Bloomberg (July 21)
“Japan’s corporate-governance code, introduced only a month ago, raised hopes that the country’s ossified corporate culture might finally crack open. The $1.2 billion accounting scandal at Toshiba…underscores how much further the country has to go.”
Tags: Accounting, Corporate culture, Corporate governance, Hopes, Japan, Scandal, Toshiba
Institutional Investor (July 20)
With social security on track to run dry in the U.S. by 2033, members of Generation X (born from 1965-1981) are taking an overwhelmingly self-reliant view toward retirement: 65% don’t expect any inheritance, pension or social security payments. “Gen Xers’ woes are increasingly shared by Millennials as they age. Like Millennials, Gen Xers tended to marry later and delay having children. Perhaps Gen Xers’ experiences with retirement planning—dominated by the sense that it is an insurmountable task—will serve as a proxy for how the younger and larger Millennial generation will fare.”
Tags: Children, Generation X, Inheritance, Marry, Millennials, Pension, Retirement, Social security, U.S.
Wall Street Journal (July 20)
“The Lee family that controls the Samsung conglomerate won its showdown with minority shareholders on Friday, but the vote still represents a watershed for corporate governance in the world’s 14th-largest economy. Though Samsung won, the bell is tolling for South Korea’s chaebol system of corporate control.” The shareholder fight marked “a step forward for corporate reform in Asia” where “a new shareholder class has been mobilized.”
Tags: Asia, Chaebol, Conglomerate, Corporate governance, Lee, Minority shareholders, Samsung, South Korea, Watershed
The Economist (July 18)
“There has always been an element of financial engineering about buy-backs. Can it really be good news if a firm feels it has nothing better to do with its money? An enthusiasm for buy-backs creates the sense that executives are more interested in short-term share-price performance than in the company’s long-term health.” According to some estimates, the number of available shares in U.S. stock markets has been reduced by approximately 6% since 2009 as a result of buy-backs, but the trend appears to be slowing.
Tags: Buy-backs, Enthusiasm, Executives, Financial engineering, Performance, Share price, Short term, U.S.
Financial Times (July 18)
“Pluto is indeed a heavenly body and deserves to be treated with full planetary respect.” It’s status as a planet should be reinstated. “Far from being the featureless frozen fuzzball visible from the most powerful terrestrial telescopes, Pluto turns out on close inspection by the Nasa probe to be an adorably colourful character…. Inside, too, Pluto has an unexpectedly warm heart, heated by processes that remain a mystery…. Pluto has all the attributes that common sense associates with a planet.”
Tags: Common sense, NASA, Planet, Pluto, Reinstated, Telescopes
New York Times (July 16)
“There was something wonderfully childlike in the delight of scientists and the public at the rendezvous of the New Horizons spacecraft with that most distant and mysterious of the planets, Pluto…. But there was nothing childish in the extraordinary science and engineering required to send half a ton of highly sophisticated instruments hurtling through space at speeds of up to 47,000 miles an hour for three billion miles.”
Tags: Childlike, Engineering, New Horizons, Pluto, Science, Sophisticated, Space
Bloomberg (July 15)
“By this point you can probably agree that it was a mistake for Greece to join the European common currency in 2001…. So why exactly are Greece and its European creditors still trying against all odds and good sense to keep the country in the euro?”
Institutional Investor (July 14)
Brazil hopes that a return of foreign capital might provide “an economic boost.” The country sure needs it. The economy has slumped “from 7.5 percent in 2010 to just 0.1 percent in 2014.” It is now in recession. “The end of the global commodities supercycle and the oil market collapse explain much of the decline, but domestic policy problems—including a growing deficit and accelerating inflation—are also to blame.”
Tags: Brazil, Collapse, Commodities, Deficit, Economy, Foreign capital, Inflation, Oil, Recession, Supercycle
New York Times (July 14)
The EU’s tentative deal “may avert an immediate catastrophe, but there is little to celebrate since it will do little to address, much less repair, the slow-moving disaster of the Greek economy.” For that matter, “in forcing Greece to submit they have not resolved the crisis of the monetary union or advanced the European project.”
Tags: Catastrophe, Crisis, Deal, Disaster, Economy, EU, European project, Greece, Monetary union
Wall Street Journal (July 12)
With about 1,000 companies making smartphones globally, only “one reaps nearly all the profits” and that company accounts for just 20% of smartphone unit sales. “Apple Inc. recorded 92% of the total operating income from the world’s eight top smartphone makers in the first quarter, up from 65% a year earlier.”
Tags: Apple, Companies, Operating income, Profits, Smartphones
