A young man asked an old rich man how he had made his money.

The old guy fingered his worsted wool vest and said, “Well, son, it was 1932. It was at the depth of the Great Depression and I was down to my last nickel. I invested that nickel in an apple. I spent the entire day polishing the apple and, at the end of the day, I sold the apple for ten cents.

“The next morning, I invested those ten cents in two apples. I spent the entire day polishing them and sold them at 5:00 pm for 20 cents. I continued this system for a month, by the end of which I’d accumulated a fortune of $1.37.

“Then my wife’s father died and left us two million dollars.”  

For those of you who missed it yesterday at 3pm, Mark McQueen was back as a regular guest co-host on the Business News Network’s “Business Day” with Kim Parlee and Tony Keller. They discussed the European financial crisis, a recent Vision Critical survey, art collecting, and more. They also interviewed Spectra Energy CEO Greg Ebel. The first segment can be found here.

Hartford Life just introduced Issue First, a new way to provide immediate life insurance protection.  Get this . . . the policy is issued before underwriting.  The upper limit on face value and age is $2 million and 66, respectively, so they are not just targeting small policies or young insurers.  The Hartford estimates that on average it takes 48 days to issue a permanent policy; that’s almost two months!  But with Issue First, the policy is issued in as little as five days if the answers to eight medical questions meet the eligibility requirements.  The Hartford’s agents must be loving this.

Five days. That’s a

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Crowd-funding, which refers to the process of culling donations from a large pool of financiers through social networks, recently took a step toward becoming a platform for investment as well.

Currently, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission mandates that crowd-funding sites be limited to donations only.

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Why don’t you go play the game like this guy? Here’s a great story! Every one of us wished this was me! A poor government clerk from a desolate region of eastern India has become the first person ever to win $1 million on an Indian game show. Sushil Kumar’s staggering win on the popular Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” has transformed him into a role model for millions of aspiring youth yearning to escape their lives of poverty and find a role in India’s burgeoning economy. His win echoes the plot of the 2008 Oscar-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire,” whose impoverished protagonist won the grand prize on the show.   They wept Kumar and his wife of four months wept when Indian movie legend Amitabh Bachchan, the show’s host, handed them a check for 50 million rupees, just over $1 million, after the contestant gave all the right answers. “You have created history!” Bachchan said.   To be air Read all post…

Deloittes commitment to the innovation economy was on display again last evening as the annual Fast 50 winners were announced. We are proud that many of our portfolio companies have been acknowledged in the past, and this year was no different:

#5 Real Matters, Markham; 5 year revenue growth of 28,265% #35 Vantrix, Montreal; growth of 447% #39 Impact Mobile, Toronto; growth of 397% #42 BTI Systems, Kanata; growth of 367% #50 Nightingale Informatix, Markham; growth of 294%

The five Wellington Financial Fund III portfolio companies above were joined by Biox Corp. , which received a Green 15 award for promoting innovative technologies to create products and services that compete with existing products and services on price and performance while reducing our impact on the environment.

Our man Duncan Stewart, Director of TMT Research with Deloitte, pointed out that these companies arent just growing fast, they are investing too: the average research and development spending was a new record, at almost $22.5 million per company.

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When you need to get financial assistance, you begin to look for private lenders from advertising or Yellow Pages or ask around friends and family who have the same problems. These searching strategies should be considered unproductive that the majority of your time will be spend on comparing, not to mention the success rate of having an appropriate personal loan is permanently low.

The searching method is improved by the intelligent Web browsing, but you need to know how to find a good private lender, sift out the irrelevant content, and choose the best available loan agreement. Read all post…