The Pope, the Queen, the Sage and the football manager
Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement as manager of Manchester United gives the management world another example of how to bow out when you are, frankly, getting a bit elderly.
On this topic, we now have four great templates – the Pope, the Queen of England, Warren Buffett and Sir Alex – each of which could be applied by organisations whose leaders are grappling with questions about the frailty and mortality of their leaders. Read more
Will “Windows Classic” be Microsoft’s Coke Classic?
No doubt, if Microsoft reverses course over Windows 8 – for instance, by restoring the familiar “Start” button to the opening screen – it will provide abundant fodder for the writers of business school case studies.
But is the comparison with Coca-Cola’s famous 1985 marketing U-turn, when it brought back “Coke Classic” following a consumer backlash against its “New Coke” recipe, correct? Read more
Bankers were “the Praetorian guard of capitalism”, Michael Noonan, Ireland’s finance minister, said last week. Given the scarring defeat suffered by the free market’s crack troops in the financial crisis, and the curbs now applied to their pay and rations, you might expect enthusiasm to replace them in the front line to be muted. Read more
The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting is like Woodstock for capitalists. It draws tens of thousands of shareholders, value investors, groupies and the curious to the midwestern city Omaha, Nebraska.
They make the pilgrimage each spring to sit at the feet of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, the two men who have spent half a century building a sprawling $260bn conglomerate.
The FT’s Dan McCrum is there to capture the weekend festivities and the wise words from the pair of octogenarian sages. He will be blogging from the cornfields and investor meetings on Friday and Saturday, so check back frequently. All times are BST.
Walt Disney is wrong to pull out of Bangladesh
Walt Disney’s decision to stop making apparel in Bangladesh, as a result of recent factory disasters, is the wrong approach for western companies.
Pulling out of Bangladesh for fear of being linked with a country with poor safety standards will not help. It is harder to stay and help to tackle the country’s deep problems, but it is a better course. Read more
Oh, @WarrenBuffett, not you too
If you’re on Twitter, you’ll know by now that Warren Buffett is – to quote his first and (at time of writing) his only tweet – “in the house“.
His appearance on the social media service is apparently linked to a Fortune forum in which the Sage of Omaha is due to participate. It has already garnered him (again, at time of writing) 40,000 followers and prompted some Twitter wit from his bridge partner, Bill Gates. Read more
It is easy to forget. Most of us work in buildings where safety can largely be taken for granted, and fire drills are annoying disruptions in which a security official seizes the chance to talk loudly and repeatedly on the public address system, stopping us from doing any work. Read more
Arriving in Shenzhen last week, I saw a poster for a local company called Stylution. Multinationals have concocted a similarly awkward “stylish solution” to the problem of how to staff expansion in China: hire hybrid managers with a perfect mix of global and local experience. Read more
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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.
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