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2009年9月30日 星期三

惠普的印表機部門歸編到PC部門

《華爾街日報》29日報導,惠普執行長赫德四年前上任以來大力改造內部人事,最新也最大的一步是將惠普的印表機部門歸編到PC部門,由現任PC部主管布萊德里掌理。

報導說,兩部合一的的細節和日期尚待宣布,但合併大計即將底定,只等赫德拍板。印表機主管約許何去何從,備受觀察。

這波整頓突顯赫德2005年到任以來,惠普業務出現了多少變化。當時,印表機是惠普的金雞母,PC是掙扎求存的賠錢部門。2004年,惠普利潤有70%由印表機和油墨包辦,PC貢獻不到5%。

赫德上任以來,形勢丕變,印表機部門成長日趨緩慢,因為客觀情勢不同於往昔,消費者日益遠離印表機。同時,PC部門利潤勁升,並且使惠普超越戴爾,成為全球最大的PC製造商。

PC部門兼併印表機,也顯示赫德引進的那批新人馬聲勢日盛。51歲的赫德四年前從Palm公司跳槽過來,創造了一個精幹善戰的PC部門,即使PC價格重跌,惠普PC的利潤仍然高過同業。

印表機合併於PC部門,風水輪流轉。2005年,PC是惠普的賠錢貨,印表機是金雞母,執行長費歐莉娜將PC納編於印表機部門,結果惠普董事會那年就將費 歐莉娜掃地出門,赫德上任,把兩個部門重新分開,找布萊德里接掌PC。布萊德里銳意撙節,提高惠普供應鍊的效率,尤其是成長快速的筆電。

2009年9月27日 星期日

a Wal-Mart Nation, the American consciousness

Vanity Fair and ‘60 Minutes’ Are Polling the People


Published: September 27, 2009

Coming together to poll average Americans, Vanity Fair and “60 Minutes” have concluded it’s a Wal-Mart Nation.

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Joe Raedle/Getty Images

In a survey, 48 percent of respondents selected Wal-Mart as the best corporate symbol of America today, far ahead of Google.

They are inaugurating a monthly survey of the American consciousness, to appear both in the magazine’s pages and occasionally on television.

The first survey, unveiled on “60 Minutes” and CBSNews.com on Sunday, reports that respondents overwhelmingly selected Wal-Mart as the best corporate symbol of America today. Wal-Mart was selected by 48 percent of respondents, while the first runner-up, Google, was selected by only 15 percent. The other options were Microsoft, the N.F.L. and Goldman Sachs.

“I wouldn’t have guessed that Wal-Mart would have run away with that,” said Jeffrey Fager, the executive producer of “60 Minutes.”

Those are the types of findings that the two like-minded institutions hope to highlight, said Mr. Fager and Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, in a telephone interview last week.

“We both wanted to do something that was outside the broad brushstrokes of national politics and got to different opinions and beliefs of Americans that don’t show up in most polls,” Mr. Carter said.

Among the questions: “Which do you think is worse: married politicians’ having affairs or politicians’ taking bribes?” (Many say both are equally bad.) And there’s this question for men: “Which of these men would you most like to trade places with for a week: George Clooney, Barack Obama, Tom Brady, or Bruce Springsteen?” (Mr. Clooney narrowly topped Mr. Obama.)

It is the first regular survey by Vanity Fair, a Condé Nast magazine with a reputation for being read in elitist circles. Is it a purposeful nod to Middle America?

“It wasn’t intended as such,” Mr. Carter said. “It’s just a way of taking a different kind of reading of the American mind, in a big professional poll way.”

The initial survey, which was conducted by CBS News in August, also found that fully half the people would support a tax of 50 percent or higher on the country’s wealthiest millionaires. “The populists are out in force,” the magazine concludes in its summary of the survey, due on newsstands Wednesday.

The New York Times is a polling partner of CBS News. Mr. Fager said the CBS polling unit also conducts independent work.

Both men said the poll was a work in progress that would evolve on a monthly basis.

Mr. Fager said, “We’re combining our collective brainpower.”

“Such as it is,” Mr. Carter said jokingly.

“And we’ll see what comes of it,” Mr. Fager said.

2009年9月26日 星期六

匯豐銀行業務中心遷回香港

總部位於英國倫敦的匯豐控股集團星期五(9月25日)在香港宣佈,將在明年二月將集團行政總裁辦公室遷回香港。

匯豐集團的董事局主席葛霖(Stephen Green)和行政總裁紀勤(Michael Geoghegan)在香港宣佈了以上決定。

這意味著未來雖然匯豐集團名義上的總部仍維持在英國,但集團的實質業務中心將搬到香港。

葛霖表示,做出這一決定是因為全球經濟的發展中新已經由西向東轉移,因此集團的業務也是一樣。

香港歡迎

香港特區政府對匯豐集團的決定表示歡迎。香港特首曾蔭權表示匯豐此舉集團有信心把香港作為開發亞洲新市場,特別是中國市場的最佳平台。

他認為匯豐的決定肯定了香港作為亞洲國際金融中心城市的地位,令他感到鼓舞。

一項由英國進行的最新報告認定香港目前是僅次於倫敦和紐約的世界第三大金融中心。

位列世界最大銀行集團之一的匯豐控股的前身是香港上海匯豐銀行,於1865年成立。集團在90年代香港主權移交中國前將總部遷往倫敦。

有分析認為,此次匯豐控股將集團主要運作中心遷返香港,顯示集團對中國和亞洲經濟前景有信心。

大提琴不能坐台灣飛機「神明不願繫安全帶」

大提琴不能坐飛機 音樂家請命

〔記 者趙靜瑜、李文儀/台北報導〕「國外都可以讓大提琴搭機,為什麼台灣不行?」大提琴家張正傑昨從台北搭機前往台東時,由於立榮航空公司地勤人員不肯讓他所 擁有百萬美金名琴「盧傑利」大提琴登機,雙方起了爭執。「希望有關單位能夠修法,找出兼顧音樂家心願和飛航安全的折衷辦法。」張正傑說。

張正傑提出根據民航局的規定,大提琴不能帶上國內線班機,這根本是讓一向視琴如命的音樂家們無所適從,最後張正傑在機場人員的協助下,親手將大提琴安置在行李艙,才順利成行。

台北市立交響樂團大提琴首席簡荿玄表示,行李艙與座艙的壓力並不相同,行李艙通常處於加壓狀態,且溫度都在零度左右,木質琴身在這樣的溫度與壓力狀態下很有可能會斷裂。

在 國外,音樂家只要替大提琴多買一張機票,就可以帶著大提琴一起上飛機,包括柏林愛樂十二把大提琴、大提琴家馬友友等演奏家,都會在給主辦單位的合約中註 明,大提琴得多買一張同艙等的機票。由於這些大提琴家多半都是國際知名大師,琴幾乎等同音樂家的生命,所用的名琴身價更是動輒數百萬美金起跳,大提琴家也 多半不願讓樂器離開視線。 國際線的航空做法則不同,國泰航空會讓旅客隨工作人員親自拿琴到行李艙,確定安置妥當;日航則是讓旅客多買一張機票,不過基於安全考量,座位未必就在乘客 身旁。但是在台灣的國內航線中,大提琴連多買一張票也不行。不少大提琴家對這規定非常懊惱,簡荿玄與國家交響樂團副首席連亦先都說,寧願放棄音樂會演出, 也不願意讓琴離開一步。

民航局表示,航空公司確實必須依法令規定,視機型及座位大小,決定能否接受像大提琴這種占座位的超大型行李進入機艙,就連擺放座位及方式都有規範,因攸關飛安。

長 榮集團發言人聶國維代表立榮航空回應表示,張正傑所搭航班,採用MD90型機飛航,座位寬度只有四十三公分,但大提琴則寬達四十八公分,根本無法容納,地 勤人員只好告知必須將名琴妥善放置於貨艙運送。他們尊重藝術家擁有的名琴價值,要把心愛的樂器放到貨艙,對音樂家確實很殘忍,但必須遵守民航法令規定。

