always give you a lot more money than it will to the people who want all the cash now. I was discussing this process with one of my students, John. John had a couple of houses and just completed a development. He needed to sell one of his properties as he was concerned that he was in a falling or a static market. If John was prepared to take delayed gratification, then he could get the price he wanted for his property. This meant that if John was prepared to not have all of the money now, rather get some in a week, some in six months and some in a couple of years, then in this way he was giving the market place a lot more flexibility on the payment and in return they would be willing to pay him a lot more for his property. John would also find that he would have a lot more buyers come through the door. This is your second strategy to create positive cashflow in a negative market.

Here's the example: You go to sell your property and you give your buyers the option of paying you 80% now and 20% later on. The reason why this strategy works so well is because of the way that finance works at the moment. Today, people have to come up with 20% or, as is the case in inner Sydney, 30% of the loan as a deposit. This is where you can step in and say to your buyer "How about you give me the 70% or 80% now and make payments to me of the other 30%. By doing this you are putting the market place in a position where they have to bring very, very little money to the table to buy your property, because the lender will lend them the 70% to purchase your property and the 30%, which is the difficult bit, usually the deposit, is the money which you are prepared to take later. You will charge them an interest on this 30%, but you do not need to receive it right now, and you protect yourself with a second mortgage situation.

Essentially you transfer title and the buyer will pay you the 70 or 80% now and you would then collect the other 20% as an income stream over a short period of time, or a long period of time and balloon the balance in a year or two years if there is anything else outstanding. Another thing you can do is you can assign or sell those mortgages to cash yourself out. By using these processes you can sell that property for top price because you are making it easier for buyers to get into your property and you are prepared to take the money over a period of months rather than having it all today.

These first two strategies require the transfer of the title of the property and this can be good when you want to sell it through a real estate agent because these are very common ways of completing real estate transactions as they include a standard sales contract with a standard seller and a standard buyer and the real estate agent can relate to these methods very easily. Another strategy where you don't transfer the title of your property and keep control of the property but can move it very quickly is one which you might of herd of, where you are using vendor finance through an installment contract.

It's all about terms

Installment contract is the new terminology for what was always known as the "terms" contract. A terms contract is where you have an agreement where you transfer possession of the property to the buyer and they take an equitable interest in the property. There is still and exchange of contract but you, the seller, are retaining legal title, and in the normal sense, you would transfer over legal title once the full debt has been paid to you. So you would have a contract that says, once you have made these payments, then the legal title will transfer. The buyer can finalise the transaction by either paying you a payment of what they owe you for the property, minus any previous payments they have made to you, or they can go on to sell the property to someone else and pay you out. In another instance they can re-finance and pay you out.

A lot of the stuff that we do at my company, 'We buy houses' is sell a lot of properties where we says "You know what? You can make payments to me for 25 years if you want but after 12 months, two years or so, I need you to re-finance somewhere else. In this way, at least you can show me that you can make payments for the first couple of years, so we can then take this to the banks and this will make it much easier for you to re-finance into the banking system".

Everybody wins

You will find that out of all of the people that want to buy properties, only 80% of people will be able to purchase a property the traditional way, so by offering your property on terms you are opening up to 100% of the market. You are also not just helping out home owners but you are able to sell to investors who have multiple houses and cannot get further finance the traditional way. Rick finds that a lot of his buyers are now investors as once they have bought three, four or five houses, the lenders will not lend them any more money to invest. These investors can come to you and buy properties because you don't have any restrictions on how many properties people own. Your benefit is that you can charge the full price for you property, as long as you make it easy for these people to get in.

Perfect Timing

The fourth strategy is a strategy that is becoming increasingly common this year. This strategy is the Lease Option which then turns into the back to back Lease Option or Sandwich Option. The reason why Rick hasn't really introduced this strategy until this year is because of the timing in the market. The best market for this type of option is where you have too many sellers and not enough buyers. When you have too many sellers and no buyers, price no longer becomes the issue, it more falls to the flexibility of the seller and the terms as to which he is prepared to sell his property.

