Chief Executive (U.S.) articles from July 2006

Chief Executive (U.S.) archives from July 2006

The real thing.(EDITOR'S NOTE)
July 1, 2006... A Coca-Cola employee and several accomplices managed to pirate a number of confidential documents and a sample of a new product from the company's Atlanta headquarters and tried to sell them to rival PepsiCo for $1.5 million. The scam was...

Where will engineers of the future come from?(FEEDBACK)
July 1, 2006... Pradeep Khosla's article, "Keeping U.S. Leadership in Engineering" ("Thought Leader," April/May), attempts to make light of the fact that the U.S. is suffering from a very serious decline in engineering enrollees and engineering graduates from...

White-collar witch hunt or failure of nerve.(FEEDBACK)
July 1, 2006... You can assert that Sarbox is less than perfect and that it was passed in haste. But you know quite well if the legislative process had been more drawn out, the eventual result would have been some toothless clauses that would have allowed the...

CEO in the ditch.(PRODUCTIVITY)
July 1, 2006... At a "town hall" meeting with employees of St. Louis-based Insituform, a $600 million firm that repairs sewer, water and other underground piping systems, someone asked CEO Tom Rooney, "What do you people in corporate do? Aren't you just...

Don't criminalize business judgment.(GOVERNANCE)(Interview)
July 1, 2006... Steve Odland, the 46-year-old CEO of Office Depot, chairs the Business Roundtable's Corporate Governance Task Force. A survey of Roundtable members undertaken by the Task Force found that CEOs are embracing a number of accountability issues...

Thorns & roses.(CEO WATCH)
July 1, 2006... THORN... * BOB NARDELLI. Home Depot's CEO presided over an AGM with not a single board member in attendance apart from himself. In a post-SOX world, isn't this the sort of thing that isn't supposed to happen anymore? ROSE... ...

CEO Confidence slides.(CEO CONFIDENCE)
July 1, 2006... TURMOIL in the Middle East and the knock-on effect hitting world stock markets finally got to CEOs. The CEO Index and all component indices fell this month. Overall, CEO Confidence declined 3.1 points in July to 162.6, almost 20 points below...

The numbers.(CEO WATCH)(Renewable energy)(Brief article)(Statistical data)
July 1, 2006... [GRAPHIC OMITTED] [GRAPHIC OMITTED] What is the biggest concern about renewable energy and the green movement? Global warming (carbon emissions) 27% Poor economic trade-off between developing...

What M & A bankers would rather I not write: methods that manipulate CEOs to pay more.(UNCOMMON WISDOM)
July 1, 2006... If you are a CEO, you were my target. For more than 10 years, I ran a firm whose business was to sell small- and medium-sized companies, and to sell them for the very highest possible prices. During that time, we closed over 1,200 M & A...

What is effective leadership today? A new study finds collaboration prized over heroics.(THOUGHT LEADER)
July 1, 2006... The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) conducted research with over 350 mid- to upper-level managers across the globe to explore the current and future states of leadership. According to 84.3 percent of leaders studied, the definition of...

Basic training for the global marketplace: the next generation needs to develop its international knowledge.(THOUGHT LEADER)
July 1, 2006... As a nation, we are losing our edge in science and technology. The Business Roundtable, National Academy of Sciences and others have sounded the alarm in recent reports, issuing warnings and calling for action. The most frequently invoked...

Act II: Martin Sullivan got the CEO seat at AIG due to its regulatory crisis. But can he take the financial giant to the next level?(Cover story)(Company overview)
July 1, 2006... Imagine trying to fill Hank Aaron's shoes. Or Wayne Gretzky's skates. Or assuming Lawrence Olivier's stage presence. Your predecessor is a household name. You are not. He also had a terrific run-up over 38 years. You had to spend the first year...

Private matters: before you gamble on going the private equity route, here are a few things to consider.(FINANCE)
July 1, 2006... Follow the headlines in the Wall Street Journal and you might think private equity barbarians such as Black-stone Group, Thomas H. Lee Partners, and perennial marquee star KKR are privatizing corporate America, commandeering the capital markets...

Next, outsource all the lawyers: convinced your offshoring options are confined to call centers and IT? Think again.(TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENTS)
July 1, 2006... Tech support, financial services and retailing led the wave of business services increasingly being sourced overseas. But the offshoring effect is now rippling outward and upward to encompass more sophisticated--and more profitable--work. Now,...

John Barth: steering solutions; Can Johnson Controls stay on a growth course with the Big Three foundering?(MANAGEMENT)
July 1, 2006... When you've got a CEO as willing to jump on an airplane as Johnson Controls' John Barth, no corner of the world is safe from his inspection. So in 2003, when the Barth clan was connecting through a Midwestern airport on their way back to...

Connecting with customers: does the performance you measure and reward truly match up with your customer care goals?(MARKETING)
July 1, 2006... The perennial cry of CEOs around the globe is that understanding what customers need and want and delivering on it is their A-1 mission. Yet customers are having a harder time than ever getting service from the companies they do business with,...

Pay for performance: beating "best practices"; How to ensure that you reward for real profit--not for empty metrics.(COMPENSATION)
July 1, 2006... Widespread criticism of CEO pay packages have spurred directors to engage in a diligent search for best practices. This vigilance is transforming the process of executive compensation design, administration and oversight at many major public...

Solving airspace gridlock: a controversial plan aims to address the capacity issues facing today's aviation infrastructure.(BUSINESS TRAVEL)
July 1, 2006... A war is about to break out over the future of aviation infrastructure--and you will soon be urged to choose sides. At stake is the future of our aviation system, which currently faces a crisis of capacity. And at issue is a controversial...

Working with a ghost: business book publishers love CEOs. They have the one thing every publisher covets--a platform.(EXECUTIVE LIFE)
July 1, 2006... When a CEO writes a book, everybody starts reading. Employees, suppliers, competitors, investors, even the media. That's why Warner Books offered a $7 million advance for Jack Welch's memoir, Jack: Straight from the Gut, and ordered an initial...

The best golf courses (you've probably never heard about): while not entirely unknown, several are hidden treasures.(EXECUTIVE LIFE)
July 1, 2006... They don't have the name recognition of Pine Valley or Pebble Beach. And most golfers couldn't tell you who laid them out or where they are located. But to the cognoscenti, they are some of the finest courses in the land--artfully designed,...

Crashing boards: telling the real scoundrels from the fakes.(FLIP SIDE)
July 1, 2006... Investors consistently ask why directors at Enron, Tyco, Adel-phi and a host of other scandal-plagued corporations did not take steps to prevent the carnage wrought by their megalomaniac CEOs. For the answer to this question, we must look at...

The other immigration problem.(EDITORIAL)
July 1, 2006... FORGET OUTSOURCING. The country's real immigration challenge is talent insourcing. While the debate over illegal immigration careens off the tracks, a far more critical discussion over reform is barely creeping forward. The emotional subject of...

Snap decision on stock options.(EDITORIAL)
July 1, 2006... AS IF COMPENSATION wasn't politicized enough, the scandal over backdating of option grants has renewed doubts about the efficacy of this form of compensation and conflated a number of other issues involving the internal controls provision of...