Showing posts with label special business topics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label special business topics. Show all posts
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
An example of take over strategy by issuing shares/ VON Roll and Finck family
Von Stahl zu von Finck
Einst war Von Roll als Stahlunternehmen ein Begriff. 1996 wurde der Stahlbereich mit von Moos zu Swiss Steel fusioniert. Die restliche Von Roll agierte unglücklich und stand 2003 nahe am Konkurs. Nach einer umfassenden Restrukturierung besteht die Gesellschaft nun mehrheitlich aus Geschäften der ehemaligen Isola-Werke, die 1987 aus Gründen der Diversifikation gekauft wurden. Von Roll ist heute spezialisiert auf die Produktion von Isolationsbändern, Kupferdrähten, Harzen sowie Lacken für Generatoren und Motoren. Im Angebot sind auch Verbundstoffe für verschiedene industrielle Anwendungen.
An der Spitze der Gesellschaft kam es Mitte 2007 zu einem Machtwechsel. Die deutsche Milliardärsfamilie um August von Finck erhöhte die Beteiligung an Von Roll von 21 auf 31,6%. Ziel dieser Aktion war es, an einer ausserordentlichen Generalversammlung eine Kapitalerhöhung um 323 Mio. Fr. durchzubringen und die Mehrheit im Verwaltungsrat zu erreichen. Beides gelang (vgl. FuW Nr. 63 vom 15. August 2007). Als Verwaltungsratspräsident und CEO übernahm Thomas Limberger die Verantwortung - Limberger war zuvor CEO von OC Oerlikon.
Die aufgelegte Kapitalerhöhung wurde von den Aktionären nicht voll gezeichnet. Von Finck sprang in die Lücke, überschritt damit die Marke von einem Drittel des Kapitals und musste in der Folge den anderen Aktionären ein Übernahmeangebot unterbreiten. Obwohl die Offerte absichtlich niedrig tief angesetzt war, wurden dem Grossaktionär fast 30% des restlichen Kapitals angedient. Dadurch erhöhte sich die Beteiligung der Familie von Finck auf beachtliche 63,1%.
DH
Einst war Von Roll als Stahlunternehmen ein Begriff. 1996 wurde der Stahlbereich mit von Moos zu Swiss Steel fusioniert. Die restliche Von Roll agierte unglücklich und stand 2003 nahe am Konkurs. Nach einer umfassenden Restrukturierung besteht die Gesellschaft nun mehrheitlich aus Geschäften der ehemaligen Isola-Werke, die 1987 aus Gründen der Diversifikation gekauft wurden. Von Roll ist heute spezialisiert auf die Produktion von Isolationsbändern, Kupferdrähten, Harzen sowie Lacken für Generatoren und Motoren. Im Angebot sind auch Verbundstoffe für verschiedene industrielle Anwendungen.
An der Spitze der Gesellschaft kam es Mitte 2007 zu einem Machtwechsel. Die deutsche Milliardärsfamilie um August von Finck erhöhte die Beteiligung an Von Roll von 21 auf 31,6%. Ziel dieser Aktion war es, an einer ausserordentlichen Generalversammlung eine Kapitalerhöhung um 323 Mio. Fr. durchzubringen und die Mehrheit im Verwaltungsrat zu erreichen. Beides gelang (vgl. FuW Nr. 63 vom 15. August 2007). Als Verwaltungsratspräsident und CEO übernahm Thomas Limberger die Verantwortung - Limberger war zuvor CEO von OC Oerlikon.
Die aufgelegte Kapitalerhöhung wurde von den Aktionären nicht voll gezeichnet. Von Finck sprang in die Lücke, überschritt damit die Marke von einem Drittel des Kapitals und musste in der Folge den anderen Aktionären ein Übernahmeangebot unterbreiten. Obwohl die Offerte absichtlich niedrig tief angesetzt war, wurden dem Grossaktionär fast 30% des restlichen Kapitals angedient. Dadurch erhöhte sich die Beteiligung der Familie von Finck auf beachtliche 63,1%.