A Lease Option, or a Rent to Own, works in this way. The seller can turn around to a potential buyer and say "OK, you want to rent this property, but wouldn't it be better for you if you could also buy the property?" You will find that the reason why most people rent is because they haven't had the opportunity given to them to purchase a property, so if you give them the option, they can rent, and at the same time they can be buying the property. Now for you as the seller, people who are renting with the option to buy will pay considerably more every month than they will if they are just renting. Also if they are renting with the option to buy, you will get a better quality tenant that moves in, and you will also have a tenant that is more respectful of your property because at the end of the day, he hopes it will be his property. Giving your tenant the option to purchase the property will also massively reduce any vacancy you have and because it's so easy to do, you don't have to worry about having real estate people do this for you.

Now there is another side to this. This is where you have a tenant who is in your property doing a Rent to Own and they then turn around and do a Rent to Own transaction themselves on the same property. This is where the Sandwich Lease Option comes in. Right now in this market place where prices are continuing to fall, it's a really good strategy that when you buy a property, you don't go and put all of your money into it. What you do, is you get a lease from the seller, with the right to buy it down the road. You might be finding right now that there are a lot of desperate sellers who are very open to the idea that if you can look after the payments they are making on the property then they are happy for you to rent the property and look after the payments and know that down the road, you will eventually buy the property for them. You agree upfront what price you will buy the property for. Then you can turn around, where there is someone who is happy to rent the property from you and buy it from you, and they are also prepared to pay more than you are already paying to the seller and purchase it at the end of a given period.

Imagine you had a property which you were buying from a seller for 0,000 and you agree that you will pay 0.00 a week which will cover the seller's debt service. The seller bought this as an investment property and then he lost his job so he had taken all of the financing out of his own home in order to buy this investment property and now he has no one living in it. As you could imagine, the seller was having all kinds of problems meeting the debt service. You could come to an agreement that you would look after the debt service and you would also look after all of the rates, insurance, tax and bits and pieces that run at another a week. So you are taking care of this property at about 2 a week. You may be surprised how easy it is to find a family who is very happy to move in there on a rent to own for 5 a week, with the option to buy the house at the end for 2,000. You might be thinking now that there is not a lot of difference between the 0,00 which you are buying it for and the 2,000 you are selling it for, but there are a couple of things that you have in your favour. Firstly you pay no stamp duty to get into the property, there are very little legal expenses and you've written one cheque to the seller for 0.00 to put the deal in place. This one cheque of 0.00 has been your only investment to get into the house. So if you have only invested 0.00 and you have no bank loan, then you can be pretty happy with that. You also have ,000 that you will receive at the end, along with .00 you are receiving in positive cashflow every week and you also have the right to do that for the next 4 years.

The fundamentals

There are a couple of rules you need to understand if you want to get out of negatively geared property. Firstly you have got to make it easy for someone else to get into it, and this is where most people get it wrong. They continue to drop the price of their property. Dropping the price of your property does not make it easier for me to get into your property if I cannot get a bank loan or I have no deposit. So this is where you need to get creative and make it easy to get people into your property.

The other strategy which we spoke about is carrying back the deposit for people in the way of an Installment Contract, because if someone wants to buy your 0,000 property and require a 30% deposit, that means they need to have 0,000 cash, plus stamp duty and all those bits and pieces, and most people don't have that much money lying in their bank. So if they can get their loan for 70% and you are able to carry back, a second mortgage for that 30% then they can make payments to you for that amount, and you can negotiate with them how much interest they will pay you for the 30%. You'll also find that you have a house that you can market as 100% bank rates.

