Beyond Survival: Winning in a Global Recession

Source: Businessweek

Unfortunately, we’re all in this economic downturn together. But there are strategies to help your business emerge on top

By Harold L. Sirkin

I spent much of November meeting with executives of 18 companies in seven countries: France, Germany, Italy, China, India, Japan, and Brazil.

I don’t take notes at such meetings and I don’t carry a tape recorder. The conversations are confidential. But I can tell you that, without exception, the CEOs I met are all feeling our pain, because our pain, they made clear, is their pain. Little happens in a vacuum any more. In today’s interconnected world of globality, where the destiny of companies and the economic fortunes of nations are more tightly bound than ever, what happens in one country affects many, many others.

As I write this, the European Union, Japan, and the United States are all clearly in recession. Even Hong Kong and Singapore, two of the so-called Four Tigers of Asia, are in recession. But the downturn is in fact universal. Every country and almost every company has been touched. Customers are slowing payments to conserve cash; companies are delaying payments to suppliers; and so on down the line. As demand falls, prices fall. The hurt is widespread.

The World’s Most Influential Companies

In a year of loss, they’re building market share, upending their industries, and changing consumers’ lives

By Jena McGregor

Source: Businessweek

“Power lasts 10 years,” goes an old Korean proverb. “Influence, not more than a hundred.”

In a year that brought the mighty to their knees, some of the biggest players in business have seen their power whittled away. The once-venerated Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September. American International Group (AIG) now bows to government officials after nearly collapsing under a web of risky bets. Even the blue-chip General Electric found itself going hat-in-hand to Warren Buffett.

As the proverb points out, influence has a shelf life, too. And it’s probably getting shorter as the cycle of change accelerates. Companies that once wielded a seemingly unshakeable hold over their industries—General Motors (GM), Sony (SNE), Microsoft (MSFT)—now find themselves following the lead of more nimble players such as Toyota (TM), Apple (APPL), and Google (GOOG). “There’s no standing still,” notes veteran strategy guru Gary Hamel. “Influence is like water, always flowing somewhere.”

Everything We Learned about the Financial Crisis, Again

The nation’s top accounting guru gets back to basics with a list of financial lessons we must remember not to forget.
Tim Reason and Marie Leone, CFO.com | US
December 9, 2008

At the last big accounting industry conference of 2008, Robert Herz, chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, reiterated what he has been saying all year: It was not fair-value accounting that worsened the credit crisis, but rather a capital markets house of cards built on complex and risky securitization structures linked to subprime mortgages.

Though Herz’s speech to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants was not entirely new (he first rolled out a version of it September), it represents a significant review of what went wrong with the nation’s economy from the perspective of the nation’s top accounting standard setter. And while peppered with the FASB chairman’s trademark dry wit, the speech is a serious one. “I hope I don’t offend anyone with my frank assessments,” Herz began, before condemning the behavior that led to the current crisis — as well as much of the finger-pointing that occurred afterwards. Few players were spared criticism, which he leveled at investors, regulators, credit rating agencies, boards of directors, bankers, Wall Street, and even some of FASB’s own accounting standards.