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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

A few days ago I posted some interesting figures related to large government investment funds (sovereign wealth funds) and their cash flow sources. So what do these funds in detail in their investments? Well this matter is not directly related to strategic planning. However the current trends and financial investments of these funds should be considered [...]

A couple of months ago I discussed in this post capital market issues and the cash flow that is created in specific nations trough commodities. Recently in some nations discussions are underway that focus on the financial power, which arise from “government investment funds” – also known as sovereign wealth funds – (in the sense [...]

I just came across an interesting new project, called “European Smart Cities”. It is a ranking of European Cities with populations under 500,000, developed by Scientists from the Technical University (TU) of Vienna in cooperation with the University of Ljubljana and the TU of Delft. Well, yes, this is one more city ranking and there [...]