On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, a new report from Oil Change International, entitled A Climate of War (pdf) quantifies both the greenhouse gas emissions of the Iraq War and the opportunity costs involved in fighting war rather than climate change. At the webpage A Climate of War at oil Change you can find some facts on the war and warming.
Archive for the 'International Business' Category
According to research by OECD South Korean workers toil for over 45 hours every week on average, nearly seven hours longer than workers in any other OECD country.
The Netherlands has the shortest working week out of all OECD countries. However where more people work part-time the average working week is likely to be shorter. The Netherlands, where 45% of workers are part-timers, the highest proportion in any OECD country, has therefore the shortest working week.
Americans put in 15% more hours on average than workers in the western (richer) bit of the European Union. Owing to flexible arrangements for part-time workers, generous welfare systems and a limit on the working week all contribute to Western Europe’s seeming indolence.
The mood in London financial markets is not good. House prices are going down, and with them the British pound. Investment bankers within UBS are looking around for jobs, and the Royal Bank of Scotland is sweeping ABN Amro’s trading floor clean with incredible lack of style:
ABN’s structured credit traders were apparently told on Thursday that they should report to RBS’ London office in preparation for a move there on Monday. Terminals needed to be checked and such like. And when they got there… they were all fired (full story).
Luckily, the British have a great sense of humour, and I couldn’t stop laughing at this economic assessment of London 2010 from the price of everything blog:
London, April 2010 – Wall Street firms have just announced their latest results for FY 2009;
300 million staff have been “written down”, leaving just two (Sid and Doris Bonkers) to manage the investment banks’ remaining worldwide debt, equity, merger and advisory, securitisation, syndication and prime brokerage businesses.
Marti Peeps, sole analyst at the last remaining research house, Teletext, welcomed the results as “a bold step in the face of ongoing bad debt provisioning,” though conceded that the City’s newly “rightsized” payroll might struggle to take on board the burgeoning supply of new issuance, namely the packet of Walkers Crisps rumoured to be hitting the primary market in late summer 2012.Hopes for a recovery in Wall Street earnings have for several quarters hinged on the prospects for the successful completion of a 40p private placement of a bag of Salt and Vinegar flavour crisps on behalf of the Walkers Crisps Company. Lead underwriters JPCitigroupMerrill, a subsidiary of the US government, and Northern Rock SocGen KFW Nomura, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tesco plc (Neasden branch), are rumoured to have “solid” interest for the underwriting, most notably from Asia, itself a subsidiary of Texas Pacific Group, but declined to go into further detail. (click here for pdf version. Enjoy!)
Update @ April 15th: London’s financial services sector faces a loss of 20,000 jobs over the next two years. Cuts by Citigroup and RBS are the tip of the iceberg (BusinessWeek).
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Did Google peak last November 6th, when its share price hit an all-time high of $742? Some people on Wall Street seem to think so. They now value the firm at around 40% less. Part of the blame belongs to the general turmoil in the stockmarket. But the bigger part, investors fear, is that Google, at the ripe old age of nine, might already be over the hill.
First, the company missed Wall Street revenue forecasts in the fourth quarter for the first time. Then a pair of reports from market researcher comScore (SCOR), the latest on Mar. 26, said U.S. growth in the number of clicks on the paid ads appearing next to Google’s search results essentially flatlined for two months running compared with a year ago. Six months ago, paid clicks were growing up to 40% annually.
However over the last couple of months Google is improving their add system in two ways. First, it offers fewer ads on each results page, and often none at all. This reduces visual clutter and pleases both users and any remaining advertisers. Second, Google seems to be trying harder to weed out those advertisers who bid low in the auctions it conducts for advertising slots linked to particular keywords. in short, with less space devoted to ads, and only higher-bidding advertisers getting through, there are fewer ads to click on.
If Google is really over the hill we will find out in the upcoming months. For now stay tuned.
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BusinessWeek has written a report on crude oil surpassing $110 for the first time on Wednesday March 12th.
Please also visit my previous post on “What’s next for oil prices?”
