Management

From FT.com May 21, 2012

Dustin Moskovitz, an early employee of Facebook, is worth $5bn, give or take the odd million, after last week’s initial public offering. He could now apply his technological knowhow and abundant new wealth to solving the world’s loftiest organisational problems. Instead, he and his partners are hunkered down in a dark ground-floor office in San Francisco’s Mission district working out how to liberate office workers and middle managers from the tyranny of lengthening to-do lists, overflowing email and meetings about meetings. Dilbert, meet Dustin.

Posted in Business, Management, Media, Technology |
From FT.com May 16, 2012

This February, as JPMorgan Chase financial traders in London were building a credit derivatives position that would soon cost the bank $2bn, Jamie Dimon was otherwise occupied. He was on a 550-mile bus ride through Florida.

Posted in Business, Finance, Management |
From FT.com May 9, 2012

It is sad to see a venerable partnership disappear but Dewey & LeBoeuf, the New York-based law firm, wasn’t one any more.

Posted in Management, US |
From FT.com May 7, 2012

I admire the chief executive who once described his attitude to the quarterly earnings report to me like this: “We spend three days before and one day after getting busy – and then we go back to running the business as usual.”

Posted in Business, Management |
From FT.com May 2, 2012

“You’re going to need a bigger boat,” says the police chief played by Roy Scheider in the film Jaws, when he first catches sight of the shark. Faced with cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s, we need a bigger investment vehicle.

Posted in Business, Management, Pharmaceuticals |

Andrew Hill Would-be directors: under-prepared, over-confident

April 25, 2012 3:15 pm by Andrew Hill

The greenest job applicants know that to make any sort of impression on their prospective employer they must at least know something about the company where they wish to work and the position for which they’re pitching. That lesson appears to have been lost, however, on many of the experienced hands seeking to join the boards of Britain’s financial companies.

Hector Sants – outgoing chief executive of Britain’s Financial Services Authority – used his valedictory speech on Tuesday to underline how would-be directors are failing even the most basic examination of their credentials for high office.

Continue reading: “Would-be directors: under-prepared, over-confident”

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Banks, Management, Regulation |
From FT.com April 23, 2012

It’s not that they’re wicked or naturally bad
It’s knowing they’re foreign that makes them so mad!
– ‘A Song of Patriotic Prejudice’

Flanders and Swann, the English songwriters whose 1960s ditty gently ribbed nationalists and national stereotypes, would have had a field day last week. Canadian Mark Carney was added to the list of candidates to become the next governor of the Bank of England, prompting this priceless, po-faced observation from one of the central banker’s supporters: “As a Canadian national he is a subject of the Queen. That is important.”

Posted in Banks, Europe, Finance, Management |

Andrew Hill Crash course in leadership for YPF’s expropriators

April 17, 2012 4:39 pm by Andrew Hill

If mergers of equals are risky and hostile takeovers riskier, where does expropriation rank on the scale of management disruption?

Pretty high, I would guess. So, a day after Argentinian government officials walked into YPF’s headquarters with a list of senior Spanish executives they wanted to expel and an order to renationalise most of Repsol’s majority stake, I feel for the oil company’s staff.

Continue reading: “Crash course in leadership for YPF’s expropriators”

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Energy, Management, Politics |
BackOlder entries

Business blog

Strategy & managing

About this blog Blog guide
This blog is mainly about business and strategy and how and why people who run companies take the decisions that they do.

Most of the time, John Gapper is in New York and Andrew Hill is in London. We occasionally debate business issues between us, but your comments and criticism are welcome.




To comment, please register for free with FT.com and read our policy on submitting comments.

All posts are published in UK time.

Contact andrew.hill@ft.com or john.gapper@ft.com about the Business blog.

See the full list of FT blogs.

About John and Andrew

John Gapper is an associate editor and the chief business commentator of the FT. He has worked for the FT since 1987, covering labour relations, banking and the media. He is co-author, with Nicholas Denton, of All That Glitters, an account of the collapse of Barings in 1995.

Andrew Hill is an associate editor and the management editor of the FT. He is a former City editor, financial editor, comment and analysis editor, New York bureau chief, foreign news editor and correspondent in Brussels and Milan.

Archive

« AprMay 2012
M T W T F S S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031