Last we were informed about US government’s decision to rescue Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Both mortgage lenders are under special regulatory supervision now, the so called conservatorship. This event can be described in two sentences, but there are some major implications. We have found the following data that illustrate the size of this public […]

How important is education? Well, we know that education (as process) and knowledge gained (as a result) has become an important factor to differentiate organizations and to establish (or at least to support) competitive advantages. Today knowledge can have the same meaning as a commodity. Information, knowledge and learning have a huge impact on capabilities […]

A couple of days ago (see this post) I had assumed that the financial reports of the fourth quarter would present new cumulative value adjustments. Yesterday Citigroup announced its financial results. Due to writedowns of $ 18.1 billion in the business segments subprime mortgage and increased losses in the segment consumer loans the loss is […]

Due to the so called subprime crisis a large number of banks had to make heavy cumulative value adjustments in the third quarter 2007. The ultimate cause for this crisis was credit default related problems with sub-prime loans for house financing (mortgages) in the US.

New stresses and strains seem to be occurring for the fourth […]

Taking into account market capitalization Chinese and European companies have gained more importance. Opposite to this development the importance of North American companies as well as Japanese Companies declined. Among the top 100 most valuable companies firms from China were able to more than double their market value (+123 per cent). American companies had to […]

Recently McKinsey announced the survey results concerning the first 100 days of new CFOs. According to available data McKinsey considered 164 responses from a representative sample of CFOs. The article that contains the findings displays participants’ views about their first hundred days as CFO.

Major findings:

CFO may not be spending their time where it’s most needed […]

A better option for sovereign wealth funds to invest in major financial players is very hard to imagine. Equities of banks offer a discount of 20 % in their share price and represent the rear light on Wall Street. To be more exactly: This year the share price of financial institutions has declined about 22 […]

A couple of weeks ago McKinsey launched a survey on the organizational challenges presented by social and economic trends. The results for this survey are available now; according to available data McKinsey received 1,317 responses from a worldwide representative sample of business executives.

Top 5 of the most important identified trends are:

Competition for talent

Centers of economic […]

A couple of days I posted some news related to previous activities by so called government investment funds (sovereign wealth funds). Their current investment activities focus on financial institutions; due to the subprime crisis some large players have to write off some parts of their loan portfolios. Therefore the share price of some players is […]

A couple of days ago we had a look at the current trends of government investment funds (sovereign wealth funds). Today we saw the next move of an investment fund: GIC (Government of Singapore Investment Corporation Pte. Ltd) and another investor subscribed (it might be Abu Dhabi - ADIA) subscribed convertible bonds of UBS, the famous […]