DH
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
watch makers in china
Bald eine Luxusuhr made in Hong Kong»
Der Hongkonger Uhrwerkproduzent Peace Mark wächst mit Traditionsmarken in China - Standortvorteile
Von Ernst Herb
Hongkong
Mitte September ist der an der Hongkonger Börse kotierte Uhrenkonzern Peace Mark, dem die Bieler Luxusmarke Milus gehört, durch den Kauf der Schweizer SMT Holding weltweit zum drittgrössten Produzenten in der Uhrenbranche aufgestiegen. «Ein Wolf ist in das Hühnerhaus der Schweizer Uhrenindustrie eingedrungen», zitierte damals die Westschweizer Tageszeitung «Le Temps» einen Konkurrenten aus dem Kanton Neuchatel. Der CEO von Peace Mark, Tommy Leung Yung, sieht das allerdings nicht so. Mit der Übernahme der STM Holding, zu der der Quarzwerkhersteller Swissebauches in China sowie die schweizerischen Hersteller mechanischer Werke Soprod und SFT gehören, sei das langfristige Überleben dieser Unternehmen gesichert worden, erklärt er im Gespräch mit «Finanz und Wirtschaft».
SMT, die in der Schweiz rund 200 und in China weitere 1400 Personen beschäftigt, werde in der Schweiz keine Arbeitsplätze abbauen und vor allem nicht ihre Schweizer Identität ablegen. «In der Uhrenindustrie sind Gefühle wichtig, denn nur so kann unterschiedlichen Bedürfnissen der Kunden Rechnung getragen werden», sagt Leung. Dass Peace Mark ihren Töchtern grosse Freiheiten lasse, beweise der Bieler Luxusuhrenhersteller Milus, der seine Autonomie behalten konnte.
Potenzial voll ausschöpfen
Dank einer kräftigen Finanzspritze können SMT und ihre Töchter in Zukunft ihr Potenzial voll ausschöpfen, ist Leung überzeugt. Peace Mark wiederum, die ihr Hauptquartier in Hongkong hat und weltweit mehr als 10 000 Angestellte beschäftigt, sichere sich mit der Übernahme eine stabile Versorgung mit qualitativ hochstehenden Uhrwerken - und das zu wettbewerbsfähigen Preisen. Leung meint, dass sein Unternehmen auch in den nächsten Jahren offen für Übernahmen oder strategische Partnerschaften sein werde. Im Juli hat Peace Mark vom chinesischen Staat 51% des grössten chinesischen Produzenten mechanischer Uhrwerke übernommen.
Zusammen mit dem Verwaltungsratspräsidenten der Gruppe, Patrick Chau Cham Wong, hält Leung 39% der Aktien Peace Mark. Dem Duo gehört auch die Finanzgesellschaft A-1 Business, die SMT übernommen hat und auf deren Kauf Peace Mark eine unbefristet laufende und vertraglich abgesicherte Option hält. Diese Konstruktion wurde gewählt, um den Aktienkurs von Peace Mark nicht zu belasten. In den vergangenen 52 Wochen sind die Titel mehr als 120% gestiegen. Sobald SMT saniert sei, soll sie juristisch voll in die Gruppe eingegliedert werden.
Mit der Übernahme der Schweizer Gruppe hat das Hongkonger Unternehmen, dessen Börsenwert 12,6 Mrd. HK-$ (1,6 Mrd. $) beträgt, die Strategie bestätigt, nicht nur ein vertikal integrierter Uhrenkonzern zu sein, sondern vor allem auch die Stellung im höheren Qualitätssegment auszubauen. Peace Mark, die unter diesem Namen keine eigenen Uhren vertreibt, ist vom Design über die Produktion bis zum Marketing und Verkauf von Uhren in der gesamten Wertschöpfungskette aktiv.
Erfolgreiche Strategie
Das nicht nur in Eigenregie, sondern auch für Kunden. Ausländischen Unternehmen, die auf dem vielversprechenden, aber schwierigen chinesischen Wachstumsmarkt nicht allein aktiv sein wollen, bietet Peace Mark eine Partnerschaft an, sei es in Design, Produktion oder Verkauf. In China betreibt die Gesellschaft unter anderem in einem Joint Venture mit Tourneau, der grössten US-Luxusuhrenkette, 75 Läden, in denen neben der Eigenmarke Milus auch so klangvolle Namen wie Rolex, IWC, Piaget und Cartier verkauft werden. Für das mittlere Preissegment besitzt Peace Mark in China, Hongkong und Taiwan unter dem Namen Time Zone mittlerweile 930 Läden. In Nord- und Südamerika wiederum betreibt diese Tochter 25 000 Verkaufsstellen, in denen die eigene Modemarke Aero Star oder die in Lizenz hergestellte italienische Marke Fiorucci angeboten werden.