特殊行李 不能比飛機座位大

民 航局在九十六年初修訂「航空器飛航作業管理規則」,像大提琴這種超大型行李,必須看座位大小能否容納,不能超過座位的長寬高;且應該要放置在地板上斜靠椅 子豎立,並用安全帶固定;連放置座位都有要求,必須靠窗、不能放在中間或靠走道座位及逃生門旁,以免影響其他旅客進出及逃生。

民航局當時會訂立這項規範,主因是曾發生「神明不願繫安全帶」的糾紛,促使該局為神像、骨灰罈、樂器等占位行李或柺杖等可能影響飛安的特殊隨身行李做出規定。

2009年9月24日 星期四

李桂蓮、李書福

劉罡

菲特的“出場費”價碼像他的投資技巧一樣神鬼莫測﹐他可以開價210萬美元只陪別人吃頓飯﹐也可以僅憑9套西裝的小恩小惠﹐就在專門錄製的視頻中對創世西裝大加贊揚。這段視頻在第20屆大連國際服裝節上被反復播放﹐每隔三分鐘﹐大屏幕上的巴菲特就會對現場觀眾說一遍﹕我現在的9件西裝都是中國製造的﹐我把其余的都扔了

巴 菲特固然喜愛創世西裝﹐但真正讓他樂於免費為這個西裝品牌做宣傳的恐怕還是創世西裝的創始人李桂蓮。或許正是李桂蓮“從貧兒到服裝大亨”的致富經歷﹐讓巴 菲特看到了創世西裝背後所蘊藏的中國草根商業文化﹐並為其動容。30年前﹐李桂蓮靠3萬元貸款起家﹐帶領一幫農村老大媽走上創業路。她和吉利汽車的老板李 書福一樣﹐都是從中國最底層一路打拼發達起來的。李桂蓮的工廠一開始只能生產桌布、圍裙和套袖等簡單物件﹐而李書福初入製造行業時從事的則是小五金加工。 現在﹐李桂蓮的創世西服已經躋身最貴國產西裝之列﹐最便宜的也要人民幣6,000元左右﹔而李書福則正在製造業最高端領域之一的汽車行業大展拳腳﹐他的吉 利汽車剛剛獲得高盛2.45億美元投資﹐正積極向高端汽車領域進軍﹐最近盛傳該公司正在洽購具貴族形像的瑞典汽車品牌沃爾沃。

如 果說中國改革開放30年的最大收獲是什么﹐以李桂蓮、李書福為代表的中國草根商業文化重新萌發、與時俱進應該算得一個。中國草根商業文化有著悠久的歷史和 豐厚的滋生土壤﹐即使只具備最低限度的發展條件﹐也難阻其破土萌發。但中國的草根商業文化也有其與生俱來的劣根性﹐比如不注重創新和質量、缺乏品牌意識、 滿足於低水平惡性競爭等﹐社會上屢禁不絕的假冒偽劣產品和時下風頭正盛的“山寨產業”﹐其背後都有這種劣根性在作怪。如何既保持中國草根商業文化的超強生 命力﹐同時又能跟上時代潮流﹐使其在全球化大背景下躋身世界先進商業文化之林﹐恐怕應該是中國民營企業家和中國政府精心去做的一件大事。應該說﹐創世西裝 和吉利汽車之所以能在中國眾多民營企業中吸引巴菲特和高盛公司的濃厚興趣﹐靠的絕不僅是李桂蓮和李書福篳路藍縷的創業歷程﹐而是他們二人使中國草根商業文 化發揚光大、更上層樓的業績。

目前全世界都在關注中國經濟能否成功實現轉型。現在國內外已經普遍形成這樣的共識﹕靠政府刺激計劃推動的經濟增長是難以持久的﹐ 中國經濟下一階段的增長要更多依賴民間投資的拉動。促進民間投資絕不僅是讓私營企業更容易獲得貸款這麼簡單﹐關鍵是要提高民間投資的層次和水平﹐讓更多李 桂蓮和李書福這樣既有創業精神、又能不斷提升企業層次的企業家湧現出來。對政府而言﹐當務之急是打破既得利益集團和國有壟斷企業對民營經濟向更高層次發展 的阻礙。如果政府對優秀民營企業家的提攜還趕不上巴菲特﹐那就太遺憾了。

(本文作者劉罡是《華爾街日報》中文網編輯兼專欄撰稿人。文中所述僅代表他的個人觀點。)

2009年9月23日 星期三

你唯一需要理解的策略是你自己的策略﹐絕不要跟著別人的策略走。

國-美國電信設備製造商阿爾卡特朗訊(Alcatel-Lucent)首席執行長韋華恩(Ben Verwaayen)接受採訪時表示﹐外界過度渲染了阿爾卡特朗訊這類西方電信設備公司被中國競爭對手收購的可能性﹐公司對其在中國市場的狀況非常滿意。

韋華恩剛剛參加完在中國大連召開的世界經濟論壇﹐上週四在他位於巴黎的辦公室接受了採訪。他表示﹐被中國競爭對手收購的風險並不沒有高於以往。近期法國媒 體的報導將阿爾卡特朗訊和中國的華為技術有限公司(Huawei Technologies Co.)或是中興通訊股份有限公司(Zte Corp.)聯繫到了一起。

本月早些時候﹐華為否認其正在與阿爾卡特朗訊商談雙方結盟的事宜。不過﹐華為一位發言人表示﹐公司對合作機遇持開放態度﹐但並沒有詳細表述。中興通訊也表示﹐無意入股阿爾卡特朗訊。

受監管壓力、競爭加劇和經濟衰退影響﹐西方無線運營商紛紛削減支出以保存現金流﹐導致一些西方網絡設備提供商運轉艱難。

更 為複雜的是﹐阿爾卡特朗訊和諾基亞西門子通信(Nokia Siemens Networks)還不得不應對來自內部整合舉措的問題。今年7月﹐阿爾卡特朗訊公佈了2006年公司創建以來首份盈利的季度財報。諾基亞西門子通信是諾 基亞(Nokia)和西門子(Siemens)組建的合資企業。

這些困難引發了關於該 行業可能加速整合步伐的市場傳言。市場領先公司愛立信(Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson)近期表示﹐公司將收購已經破產的北電網絡(Nortel Networks)部分基礎設施業務﹐以鞏固市場第一的地位。市場有進一步傳言稱﹐如果排名全球市場第四的阿爾卡特朗訊和第二位的諾基亞西門子通信進行合 併﹐或許有助於應對愛立信以及華為和中興通訊等迅速崛起的中國競爭對手。華為目前排名全球市場第三位。

電信運營商也在加速整合。就在最近﹐德國電信(Deutsche Telekom)和法國電信(France Telecom)宣佈合併雙方旗下的英國無線業務。

阿爾卡特朗訊、愛立信和諾基亞西門子通信一直在爭奪中國市場份額。中國市場增長勢頭依然強勁﹐隨著中國推出第三代(3G)無線網絡﹐電信設備製造商將爭奪價值數十億美元的設備訂單。

韋華恩表示﹐阿爾卡特朗訊在中國的固網及移動網絡基礎設施市場佔據著三分之一的市場份額﹐中國業務佔公司在亞太地區業務的一半以上。

韋華恩表示﹐通信網絡設備行業目前更專注於轉型﹐而不是整合。

韋華恩援引倫敦阿森納足球俱樂部(Arsenal Football Club)主教練溫格(Arsene Wenger)的話說﹐你唯一需要理解的策略是你自己的策略﹐絕不要跟著別人的策略走。韋華恩稱自己是個鐵桿球迷。

但韋華恩說﹐認為大型網絡設備供應商總是那些總部設在歐洲或美國公司的觀念是錯誤的。

他說﹐市場存在著新興力量。總的看法是﹐我們有我們西方公司﹐他們是唯一的市場力量。現在這個觀念需要重新考慮了。

Geraldine Amiel

Beethoven meets hip hop

Cool | 22.09.2009 | 18:30

Beethoven meets hip hop

This year, Bonn's prestigious Beethoven Festival entrusted a group of 16 secondary school students with the planning, marketing and managing of a whole concert!