100% bank rates

Another process you can use is to advertise your house for 100% bank rates. This means that what the buyer does not borrow from the bank, they are borrowing from you at the exact same bank rate that they are paying at the bank. So if the bank is lending 70% of the loan to them at 7.12% then the 30% they haven't got, they can borrow from you at 7.12%. The great part for them is that there are no other houses in the whole suburb that they can walk into and have no money. And yes, if you were wondering, they do need to have good credit but you do not have to assess that, because the lender that lends them the first bit, the 70 or 80%, are going to assess their credit. If the bank is prepared to lend them the 70%, and the banks are a little more thorough with their credit checks than you can be happy to lend them the 30%. You will find this a very good way to move your properties on, and you can turn your negatively geared properties into positively geared payments.

If you want to leave the real estate people out of it, you have the two other strategies we spoke about, with one being the Rent to Own, where tenants are given the option to purchase the property they are renting. You will find with your Rent to Own properties, that the extra bit that the tenants are willing to pay you is usually the difference between you being negatively geared or positively geared. That's an important point to remember. You might be wondering now why people would pay up to an extra 50% of the normal market rent. Well you can offer the tenant that an amount out of the rent which they pay, you will contribute X percent or X dollars towards the purchase price when they buy the property.

You will find that just so long as people know that it is not lost money and, if they decide to buy, then a percentage of the money that they pay every week will go towards the purchase price of the property, they are happy to pay a higher rent. You can usually have a rough idea of what they are paying you every week or every month on this Rent to Buy, above the standard rentals, and that is the bit which you can offer back to them if they decide that, later on down the road, they want to purchase the property.

The next process is for Installment Contracts or Wrap around Mortgages. This is where you create a payment stream where people pay you money to get in. It can be ,000, ,000, or even ,000. Whatever money they can offer you as a deposit, and you might be surprised by the amount of cash that some people have lying around. The balance of what they don't have, you get the solicitors put the paperwork system together so that they can make payments to you every month. You can even get all these payments collected by the real estate agents, so you don't even do this part yourself. They make the payments on the underlying mortgage, they pay the water rates, the council rates, insurance. They pay absolutely everything and just send the positive cash flow to you when it is all done.

Qs and As

There are a lot of questions that come up about some of these strategies, how to put them together, and what they should consider. I would like to share a couple with you.

How much discount do I want?
You may often ask yourself, "How much discount do I want?" The answer is that you want what you can get. The other day, a house went at an auction for 0,000 where only one person bid; so that's what the house went for. That house was pretty close to being worth 0,000. If it had of been an ordinary sale and someone had said "I'll give it to you for 0,000", wouldn't you be happy to pay 0,000 and not get any discount. If it had been a 0,000 offer, you might try to get a ,000 discount. So how much discount you go to get on your houses or home unit is dependent upon what is being offered to you and how close it is to the right price. If you sell a property and you want to get out tomorrow, you would significantly reduce the price of the house, just to get out, so there really is no negotiating room in the price. You just need to research your neighbourhood or a particular suburb you are looking to buy in, and there is no fine line. There is no "Take of 20 or 30%", because if the seller has already taken off a whole bunch and you are trying to get another 10% it is not necessary if you already have the deal. A lesson you will learn as you complete more of these deals is not to push too hard when you already had the deal. Once you have your formula and you have your deal, stop pushing. If your formula has allowed you to get the profit you need, stop. Sometimes you can keep pushing for another or and the whole thing falls apart and you are lying in bed at One O'clock in the morning thinking "Gee there was ,000 profit in there but I had to keep pushing for that last ".

How much money should I add to the price?
People often wonder how much money they should add to the selling price of one of their rent to own properties. "Should it be a percentage or how much extra should I charge?" The thing is that the market place will let you know. The market will determine what they are willing to pay you and how much you will get for the property. Here's what we do know. If you make it easy for people to buy properties just like the government made it real easy when they introduced the ,000 first home owners grant, it brings a whole heap of people into the market and opens it up to almost everyone. You want to do the same sort of thing. If you make it easy for people to get into your property, they will pay you more for it, than the traditional way. Whenever you sell properties this way you can be sure that you can get more for them. How much more? That's hard to determine. If you wondered what the rule was, I would tell you that whatever the retail price of the property is, you can always go another 5%, well somewhere between 5% and 10% above the market value. It's really just about putting your sign out the front and seeing how you go. The market place will let you know how much you can sell your property for. You don't get to decide how much you want to sell your property for. The market place decides.

