Saving Capitalism From Short-Termism: How to Build Long-Term Value and Take Back Our Financial Future


Book Description

Conquering the obession with short-term profits is critical to the future of business, society, and capitalism itself—Alfred Rappaport presents a game plan every business leader should read “As Rappaport keeps on speaking out for the realities surrounding investment and speculation, our society will profit as it builds on his keen insights.” John C. Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group (from the Foreword) About the Book: Alfred Rappaport, who first introduced the principles and practical application of "shareholder value" in his groundbreaking 1986 classic Creating Shareholder Value, reiterated the basic message in his 2006 Harvard Business Review article: Focusing on Wall Street quarterly earnings expectations rather than on creating long-term value is an invitation to disaster. Rappaport shows how deeply flawed short-term performance incentives for corporate and investment managers were an essential cause of the recent global financial crisis. In Saving Capitalism from Short-Termism, Rappaport examines the causes and consequences of “short-termism” and offers specific recommendations for how publicly traded companies and the investment management community can overcome it. Whether you're a corporate manager, money manager, public policymaker, business-school student, or simply concerned about your financial future, Saving Capitalism from Short-Termism provides valuable insights and practical ideas to change the course of your organization—and contribute to a healthier economy that benefits all.




The Clash of the Cultures


Book Description

Recommended Reading by Warren Buffet in his March 2013 Letter to Shareholders How speculation has come to dominate investment—a hard-hitting look from the creator of the first index fund. Over the course of his sixty-year career in the mutual fund industry, Vanguard Group founder John C. Bogle has witnessed a massive shift in the culture of the financial sector. The prudent, value-adding culture of long-term investment has been crowded out by an aggressive, value-destroying culture of short-term speculation. Mr. Bogle has not been merely an eye-witness to these changes, but one of the financial sector’s most active participants. In The Clash of the Cultures, he urges a return to the common sense principles of long-term investing. Provocative and refreshingly candid, this book discusses Mr. Bogle's views on the changing culture in the mutual fund industry, how speculation has invaded our national retirement system, the failure of our institutional money managers to effectively participate in corporate governance, and the need for a federal standard of fiduciary duty. Mr. Bogle recounts the history of the index mutual fund, how he created it, and how exchange-traded index funds have altered its original concept of long-term investing. He also presents a first-hand history of Wellington Fund, a real-world case study on the success of investment and the failure of speculation. The book concludes with ten simple rules that will help investors meet their financial goals. Here, he presents a common sense strategy that "may not be the best strategy ever devised. But the number of strategies that are worse is infinite." The Clash of the Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation completes the trilogy of best-selling books, beginning with Bogle on Investing: The First 50 Years (2001) and Don't Count on It! (2011)




Stock Market Short-Termism


Book Description

Consideration of harmful short-termism in capital markets is prevalent amongst legal and business academics. It is also garnering increased attention in corporate board rooms and executive suites, and from the investing public. As a result, correcting perceived short-termism in capital markets has become a rationale for reform used by regulators across the globe. Despite the considerable attention given to this phenomenon, there has not yet been a comprehensive book analyzing the perceived short-termism problem, its sources and causes, and reform efforts undertaken to date. This book fills this gap by documenting the rise of the short-termism discussion, analyzing the significance of the problem, and considering the proposed legal remedies. Based on this analysis, a framework for effective short-termism reform is offered.




Understanding the Company


Book Description

What is the purpose of the company and its role in society? From their origin in medieval times to their modern incarnation as powerful transnational bodies, companies remain an important part of business and society at large. Drawing from a variety of perspectives, this book adopts a normative approach to understanding the modern company and provides insights into how companies should be conceptualized. It considers key topics such as the development of corporate theory, the rights and obligations of the company, and the means and ends of corporate governance. Written by leading experts of different jurisdictions, this book provides important international viewpoints on some of the most pressing corporate governance questions.




