Chief Executive (U.S.) articles from July 2004

Chief Executive (U.S.) archives from July 2004

Who's winning the game?(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
July 1, 2004... I confess that throughout my many years in various forms of international business journalism, I have tried to analyze economic activity in national terms. I have tried to analyze what a particular company or industry is achieving or not...

Succession at Coca-Cola.(Feedback)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... Sure, it's feasible that Coca-Cola's board acted maladroitly in tapping retiree Neville Isdell as the company's new CEO ("Directors Run Amok at Coke," Final Word, June). But absent hard evidence of what went on behind closed doors, isn't it...

CEO of the Year.(Feedback)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... Fred Smith is a brilliant choice as CEO of the Year ("Leader of the Pack," Cover Story, June). When he filed his original flight plan, a lot of people said it couldn't be done, but he transformed a plain brown, boring business into a hot purple...

Corrections.(Correction Notice)
July 1, 2004... An article about radical turnarounds in the June issue misidentified one of the moving companies owned by SIRVA Inc. It is Global Van Lines, not United Van Lines. An article in May about the trend of publicly traded companies going private...

Darts & Roses.(CEO Watch)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... ROSE... * VERIZON'S IVAN SEIDENBERG. Now that the legal fight is over, Seidenberg is pulling the trigger on a massive fiber-optic roll-out to the home. Finally, a broadband solution. Go, baby, go. DART... * MARC BENIOFF. The...

Better to switch than fight?(Boardroom Battles)
July 1, 2004... ANOTHER PROXY SEASON has wound down and a record number of shareholder resolutions were filed. As of early June, when the bulk of annual meetings had been held, more than 1,100 resolutions had been filed, according to the Investor...

Darts & Roses.(CEO Watch)
July 1, 2004... ROSE... * AUGUST A. BUSCH III, for winning the first big takeover battle in China. Anheuser beat SABMiller for control of the Harbin Brewery Group. Who said all these guys could do was make bikini commercials? Bud for the billions! ...

Thailand wants Bill. Tiger, too.(Global)
July 1, 2004... THAILAND, long favored by scruffy backpackers and pot-bellied sex adventurers, is embarking on an image enhancement. The country is trying to draw higher-quality tourists of the CEO type by offering a special program: For $25,000, you get a...

A note of caution, but hiring to continue.(CEO Confidence Index)
July 1, 2004... AFTER A SURGE of confidence in May, CEOs appeared a bit more tentative in June. Energy costs and the certainty of higher interest rates figured in their more cautious tone. But significantly, and in a break with past trends, CEOs are showing no...

Making consumer-directed health care work: CEOs must gradually change employee expectations.(Chief Concern)
July 1, 2004... When it comes to health care, chief executives are caught in a bind. The costs continue to rise at alarming rates, yet employees are demanding a continuation of longtime benefits. Many CEOs, at wit's end, seem ready to embrace new solutions....

The mounting assault by trial lawyers, Inc.: CEOs must help drain the litigation swamp.(Thought Leader)(Trial Lawyers, Inc.)
July 1, 2004... The risks posed by an out-of-control civil justice system are mounting. Managing these risks is no longer a peripheral function for a CEO. After all, the tort process can distort every aspect of a company's business. Like any corporate counsel...

How CEOs reinvent their companies: mere execution isn't enough. You need game-changing ideas.(Thought Leader)
July 1, 2004... Reinvent or die. Business magazines (including this one) are full of such axioms. But they contain a measure of truth. The challenge of continually reinventing your company to survive in a business environment where change comes faster than...

The CIO's rise and fall: more CEOs are asking their chief information officers to report to the CFO. Can it come back to hurt their companies?(C-Suite Confidential)(Chief Information Officer)(Chief Financial Officer)
July 1, 2004... It was a big deal for Blue Rhino CEO Billy Prim when Wal-Mart named his company's global sourcing division as the retail chain's International Supplier of the Year in 2002. Prim had just completed a grueling, multiyear overhaul of Blue Rhino, a...

Chrysler fights back: Dieter Zetsche has stopped the bleeding. Now Chrysler must go on the offensive in the most brutal auto market in history.(Cover Story)
July 1, 2004... In a video that has become a hit inside the Chrysler Group, CEO Dieter Zetsche is driving a red Grand Caravan minivan around the Detroit area, demonstrating the vehicle's versatility. "During the week, I'm the CEO of a Fortune 500 company,"...