What do I negotiate?
People also ask what to negotiate when you purchase a property. If you go to buy a property and you can't speak directly to the seller, you ask the agent, "Would the seller like to sell his house today? Or would he rather sell it in another six months?" "No he wants to sell it today" they say. "Well I'm here with my cheque book ready to buy a house today. Which one of your sellers would like to sell their house today?" In the old days agents didn't like to bring the vendors in to see buyers and that was fine, but the market has changed now, and we are finding that vendors are so keen to get out of these properties because they more often than not have had they're property for months, just sitting there unsold. You might also find that so much of the negotiations are not about the price, but the terms on which you buy it. Now with any vendor you could argue all day long to get a discount from 0,000 to 0,000 or 0,000, but if the vendors are going to go and live over seas for five years, then you can propose that they create you a 30 year mortgage and you can make the payments to them for five years and pay the balance at the end of that five year period. Now, if you are paying no interest and 100% of your payments are directly going towards the principal amount, then the amount you will save in interest is much, much more than if you were to get a ,000 or even ,000 discount. These are the type of things you couldn't do in a hot market.

Rent to Owns are also very easy to negotiate these days. You can just go to the seller and say "Hey I don't really have my finances in shape, how about you rent me the property for the next three years and I'll give you the price you need at the end" Then you just need to work out the rent. Sometimes it'll be equal to what the sellers payments are, sometimes it will be the standard market rent plus 20%, it doesn't really matter what the amount is, because you are going to then put up a sign which says "Rent to Own", where you will set up this transaction with someone else and collect a rent which is more than the rent you are paying to the seller. This transaction is all about controlling properties without owning them.

What ever happened to Jeff?

How did Jeff turn those properties around? Jeff ran some ads in the paper while he was in Sydney for his properties in Melbourne. So, Jeff ran some ads, people went to see his houses in Melbourne and he got a phone call the next day from someone who had a deposit but couldn't qualify for a bank loan because they had had some issues with credit in the past. He was happy to pay the asking price for Jeff's property as against having no property at all. And the best part? Jeff was able to do this all himself without having to fly back and forth to Melbourne to complete the deal. So if you have a negatively geared property, you don't need to drop the price and cut your losses. You can use these strategies to turn your negatively geared properties into positively geared payments. You can get creative and at the same time open your property up to 100% of the market.

Lease Option - Rent to Own Strategies

Hopefully you can take this information and start to make some serious cash and if you have any other questions or you want some more information on some of these strategies, you can log onto my website at http://www.rickotton.com where you can sign up for one a seminar or send me an email.

A man of dedicated vision he is founder and CEO of We Buy Houses, a leading property enterprise which Rick has successfully expanded into the international markets of America, the UK, New Zealand and Australia. Rick's success has been achieved by recognising property profits can be maximized when you start to create strategies relating to the terms under which the property is acquired or sold, and not simply relying on price-led strategies. Rick buys, sells and trades property using little or none of his own money, and he structures transactions to create positive-cash flow. http://mrpositivecashflow.com/.

ENTERPRISE RENTAL

Implement Enterprise Risk Management

Organizations have long practiced various parts of what has come to be called enterprise risk management. Identifying and prioritizing risks, either with foresight or following a disaster, has long been a standard management activity. Treating risk by transfer, though insurance or other financial products, has also been common practice, as has contingency planning and crisis management.

enterprise architecture as strategy

What has changed, beginning very near the close of the last century, is treating the vast variety of risks in a holistic manner, and elevating risk management to a senior management responsibility. Although practices have not progressed uniformly though different industries and different organizations, the general evolution toward ERM can be characterized by a number of driving forces.