Die von Peace Mark eingeschlagene Strategie ist erfolgreich, konnte das Unternehmen doch den Umsatz im vergangenen Finanzjahr um 35,6% auf 3 Mrd. HK-$ erhöhen. Im chinesischen Markt, der mehr als 50% zum Umsatz beisteuert, nahmen die Verkäufe 143% zu. Der operative Gewinn stieg 45% auf 456 Mio. HK-$. Besonders stark angezogen hat im Vorjahr mit +1587% das Geschäft im obersten Preissegment, das nun für 14,3% des Gruppenabsatzes verantwortlich ist.
Für Leung, der auch Präsident des 660 Mitglieder zählenden Verbands Hongkonger Uhrenproduzenten ist, zeigt dieser Trend, dass Hongkong sich im harten Wettbewerb der Uhrmacher und -händler behaupten kann. Denn anders als noch in den Sechziger- und Siebzigerjahren, als das Herkunftssiegel «Made in Hong Kong» gleichsam für Massenware stand, setzt die chinesische Sonderverwaltungszone heute auf Qualität. Nur so kann Hongkong neben China und seinem weit tieferen Lohnniveau bestehen. Längst sind die auf Billigwaren spezialisierten Arbeitsplätze - auch im Bereich Uhren - in die Volksrepublik abgewandert. Auf dem Festland besitzt Peace Mark sieben Produktionswerke, in denen ein Grossteil des Personals beschäftigt ist. In Hongkong selbst werden auch noch Uhren gemacht, aber nur deshalb, weil es dem Unternehmen gelungen ist, die Wertschöpfungskette hinaufzusteigen.
Weg vom Billigimage
Der Produktionsstandort Hongkong bietet derzeit den Uhrenproduzenten allerdings gute Bedingungen. Denn obwohl die ehemalige britische Kronkolonie bis 2047 wirtschaftlich von China autonom bleibt, können Waren, die in der Handelsmetropole hergestellt werden, seit drei Jahren zollfrei nach China eingeführt werden. Peace Mark baut daher in Hongkong mittlerweile an zwei Produktionslinien Zeitmesser des mittleren Preissegments zusammen.
Leung sieht darin nur den Anfang eines lange andauernden Trends. Es werde Hongkong in Zukunft gelingen, sich als Herkunftsort von Qualitätsuhren zu profilieren. Er schliesst denn auch nicht aus, dass in einigen Jahren Luxusuhren unter dem Namen Peace Mark und versehen mit dem stolzen Siegel «Made in Hong Kong» erfolgreich auf dem Weltmarkt verkauft werden. Leung wertet dies aber nicht als Konkurrenz zur Schweiz, sondern in einem - gerade dank dem Wirtschaftsboom in Asien - weltweit wachsenden Luxusgütermarkt als eine Ergänzung zu den traditionellen Uhrennationen.
Der Hongkonger Uhrwerkproduzent Peace Mark wächst mit Traditionsmarken in China - Standortvorteile
Von Ernst Herb
Hongkong
Mitte September ist der an der Hongkonger Börse kotierte Uhrenkonzern Peace Mark, dem die Bieler Luxusmarke Milus gehört, durch den Kauf der Schweizer SMT Holding weltweit zum drittgrössten Produzenten in der Uhrenbranche aufgestiegen. «Ein Wolf ist in das Hühnerhaus der Schweizer Uhrenindustrie eingedrungen», zitierte damals die Westschweizer Tageszeitung «Le Temps» einen Konkurrenten aus dem Kanton Neuchatel. Der CEO von Peace Mark, Tommy Leung Yung, sieht das allerdings nicht so. Mit der Übernahme der STM Holding, zu der der Quarzwerkhersteller Swissebauches in China sowie die schweizerischen Hersteller mechanischer Werke Soprod und SFT gehören, sei das langfristige Überleben dieser Unternehmen gesichert worden, erklärt er im Gespräch mit «Finanz und Wirtschaft».