The young people who took part in the ambitious arts management project produced an innovative programme in which hip-hop met classical music.

Interview: Kate Laycock

2009年9月21日 星期一

台灣高鐵營運惡夢開始?

導高鐵營運 交部拿公司法解套

〔記者曾鴻儒、陳曉宜/台北報導〕高鐵今天將召開董事會,交通部長毛治國證實政府將「主導」高鐵營運,但目前「還缺很多臨門一腳」。他也證實高鐵公司曾有意終止BOT合約,但為避開複雜的買回問題,政府將援引公司法取得經營權。

高鐵換手風波喧騰三天,毛治國終於說明始末,同時也以當年高鐵規劃者身分,為高鐵違背「政府零出資」承諾澄清。他說,當年招標條件中,政府準備了一千零五十七億的「補貼」,所謂零出資,是政府不用再有任何補貼,但投資、融資則不在此限。

他也肯定高鐵股東貢獻,強調高鐵體質良好,稅前、息前、折舊前盈利率比各國高鐵都高。雖然如此,龐大的利息與折舊攤提負擔,仍非高鐵所能支應。

在融資結構重整進展不順下,交通部七月確立「成本最低」原則,朝維持高鐵營運、維持民營公司身分、政府主導經營等方向解決。

根據獎參條例及高鐵公司與政府簽訂的BOT合約,當高鐵無法繼續經營時,政府與高鐵公司須終止BOT合約,並進入鑑價程序,然後由政府出資買回,之後另組國營公司或委託民營公司營運。

由於買回高鐵需三千至五千億,非政府目前財力所能負擔,為避免「接管」聯想,衍生更複雜的問題,交通部決定捨棄獎參條例,援引公司法改組董事會以取得經營權,高鐵成為政府主導的民營公司。

轉虧為盈後輔導上市

毛治國說,接手後第一要務是先處理融資問題,接下來則是調整折舊方式,最後就是設法讓公司轉虧為盈;但轉虧為盈後,即使政府不再主導,也不會將經營權還給現有經營者,將朝輔導上市方向規劃。

國民黨團質疑政府不增資、不收買,但高鐵自有資金低,如何轉虧為盈?毛治國說,政府將優先解決高鐵融資問題,設法讓高鐵借貸償還利率降低,同時延長折舊年限,並要求高鐵公司開源節流。

一位不願具名的學者批評,毛治國肯定高鐵股東成績、強調高鐵體質良好,如果體質良好,董事結構為何需重組?有政府作保,以官股為主的銀行團早就可融資、為何非得等政府拿到主導權?政府作法矛盾,似乎就只是要換董座。

學者質疑,高鐵目前虧損七百零二億、負債四千多億,政府取得經營權後,如果仍無法挽救高鐵頹勢,後果誰來收拾?雖然政府介入是目前不得不的作法,也是最佳選項,但政府對高鐵未來發展評估,也應讓國人知道。

2009年9月18日 星期五

Amazon.com Inc.become more like a general retailer

Amazon Is Selling Designs of Its Own

Amazon.com Inc. is quietly expanding its private-label business in a bid to diversify away from its online bookstore roots and become more like a general retailer.

Amazon

After starting with private-label patio furniture in 2004, Amazon has since added its own housewares, including a steamer, frying pan and chopping block.

The latest sign: The Seattle-based e-commerce giant -- known for high-tech innovations like one-click checkout and the Kindle e-reader -- last month received a U.S. design patent for a wooden chopping block.

The $24.99 Pinzon bamboo cutting board is being sold as part of a line of Amazon's own kitchen products on its Web site. It features two surfaces, one flat and the other curved. A curved blade, designed for chopping herbs, is stored inside the block.

In June Amazon launched a new collection of private-label kitchen utensils, designed by Seattle Chef Tom Douglas and sold under his name.

Amazon won't disclose any other patent applications, but says it is always evaluating opportunities to patent the designs it develops for private-label products.

Amazon doesn't say what percentage of its $19 billion in annual sales are from its private-label business, but it already sells more than 1,000 products that are manufactured at its request. While that's a small number compared with the millions of other listings on the site, it underscores how far the company has moved beyond books, CDs and DVDs. For the first time ever, Amazon's second-quarter North American sales of "general merchandise" -- which includes everything from patio furniture to TVs -- were larger than its sales of media, such as books, movies and videogames.

The company now has its own design and sourcing team on staff, although manufacturing is outsourced.

Chris Nielsen, Amazon's vice president of home and garden product sales, says the company has developed private-label products when it felt customers' needs weren't being met by the rest of its catalog.

Mr. Nielsen says developing private-label products has required new skills for the company, such as managing quality control and meeting product safety regulations. But online feedback from customers who leave product reviews helps the company make improvements. For instance, Amazon lengthened its first private-label product -- a chaise lounge -- after customers said it wasn't comfortable for tall people.

Kerry Morris, Amazon's private-label product development manager, says she has already gotten useful feedback about the chopping block. Some customers complained that the knife handle wasn't comfortable for extended periods of time. She is headed to China to work on improving the design.

Amazon launched its private-label efforts in 2004 with a line of outdoor furniture called Strathwood, and has slowly expanded to kitchen, bed and bath products under the name Pinzon, the explorer who discovered the Amazon River.

The company won't disclose profit margins for its private-label merchandise but it is clear that the effort wouldn't be feasible if it weren't for Amazon's economies of scale.

Ben Schachter, an analyst with Broadpoint AmTech, says Amazon's private-label business is in its early stages and doesn't add much to the company's sales now. Yet "Amazon thinks very long term," he says.

Private labels are popular with many traditional retailers because they can provide higher profit margins by cutting out the middleman in the supply chain. Some, such as Best Buy Co., have reported a big boost in private-label sales during the recession as consumers trade down. But online-only retailers have been slower to adopt private-label brands because they lack the expertise to design products, and lack a physical store presence to introduce a new brand.

Zappos.com Inc., recently acquired by Amazon, launched private-label products in 2003, and they now account for about 5% of the company's $1 billion in gross merchandise volume. The company sells 2,500 different products across 10 in-house brand names, such as Fitzwell. Mike Normart, senior director of brand development, says Zappos has had the most success with products that name brands aren't offering, like wide-calf boots. "We try to make them cost a little bit less so there is a value, but we also try to make it a better shoe," says Mr. Normart.

Drugstore.com Inc., which purchased the private label "de~luxe" brand in 2007, says it saw sales of those products increase 30% between 2007 and 2008. "We can obtain high margins by sourcing every component that goes into making the brand ourselves, from packaging to fragrances, and in turn can provide an affordable price for our customers," according to a spokeswoman.

The private-label strategy isn't without its problems. In particular, Amazon's own products may conflict with the products and merchants that the company already hosts on its site.

Amazon says that many of the private-label goods that it offers come from suppliers who also sell branded goods through the site. "They view this as a natural extension of their business models," the company says.

Adam Cornell, director of sales and marketing at wooden products maker Catskill Craftsmen in Stamford, N.Y., says Catskill sells as much as 40% of its products -- which includes chopping blocks -- online through sites such as Amazon. But so far, Catskill has seen little effect from Amazon's private-label business.

In theory, Mr. Cornell says, Amazon could "hamper competition" on its site with a stronger push into private labels. But "thankfully there are plenty of dot-com's selling competitive products that I don't think it will really have a major impact," he says.

Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com

mutually dependent

Recovery Picks Up in China as U.S. Economy Still Ails
By KEITH BRADSHER
Although rapid growth in China has come while the U.S. economy was still shrinking, the countries remain mutually dependent.

On Demand Books

谷歌昨日公布与浓缩咖啡印书机(Espresso Book Machine)制造者On Demand Books签署了一项协议。通过这项安排,谷歌将供应200万册版权过期图书,这些图书可以在图书馆、大学及其它地点购买或发货。浓缩咖啡印书机可以在5 分钟内印刷出一本300页厚的图书,包括封面和书脊。这些书的标价可能在8美元左右,其中谷歌留1美元,On Demand Books留1美元,零售商留3美元。剩下的3美元是材料和人力成本。

谷歌发言人詹妮•约翰逊(Jennie Johnson)表示:“谷歌的使命是让世界上的书变得更容易获取。”

此次结盟所选时机,是为了帮助谷歌证明其在图书方面的广泛举措能给公众带来好处。这些举措包括图书内容搜索和拟议就一起版权集体诉讼案达成的法律和解。

这一有争议的和解正在等待纽约法院的批准,它遭到了美国反垄断机构以及亚马逊(Amazon)、微软(Microsoft)和雅虎(Yahoo)的 攻击。预计美国司法部(Justice Department)在定于今日向法庭提交的文件中,将会提供更多有关其反对意见的细节。

译者/董琴

2009年9月11日 星期五

Inside the Kraft Foods Transformation

Inside the Kraft Foods Transformation

Eleven of the top leaders from the largest food and beverage company in the U.S. talk about their three-year turnaround and their campaign to reorganize for growth.

When a company’s corporate core gets too far from its businesses, from the marketplace, and from its consumers, then a new organizational model may be needed. That was true of Kraft Foods when I returned as chief executive in June 2006. I had just spent three years running the Frito-Lay division of PepsiCo, where decision making was highly decentralized. That experience had reminded me how powerful it is when people come to work every day aligned with and focused only on the business, rather than on the internal organizational demands.

Kraft, too, had gone through periods of decentralized decision making, as I knew from my previous 22 years with the company. But the company in 2006 wasn’t operating that way. Not long after I arrived, a request to review and approve a pricing decision in the German coffee business arrived on my desk in Northfield, Ill. It created a lot of unnecessary work when people asked us in corporate headquarters to make decisions that were not our province. Moreover, we weren’t managing our brands and categories at the appropriate level to understand their competitive dynamics. We weren’t as nimble or responsive as we needed to be, and it was affecting our results.

Now, three years later, we’re delivering. We had an exceptionally strong year in 2008, on both the top line and the bottom line, despite the challenging macro­economic environment. And there has been an equal impact on the effectiveness of our management. Today, I spend the bulk of my time on strategy, on understanding key drivers within our business units, and on putting the right people in critical positions — where they have much more responsibility than in the past.

One of the vehicles for achieving these results was the “Organizing for Growth” (OFG) initiative that we began at Kraft Foods in 2007. Rewiring our organization was one of the four key strategies of our three-year turnaround plan to restore the company to sustainable, long-term growth. To achieve this, we had to essentially dismantle the existing organizational matrix and replace it with a decentralized structure that gave our newly reorganized business units more direct lines of responsibility. This was an enormous undertaking, both in concept and in implementation. It involved changing reporting lines, structures, and operating units. And it was only one part of a larger change initiative that involved operational changes — building up our sales capabilities, reframing our food categories, and implementing new operating metrics and financial rewards for our executives and managers.

There is often a tendency to believe that when you make a structural change first, everything else will follow. However, structural, cultural, and operational changes are typically made together, and they influence one another.

This is the story of our reorganization and the changes that it helped deliver. It is an initiative that is best described by those within Kraft who participated in it. Their story — our story — follows.

Irene Rosenfeld

Before the Turnaround

Karen May: When I came to Kraft in 2005, it was a company with iconic brands. Kraft had scale like nobody else. On an individual basis, the talent was amazing. Yet somehow, we were getting in our own way. We had functionalized to an extreme, and had lost focus on business results.

Rick Searer: How did Kraft ever get so centralized? To answer that, you have to understand how the company of today came to be. We are essentially a combination of businesses that have been bought and sold over the course of 25 years. Philip Morris bought General Foods in 1985, then bought Kraft in 1988, and put us together into a de facto holding company a year later. Oscar Mayer, Nabisco, and Jacobs Suchard in Europe all became part of Kraft through acquisitions.

Instead of letting the old Kraft Foods, the old General Foods, and the old Nabisco each have their own functions and operate as business units within a holding company, we moved in the early 2000s to a centralized model with very strong functional control, leaving the business units as not much more than marketing entities.

As a result, they were increasingly disempowered and disenfranchised. And increasingly, there was a slowed-down, thickening sense of process. Functional leaders were making decisions that might have made sense for the whole but clearly did not make sense for individual business units.

Dave Brearton: Up to a point, centralization was the right thing to do. If we hadn’t done it — if we hadn’t ripped out some of the costs and rationalized some of the infrastructure of the companies we bought — we would still today have a very disparate company with no real leverage of our scale. But the resulting problem, as we got into the middle part of this decade, was that we weren’t growing. Our earnings were going down. And we weren’t responding to changes in the environment quickly enough.

Brian Davison: The research and development function would have a goal for cost reduction. So would people in manufacturing and procurement. People were re­warded for their ability to hit their functional goals. They were good at that, but their linkage to the overall business performance and goals started to wane.

Mark Clouse: The operations group was incented for cost management and efficiency rates. Meanwhile, as a business manager — I was running the China operation when we started thinking about these changes; I run the Brazil operation now — I was chasing revenue. There was always this friction between the two sets of incentives, and the business unit leaders lacked the ability to holistically run the business. That was a constant source of problems — it got in the way of accountability and overall ownership of the business.

Lance Friedmann: An example from mid-2007 might show how siloed we were. The European chocolate business had developed a really cool reclosable package for their chocolate bars. You opened it up, took a bite of chocolate, and then put the rest back in and the adhesive resealed. It really helped freshness. They’d been developing this new packaging for some time.

Somebody was showing it at a strategic planning session in front of Irene, Sanjay, and the rest of the Kraft executive team (KET). [The KET, numbering nine people at the time, is composed of the most senior executives of the corporation.] And Gustavo Abelenda, who leads the Latin America operation, including a large chocolate business in Brazil, saw it and said, “That’s really cool.” Sanjay said, “You hadn’t seen that?” And Gustavo said, “No, I really hadn’t seen it.” A lot of lightbulbs went on. We suddenly saw how disconnected some of our teams could be.

This was before OFG — we had no mechanisms in place for making this sort of information flow. Now, we have something called category executive teams — multi-geographic groups responsible for sharing ideas in the areas of biscuits, chocolate, coffee, and powdered beverages. And, not surprisingly, today there’s a reclosable package in Brazil.

Mark Clouse: Another problem was how much time we spent, as business unit managers, communicating up the line. In a centrally run company, it stands to reason that the people in the center would need to understand your business at a level of detail that allows them to make good decisions. So we would prepare answers for whatever set of questions might be thrown our way. That took away from time we would otherwise spend developing our brands, building our businesses, and addressing the needs of the market or of our consumers.

Framing the Alternatives

Irene Rosenfeld: When I returned to Kraft in 2006 as CEO, I spent a lot of time talking to people about what was working and what wasn’t. I talked to employees and sought out customers. And I asked our board what issues they thought were getting in our way.

These conversations confirmed my sense that we had let the pendulum swing much too far toward centralization; we had a structure that was 80/20 global versus local. We needed to move that pendulum back. The only question was how. It was easier to look at possible alternatives because we all saw that what we had in place wasn’t working.

