In Germany there is a political discussion going on about women’s quota for positions in management boards and top management. This is a political discussion and mainly refers to large businesses, i.e. for DAX-companies, for the time being. Currently, political parties and even ministers have varying opinions about this topic. Ideas range from critical positions [...]

I just discovered a new early indicator. You may remember that I like the sort of indicators that are not scientific but can be observed in ordinary life. Now I have one more of this sort. We participate in the amazon-associates program with our management portal. We recommend books on the portal and when one [...]

trendwatching.com, a leading trend firm, has just released its ’10 Consumer Trends for 2010′. According to this trend report next year will bring a bonanza of opportunities, as even cautious consumers crave pragmatic or exciting innovations.Its argues that we will see a scene from ‘urban pride’ to ‘forced sustainability’. The summary: BUSINESS AS UNUSUAL | [...]

There is a saying that nothing is as old as yesterday’s news. This week I read a newspaper article about much older news. As it seems, these can be quite interesting again. Most people, including me, did not even notice it: one of Germany’s most popular TV news formats – Tagesschau – has been broadcasting [...]

Naseem Javed is a regular contributer of interesting articles for our Management Portal. His latest piece of thought covers nine opportunites that – as he thinks – will be hot for businesses in 2009. I think these are very interesting ideas. If you think about your business strategy for 2009, it is well worth to [...]

A large number of articles concerning the financial crisis have been published these days. In sum all write offs in financial institutions (worldwide) have reached a total of 485 billion USD this week. 42 billion USD write offs can be found among banks in Germany. The amount of recapitalization (worldwide) within banks is 459 billion [...]

The last two days can be described as a dramatic change in terms of the global financial crisis. Not so long ago – or to be more specific: last weekend – a liberal approach seem to rule governmental measures how to tackle the financial crisis. Lehman Brothers did not receive a public backup. But at [...]

The international financial crisis claimed another victim among German banks this week. It was the specialised mortgage and public sector lender Duesseldorfer Hypothekenbank (Duess Hyp). “The small German bank’s owners have temporarily transferred ownership to the BdB’s depositor guarantee fund, after which it will be sold to a third party.”  The bank is fairly small [...]

So far I have resisted the wish to comment about the ongoing sub-prime and financial crisis on this blog. I surely have an opinion about all this. However, so much has been written in this matter – analyses, comments, reports, more analyses, readers comment etc. I agree with many of them and disagree with others. [...]

My morning reading of the German newspaper FAZ really gave me a happy start into the day. I read an article about the weak stock quotes of the large investment firms like Blackstone or Fortress. There I found this sentence “In the view of increasing defaults of corporate loans, a new heyday is expected for [...]