SMT, die in der Schweiz rund 200 und in China weitere 1400 Personen beschäftigt, werde in der Schweiz keine Arbeitsplätze abbauen und vor allem nicht ihre Schweizer Identität ablegen. «In der Uhrenindustrie sind Gefühle wichtig, denn nur so kann unterschiedlichen Bedürfnissen der Kunden Rechnung getragen werden», sagt Leung. Dass Peace Mark ihren Töchtern grosse Freiheiten lasse, beweise der Bieler Luxusuhrenhersteller Milus, der seine Autonomie behalten konnte.
Potenzial voll ausschöpfen
Dank einer kräftigen Finanzspritze können SMT und ihre Töchter in Zukunft ihr Potenzial voll ausschöpfen, ist Leung überzeugt. Peace Mark wiederum, die ihr Hauptquartier in Hongkong hat und weltweit mehr als 10 000 Angestellte beschäftigt, sichere sich mit der Übernahme eine stabile Versorgung mit qualitativ hochstehenden Uhrwerken - und das zu wettbewerbsfähigen Preisen. Leung meint, dass sein Unternehmen auch in den nächsten Jahren offen für Übernahmen oder strategische Partnerschaften sein werde. Im Juli hat Peace Mark vom chinesischen Staat 51% des grössten chinesischen Produzenten mechanischer Uhrwerke übernommen.
Zusammen mit dem Verwaltungsratspräsidenten der Gruppe, Patrick Chau Cham Wong, hält Leung 39% der Aktien Peace Mark. Dem Duo gehört auch die Finanzgesellschaft A-1 Business, die SMT übernommen hat und auf deren Kauf Peace Mark eine unbefristet laufende und vertraglich abgesicherte Option hält. Diese Konstruktion wurde gewählt, um den Aktienkurs von Peace Mark nicht zu belasten. In den vergangenen 52 Wochen sind die Titel mehr als 120% gestiegen. Sobald SMT saniert sei, soll sie juristisch voll in die Gruppe eingegliedert werden.
Mit der Übernahme der Schweizer Gruppe hat das Hongkonger Unternehmen, dessen Börsenwert 12,6 Mrd. HK-$ (1,6 Mrd. $) beträgt, die Strategie bestätigt, nicht nur ein vertikal integrierter Uhrenkonzern zu sein, sondern vor allem auch die Stellung im höheren Qualitätssegment auszubauen. Peace Mark, die unter diesem Namen keine eigenen Uhren vertreibt, ist vom Design über die Produktion bis zum Marketing und Verkauf von Uhren in der gesamten Wertschöpfungskette aktiv.
Erfolgreiche Strategie
Das nicht nur in Eigenregie, sondern auch für Kunden. Ausländischen Unternehmen, die auf dem vielversprechenden, aber schwierigen chinesischen Wachstumsmarkt nicht allein aktiv sein wollen, bietet Peace Mark eine Partnerschaft an, sei es in Design, Produktion oder Verkauf. In China betreibt die Gesellschaft unter anderem in einem Joint Venture mit Tourneau, der grössten US-Luxusuhrenkette, 75 Läden, in denen neben der Eigenmarke Milus auch so klangvolle Namen wie Rolex, IWC, Piaget und Cartier verkauft werden. Für das mittlere Preissegment besitzt Peace Mark in China, Hongkong und Taiwan unter dem Namen Time Zone mittlerweile 930 Läden. In Nord- und Südamerika wiederum betreibt diese Tochter 25 000 Verkaufsstellen, in denen die eigene Modemarke Aero Star oder die in Lizenz hergestellte italienische Marke Fiorucci angeboten werden.
Die von Peace Mark eingeschlagene Strategie ist erfolgreich, konnte das Unternehmen doch den Umsatz im vergangenen Finanzjahr um 35,6% auf 3 Mrd. HK-$ erhöhen. Im chinesischen Markt, der mehr als 50% zum Umsatz beisteuert, nahmen die Verkäufe 143% zu. Der operative Gewinn stieg 45% auf 456 Mio. HK-$. Besonders stark angezogen hat im Vorjahr mit +1587% das Geschäft im obersten Preissegment, das nun für 14,3% des Gruppenabsatzes verantwortlich ist.