Gary Conte: Given where Irene wanted to go, it became very clear that we had to go back and create much more accountable business units (we now call them BUs), as a way of pushing decision making down the hierarchy, deploying resources where they were needed, and giving our leaders more freedom to act. Going to BUs meant raising the stakes for the managers we appointed.

The main idea behind OFG — shifting accountability and resource allocation into the business units — never changed once we started talking. There were some variations on the theme: We identified functions that would take a hybrid approach, with some control remaining in the center. And we always believed that some things needed to stay at the corporate level en­tirely — governance, for example. We just wanted to be sure that the things we defined in that way were very few and were of the highest priority.

At the same time that we wanted to get closer to the markets, we couldn’t forget that at Kraft Foods, big is beautiful. We needed to continue to find ways to use our scale to our advantage. So as we developed these accountable business units, we also gave a lot of thought to the collaborating mechanisms that would help us take advantage of our size. Our corporate functional experts are one such mechanism; these people work across our businesses to build capabilities and disseminate best practices. Another coordinating mechanism: the councils and networks we’ve established to pursue market opportunities that cut across business units or categories. Corporate strategic planning is a third mechanism, involving the identification of strategic platforms that business units must address in their own strategic plans. Health and wellness is an example of a strategic platform that started in corporate and is now important across our portfolio.

The Defining Moment

Irene Rosenfeld: We began talking about a sweeping decentralization in early 2007. I knew this would represent an enormous undertaking for the corporation. Had we been making this kind of change at a time when all was quiet on the business front, it would not have been as big a deal. But that wasn’t the case.

I lay awake many nights thinking, “Is this the right thing to do, and is this the right time to do it?” In the course of those sleepless nights, I came to the conclusion that we couldn’t get where we needed to go if we didn’t do it. How I felt was irrelevant, though — it was really about how the team felt, and whether they would get behind the decision.

I held many meetings with the various teams, talking about the pros and cons of a sweeping decentralization plan. The business managers supported it from Day One — no big surprise there; when all was said and done, such a change was going to give them more autonomy. As for the functional leaders, it’s probably fair to say that they were at different stages of acceptance.

In April 2007, I wrote a memo to the extended Kraft management team — about 170 people in all — announcing an initiative I called Rewiring Headquarters. (Later, we would change the name to Organizing for Growth.) I said that we would change our operating model to allow more decisions to be made by line-of-business managers, redeploy and eliminate some resources at headquarters, and make Kraft as a whole more effective. I promised we would come up with a set of specific recommendations by the summer. Suddenly we had a timetable.

The defining moment, as I like to think of it, came in July 2007, at a meeting of the Kraft executive team in our Tarrytown, N.Y., offices. This was the first time that I publicly declared to my staff: “We’re going to do this.”

Lance Friedmann: There was discussion and some comment. And then Irene very deliberately went around the room and said to the members of the KET, one by one, “What do you think? Can you support this?”

Irene Rosenfeld: My goal was to get us to a resolution in such a way that the executive team would own it and would be prepared to execute it, coming out of that meeting. But what I appreciated was that even the individuals who did not fully support the decision said so. It wasn’t just, “Let’s salute the flag.” It was more like, “I’ll do what the team decides, but let me tell you first how I really feel.”

Leading the Change

Gary Conte: With a corporate-wide transformation like this, it’s not easy. You’re challenging culture, you’re challenging behavior, you’re challenging self-interest. And there are a million details to iron out. What should the organizational structure be? Who should staff it? Which business processes should change? And what should the motivational processes be?

Within a month of the Tarrytown meeting, we had assigned teams to tackle the eight most important issues involved in the reorganization — what would remain at the corporate core; how shared services would work; people and motivators; the redesign of cross-organization collaboration processes; strategic planning and performance management; how the new model would play out in North America; how it would play out in our international operations; and communications. Each team had a work stream and a deliverable. And each team had at least two KET sponsors — that was critical. It ensured that the solution being developed was consistent with the new model.

The KET sponsors provided a necessary buffer between the team and the rest of the executives. Otherwise, you could imagine that when a team came up with a recommendation that significantly changed another Kraft executive’s role, there would be no one to run interference, validate that it was consistent with the objectives, and help facilitate the discussion. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, being involved in the change process drew the individual KET members into the program. They had some skin in the game.

Brian Davison: One fundamental question, once we had decided to go with accountable business units, was what were the right BUs? For instance, by the time of the Tarrytown meeting, our Canadian business had basically been taken apart, and most of the business decisions about Canada were being made in the United States. With OFG, we decided it made more sense to treat Canada as its own BU with its own dedicated resources, which is what we had historically done. We did a number of such realignments, with the goal of making decisions closer to the consumer.

Irene Rosenfeld: At the same time, we were conscious of the need to preserve our scale advantages. That involved thinking through what this new organization meant function by function, geography by geography. It was never one-size-fits-all. The model we implemented in North America looked quite different from what we implemented in Europe or in developing markets.

Sanjay Khosla: There was a good reason for our varied models. Kraft Foods International, which I was brought in to run, shared North America’s problem of being too internally focused; and as in North America, it made tremendous sense for us to push decision making down to the unit level — in this case, a region or country. His­torically, what was good for one market was seen as be­ing good for every market. And that clearly was not true.

Irene Rosenfeld: It’s vitally important, when you’re making a change like this, to have the right people in place. In our case, the people running the businesses could no longer principally be marketers; they needed to become general managers. And the functional executives had to move to being functional leaders, capability builders, managers of careers, and sharers of best practices. Not everybody was able to make that transition.

Karen May: In retrospect, it was the business leaders who thought, “What’s the big deal? We’ve been operating like this for a long time” who had the most trouble growing into their responsibilities. The stronger BU managers knew they were taking on a huge shift. They would say, “This means my team has to be different and my talent needs to be different.” When you heard that, you had more of a feeling of comfort.

Irene Rosenfeld: To give BUs a better chance of succeeding, we changed the way we aggregated data on the individual businesses and evaluated their performance. We had always been a very metrics-oriented organization, but by now we had binders and binders of data, and it had become impossible for any one person to understand what they needed to do. And we often had situations where the metrics for the functions were in conflict with the business units’ metrics.

Brian Davison: We decided to distill what was important to any given business’s performance, and present it in a scorecard that could be understood at a glance. We used green highlighting to show areas where a business was performing as expected, yellow to pinpoint emerging problems, and red to flag areas requiring immediate attention. The three main measures on the scorecard — which we picked for their alignment with shareholder value — were organic revenue growth, operating income growth, and cash flow.

I think most people would agree the scorecards have been a big change for the better. Before, we had a culture where, as a business unit manager, you’d want to prepare yourself to be able to answer any question. Now, to a great extent, you know what’s going to come up in your monthly performance meetings.

Gary Conte: We also took a fresh look at decision rights. We had a lot of policies, either created over the years to address internal needs or inherited from companies we acquired. There were policies for every aspect of global company-wide activity: accounting procedures, employment, acquisitions, materials, selling to consumers, business processes, cash flow, employee gifts, and so on. Some of the policies no longer made sense; others required too many levels of approval. We eliminated many old policies, updated others, and put all of them in a consistent format; we made them easy to search for on Kraft’s intranet. People can use this intranet site to ask for notifications of changes in the policies, or to ask questions about them, or to request an exception or suggest a change. Most importantly, if a policy isn’t on the site, then that policy sunsets. We no longer have people following policies that aren’t current or relevant. And the quick access that managers have to these policies lets them know the boundaries and the reasons behind them; it frees them to innovate without feeling they need to seek approval from some other person or place.

