Fortune and Folly


Book Description

Today institutional investors dominate the stock market. They hold assets valued at about 6.5 trillion - almost one fifth of the country's financial assets. Furthermore, institutional investors now own well over half of the stock in the country's 100 largest corporations, including such flagship companies as IBM, GE, Johnson & Johnson, and Mobil. Because of the tremendous influence institutional investors have on American corporations, business and government policymakers must make assumptions about how and why they make decisions - their priorities, motives, and concerns. In addition, anyone who markets to institutional investors needs to know what makes them tick. Sprinkled with candid and often colorful quotations from a variety of investment insiders, Fortune and Folly gives you a unique look at what really happens on Wall Street; facts that challenge the assumptions routinely made about the economic motivations of business behavior; new insights on pension safety and possible political influences; and economic analyses by Carolyn K. Brancato, the country's foremost expert on the economics of institutional investing.




Global Financial Stability Report, September 2003


Book Description

This September 2003 issue of the Global Financial Stability Report highlights that since March 2003, further progress has been made in addressing the lingering effects of the bursting of the equity price bubble. Household and corporate balance sheets have continued to improve gradually and corporate default levels have declined. Companies in mature markets have cut costs, enhancing their ability to cope with slower growth and other potential difficulties. Corporations—particularly in the United States—have made good progress in their financial consolidation efforts and are in a better financial position to increase investment spending.




Services Marketing Issues in Emerging Economies


Book Description

This book would enable students, academics and practitioners to develop a thorough understanding on how to address service marketing issues and problems in a variety of settings in emerging economies. This book would also give them the background necessary to think through different elements of service marketing in emerging markets by comparing and contrasting with developed economies. This book will describe the component of service marketing, including service mix, service development, consumer behavior, customer assessment, service communication, role of electronic channel and channel management, service chain, pricing and similar topics. Chapters of the book will focus on creating, communicating and delivering customer value to emerging market consumers through several service marketing strategies, processes and programs in the context of markets dynamics, consumer diversity, and competitors. By way of illustrating various actual business situations, this book will help students, academics and practitioners to build necessary skills to take service marketing decisions in emerging economies. This book would be relevant for students of postgraduate programs of full time MBA, post graduate diploma in management, and executive post graduate programs and doctoral programs to develop a critical understanding of the business scenarios and service marketing strategies in emerging economies.




The Handbook of the Economics of Corporate Governance


Book Description

The Handbook of the Economics of Corporate Governance, Volume One, covers all issues important to economists. It is organized around fundamental principles, whereas multidisciplinary books on corporate governance often concentrate on specific topics. Specific topics include Relevant Theory and Methods, Organizational Economic Models as They Pertain to Governance, Managerial Career Concerns, Assessment & Monitoring, and Signal Jamming, The Institutions and Practice of Governance, The Law and Economics of Governance, Takeovers, Buyouts, and the Market for Control, Executive Compensation, Dominant Shareholders, and more. Providing excellent overviews and summaries of extant research, this book presents advanced students in graduate programs with details and perspectives that other books overlook. - Concentrates on underlying principles that change little, even as the empirical literature moves on - Helps readers see corporate governance systems as interrelated or even intertwined external (country-level) and internal (firm-level) forces - Reviews the methodological tools of the field (theory and empirical), the most relevant models, and the field's substantive findings, all of which help point the way forward




The Nordic Corporate Governance Model


Book Description

The Nordic Region is remarkable in many ways and has been the subject of increasing interest over the past years. The five countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden are culturally closely aligned and combine a well-functioning business sector and high GDP with an expansive welfare state and high taxes. What has been well less known outside the Nordic Region is the shared corporate governance model used by companies and for the first time a comprehensive study is available in English to explain this model.The main part of the study is the condensed presentation of the Nordic CG model. It is based on four country reports covering the three EU Member States (DK, F, S) and one EEA Member State (N). Each country report has been drawn up by a team consisting of a legal expert and a corporate governance expert with practical experience. To ensure that the report reflects actual practices, each team was assisted by a reference group consisting of business practitioners with extensive experience from large-cap listed companies and connections to the national CG code committees. To provide an international aspect, the renowned American scholar Ronald J Gilson contributed a comment on the report's findings in a separate chapter.The key observation of the study is that the Nordic CG model allows the shareholder majority to effectively control and take long-term responsibility for the company that they own. The alleged risk of such a system - the potential that a shareholder majority misuses its power for its own benefit at the expense of minority shareholders - is effectively curbed through a well-developed system of minority protection. The result is a governance model that encourages strong shareholders to engage in the governance of the company in their own interest, while creating value for the company and all its shareholders.




Hospitality Financial Management


Book Description

Hospitality Financial Management is an up-to-date finance text that offers hospitality students a uniquely Canadian introduction to financial management specifically for hospitality and tourism majors. The book uses hospitality examples throughout to cover concepts from a practical perspective, explaining and demonstrating the importance of financial management in the hospitality industry.







Corporate Governance


Book Description

A detailed look at the importance of corporate governance in today's business world The importance of corporate governance became dramatically clear at the beginning of the twenty-first century as a series of corporate meltdowns from managerial fraud, misconduct, and negligence caused a massive loss of shareholder wealth. As part of the Robert W. Kolb Series in Finance, this book provides a comprehensive view of the shareholder-manager relationship and examines the current state of governance mechanisms in mitigating the principal-agent conflict. This book also offers informed suggestions and predictions about the future direction of corporate governance. Relies on recent research findings to provide guidance through the maze of theories and concepts Uses a structured approach to put corporate governance in perspective Addresses essential issues related to corporate governance including the idea of principal-agent conflict, role of the board of directors, executive compensation, corporate monitoring, proxy contests and corporate takeovers, and regulatory intervention Corporate governance is an essential part of mainstream finance. If you need to gain a better understanding of this topic, look no further than this book.




Ethics, Governance and Corporate Crime


Book Description

This book is comprised of academic work on key current issues pertaining to the areas of ethics, governance and corporate crimes. The book provides a platform for researchers to publish their work, articulate their concerns and offer critical perspectives on what they see happening around them.