ENTERPRISE

What is Risk Management?

Risk management is simply a practice of systematically selecting cost effective approaches for minimizing the effect of threat realization to the organization. All risks can never be fully avoided or mitigated simply because of financial and practical limitations. Therefore all organizations have to accept some level of residual risks.

Whereas risk management tends to be pre-emptive, business continuity planning (BCP) was invented to deal with the consequences of realized residual risks. The necessity to have BCP in place arises because even very unlikely events will occur if given enough time. Risk management and BCP are often mistakenly seen as rivals or overlapping practices. In fact these processes are so tightly tied together that such separation seems artificial. For example, the risk management process creates important inputs for the BCP (assets, impact assessments, cost estimates etc). Risk management also proposes applicable controls for the observed risks. Therefore, risk management covers several areas that are vital for the BCP process. However, the BCP process goes beyond risk management's pre-emptive approach and moves on from the assumption that the disaster will realize at some point.

Financial risk management is the practice of creating value in a firm by using financial instruments to manage exposure to risk. Similar to general risk management, financial risk management requires identifying the sources of risk, measuring risk, and plans to address them. As a specialization of risk management, financial risk management focuses on when and how to hedge using financial instruments to manage costly exposures to risk.

In the banking sector worldwide, Basel Accord are generally adopted by internationally active banks to tracking, reporting and exposing operational, credit and market risks.

Currently working for Compass Bank, a smaller regional bank, the same general risk is still apparent. From deposit fraud including check kiting, Insider Trading fraud, Internet Banking concerns, and robbery. Compass Bank must insure to continually track, monitor, rethink or revamp, and implement.

Finance theory (i.e. financial economics) prescribes that a firm should take on a project when it increases shareholder value. Finance theory also shows that firm managers cannot create value for shareholders, also called its investors, by taking on project that shareholders could do for themselves at the same cost. When applied to financial risk management, this implies that firm managers should not hedge risks that investors can hedge for themselves at the same cost. This notion is captured by the hedging irrelevance proposition: In a perfect market, the firm cannot create value by hedging a risk when the price of bearing that risk within the firm is the same as the price of bearing it outside of the firm. In practice, financial markets are not likely to be perfect markets. This suggests that firm managers likely have many opportunities to create value for shareholders using financial risk management. The trick is to determine which risks are cheaper for the firm to manage than the shareholders. A general rule of thumb, however, is that market risks that result in unique risks for the firm are the best candidates for financial risk management.

Why the Change?

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (Pub. L. No. 107-204, 116 Stat. 745, also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002 and commonly called SOX or Sarbox; July 30, 2002) is a United States federal law passed in response to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals including those affecting Enron, Tyco International, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom (recently MCI and currently now part of Verizon Businesses). These scandals resulted in a decline of public trust in accounting and reporting practices. Named after sponsors Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) and Representative Michael G. Oxley (R-Oh.), the Act was approved by the House by a vote of 423-3 and by the Senate 99-0. The legislation is wide ranging and establishes new or enhanced standards for all U.S. public company boards, management, and public accounting firms. The Act contains 11 titles, or sections, ranging from additional Corporate Board responsibilities to criminal penalties, and requires the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to implement rulings on requirements to comply with the new law. Some believe the legislation was necessary and useful, others believe it does more economic damage than it prevents, and yet others observe how essentially modest the Act is compared to the heavy rhetoric accompanying it.