Irene Rosenfeld: We changed Kraft’s incentive structures in a way that linked unit managers’ compensation more directly to their individual performance. For example, in the past we might have incented the general manager of a country — China, say — based on the total perfor­mance of Kraft worldwide. Now, bonuses are calculated by weighing the performance of their individual businesses (for example, China) at 70 percent and the next higher level of aggregation (for example, Asia/Pacific) at 30 percent. That is just enough to encourage the managers to support the greater good, not just their own individual performance. We’re hopeful this will encourage managers to make the trade-offs that help both their units and Kraft as a whole.

Learning New Roles

Dave Brearton: For most functional leaders, I’d say, the reorganization has been a huge shift. Previously, those of us in the KET had big portfolios. You might have had responsibility for a large number of factories, or for the customer service group worldwide, or in marketing for consumer insights worldwide. Suddenly you’re influencing decisions, providing tool kits, or managing talent, but you’re not actually running a day-to-day operation.

Karen May: There’s an art to letting go, which is necessitated by the new structure. In their new role, these executives are like orchestra conductors. They’re not playing the instruments and they’re not writing the music. But they are making sure it all comes together. It’s not a matter of abdicating responsibility. The responsibility is huge.

Jean Spence: Whenever you go through a change like this, you do feel a certain loss. I used to have 14 direct reports, and I would spend time with each of them on project updates. Moreover, I was involved in approving the year-end performance reviews of their direct reports — about 100 R&D staff people altogether.

That’s now done on a local basis. The head of R&D in the cheese division worries about cheese. My job now is to think about the strategic projects — for instance, what’s the 10-year trend going to be, what are the implications for R&D, and how do we build that into our strategy. Before, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t able to spend much time on these questions. I’m finding the new challenge pretty interesting.

Rick Searer: It didn’t make sense to decentralize every function — and we didn’t. The model needed to be more flexible than that. We knew from long experience that there were functions, in North America in particular, that were better off centralized. We ran information technology and human resources centrally because they were more efficient that way. We kept sales central for reasons of effectiveness — our wall-to-wall sales force provides the best in-store coverage for our iconic brands.

Where does it make sense to enable each business unit to be nimble, and where does it make sense to take advantage of the scale of Kraft? Our answer to that question informs the model we have today. And the answer is still evolving.

Mark Clouse: As a business unit leader, I find that my ability to engage my organization has been aided greatly by the fact that we are setting more of the direction. And as a company, we’re doing smarter things. We’re not launching products just because someone thinks a platform that sells well in one place will sell well in another.

These problems are now gone, and we’re focusing on the things we should be focusing on: the top line and the bottom line.

Nick Meriggioli: I can offer a specific example of how things have changed for the better. Toward the end of 2008, operating income at Oscar Mayer, the North American unit I run, was a little behind plan. In the past, the sales planning team might not have had much reason to try to fill this gap. Their efforts, and much of their incentive compensation, were based on driving top-line growth.

This time, they devised a plan to focus on higher-margin products and trim trade spending. That helped us deliver the number we were looking for on the bottom line.

The new organization and the mind-set within business units of “We’re all in this together” — sales and marketing and operations and R&D, all pulling in the same direction — facilitated this tactical adjustment.

Sanjay Khosla: Fundamentally, the role of corporate executives in this new structure has been to put the right people in the right jobs, and then get out of their way. And I’d argue that by going to the business unit structure, Kraft has done one of the most profound things in its history. We’ve unleashed the potential of our people.

The Challenges of Change

Irene Rosenfeld: When you make a change of this magnitude, it can take a while for people to figure out what to do. Some embrace that responsibility faster than others. At the same time, some of the functions have actually become, in effect, too hands-off.

Dave Brearton: The center still has people who can be parachuted in to help with issues. I think we have been a bit slow to react from the center in a couple of cases, and the BUs aren’t always anxious to get our help. It’s a delicate balance, knowing when to intervene, but we’re getting there.

Jean Spence: For me, and I think for a lot of us, the biggest challenge in decentralizing is making sure we get the benefit of collaboration across the enterprise. In the past — when the top R&D people in the business units reported to me and I had to answer to Kraft’s needs — if we created a promising new cookie technology in East Hanover, N.J., I could have the VP go over and share it with our Asia/Pacific operation. His day job may have been local in New Jersey, but a very important part of his role was sharing his innovations globally.

We’ve had to make sure to reinforce that ethic even though we have a less centralized reporting structure. We have several mechanisms in place. The highest-profile example is our category executive teams. We also have collaborative networks through which we share best practices.

Nick Meriggioli: Along with accountability, people need information. Our information systems were built to provide information to the business units, but not to the categories that make up those units. The people who oversee the hot dog, cold cuts, and bacon businesses — subcategories within Oscar Mayer — need to get data on their monthly results at the same time that I get the broader business unit results. With our new implementation of SAP, we’re making progress here.

Karen May: Another thing we are still working out is how to adopt more of the shared-services model. The idea is that each function defines its services and costs; the business units, within guardrails, get to choose the level of service they need or, in the extreme, to opt in or out completely. In previous years, the business units had no such flexibility — they would just get a huge cost allocation for shared services that they didn’t understand, and that they saw as a big dump into their P&L. There wasn’t a mechanism for them to exercise any control over it.

The process for calculating costs using shared ser­vices is still not as clear as we’d like it to be. Indeed, it’s fair to say the shared-services model is still in its infancy at Kraft — each function has done it in its own way. But the problems in the broader economy should give shared services a push forward, because of the method’s potential to help us control costs.

Looking Forward

Jean Spence: Before OFG, the business units were able to say, “I missed my plan, but you left me nothing else to pull from my P&L besides marketing, and of course that’s going to make my market share go down.” They can’t say that now, because they make their own P&L decisions, and I think we’re getting more effort from them. We’re certainly getting better results.

In addition, we’re being forced to allocate costs more accurately. When we peeled out everything that people do — the functions had to list their services and what they really cost — it became clear that certain business units were getting charged disproportionately. That meant that some of our more profitable business units were subsidizing less profitable ones. I personally think the transparency will make us a better company, because now, if we can’t get the margin up in a particular area, it will force us into some tough discussions and decisions.

Dave Brearton: In 2008, in a further evolution of OFG, we gave our business units an internal cash-flow target and, with all the P&L and balance sheet levers they needed now at their disposal, they exceeded it handsomely. You’re not going to improve your cash flow unless the entire business works together. If the dots connect only at the office of the CEO, it isn’t going to work.

Rick Searer: Overall, I would say that OFG is working very well. The organization is adopting good practices and has embraced it very positively. I think it’s fair to say, though, that the flywheel is only just beginning to turn. That’s not too surprising given the dramatic change and the fact that we had a business that was in need of fixing as we entered 2007. So we are nowhere near the end state on this. One is never truly in an end state, anyway.

Irene Rosenfeld: When I talked to investors about it, they were often concerned. “You’re making this tremendous organizational change!” they’d say. But I knew in my heart that this was going to be a big enabler for us. It is a fundamental human desire to be in control of your destiny and to make the necessary decisions that will affect your performance. When we tapped into that desire, it took us to a whole new level. We’ve just about turned the motor on; now, we’re ready to make it hum.

Six Keys to a Successful Reorganization

The strategy+business team asked executives at Kraft Foods Inc. what advice they would offer a CEO or senior leader considering a similar corporate transformation. The following factors came up most consistently in their answers.

1. Start with the business strategy. Whatever else it may be intended to do, the new organizational model should primarily enable and catalyze the strategic direction of the company. If the strategy isn’t clear, the organization cannot align behind it. In Kraft’s case, the need to move decision making closer to consumers and markets was a clear strategic shift that prompted other changes and discussions.

2. Go beyond lines and boxes in designing the organization. You must have the right people, and the right reporting relationships, in any change initiative. However, that alone is not sufficient for success. Kraft went further, addressing work-flow processes, decision rights, metrics, career paths, corporate policies, incentives, and talent development. Executives credit this deeper execution for many of the benefits their change initiative has produced.

