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This is why business leaders are reviled

If you behave like this, you deserve to be cursed, reviled, and generally hated. Unfortunately many business leaders are exactly like this, which is why a business tycoon is considered by society as a figure to be loathed. The "this" I refer to is Stephen Elop, Chairman of Nokia being entitled to a $25m payout for the the sale of Nokia's handset business to Microsoft. Nokia, as everybody knows, has been in dire straits for quite some time. In 2010, the Board fired its existing Finnish leaders and brought Stephen Elop, from Microsoft, as the CEO to "rescue" Nokia. Elop abandoned Nokia's operating system Symbian and tied its fortunes to Microsoft by adopting the Windows platform. It did not work and Nokia has continued to slide. During Mr Elop's tenure, Nokia's market capitalisation fell  by $ 14 bn - that's the amount Nokia's shareholders have lost. Finally Nokia has decided to sell its handest business to Microsoft for under $ 10 bn. Elop...
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Stuff the trade

The news yesterday that two former executives of Bristol - Myers Squibb (a pharmaceutical giant) have had prosecution charges dropped against them , spurred this post. These two were top executives 5 years ago and apparently indulged in “channel stuffing” – the practice of dumping stocks into the wholesale or retail trade in order to show higher sales for a quarter or a period. As happens with such practices, if taken too far, one day they catch up with you. In the case of Bristol-Myers, it did and they had to publicly state this and their stock market value fell ; this was what led to the attempt at prosecuting these two executives. Every consumer goods company in the world does this, to some degree or the other. Consumer goods companies do not sell directly to the end consumer, which is you or me. They sell to a complex distribution chain – wholesalers, retailers, etc etc. What they show as sales in their books is what they sell to their first link in this distribution chain . Its q...
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From Draught to Craft

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This blogger is not a beer drinker.. He is therefore completely ignorant of the niceties of beer and therefore eminently qualified to comment on developments in the beer industry. In many countries in the world, people, especially men, gulp down enormous quantities of beer. Most of it is mass produced by the beer giants of the world - Diageo, Anheuser Busch, SAB Miller, Heineken and the like, including our own home grown United Breweries. Bottled or canned beer is by far the largest selling channel for beer - the one that keeps afloat the likes of Diageo, et al. But nuanced beer drinkers consider this somewhat of a travesty in beer drinking - apparently they have no taste. Hence the onset of draught beer which is served out of cask or a keg. Go to a pub  and barmaid will pour out a pint of draught, topped with a nice head. This blogger has a partiality to buying rounds for whoever he is with - not to taste the subtleties of the draught but to ogle at the barmaid - who is invariably...
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