Institutional Investor (December 19)
Investors and CEOs using their power to change the world around them provides the best hope for restoring value-creating potential to relationships between public companies and asset owners. But it may not be good enough. Investors and companies that seek to remain in public markets and derive value from their relationships will need ways to find each other in the masses of intermediaries between them, special tools for using this approach, and plans for navigating the inevitable collisions with short-term activists.”
Tags: Asset owners, CEOs, Hope, Intermediaries, Investors, Markets, Navigating, Potential, Power, Public companies, Relationships, Restoring, Value, Value-creating
New York Times (October 1)
“As species disappear and the complex relationships between living things and systems become frayed and broken, the growing damage to the world’s biodiversity presents dire risks to human societies.” We are living through “one of the most explosive extinction episodes in history” with plant and animal extinction occurring “an estimated 1,000 times faster than natural rates.” Our course is unsustainable. “It is much less costly to protect and conserve nature than it is to restore it or suffer the consequences of its destruction.”
Tags: Animal, Biodiversity, Complex, Consequences, Conserve, Damage, Destruction, Disappear, Extinction, Plant, Protect, Relationships, Restore, Risks, Species
Washington Post (December 3)
President George H.W. Bush’s remarkable legacy includes putting together “one of the finest, scandal-free Cabinets in U.S. history.” In contrast, the “current crew” is populated with “liars, braggarts and bullies” who posterity will judge harshly. “None of them will be heralded for leaving American democracy stronger than when they entered office. Neither in their personal dealings nor in their policy choices will they be seen as kind or considerate. They’ve torn up international agreements, frayed relationships (here and abroad) and deformed institutions.”
Tags: Agreements, Braggarts, Bullies, Bush, Cabinets, Democracy, Institutions, Legacy, Liars, Policy, President, Relationships, Scandal-free, U.S.
Straits Times (September 18)
On Monday, Donald Trump “effectively broadsided one of the world’s largest trade relationships, announcing plans to proceed with tariffs on another US$200 billion in US imports of Chinese goods.” Combined with previous tariffs, “this means roughly half of everything Americans buy from China…is now subject to punitive import duties. Whole industrial sectors stand to feel the effects, including agriculture, manufacturing, textiles and retail.”
Tags: Agriculture, Broadsided, China, Duties, Import, Imports, Manufacturing, Punitive, Relationships, Retail, Tariffs, Textiles, Trade, Trump, U.S.
Institutional Investor (April 19)
“Targeted by an activist hedge fund? Try calling in the influencers. A new study of institutional investor relationships found that how shareholders vote—and if they vote—is deeply impacted by who they know. Among major investors, networks move markets.”
Tags: Activist, Hedge-fund, Influencers, Investors, Markets, Networks, Relationships, Shareholders, Target, Vote
Bloomberg (July 18)
Japan needs to mend relationships with its neighbors. After the upper house Diet elections, “LDP leaders would be wise to focus their resources on overcoming opposition to the most difficult structural reforms. That doesn’t mean Japan can’t take measures it deems necessary to bolster its defenses, such as increasing its military budget, or even making cosmetic changes such as renaming its military the ‘National Defense Forces.’ Such decisions should be based on strategic concerns, not a desire to fire up patriotic fervor. They should be communicated to Beijing quietly but transparently, well in advance.”
Tags: Asia, China, Communication, Defense, Diet, Elections, Japan, LDP, Military, Relationships, Resources, Structural reforms
