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 […]

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 […]

Quite recently I have found a very interesting study concerning success factors. A large strategy consulting company did analyze these factors for Chinese companies abroad. To compete abroad four major success factors were described:
 

Productivity and quality need to be improved. It is expected that in the next couple of years the salary level in China […]

We all come across various pieces of news and information every day. Most of them don’t get our attention, taken on their own. However, sometimes two seemingly unrelated pieces of information team up in our minds and suddenly become more interesting.
This just happened to me. Last weekend, during my course of Real Estate Investment Banking, […]

OK, Porsche’s announcement to increase its share in VW is not really new any more. However, I have spent the last few days thinking about the strategic rationale behind that (among other things, of course). And still, I did not make up my mind. I am not sure if this is a smart or dumb […]

At mid of December last year I posted about the legal disputes (in terms of copyright issues) and the opportunities to generate “Web 2.0-returns”.
Now we will face the next level of the copyright battle. Viacom (the media company) takes Youtube to the court and claims compensation for copyright violations. The amount of money or better […]

Lower Saxony, a federal state in the north of Germany, is VW’s second-largest shareholder after Porsche. Due to the so called “Volkswagen law” the state is in a very comfortable position to control the company.
The law came into force on 21st March 1960, when the former Volkswagen GmbH was privatised and converted into a public […]