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If you are interested in globalisation, you can hardly ignore the experiences of General Electric. Claudia Deutsch has written a fascinating article about the giant company’s journey from scepticism, to facing up to globalisation’s challenges, and now to become a truly global business in all facets.
“They are managing their worldwide organization as a network, not a centralized hub with foreign appendages,” said Christopher Bartlett, a professor at the Harvard Business School who has written several case studies on GE.
“Everyone talks about outsourcing manufacturing, but it is the high-level R&D jobs that are the great marketing tools, and I’m a salesman, remember. I know that you don’t get to sell things for long unless you are part of the culture into which you are selling.” Immelt said.
For example, GE Healthcare unit has already moved its headquarters to the London area, and another may follow soon. London, it turns out, is a better hub for global operations than Connecticut. If the whole company eventually follows, it won’t be the first time a Fortune 500 company has left the United States - and it certainly won’t be the last.
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Happy 50th Anniversary for LEGO! Hearing or reading the name LEGO always brings up good memories and puts a smile on my face! During my childhood LEGO was my favourite toy! I could literally play all day with it! Yesterday was the official 50th anniversary of LEGO.
From a business perspective LEGO is a text-book example of a company that successfully transformed itself for the 21st century. Late 90s LEGO seemed to have had its best time. However it managed to blend in and fully adapt internet in its business model. Resulting in the fact that you now can first build your very own artwork online and have it delivered at your house in the famous interlocking bricks!
Furthermore, if you do a really good work in making your own LEGO artwork it can even be put in mass production by LEGO and put up in stores worldwide. LEGO gives you royalties of 5%, which in turn can make you a good living. Building and ordering LEGO bricks online now accounts for 10% of sales. So still loads of potential especially if you take in account the long tail. Building and ordering your very own LEGO artwork online is basically an unlimited supply of LEGO artwork variety.
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A symbolic visual for this week’s ups and downs at stock markets across the world.
On the bright side of all the market tumble news, I just found out that Western chocolatiers experimenting with new flavours aimed at targeting Asian markets in order to fuel growth in a saturated Western chocolate market. You can think of ginseng, red bean and green tea flavours! What’s more to come? As I just finished reading the book “The Long Tail by Chris Anderson” creating more product variety aimed at niche markets has a big future! A glimpse into the beginning of a world with unlimited variety of chocolate can be found here.
What’s on the agenda for this week. Last week was dominated by macroeconomic news and off-course large financials recording their 2007 Q4 earnings. This will continue with over 100 S&P500 companies (amongst others Microsoft, Apple, General Motors, Ford, DuPont en Bank of America) recording their annual and/or 2007Q4 results but there is more in store this week and from another front namely international political economic news:
EU on Green: The European Commission unveils a comprehensive energy policy on Wednesday January 23rd in an effort to limit carbon emissions, increase energy security and shield economies from volatile fuel prices. It will include targets to reduce greenhouse gases, beefed up carbon trading and incentives for clean coal, biofuels, renewables and other sorts of greenery. Background articles here (The Economist) and here (IHT).
The World Economic Forum: Davos, will again welcome the World Economic Forum for its 38th annual meeting. It officially focuses on collaborative innovation, but the hottest topics behind the scenes will more likely focus around the credit crunch and the prospects for the world economy. On Thursday there will be the most prominent public meeting of the forum with ECB-president Jean-Claude Trichet, American minister of Finance Henry Paulson and leaders of leading American merchant banks. They will address the threat of any wider impact and implications of the credit crunch. Digital footage can be found here.
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Today, the world’s biggest bank delivers dreadful results. Citigroup recorded a net loss of $9.8 billion, driven by a whopping $18.1 billion in pre-tax write-downs and credit costs on exposure to subprime mortgages.
Worse, it is no longer just collateralised-debt obligations and other complex securitised products that are hurting the world’s largest bank (by assets if no longer by market value). Credit cards and other consumer-finance businesses are deteriorating fast as America’s economy flirts with recession.
Capital markets around the world ended the day all in red digits. What more can we expect the upcoming weeks when other leading financials record their 4Q and FY2007 results? How much more write downs can capital markets digest? How can we fix it?
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