The first and most important part of the Act establishes a new quasi-public agency, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which is charged with overseeing, regulating, inspecting, and disciplining accounting firms in their roles as auditors of public companies. The Act also covers issues such as auditor independence, corporate governance and enhanced financial disclosure. It is considered by some as one of the most significant changes to United States securities laws since the New Deal in the 1930s.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act's major provisions include the following:

o Creation of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)

o A requirement that public companies evaluate and disclose the effectiveness of their internal controls as they relate to financial reporting, and that independent auditors for such companies "attest" (i.e., agree, or qualify) to such disclosure

o Certification of financial reports by chief executive officers and chief financial officers

o Auditor independence, including outright bans on certain types of work for audit clients and pre-certification by the company's Audit Committee of all other non-audit work

o A requirement that companies listed on stock exchanges have fully independent audit
committees that oversee the relationship between the company and its auditor

o Ban on most personal loans to any executive officer or director

o Accelerated reporting of insider trading

o Prohibition on insider trades during pension fund blackout periods

o Additional disclosure

o Enhanced criminal and civil penalties for violations of securities law

o Significantly longer maximum jail sentences and larger fines for corporate executives who knowingly and willfully misstate financial statements, although maximum sentences are largely irrelevant because judges generally follow the Federal Sentencing Guidelines in setting actual sentences

o Employee protections allowing those corporate fraud whistleblowers who file complaints with OSHA within 90 days to win reinstatement, back pay and benefits, compensatory damages, and congressional page abatement orders, and reasonable attorney fees and costs.

But enacting a law with out a governing body to oversee the provisions and rules would be a waste of time and taxpayers dollars. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was placed into law to help stop corruption and deception to protection the employees and citizen from scandal.

Governed by Whom

The committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) is a U.S. private-sector initiative, formed in 1985. Its major objective is to identify the factors that cause fraudulent financial reporting and to make recommendations to reduce its incidence. COSO has established a common definition of internal controls, standards, and criteria against which companies and organizations can assess their control systems.

COSO is sponsored and funded by 5 main professional accounting associations and institutes; American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), American Accounting Association (AAA), Financial Executives Institute (FEI), The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) and The Institute of Management Accountants (IMA).
COSO has setup some internal controls. The controls are as follows.

o Internal control is a process. It is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

o Internal control is affected by people. It's not merely policy manuals and forms, but people at every level of an organization.

o Internal control can be expected to provide only reasonable assurance, not absolute assurance, to an entity's management and board.

o Internal control is geared to the achievement of objectives in one or more separate but overlapping categories.

Internal control consists of five interrelated components. These components provide an effective framework for describing and analyzing the internal control system implemented in an organization. The five components are the following:

Control environment: The control environment sets the tone of an organization, influencing the control consciousness of its people. It is the foundation for all other components of internal control, providing discipline and structure. Control environment factors include the integrity, ethical values, management's operating style, delegation of authority systems, as well as the processes for managing and developing people in the organization.

Compass Bank tries to control the environment inside the company. We offer different foundations to help build an ethical place to work. We try to hire the "right" person for the position in hopes of aspiring the correct mindset. But hiring the right person is not always perfect. We have been tested by unethical decisions of our employees, which have placed the company in court, mitigation, or litigation.

Risk assessment: Every entity faces a variety of risks from external and internal sources that must be assessed. A precondition to risk assessment is establishment of objectives and thus risk assessment is the identification and analysis of relevant risks to achievement of assigned objectives. Risk assessment is a prerequisite for determining how the risks should be managed.

Internal and external risk is a constant threat to any bank including Compass Bank. Some of the internal and external risk is the Internet and providing instant, on-demand results for our customer opens the door to Internet threats and/or fraud. We assess the risk, evaluate, and put into place backup plans. We try to eliminate risk before it happens.

Control activities: Control activities are the policies and procedures that help ensure management directives are carried out. They help ensure that necessary actions are taken to address risks to achievement of the entity's objectives. Control activities occur throughout the organization, at all levels and in all functions. They include a range of activities as diverse as approvals, authorizations, verifications, reconciliations, reviews of operating performance, security of assets and segregation of duties.

Most companies provide a level of control activities. Compass Bank limits different control activities base on your position within the bank. At my level, a manger, I would have different authorities, like up to million dollar transfer approvals, whereas a customer service representative would only have 0 thousand dollar transfer approvals abilities. Based on the position within Compass Bank, most activities are controlled based on risk involved.
Information and communication: Information systems play a key role in internal control systems as they produce reports, including operational, financial and compliance-related information, that make it possible to run and control the business. In a broader sense, effective communication must ensure information flows down, across and up the organization. Effective communication should also be ensured with external parties, such as customers, suppliers, regulators and shareholders.

