Salomon Brothers was one of the largest investment banks in the US in the 1970s and 1980s. It was the first bank to sell mortgage-backed securities. The head of the government bond trading desk at Salomon had figured out a way to scam the Fed's treasury auctions. When the scam surfaced, the Fed and the SEC were both determined to bring down Salomon, but Warren Buffett stepped in to help find the culprit and keep the bank running.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Bernie Madoff ran an investment management firm that was not open to all - it was an invite-only club. That is what made it aspirational. Many investors saw it as a sign of status if they got to invest with Madoff. But no one knew that Madoff was not investing their money; he was just running a Ponzi scheme that lost investors a massive $65 billion.

How did he pull it off?

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Seven women from a housing society in South Mumbai started Lijjat Papad in 1959. It started as a co-operative and has since onboarded more than 45,000 member sisters. Interestingly, Lijjat also runs the Sasa brand of detergents and soaps.

Lijjat Papad is a masterclass in sustainably managing a large-scale organization that has remained true to its core values, even decades after its establishment.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Nick Leeson was a young trader at Barings Bank who was tasked with setting up a trading desk in Singapore. He was an aggressive risk-taker who told small, harmless lies that soon became big enough to bankrupt the bank. He exhibited several behavioral biases that also led him to run a full-fledged scam. When in prison, he wrote a book called Rogue Trader, detailing how he orchestrated the whole scam at Barings.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

A company usually creates reserves from share premiums and retained earnings. However, not all reserves are liquid. Companies use reserves for various purposes. If not used well, excessive reserves held in cash could be a drag on the company's ROE.

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Ryanair offers extremely cheap flight tickets in Europe. They sell most tickets for £15 or less, which is roughly ₹1600. You hardly ever find those fares, even in India. Indigo is said to have emulated Ryanair's business model in its early days, but not anymore. So, how does Ryanair make money? What is its business model?

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Crazy Eddie was an electronics retailer in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. It was very famous for its catchy TV commercials but soon became infamous for the scams by its founders. This is a crazy tale of how two cousins defrauded their customers, shareholders, insurers, and the government.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.

Jio Financial Services was spun off from Reliance Industries. Reliance is a part of the Nifty 50 index. Does that make JFS a de facto member of the index? JFS became part of the index for 13 days. What was the reason? Was 13 days too much or too little?

You could use the same framework to understand ITC Hotels' inclusion and exclusion in the indices.

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Disclaimer: The stocks or financial instruments discussed in this podcast are meant for educational purposes only. Please do not consider them recommendations or financial advice of any form.