It is the heart of the holiday season, the festive week of Christmas to New Year’s. It is time to reflect and be grateful for what we have and not miss what we don’t have.
Last year this time we all were feeling doom and gloom. The market was down. There were no loans to be had. People were losing jobs left and right and the aura and psychology of the market and the overall economy was really bad.
As we close on 2009, I must confess that the year was one of goodness and counter intuitive wins mixed with sadness.
I am most grateful for the health of my family and friends.
And the Washington Capitals had a magnificent twelve months on the ice and off the ice. We had a really great record. We finished last year strong and won our first playoff series in 10 years and we are now well positioned for this next year. We also sell out all of our games. We have a backlog of people awaiting season tickets. We were able to raise our prices and we have very happy customer satisfaction levels. Who would have thought we could be that successful in this economy? I am very grateful to you all.
The Washington Mystics also grew quite fast and became one of the best performing teams in the WNBA and turned their on court performance around as well as we qualified for the playoffs.
Revolution Money grew fast; built out its platform; and – as was reported in November – was acquired by American Express at a healthy return to investors. We await final approval by the government but I believe this deal will close sometime in Q1 of 2010. This was the third largest acquisition of a new media payments platform ever behind PayPal and Bill Me Later (both by eBay) so it was a big win for us all and I am very excited about helping the American Express Company in the future as we roll out this platform into a new series of great consumer beneficial products and services.
He is beloved in our community.