Financial Times (March 18)
“A long-awaited showdown between Toshiba and its two largest investors has ended in embarrassment for the conglomerate and an unprecedented show of shareholder strength in Japan. The landmark vote in favour of a probe into Toshiba’s conduct follows five years of increasingly confident shareholder activism against the conservative bastion of corporate Japan.”
Tags: Activism, Conduct, Confident, Conglomerate, Conservative, Corporate Japan, Embarrassment, Investors, Japan, Landmark vote, Showdown, Strength, Toshiba, Unprecedented
Time (November 22)
“The defection, subsequent surgeries and slow recovery of the soldier have riveted South Korea, but it will be a huge embarrassment for the North, which claims all defections are the result of rival Seoul kidnapping or enticing North Koreans to defect. Pyongyang has said nothing about the defection so far.”
Tags: Defection, Defections, Embarrassment, Kidnapping, North Korea, Recovery, Soldier, South Korea, Surgeries
Bloomberg (July 3)
“Strenuous efforts by Chinese regulators to ensure market stability are having the opposite effect.” The rationale is unimportant. “Whether such efforts are meant to protect important companies, stabilize markets or avoid national embarrassment, they’re preventing China’s markets from growing up. And it’s increasingly clear that they’re unnecessary.” Furthermore, “infantilizing Chinese firms…prevents the professionalization of management and improvements in corporate governance.”
Tags: China, Corporate governance, Embarrassment, Infantilizing, Management, Market stability, Professionalization, Rationale, Regulators
Bloomberg (July 8)
“Since its commercial introduction in 2007, the Airbus A380 has brought a long-lost sense of glamour back to travel…. Financially speaking, it’s a disaster of similarly grand proportions.” Airbus has “acknowledged it will never recoup the €25 billion ($32 billion)” of initial development costs. If production falls below 30 planes a year, there’s also a chance production could go back into the red, after only one year of profitability. “Axing the A380 outright” still remains “hard to do. Besides the embarrassment of admitting defeat on the program,” write downs that would ripple through the company and much of Europe.
Tags: A380, Airbus, Development costs, Disaster, Embarrassment, Europe, Glamour, Planes, Production, Profitability, Recoup, Write-downs
New York Times (November 30)
Japan canceled its 2014 whale hunt in the wake of a critical ruling from the International Court of Justice, but now stands poised to resume whaling in 2015. The new plan will reduce catches and raise the profile of scientists, but remains “a variation on the same evasion of treaty obligations, just as Japan’s insistence on ‘science’ as its prime motive rings hollow in a field where experts say nonlethal research already suffices.” The decision to resume the hunt is “a diplomatic embarrassment for Japan.”
Tags: Diplomatic, Embarrassment, Evasion, Experts, Hunt, Japan, Motive, Research, Scientists, Treaty obligations, Whales
Financial Times (August 13)
“Japan’s public diplomacy hovers between the ludicrous and the sinister. In recent months, the country has specialised in foreign policy gaffes that seem designed to give maximum offence to its Asian neighbours while causing maximum embarrassment to its western allies.” Japan’s newly unveiled naval destroyer, which looks a lot like an aircraft carrier, is the most recent offense. It shares the name “Izumo” with “a Japanese warship that took part in the invasion of China in the 1930s.”
Tags: Aircraft carrier, Allies, Asia, China, Destroyer, Diplomacy, Embarrassment, Foreign policy, Gaffes, Invasion, Izumo, Japan, Warship