Information and communication is key to any success for a company. Compass Bank assess the information and determines how much of the information to communicate. If the assessment determines there is not a lot of risk, the information is not always shared. But if the information is needed at the lower level employees, like the recent TJX problem of hackers compromising credit card information, limited information is provided to help our customers.

Monitoring: Internal control systems need to be monitored--a process that assesses the quality of the system's performance over time. This is accomplished through ongoing monitoring activities or separate evaluations. Internal control deficiencies detected through these monitoring activities should be reported upstream and corrective actions should be taken to ensure continuous improvement of the system.

Compass Bank has internal monitoring of all activities. We are constantly audited to make sure we stay in compliance with all federal, state and local laws. One thing we do each year is to make sure all of our employees' go through compliance testing. The test involves the Bank Secrecy Act and the Anti-money Laundering Act. Each employee must pass both test with an 80% or better. We have other monitors setup but I am unable to elaborate on them.

In conclusion, it is reasonable to expect that the forces cited above will continue. Accordingly, risk management practices will become more and more sophisticated. As capabilities continue to improve, organizations will increasingly adopt better ERM controls because they can.

Enterprise risk management is a "big idea.' Among other things, ERM can be viewed as the broad conceptual framework that unifies the many varied parts of the actuarial discipline. ERM provides a logical structure to lin these subject area together in a compelling way to form an integrated whole. In so doing, ERM addresses critical business issues such as growth, return, consistency and value creation. It expresses risk not just as threat, but as opportunity - the fundament reason that business is conducted in a free enterprise system.

Implement Enterprise Risk Management

References:

Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission from Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia, Retrieve from the Internet on January 28, 2007 from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_of_Sponsoring_Organizations_of_the_Treadway_Commission
Sarbanes-Oxley Act, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Retrieved from the Internet on January
28, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act

Overview of Enterprise Risk Management, by Casualty Actuarial Society, (May 2003) Retrieved from
the Internet on January 28, 2007 from http://www.casact.org/research/erm/overview.pdf

Steven Brown, MBA is a loving husband and father of two boys. He enjoys his time with his family by providing a strong family foundation of Christian Faith. After completing his Bachelors degree, Steven wanted to further his ability to teach and share to others his mindset that they can do anything if they would believe in themselves.

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Budget Car Rentals - How to Find a Discount

Budget car rentals are becoming very popular nowadays mainly because of its affordability. But this is not the entire story. There are lots of companies which are also giving discounts on these budget car rentals. We would, in this article, look at some of the ways to get these discounts on budget car rentals.

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One very easy and effective way of keeping track of the discounts offered on budget car rentals is through subscribing to a newsletter which has all the information relating to such discounts. After having joined the group or the elite community, you would be kept abreast of the new deals and discounts coming up in the market for budget car rentals. This will ensure that you do not have to spend lot of time researching and browsing for the deals on the internet and asking people you know. You would get all the information directly into your mailbox.

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Browse the internet and look out for sites which have such discounts for budget rental cars. There would be lot of sites around and it would not be that difficult to get hold of these sites. But be careful, there are lots of spurious or bogus sites doing the rounds in the virtual world and that might actually end up in you getting hooked on to some impostors. After you find out the genuine ones, try to get registered with them. If there is nothing called registration, then try to contact them through the contact numbers which would be available on their website. Ask them for discounts on budget car rentals if there are any. If they say there aren't any, then drop in your email id or your phone number and ask them to contact you if any such discounts come up in the future. You can also bookmark those sites and visit them to find out whether there is anything new coming up or not.