The Big Pivot


Book Description

We live in a fundamentally changed world. It’s time for your approach to strategy to change, too. The evidence is all around us. Extreme weather, driven by climate change, is shattering records all over the planet. Our natural resources are in greater demand than ever before as a billion more people enter the global middle class, wanting more of everything. Radical transparency is opening up company operations and supply chains to public scrutiny. This is not some futuristic scenario or model to debate, but today’s reality. We've passed an economic tipping point. A weakening of the foundations of our planetary infrastructure is costing businesses dearly and putting our society at risk. The mega challenges of climate change, scarcity, and radical transparency threaten our ability to run an expanding global economy and are profoundly changing “business as usual.” But they also offer unprecedented opportunities: multi-trillion-dollar markets are in play, and the winners of this new game will profit mightily. According to Andrew Winston, bestselling author (Green to Gold) and globally recognized business strategist, the way companies currently operate will not allow them to keep up with the current—and future—rate of change. They need to make the Big Pivot. In this indispensable new book, Winston provides ten crucial strategies for leaders and companies ready to move boldly forward and win in this new reality. With concrete advice and tactics, and new stories from companies like British Telecom, Diageo, Dow, Ford, Nike, Unilever, Walmart, and many others, The Big Pivot will help you, and all of us, create more resilient businesses and a more prosperous world. This book is the blueprint to get you started.




How CEOs Can Fix Capitalism


Book Description

The financial crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession caused a crisis of public confidence in business and American-style capitalism, with its focus on maximizing shareholder value. Corporate leaders understood that reform was needed and that they needed to commit themselves to the dual goal of producing benefits for society and their firms’ bottom lines—to creating “shared value.” But the specific actions they could take to bring about this change were less clear. This ebook offers some of the freshest thinking today on practical measures that businesses can implement to create shared value. Originally published in an online forum hosted by Harvard Business Review, it offers valuable advice about how CEOs, other senior executives, and boards of directors can work together to engage stakeholders in new ways, change their companies’ values, build healthier relationships with investors, revamp incentive systems to create long-term value, and develop stronger succession plans. The authors of this collection of short articles include current or former CEOs, such as Howard Schultz of Starbucks and Dominic Barton of McKinsey & Company, and an array of prominent academics and other thought leaders, including Roger Martin of the University of Toronto, Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford, and Alfred Rappaport of Northwestern. Its editors are Raymond Gilmartin, the former CEO of Merck and, until recently, an adjunct professor at Harvard Business School, and Steve Prokesch, a senior editor at Harvard Business Review who previously worked at the New York Times and BusinessWeek magazine. In their introduction, they offer five specific recommendations on how CEOs can restore public faith in capitalism. HBR Singles provide brief yet potent business ideas, in digital form, for today's thinking professional.




The History Manifesto


Book Description

How should historians speak truth to power – and why does it matter? Why is five hundred years better than five months or five years as a planning horizon? And why is history – especially long-term history – so essential to understanding the multiple pasts which gave rise to our conflicted present? The History Manifesto is a call to arms to historians and everyone interested in the role of history in contemporary society. Leading historians Jo Guldi and David Armitage identify a recent shift back to longer-term narratives, following many decades of increasing specialisation, which they argue is vital for the future of historical scholarship and how it is communicated. This provocative and thoughtful book makes an important intervention in the debate about the role of history and the humanities in a digital age. It will provoke discussion among policymakers, activists and entrepreneurs as well as ordinary listeners, viewers, readers, students and teachers. This title is also available as Open Access.




Hollowed Out


Book Description

For the past several decades, politicians and economists thought that high levels of inequality were good for the economy. But because America’s middle class is now so weak, the US economy suffers from the kinds of problems that plague less-developed countries. As Hollowed Out explains, to have strong, sustainable growth, the economy needs to work for everyone and expand from the middle out. This new thinking has the potential to supplant trickle-down economics—the theory that was so wrong about inequality and our economy—and shape economic policymaking for generations.




Corporate Financial Strategy


Book Description

The field of Corporate Finance has developed into a fairly complex one from its origins focussed on a company's business and financial needs (financing, risk management, capitalization and budgeting). Corporate Financial Strategy provides a critical introduction to the field and in doing so shows how organizations' financial strategies can be aligned with their overall business strategies. Retaining the popular fundamentals of previous editions, the new edition brings things up to date with an array of new examples and cases, new pedagogical features such as learning objectives and suggested further reading, and includes new material on mergers and acquisitions, and valuations and forecasting. Unlike other textbooks, Ruth Bender writes from the perspective of the firm rather than the investor. Combined with a structure driven by issues, the result is a textbook which is perfectly suited to those studying corporate finance and financial strategy at advanced undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education levels.




The Impulse Society


Book Description

The author of The End of Food argues that today's technologically driven, high-speed consumer economy is preventing the advancement of society and recovery from the recession, tracing three decades of economic decline while identifying possible resolutions.