My first job when I got my equity card was acting in 14 plays back-to-back. Playing that many roles, you look for ways of differentiating the characters physically, which goes hand in hand with understanding them psychologically.
I mainly believe in investing in property, creating a balance between property, equity and FDs.
As the property market is very steep right now I think people should invest their capital in a mix of equity and debt instruments, through reputed mutual funds and maybe some in gold and silver. Regular savings are very very important.
There is more equity now in movies and TV, although I think its mostly because of changing demographics. It's not a moral proposition. It's good business. Shows about people of all colors are making money.
I had saved a lot of money working at Mrs. Fields' Chocolate Chip Cookies, ushering at the Golden Gate Theatre, and doing odd jobs so I could live in New York for a few months. If it ran out, I would have to give up and go home. It turned out OK. I got my Equity card and started working.
When I left Facebook, I left an enormous amount of equity on the table. I thought, 'I don't want to be a slave to money. I want to be a slave to something bigger: an ambition, a goal.'
The restructuring theme can be of various kinds. Some amount of debt gets serviced out of cash flows, some gets back-ended and resolved with sale of non-core assets of the company, and some debt gets converted into equity which might today look like a haircut.
We don't understand the equity market well, and so we deploy funds in fixed-income securities, and like any other securities, investment in those securities also need to follow the mark-to-market accounting principle.
While I was at NYU, I did a play at The Public called 'The Forbidden City,' where I went in as an understudy and got my Equity card.
When I hear of an 'equity' in a case like this, I am reminded of a blind man in a dark room - looking for a black hat - which isn't there.