There are many websites which give online coupons on budget rental cars. These coupons could be got online and there are some companies which give these coupons when one checks out the rented car. These coupons would come in very handy as they would bring about lots of savings for you with your budget car rentals deal. Do not just be satisfied with one website. There would be lot of websites who would be offering such discounts and who knows you might even come across better ones at the other websites.

Be flexible with your discounts on these budget vehicles and do not think that you would come across discounts for any vehicle that you choose. These discounts are basically available with vehicles which do not have lot of sales value and that as a result would mean that the most popular vehicles might not carry these discounts. So try to understand this fact and act accordingly. If you book multiple vehicles, then there are very good chances of you getting discounts on these budget car rentals.

There would be many companies in your area which would be providing such discounts. Ensure that you get hold of the best one and strike a great deal.

Budget Car Rentals - How to Find a Discount

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BHEL - Largest Manufacturing and Engineering Enterprise

BHEL, the Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited has paved the way into industrial sector and today it is one of the largest nine Public Sector Undertakings in India. BHEL, the largest manufacturing and engineering enterprise has started its journey in 1956 in Bhopal, India by entering into the Heavy Electrical Industry. Organized dream and passion to strive for the best has made this a prime conglomerate. At present this industrial giant has 14 manufacturing plants, 18 regional offices, 14 manufacturing divisions, 8 service centers and total of 150 project sites in India and across the world. Because of this huge network BHEL is always close to its customer and fulfill their needs with perfect product or service without a delay.

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BHEL has three main business sectors around which its whole operations are organized. These are Power Industry, Overseas Business and Renewable Energy. BHEL tenders from all these sectors are issued in different websites and newspapers. Apart from all the expansions and dreams, it is the well committed work force that is the main contributor to BHEL's success. Every employee at this organization is given equal opportunity to grow personally and professionally. This leads to employee as well as organizational growth. From time to time employees are upgraded with professional trainings.

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After this comes the companies, organizations and other public sectors working with BHEL. Now how these are part of BHEL? BHEL is such a big name that it needs support of other companies for its internal functioning. For this various tenders are issued. The tenders can be for transporting products, supply of paints, digitization of drawings, measuring equipments, building renovations and many more. Latest BHEL tenders information can be taken from resources as mentioned earlier. So if you are a company and interested in doing business with BHEL then keep looking for latest BHEL tenders information.

BHEL and the Global Compact

Everyone knows that the Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited is the largest manufacturing and engineering enterprise but it is also playing crucial role in the social activities leading to better life and planet. Recently BHEL has joined hands with Global Compact of United Nations to work in the areas of Human Rights, Labour Standards, Environment and Anti-Corruption.

BHEL Product Range

If we talk about Industrial World then by default the name of the BHEL is associated with it because of it huge role, contribution and product range. It is one of the leading industries across the world in the sector of power. The product range of BHEL is huge comprised of about 180 products so it is hard to pen down all here. The main out of these are products for thermal power plant, gas based power plants, hydro power plants, DG power plants, boilers, industrial sets, boiler auxiliaries etc. In addition to these there are many kinds of services in the field of power, industry, transmission, telecommunication and transportation that are rendered by BHEL.

BHEL and Quality

No one can touch the zenith if quality is not taken care of. BHEL is an ISO 9001:2000 certified company that means its quality standards are as per International Standards. BHEL also focus on Quality Management Systems and Total Quality Management. To maintain quality, Critical Quality Issues are investigated thoroughly and proper preventive actions are taken at BHEL. It also has the Product Certification by International bodies such as API and ASME. This further strengthens the quality aspect along with technology. All this is expected from the company that deals with BHEL through BHEL tenders. The second party must authenticate in BHEL tenders that its product and services will only enhance the quality of this largest manufacturing and engineering enterprise so that all its products and services meet the business excellence.

Chief Achievements of BHEL
It is the supplier of more than one million valves to Power plants and related industries. It has supplied more than 25,000 Motors with Drive Control System. For power generation BHEL has installed equipment of more than 90,000 MW

BHEL - Largest Manufacturing and Engineering Enterprise

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