The Trust Agenda: CEOs are increasingly seeking “good growth,” aligned with business ethics and sustainability

May 22, 2014 Leave a comment

Published: May 5, 2014 / Summer 2014 / Issue 75

The Trust Agenda

CEOs are increasingly seeking “good growth,” aligned with business ethics and sustainability.

by Dennis Nally

As the global economic recovery gathers momentum, optimism among CEOs is increasing. The postrecession period challenged many companies, and their chief executives focused their attention on survival. But they are now switching into growth mode. This drive for growth is shaped by fundamental external forces that are transforming business and society. Read more of this post

Filed under Life

From black to green: U.S. billionaire Tom Steyer’s ‘Road to Damascus’

May 22, 2014 Leave a comment

From black to green: U.S. billionaire’s ‘Road to Damascus’

7:10am EDT

By Richard Valdmanis, Fergus Jensen andSonali Paul

BOSTON/JAKARTA/MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Billionaire Tom Steyer has rapidly become one of America’s most visible environmental advocates, vowing to punish lawmakers who don’t oppose climate change and pledging to spend up to $100 million to put the issue center stage in the November 4 elections. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

Pressure builds on Thai Senate as crisis drags on

May 22, 2014 Leave a comment

Pressure builds on Thai Senate as crisis drags on

6:31am EDT

By Robert Birsel

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand’s Senate was meeting on Tuesday to try to find a solution to protracted political turmoil, with both sides putting pressure on the only legislative assembly still functioning in the polarized country. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

Fighting fakes: ahead of IPO, Alibaba takes a tougher line

May 22, 2014 Leave a comment

Fighting fakes: ahead of IPO, Alibaba takes a tougher line

6:05am EDT

By Paul Carsten and Deepa Seetharaman

BEIJING/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Alibaba is taking a tougher line against counterfeit items sold on its online marketplaces as the Chinese e-commerce giant heads towards a U.S. stock listing that could be the world’s biggest technology company IPO. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends, TMT Trends

It’s Activists, Not Buffett, Who Can Change Corporate America?

May 22, 2014 Leave a comment

It’s Activists, Not Buffett, Who Can Change Corporate America

By ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI

MAY 12, 2014, 9:30 AM 16 Comments

Anthony Scaramucci is founder and co-managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, a global asset management firm with about $10.5 billion in assets under management and advisement as of March 31. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

E-commerce edge helps British retailers expand abroad

May 22, 2014 Leave a comment

E-commerce edge helps British retailers expand abroad

4:41am EDT

By Emma Thomasson and James Davey

BERLIN/PARIS (Reuters) – Marks & Spencer Plc is making a new push to expand abroad, hoping e-commerce will give Britain’s biggest clothing retailer a better chance to succeed than earlier attempts to enter new markets. Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

BlackBerry aims to reverse emerging market slump with budget handset

May 22, 2014 Leave a comment

BlackBerry aims to reverse emerging market slump with budget handset

5:41am EDT

By Randy Fabi and Euan Rocha

JAKARTA/TORONTO (Reuters) – BlackBerry Ltd launched a low-cost touchscreen device in Jakarta, the Z3, as the embattled smartphone maker looks to revive sales in emerging markets like Indonesia where its once-fervent following has shriveled. Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

Epic Fails of the Startup World: “The fact that most new businesses fail is hardly a secret. So why are so many people gambling on ventures that are likely to end badly?”

May 22, 2014 Leave a comment

EPIC FAILS OF THE STARTUP WORLD

by James SurowieckiMAY 19, 2014

We live in the age of the startup. It’s never been easier to build a product and start a company. And, thanks to the boom in angel investing and crowdfunding, it’s never been easier for startups to raise money. The analytics firm CB Insights logged more than seventeen hundred seed-investment deals in the U.S. tech industry in 2012, more than three times the number from three years earlier. But there’s a catch: starting a company may be easier, but making it a success isn’t. Competition is fierce, profits are scarce, and venture capitalists aren’t generous when it comes to later stages of funding. As Gideon Lewis-Kraus shows in “No Exit,” a new Kindle Single about startup culture, the life of a new company is often brutish and short. Though we may be seeing a “Cambrian explosion” of new companies, as The Economist recently put it, there’s a mass extinction going on, too. Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

Michael Gerson: Americans’ aversion to science carries a high price

May 22, 2014 Leave a comment

Michael Gerson: Americans’ aversion to science carries a high price

By Michael Gerson, Tuesday, May 13, 7:45 AM

Americans have something of a science problem. They swallow, for example, about $28 billion worth of vitamins each year, even though the Annals of Internal Medicine recently concluded that “[m]ost supplements do not prevent chronic disease or death, their use is not justified, and they should be avoided.” Americans often fear swallowing genetically modified plants (and Vermont recently required labeling of food containing genetically modified organisms, known as GMOs), though GMOs have “been consumed by hundreds of millions of people across the world for more than 15 years, with no reported ill effects,” according to theJournal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Read more of this post

Filed under Life

A Brave New World for Bond Investors; After a three-decade bull market in bonds, investors like BlackRock’s Rick Rieder are using a variety of techniques to make money when rates start to rise

May 22, 2014 Leave a comment

A Brave New World for Bond Investors

28 APR 2014 – JULIE SEGAL

It’s easy to get William Eigen III riled. Just ask him how fixed-income managers are rethinking their approach to investing now that a 30-plus-year bull market in bonds is not only coming to a close but will likely go down in economic history as a freak occurrence. Eigen, a longtime bond manager who is part owner of an auto service shop and restores American muscle cars like Camaros and Challengers, says most of his peers are stubbornly sticking with what’s worked for three decades. He believes that managers instead need to start using a mix of traditional and hedge fund techniques to make sure investors continue to get what they’ve always expected from fixed income: capital preservation, diversification and income. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

2014 Money Masters: Profiting in a Slow-Growth Economy

May 22, 2014 Leave a comment

MAY 08, 2014

2014 Money Masters: Profiting in a Slow-Growth Economy

The winners of our fifth annual U.S. Investment Management Awards have an uncanny ability to make money regardless of the strength of the economy. Read more of this post

Filed under Life

AT&T could become a television giant, too, with a $50 billion DirecTV merger

May 22, 2014 Leave a comment

AT&T could become a television giant, too, with a $50 billion DirecTV merger

By Brian Fung Updated: May 12 at 6:22 pm

The rumors keep escalating. AT&T might be willing to pay $100 a share to acquire DirecTV, one of the nation’s few satellite TV operators, according to Bloomberg. The deal would amount to about $50 billion. Read more of this post

Filed under TMT Trends

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