3. Understand that one size does not fit all. Any robust organizational model will apply in different ways in different situations. Decentralization of the business units was Kraft’s theme. But there were also functions, and markets, where centralization served customers — and the company — better, because Kraft was able to leverage its scale. Where this was true, as in its North American sales operation, Kraft didn’t hesitate to make exceptions.

4. Have thorough planning discussions pre-launch, to be able to move quickly later. Major change initiatives work best when key stakeholders have had a chance to articulate their concerns — and when the team involved in the decision has had the time to think through the implications of the new model and establish some guiding principles. The detailed qual­ity of these discussions can engender some initial frustration, but at Kraft they built a sense of collective ownership. The discussions also led to a road map that allowed the corporation, in the long run, to move more decisively.

5. Leverage the power of leaders. Transformation efforts that don’t have the support of senior leadership often fail in spectacular fashion. But Kraft required much more of its leaders than verbal support, asking its nine-person executive team, and then an expanded group of 120 senior managers, to hammer out the details of the new model and keep it moving forward. Kraft executives were in­volved in all major proposed changes — critiquing the changes, keeping them on track, and talking them through with other Kraft executives who might be affected.

6. Expect a multiyear journey. Even the best-planned change initiative requires some course corrections — or ends up working best when done in phases. Kraft began by moving decision making about such matters as product development and manufacturing to lower levels in the hierarchy — thus taking aim at one of the biggest perceived problems in the company, its general managers’ lack of control over key P&L levers. In 2009, Kraft is focusing on some other aspects of the new model, such as how to implement shared services. And now that the new organization structure is in place, the company is shifting its attention from rewiring the organization to building high-performing teams.

Reprint No. 09307

Author Profiles:

  • Irene Rosenfeld is chairman and chief executive officer of Kraft Foods Inc. She has spent most of her career at the company. From 2003 to 2006, she was chief executive of PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay unit.
  • Dave Brearton is executive vice president of operations and business services at Kraft Foods and was one of two executive sponsors of the company’s reorganization effort.
  • Mark Clouse is vice president and managing director of Kraft Foods Brazil.
  • Gary Conte, vice president of human resources, corporate functions, and employee services, served as one of the program leaders on Kraft Foods’ reorganization.
  • Brian Davison, vice president of strategic planning at Kraft Foods, was co–program leader, with Gary Conte, on the reorganization.
  • Lance Friedmann is senior vice president of marketing for Kraft Foods International Inc.
  • Sanjay Khosla joined Kraft Foods in 2006 as executive vice president and president of Kraft Foods International.

    Karen May, executive vice president of global human resources, was the executive sponsor, with
    Dave Brearton, of Kraft Foods’ reorganization.

    Nick Meriggioli is the president of Kraft Foods’ Oscar Mayer business unit.

    Rick Searer
    is executive vice president of Kraft Foods and president of Kraft Foods North America.

    Jean Spence is Kraft Foods’ executive vice president of research, development, and quality.

    This article was created through a “virtual roundtable”: a series of interviews edited into a single story line. Also contributing to this article was consulting writer Robert Hertzberg. For more information, contact editors@strategy-business.com.

2009年9月4日 星期五

OVERMIGHTY FINANCE LEVIES A TITHE ON GROWTH

OVERMIGHTY FINANCE LEVIES A TITHE ON GROWTH

By Benjamin Friedman 2009-09-02

The protracted debate over how to clean up after the financial crisis – and how to reform our accident-prone financial system to prevent another such episode – is stuck on the problem of how to regulate markets without undermining the benefits they bring.

What is sorely missing is any real discussion of what function our financial system is supposed to perform and how well it is doing that job – and, just as important, at what cost.

The crucial role of the financial system in a mostly free-enterprise economy is to allocate capital investment towards the most productive applications. The energetic growth and technological advance of the western economies suggest that our financial system has done this job pretty well over long periods. The role of start-up companies in this process – Apple, Microsoft, Google and many others – testifies to the success not just of our entrepreneurs, but our financial markets, too. The financially triggered Great Recession of 2008-? blemishes this record but does not wipe it away.

Aside from the recession, it is important to ask what this once- admired mechanism costs to run. If a new fertiliser offers a farmer the prospect of a higher crop yield but its price and the cost of transporting and spreading it exceeds what the additional produce will bring at market, it is a bad deal for the farmer. A financial system, which allocates scarce investment capital, is no different.

The discussion of the costs associated with our financial system has mostly focused on the paper value of its recent mistakes and what taxpayers have had to put up to supply first aid. The estimated $4,000bn of losses in US mortgage-related securities are just the surface of the story. Beneath those losses are real economic costs due to wasted resources: mortgage mis-pricing led the US to build far too many houses. Similar pricing errors in the telecoms bubble a decade ago led to millions of miles of unused fibre-optic cable being laid.

The misused resources and the output foregone due to the recession are still part of the calculation of how (in)efficient our financial system is. What has somehow escaped attention is the cost of running the system.

One part of that cost is especially apparent just now as students return to universities. For years, much of the best young talent in the western world has gone to private financial firms. At Harvard more than a quarter of our recent graduates who have taken jobs have headed into finance. The same is true elsewhere. The extent to which employees in the US financial sector are more likely to have college educations than other workers has more than tripled over the last three decades.

At the individual level, no one can blame these graduates. But at the level of the aggregate economy, we are wasting one of our most precious resources. While some part of what they do helps to allocate our investment capital more effectively, much of their activity adds no economic value.

Perversely, the largest individual returns seem to flow to those whose job is to ensure that microscopically small deviations from observable regularities in asset price relationships persist for only one millisecond instead of three. These talented and energetic young citizens could surely be doing something more useful.

The fact that they are not is itself a waste of resources. But the reason they are not – what provides the incentive that attracts so many of our best students into finance – also bears on how well our financial system is serving our economy.

In the US, both the share of all wages and salaries paid by the financial firms and those firms' share of all profits earned have risen sharply in recent decades. In the early 1950s, the “finance” sector (not counting insurance and real estate) accounted for 3 per cent of all US wages and salaries; in the current decade that share is 7 per cent. From the 1950s to the 1980s, the finance sector accounted for 10 per cent of all profits earned by US corporations; in the first half of this decade it reached 34 per cent.



These wages and profits – and the office rents, utility bills, advertising and travel expenses – are all parts of the cost of running the mechanism that allocates our economy's capital. To recall, what makes a new fertiliser a good deal for the farmer is not just that it delivers greater production per acre but that the added production is sufficient to buy the fertiliser and increase the farmer's own return.

What makes a more efficient financial system worthwhile is not just that it allows us to achieve greater production and economic growth, but that the rest of the economy benefits. The more the financial system costs to run, the higher the hurdle. Does the increased efficiency our investment allocation system delivers meet that hurdle? We simply do not know.

Economic decisions are supposed to turn on weighing costs and benefits. It is time for some serious discussion of what our financial system is actually delivering to our economy and what it costs to do that.

