On a conjecture by le Veque and Trefethen related to the kreiss matrix theorem

In the Kreiss matrix theorem the power boundedness ofN ×N matrices is related to a resolvent condition on these matrices. LeVeque and Trefethen proved that the ratio of the constants in these two conditions can be bounded by 2eN. They conjectured that this bound can be improved toeN.In this note the conjecture is proved to be true. The proof relies on a lemma which provides an upper bound for the arc length of the image of the unit circle in the complex plane under a rational function. This lemma may be of independent interest.