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

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

Time for a new trope.(EDITOR'S NOTE)(Editorial)
September 1, 2006... CNBC's "Street Signs" asked me to appear on their program commenting on a Slate.com article, "The CEO Real Estate Scam," in which the author, Michelle Leder, expressed outrage that some companies were offering their CEOs "loss protection" and...

White-collar witch hunt or failure of nerve.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2006... Your article hits on a number of points I have been making for some time. Today I started drafting a letter to my Congressmen and the Speaker of the House (I sit on a board with him) to communicate my deep concern over the unbalanced...

Going Dutch: as the company's first woman and non-Dutch CEO, Nancy McKinstry was both an insider and an outsider.(TURNAROUNDS)(Interview)(Company overview)
September 1, 2006... For years Wolters Kluwer, the $5-billion Amsterdam-based publisher of law, medical and professional books and journals, had a basic strategy: Buy a family-run publishing company, strip out a lot of costs, generate a lot of cash, and buy the...

Data duty: federal courts insist companies police their recordkeeping.(COURTS AND THE LAW)
September 1, 2006... STARTING DECEMBER 1, the federal courts will impose new rules of procedure on business litigants requiring that companies create, handle and store their business records with one eye on their business needs and the other on the legal system....

Thorns & roses.(CEO WATCH)
September 1, 2006... THORN... * To federal judge ANNA DIGGS TAYLOR, a Carter era appointee, for preening "there are no hereditary Kings in America," in her 44-page decision to strike down NSA's warrantless wiretaps as unconstitutional, apparently oblivious of...

Confidence suffers again.(CEO CONFIDENCE INDEX)
September 1, 2006... CONTINUING a fall for the third month straight, Chief Executive's CEO Confidence Index dropped by 4.7 points to 157.9, according to 255 top executives surveyed this month. The drop, while not huge, continues a marked fall from May, when the...

Inside M & A banking: how do you protect a CEO from paying too much?(UNCOMMON WISDOM)
September 1, 2006... The relationship between CEOs and investment bankers is like that of medieval popes with Knights Templar, the famous order of warrior monks who raised their own revenue and were a power that the Church as much feared for its independence as...

A dose of telemedicine: can use of broadband control health care costs?(THOUGHT LEADER)
September 1, 2006... Rising health care is no longer an annoying item on the expense line; it is now a basic threat to overall company performance. Some companies try to avoid the obligation through the use of temporary employees or simply moving more of the costs...

CEO transform thyself: in turning Textron around, Lewis Campbell found it necessary to turn himself around.
September 1, 2006... Performance improvement is on every CEO's agenda and most reckon they have a clear idea about how best to pursue it. Details in the playbook may differ from company to company but the broad strokes are familiar to most leaders. Every now and...

The essential epiphany: what it's like working every day in a "Harvard Business School" case study.(Q & A)(Lewis Campbell - Textron)(Interview)
September 1, 2006... Before he could transform the company, Lewis Campbell had to transform himself. The 60-year-old native of Winchester, VA, who became Textron's CEO in 1998, talks about why it became necessary and what he had to do to make it happen. Why...

New deans, new directions: changes at the top bring innovation to the traditionally staid world of top business schools.(EDUCATION)
September 1, 2006... Business school deans once cloistered themselves in ivy-covered towers within serene university settings, isolated from real world pressures. But no longer. Today, the top job at the world's top schools presents challenges akin to those faced...

Lessons from the Wal-Mart wars: why CEOs should take a hard line against programs that compensate businesses and workers who can't compete.(TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENTS)
September 1, 2006... Most CEOs know that today's labor disputes are just a pale reflection of the huge nationwide strikes and lockouts of 100 years ago. The decline in union membership over the past 50 years shows that modern workers no longer buy into the union...

Do hedge fund activists have you in their sights? You pick up the phone one day and the caller says, "hello, I'm your biggest shareholder." Now what?(MARKETS AND FINANCE)
September 1, 2006... Despite media coverage to the contrary, activism is not necessarily a drawn out adversarial process. The activist fund, like all investors, is interested in seeing its holding appreciate and believes that it has a plan that (in the portfolio...

Realizing the high performance enterprise: what are the commonalities among companies that achieve enduring success? And how do you instill them at your organization?(ROUNDTABLE)(Lawrence D. Mason - The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company )(Sherrill W. Hudson - TECO Energy)(Vernon Ellis- Accenture)
September 1, 2006... Mention high performance enterprise and the usual suspects come to mind. Microsoft, for its culture of innovation; Wal-Mart, for its revolutionary distribution system; Toyota, for its production system; and Dell, for continually streamlining...

Technology's impact on branding: in a tech-driven customer world, CEOs need to stay on top of brand building.(MARKETING)
September 1, 2006... The scene: somewhere in the advertising future, between science fiction and science fact. You look up at the moon and staring back is the Coca-Cola logo. Your daughter smiles and her braces flash the word "Crest." Your rental car is free...

P & G's A.G. Lafley honored.(CEO OF THE YEAR DINNER)(Procter & Gamble Co.- Alan G. Lafley)
September 1, 2006... After the closing bell on July 12, more than 200 of America's business leaders and their guests filled the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to honor the 2006 Chief Executive of the Year, A.G. Lafley. In assuming the title, Lafley joined a...

Fit to be CEO: how some CEOs link fitness and performance.(EXECUTIVE LIFE)
September 1, 2006... I was in Hawaii giving a speech for the leadership of Washington Mutual Bank. As is usual in my case, after the speech I went to the fitness center for my daily aerobic exercise. To my surprise, working out next to me on a treadmill was Kerry...

Protecting your assets: your life is complicated enough. Here are some ways to put your mind at ease.(EXECUTIVE LIFE)
September 1, 2006... In "Divorce in the Workplace" (June 2006), we described Jack Welch's woes and Gary Wendt's folly in their divorce situations, coterminous affairs and financial settlements. We strongly recommended a prenuptial agreement in order to protect the...

Whose ox was Gore-d? How to profit from the coming apocalypse.(FLIP SIDE)(Column)
September 1, 2006... Global warming has now officially joined the ranks of topics it is no longer acceptable to make light of. Due to the stunning popularity of Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth, which looks an awful lot like those public service documentaries...

Time to remove our SOX.(Sarbanes-Oxley Act )(Editorial)
September 1, 2006... IN A MOVE INTENDED to ensure the future competitiveness of U.S. financial markets, a newly formed commission will recommend changes to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other regulatory mandates. "The Committee on Capital Markets Regulation," will be...

Politics of the top job.(Hewlett-Packard Co.- Patricia Dunn)(due diligence, prevention of fraud)(Editorial)
September 1, 2006... REVELATIONS that Hewlett-Packard spied on its directors and nine journalists in order to plug a boardroom leak left chairman Patricia Dunn taking the fall. For a company to lose one chief (Carly Fiorina) in a board-related tussle may be...