The writer is an economics professor at Harvard University and author of The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth

金融业繁荣的代价

作者:哈佛大学经济学教授本杰明•弗里德曼(Benjamin Friedman)为英国《金融时报》撰稿 2009-09-02


金融危机过后该如何收拾残局?应如何改革我们易出事故的金融体系,使类似事件不再发生?这场持久辩论卡在了如何监管市场而不致损害市场所带来好处的问题上。

我们极度缺失的是有关下列问题的严肃讨论:我们的金融体系理应执行哪种功能,其完成效果如何,以及同样重要的是,成本有多高。

在一个主要基于自由企业的经济体里,金融体系的关键作用在于将资本投资配置给最具生产力的领域。西方经济体充满活力的增长和技术进步表明,在很长时 期内,我们的金融体系在这方面做得相当出色。苹果(Apple)、微软(Microsoft)、谷歌(Google)及其它众多初创公司在此过程中的作 用,不仅证明了企业家的成功,也证明了我们的金融市场的成功。由金融领域触发的2008年大衰退(Great Recession)给这项记录蒙上了污点,但并不能将其彻底抹去。

除了衰退,询问一下这个曾备受称赞的机制的运作成本也很重要。如果一种新式肥料有可能让农民提高农作物产量,但肥料价格、以及运输和施肥的成本高于额外产出在市场上的收益,对于农民而言,这个买卖就不划算。配置稀缺投资资本的金融体系亦是如此。

有关金融体系成本的讨论,大多聚焦于金融体系最近所犯错误的纸面价值,以及纳税人必须拿出多少钱来进行紧急救助。美国抵押贷款相关证券的亏损估计高 达4万亿美元,这不过是表象。在这些亏损背后,是由资源浪费造成的实际经济损失:对抵押贷款错误定价,致使美国建造了过多的房屋。10年前,电信泡沫中类 似的定价错误,让美国铺设了数百万英里的闲置光纤电缆。

在计算我们金融体系的效率时,被滥用的资源和因衰退而放弃的产出仍是其中的一部分。没有引起人们注意的是这一体系的运作成本。

目前,随着大学生开始返校,其中一部分成本体现得尤为明显。多年来,西方世界最优秀的年轻人才中,大多供职于私人金融公司。哈佛大学 (Harvard)最近就业的毕业生,有四分之一以上流入了金融业。其它学校的情况也是如此。过去30年来,相对于其他行业,美国金融业员工受过高等教育 的可能性提高了两倍以上。

从个人层面讲,谁都无权指责这些毕业生。但从总体经济层面上看,我们正在浪费我们最宝贵的资源之一。尽管这些毕业生做的部分工作有助于更有效地配置我们的投资资本,但大部分工作都没有增加经济价值。

有悖常理的是,最高的个人回报似乎流向了这样一些人:他们的工作是确保资产价格关系与可观察到的规则性的细微偏差只会持续千分之一秒,而不是千分之三秒。这些才华横溢、精力充沛的年轻人,本可以做一些更有用的事情。

他们没有这样做,本身就是一种资源浪费。但他们没有这样做的原因——为吸引我们这么多最优秀学生进入金融业提供了动机——也与金融体系为我们经济服务的好坏有关。

在美国,金融公司支付的薪资总额以及赚取的利润在总体经济中的比例,最近几十年都有大幅提升。上世纪50年代初,“金融”业(不包括保险和房地产 业)占美国薪资总额的3%;而本世纪以来,这一比例为7%。从50年代至80年代,在美国企业赚取的所有利润中,金融业占10%;而2000年至2005 年间,这一比例达到34%。

这些薪资和利润——以及写字楼租金、水电费、广告费和差旅费——都属于我们经济资本配置机制的运作成本。回到上文的问题上,要让一种新化肥对于农民来说很划算,它不仅要能提高单位产量,增加的产出还要足以购买化肥,并提高农民自身的收入。

一个更有效的金融体系要想有价值,不仅要让我们能够获得更高的产出和经济增长率,还要让其它经济部门获益。金融体系的运作成本越高,障碍就越大。我们的投资配置体系所提高的效率,能够跨越这一障碍吗?我们真的不知道。

经济决策理应权衡成本与效益。我们是时候展开一些严肃的讨论了,看看我们的金融体系到底给经济带来了什么,以及这样做付出了什么代价。

译者/何黎

本文作者是哈佛大学经济学教授,著有《经济增长的道德后果》(The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth)



旧车 |报废奖金:过大于功 (德国经济)

德国经济 | 2009.09.04

旧车报废奖金:过大于功

根据联邦经济与出口监控局的消息,德国政府为旧车报废提供的奖励补贴已经告罄。从今年一月起,德国政府拿出总计50亿欧元,为每辆旧车提供2500欧元的 报废买新车奖金,这相当于促销200万辆新车。让人没料到的是,消费者对旧车报废奖金趋之若鹜。这一措施暂时缓解了经济危机之下汽车行业的危难处境,但是 旧车报废奖金用完了之后该这么办?专家们担心,明年恐怕将出现新车销售急剧下滑的局面。

旧车报废奖金是否本身就是垃圾?联邦政府本来想通过此举促进对新车的市场需求,从而为德国汽车工业打上一针强心剂,但是结果却只能解一时之 痛。专家们认为,旧车报废奖金只能解除燃眉之急,而不具有可持续性的功效。尽管它作为刺激需求的工具起到了一定作用,提高了汽车销量,但是明年将不会出现 这样的消费增长。消费者提前购买了汽车,手头可能就没有了钱在其它领域去消费。贝尔吉施-格拉德巴赫高等专科大学的汽车行业专家斯蒂凡.布拉策尔指出:

"肯定是这样的,一个人买了辆汽车,就不能把这笔钱用来买沙发了,这是显而易见的。就是说,汽车工业通过这项刺激消费政策得到的好处比其它行业要多。"

旧车报废奖金:2500欧元Bildunterschrift: 旧车报废奖金:2500欧元

通过这一措施在德国制造更多的就业机会的目标也没有实现。更糟糕的是,在一些汽车修理厂,已经出现了就业岗位略有减少的倾向,因为送修车辆减少了。 二手车商家也抱怨生意开始减少。旧车报废奖金实际上是补贴了一些国外汽车厂家的就业岗位,因为它主要促进的是小型汽车的销售,因为那些靠报废奖金才买汽车 的人通常不会是奔驰或者宝马高级汽车的买主。根据最新的统计,外国汽车厂家在德国汽车市场的占有率在过去五个月里上升到了45%,而德国的汽车出口则下降 了38%。布拉策尔说:

"很多人购买了汽车,他们是比计划提前进行了消费,因此2010年就不会再买。旧车报废奖金是典型的价格扭曲,我认为汽车行业和汽车销售商将在今后几年里吞咽它的苦果。"

旧车报废Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: 旧车报废

尽管如此,布拉策尔主持的"2008/2009全球汽车厂商业绩比较调查报告"显示,旧车报废奖金还是在一开始给德国汽车工业带来了一时的繁荣。今 年头五个月,德国汽车销售量同比增长了5%,其中大众汽车公司是最大的受益者。起亚、大众和标志等汽车厂靠小型车生产较好地抵御了经济危机带来的冲击。从 全球范围内来看,旧车报废奖金只是把汽车工业的萧条步伐减慢了。今年前五个月,德国产汽车的销售额同比下降了近三分之一,即减少到一万亿欧元。布拉策尔 说:

"总的来说,它是一个也有一些积极效果的消费刺激政策。我们的调查报告显示,旧车报废奖金至少暂时阻止了全球性的汽车市场下滑趋势。但它是人为的刺激,也就是说,实际上的需求和需求水平是另外一回事。"

旧车报废Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: 旧车报废

布拉策尔预言说,最晚到明年,汽车厂家就会发现,价格扭曲改变了买家的心理,现在大家已经不愿意花太多的钱购买新车了。汽车厂家必须大幅度在价格上打折扣才行。布拉策尔说:

"我相信,从长期来看,旧车报废奖金是过大于功。特别是它带来的价格扭曲效应已经深入消费者的观念中,这将使得明年汽车厂家的打折率将更高。"

旧车报废奖金的告罄也可能会给想买汽车的人带来好处。调查显示,目前新车销售的打折幅度迅速增加,例如大众高尔夫Trendline车型如果算上旧 车报废奖金的话,打折幅度已经达到40.6%,欧宝Corsa Selection车型的打折幅度则达到了46.2%。汽车行业专家费尔丁南·杜登霍弗尔预言说,"九月份起汽车销售商将展开新的一轮折扣大战,只不过这 一轮没有国家的补贴而已。"

作者:Jennifer Giwi/潇阳

责编:乐然

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