Gordon Murray’s quest to reinvent automaking started in a traffic jam.

Bloomberg Markets Magazine editor Ron Henkoff and reporter Sean B. Pasternak discuss the featured stories in the magazine's June Issue. (Source: Bloomberg)

Raymond Harbert, chief executive officer of Birmingham, Alabama-based Harbert Corporation, had a radical proposal for his father. It was 1992, and the company that had made his dad, John M. Harbert III, a billionaire was eking out small profits and was $300 million in debt. Raymond proposed selling the core construction business, which dated back to the company’s 1946 founding. The elder Harbert threw his son out of his office, an associate recalls.

In his ground-level office on a back street of Las Vegas, Lee Amaitis is worlds away from the 15- story building in London where he served as the second in command at Cantor Fitzgerald LP until 2008. Rather than looking at the Tower of London on the River Thames from his office, he now has a view of men entering and leaving Sheri’s Cabaret, featuring “Hot Fully Nude Girls.’’

Calling a person who outranks you a jerk isn’t usually a smart step if you want to climb the ladder to success. It worked for Bonnie Baha.

Lill-Karin Skaret, a 67-year-old grandmother from Namsos, Norway, was traveling to a lakeside vacation villa near India’s port city of Kochi in March 2010 when her car collided with a truck. She was rushed to the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, her right leg broken and her artificial hip so damaged that replacing it required 12 hours of surgery.

Former President Bill Clinton towers over Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel at a south side union hall, paying tribute to the skill that helped define his one-time White House adviser.

Loews Corp. Chief Executive Officer James Tisch is the dealmaker who won’t make a deal.

Banks from Citigroup Inc. in the U.S. to BNP Paribas SA in France are racing to shed assets and raise money ahead of new global capital rules that start taking effect in 2015. For Canadian lenders, these moves have created the opportunity to go on a shopping spree.

Reverend Steven Jamison recalls the February day 13 years ago when he was digging ditches to replace culverts at his Maranatha Faith Center in Columbus, Mississippi. As he switched from a shovel to an excavator, an oily black substance began to fill the trench. It smelled like turpentine, and the deeper he dug, the more he saw, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its June issue.

In May 1998, Indonesia was in turmoil. During the previous 10 months, the currency had plunged 80 percent in value and food prices had soared 200 percent. Rioters were marauding through Jakarta, torching businesses owned by wealthier ethnic Chinese, who were fleeing for their lives.

On a January evening, Anand is shelling betel nuts by the light of an electric lamp in Halliberu, his village in India’s Karnataka state.

Jose Carlos Arara puts a tarnished 38-caliber revolver into his waistband. It’s a sweltering, mid- November morning in the Brazilian Amazon rain forest, and the 31-year-old Indian chief walks through the jungle to check on his tribe’s yuca crop.

Michael Cook, founder of the SouthernSun Small Cap Fund, was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, and he likes it there just fine.