Bloomberg (May 21)
“The world’s biggest businesses were doing fine until Covid-19 arrived. Now they’re doing even better. The top 50 companies by value added $4.5 trillion of stock market capitalization in 2020, taking their combined worth to about 28% of global gross domestic product. Three decades ago the equivalent figure was less than 5%.”
Tags: 2020, Businesses, Capitalization, Companies, COVID-19, Stock market, Top 50, World's biggest
Mercury News (May 3)
“Of the many problems confronting Bay Area companies as they move out of pandemic lockdowns and into the workplaces of the future, one issue is proving especially thorny: Do they make their workers get COVID shots?” Legally, they can require vaccinations “as a condition of employment. But just because they can mandate injections doesn’t mean they should.”
Tags: Bay Area, Companies, COVID shots, Employment, Lockdowns, Pandemic, U.S., Vaccinations, Workers, Workplaces
Atlanta Journal Constitution (March 25)
“Far more workers are becoming eligible for vaccines now. Gov. Brian Kemp announced Tuesday that all Georgians over the age of 16 will qualify for access starting today. An array of Georgia-based companies…said they are strongly encouraging employees to get shots that could curb the pandemic, protect the public and help open workplaces more quickly.”
Tags: Access, Companies, Eligible, Employees, Encouraging, Georgia, Kemp, Pandemic, Protect, Public, Shots, Vaccines, Workers, Workplaces
Institutional Investor (March 9)
“Shareholder activists pulled in their horns in 2020, targeting 10 percent fewer companies than in 2019 and winning 16 percent fewer board seats.”
Tags: 2019, 2020, Activists, Board seats, Companies, Fewer, Shareholders, Targeting
Boston Globe (February 2)
“More than 10 months into a pandemic that has all but emptied downtown towers, the long-term future of offices in Boston remains unclear. Vacancy rates downtown are the highest they’ve been in a decade. There’s more than 3.5 million square feet available for sublease from companies holding long-term leases on space they’ve decided they no longer need. Rents, after climbing steadily for years, are starting to fall.”
Tags: Boston, Companies, Downtown, Emptied, Future, Leases, Long term, Offices, Pandemic, Rents, Sublease, Towers, Vacancy
The Economist (November 28)
“Investors are turning one eye away from the immediate struggle of coping with the pandemic and looking instead at the longer-term competitive picture. Who has won and who has lost? Like viruses, recessions usually come for the weakest first. Companies with sickly balance-sheets or frail margins quickly succumb. As promising startups become crushed closedowns, it is often the incumbents that have the resources to wait it out.”
Tags: Balance sheets, Companies, Crushed closedowns, Incumbents, Investors, Margins, Pandemic, Promising, Recessions, Resources, Startups, Succumb, Weakest
Bloomberg (July 3)
“Much more than survive the pandemic lockdown, the largest American companies are seeing their advantage widen drastically as a result of it, with investors flocking to anything with size and stability.”
Reuters (February 18)
“The aversion to allowing work from home is unwelcome news for the government, which wants companies to let their employees telecommute during the Olympics to make travel easier for Games participants and spectators on Tokyo’s notoriously packed trains and roadways.”
Tags: Aversion, Companies, Employees, Government, Home, Olympics, Participants, Spectators, Telecommute, Tokyo, Work
New York Times (October 20)
“China’s assertive campaign to police discourse about its policies, even outside of its borders, and the acquiescence of American companies eager to make money in China, pose a dangerous and growing threat to one of this nation’s core values: the freedom of expression.” U.S. companies shouldn’t cave. They “have an obligation to defend the freedom of expression, even at the risk of angering China.”
Tags: Assertive, China, Companies, Dangerous, Discourse, Freedom of expression, Obligation, Police, Risk, Threat, U.S.
The Economist (May 11)
Companies are really bad at hiring. “Only a third of American companies check whether their recruitment process produces good employees” and obvious flaws in hiring practices are rampant. “Everyone should worry that companies are less rigorous about evaluating the performance of their staff than about the quality of the raw materials they put in their products.” This helps to explain why productivity has been so sluggish.
Tags: Companies, Employees, Evaluating, Flaws, Hiring, Performance, Productivity, Quality, Raw materials, Recruitment, Rigorous, Staff, U.S.
