This headline isn’t much of an exaggeration, as we learn from a front-page Wall Street Journal story, “Profit as We Know It Could Be Lost With New Accounting Statements.” The proposed changes (in the early stages of formulation and subject to quite a few approvals before it would take effect) would totally revamp income statements […]
Read more...I am beginning to suspect that many are reacting to the overstimulation of the modern world – the accelerating pace of change, data overload, time pressure, work and relationship instability – by turning off their brains. The rise of fundamentalism and the “family values” push, both efforts to turn back the clock, is one set […]
Read more...We made a couple of posts (here and here) on the subject of Wal-Mart’s threat research unit. Bruce Gabbard, a former member of the group (former by virtue of having been fired), spoke to the Journal about its activities, which reportedly included having Gabbard monitor board meetings (which as we discussed, at a minimum would […]
Read more...Oddly, there hasn’t been as much chatter in the blogsphere as I would have expected on the House passage on Friday of what is called the “say on pay” bill. The House legislation would give shareholders a non-binding vote on executive pay and golden parachutes. Initially, the Senate wasn’t expected to take it up, but […]
Read more...I have long been annoyed by the Wall Street Journal/Larry Ribstein party line that takes issue with long prison sentences for high profile white collar criminals. The argument boils down to “They weren’t violent.” That has always offended me, because it’s a class argument. As political philosopher Rodney Dangerfield said: If you steal $10,000 from […]
Read more...In her Sunday New York Times column, “‘For Sale’ May Mean ‘You Lose’,” Gretchen Morgenson notes in passing that bankruptcies don’t get as much attention as sexier mergers or IPOs (and it’s confirmed by the dearth of comment on the usual suspect sites in the blogsphere). But there is a lot of money made in […]
Read more...I don’t know about you, but every time I hear about a book on leadership by an ex-CEO, I cringe. They are almost without exception self congratulatory puff pieces with plenty of macho posturing. And they seldom offer useful advice. For example, one reader gave a capsule review of Jack – Straight from the Gut: […]
Read more...William Greider was early to question whether free trade delivers the benefits its proponents assert it does (we pointed to his 2005 New York Times op-ed piece, “America’s Truth Deficit,” in which he described our prevailing regime as managed trade rather than free trade, and observed that most of our trading partners were playing the […]
Read more...Readers may recall that we commented, in “Wal-Mart Behaves Badly, Again,” on an April 4 Wall Street Journal article that described the activities of its Threat Research and Analysis Group. This story came to light because the Bentonville company fired Bruce Gabbard, one of the unit’s members, because he intercepted a reporter’s phone calls while […]
Read more...I have long wondered why business executives making serious decisions accept, even demand, such an imprecise and incomplete means of communication as a PowerPoint presentation. And I am not alone in that view. In fact visual information guru Edwin Tufte is even more critical: Imagine a widely used and expensive prescription drug that promised to […]
Read more...Wal-Mart just doesn’t get it. It spends considerable time and energy on social responsibility initiatives, like promoting diversity at vendors (after begin named as defendant in the largest class action discrimination suit in history) and becoming environmentally responsible (after having settled an EPA action). Yet the company continues to engage in behavior which, if not […]
Read more...A story in Thursday’s Financial Times, “Global, universal, unmanageable? Why many are wary of bank mega-mergers,” by Peter Thal Larsen describes why most bank mergers fail to live up to their promise. Even though the srticle was prompted by the possible Barclays-ABN Amro merger, its logic applies to much smaller deals. Most advocates of banking […]
Read more...Forgive the Financial-Times-heavy series of posts today, but it seems to work out once a week or so that the FT has a lot of good material that isn’t replicated in the US press. John Kay’s comment on private equity funds in Tuesday’s FT is skeptical without being doctrinaire. His big question is whether the […]
Read more...Um, because Barney Frank is making their case? This great post from Dean Baker at Beat the Press makes a simple and persuasive argument: Representative Barney Frank has proposed a law that would require corporations to have non-binding polls of their shareholders on CEO compensation packages. According to Marketplace Radio, the opponents of this measure […]
Read more...The blog Conglomerate pointed us to a paper, “The Fetishization of Independence,” by one of its one-time writers, Usha Rodrigues, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Georgia. They argue it is a “great” paper. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but is well documented and certain to cause a lot of debate. […]
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