Keeping the pipeline full: thanks to its indefatigable CEO, Novartis's R & D effort is paying off.(Innovation)(Food and Drug Administration)
July 1, 2004... Soon after his Swiss pharmaceutical company, Sandoz, merged with rival Ciba-Geigy in 1996 to form Novartis, CEO Daniel Vasella set out to meet some of his researchers. One of them told him about a drug compound languishing in Ciba-Geigy's labs...

Flex forward: Flextronics' Michael Marks says that outsourcing can only get much, much bigger.(Global)
July 1, 2004... For Michael Marks, outsourcing is not a dirty word. "It's ridiculous," he says of the backlash against moving U.S. jobs overseas. "Outsourcing is good for America. The unemployment rate is lower than when I got started in this business." ...

The Wal-Mart of auto sales? AutoNation's Mike Jackson has big plans for the car retailer.(Management)
July 1, 2004... Come south, young man. That was the siren song Mike Jackson heard from the desperate lips of Wayne Huizenga, the entrepreneur who built Waste Management and Blockbuster Entertainment into behemoths. Huizenga's latest venture, consolidating...

Building a nation.(Management)(AutoNation)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... September 1999 -- Mike Jackson begins tenure as CEO five months after AutoNation is founded. November 1999 -- Company announces exit from rental car business; spins off Alamo and National seven months later. December 1999 -- Exits...

Back to B-school: CEOs are turning to custom-designed programs at top schools to educate the senior ranks.(Education)
July 1, 2004... Bill Franz recalls the moment with clarity. As director of training and development for Osram Sylvania, the global lighting company, he had just spent about $400,000 to put four teams of six managers through the firm's Global Managers...

For big spenders, a global program: through a Barcelona school, companies send executives to get an education on the road.(IESE)(China Europe International Business School)
July 1, 2004... The IESE Business School in Barcelona couldn't be in a more picturesque setting, in the foothills of the Pyrenees overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Its academic stripes are also becoming known, thanks to an innovative, global executive MBA...

Protecting trade secrets in China: how CEOs must build intellectual property strategies.(Technology)
July 1, 2004... Despite China's low wage rates and massive, fast-growing markets, many companies are cautious in setting up operations there because of a very real danger: China remains an intellectual property jungle, full of risks. It has virtually no trade...

Splendor at sea: the Queen Mary 2 evokes the golden age of timeless and luxurious transatlantic travel.(Travel)
July 1, 2004... As the Queen Mary 2 made her way out of New York Harbor in the gathering dusk, the venerable Queen Elizabeth 2 sailed by her side. Amid fireworks, circling helicopters and thousands of flashbulbs from lower Manhattan and New Jersey, I stood on...

Course of history: at the Architects Club, a lesson in design awaits around every bend.(Golf)(Architects Golf Club)
July 1, 2004... Over the past decade and a half, a curious trend has reared its head in the world of golf course design. Classic holes from the storied links of Scotland and Ireland and fabled venues across the United States have been painstakingly reproduced...

Diesel: the smarter alternative? As gas prices rise, new high-peformance diesels bear attention.(Wheels)
July 1, 2004... It seems safe to say that the soaring price of gasoline isn't much of a factor when a CEO goes shopping for a luxury car. But that could change with the arrival of a new breed of diesel cars that offer vastly better fuel economy than equivalent...

This won't take a nanosecond: next up in the hype market: the nanofication of America.(Flip Side)
July 1, 2004... The time has finally come for us all to start thinking seriously about nanotechnology, even though very few of us have any idea what it is. Nanotechnology, as The New York Times recently defined it, is "a broad term for technical advances in...

Can politics be fixed?(Editorial)(Editorial)
July 1, 2004... WITH THE POLITICAL SEASON upon us, the temptation in coming months will be to argue that one political party or one candidate for president has the right answers for CEOs and the business world. Before the madness begins, it might be...

Let airlines fail.(Editorial)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... CEOS OF MAJOR AIRLINES have gone hat in hand to Congress, asking for billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. They're blaming high oil prices and security costs for their financial plights, but their problems are far more deeply rooted. (See...