Für Leung, der auch Präsident des 660 Mitglieder zählenden Verbands Hongkonger Uhrenproduzenten ist, zeigt dieser Trend, dass Hongkong sich im harten Wettbewerb der Uhrmacher und -händler behaupten kann. Denn anders als noch in den Sechziger- und Siebzigerjahren, als das Herkunftssiegel «Made in Hong Kong» gleichsam für Massenware stand, setzt die chinesische Sonderverwaltungszone heute auf Qualität. Nur so kann Hongkong neben China und seinem weit tieferen Lohnniveau bestehen. Längst sind die auf Billigwaren spezialisierten Arbeitsplätze - auch im Bereich Uhren - in die Volksrepublik abgewandert. Auf dem Festland besitzt Peace Mark sieben Produktionswerke, in denen ein Grossteil des Personals beschäftigt ist. In Hongkong selbst werden auch noch Uhren gemacht, aber nur deshalb, weil es dem Unternehmen gelungen ist, die Wertschöpfungskette hinaufzusteigen.
Weg vom Billigimage
Der Produktionsstandort Hongkong bietet derzeit den Uhrenproduzenten allerdings gute Bedingungen. Denn obwohl die ehemalige britische Kronkolonie bis 2047 wirtschaftlich von China autonom bleibt, können Waren, die in der Handelsmetropole hergestellt werden, seit drei Jahren zollfrei nach China eingeführt werden. Peace Mark baut daher in Hongkong mittlerweile an zwei Produktionslinien Zeitmesser des mittleren Preissegments zusammen.
Leung sieht darin nur den Anfang eines lange andauernden Trends. Es werde Hongkong in Zukunft gelingen, sich als Herkunftsort von Qualitätsuhren zu profilieren. Er schliesst denn auch nicht aus, dass in einigen Jahren Luxusuhren unter dem Namen Peace Mark und versehen mit dem stolzen Siegel «Made in Hong Kong» erfolgreich auf dem Weltmarkt verkauft werden. Leung wertet dies aber nicht als Konkurrenz zur Schweiz, sondern in einem - gerade dank dem Wirtschaftsboom in Asien - weltweit wachsenden Luxusgütermarkt als eine Ergänzung zu den traditionellen Uhrennationen.
wikinomics
the myth of self organisation and individual freedom revisited
Excerpt: Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams
Published: October 11 2007 15:01 | Last updated: October 11 2007 15:01
This was one of six books shortlisted for the 2007 FT/Golman Sachs business book of the year award. Read the shortlist, plus synopses, reviews and judges comments. You can also vote on the best business book ever, as selected by top CEOs and other experts.
............................................................................................................................................
WikinomicsCall them the “weapons of mass collaboration.” New low-cost collaborative infrastructures—from free Internet telephony to open-source software to global outsourcing platforms—allow thousands upon thousands of individuals and small producers to co-create products, access markets, and delight customers in ways that only large corporations could manage in the past. This is giving rise to new collaborative capabilities and business models that will empower the prepared firm and destroy those that fail to adjust. The upheaval occurring right now in media and entertainment provides an early example of how mass collaboration is turning the economy upside down. Once a bastion of “professionalism,” credentialed knowledge producers share the stage with “amateur” creators who are disrupting every activity they touch. Tens of millions of people share their news, information, and views in the blogosphere, a self-organized network of over 50 million personal commentary sites that are updated every second of the day.2 Some of the largest weblogs (or blogs for short) receive a quarter of a million daily visitors,3 rivaling some daily newspapers. Now audioblogs, podcasts, and mobile photo blogs are adding to a dynamic, up-to-the-minute stream of person-to-person news and information delivered free over the Web.--
Individuals now share knowledge, computing power, bandwidth, and other resources to create a wide array of free and open-source goods and services that anyone can use or modify. What’s more, people can contribute to the “digital commons” at very little cost to themselves, which makes collective action much more attractive. Indeed, peer production is a very social activity. All one needs is a computer, a network connection, and a bright spark of initiative and creativity to join in the economy. These new collaborations will not only serve commercial interests, they will help people do public-spirited things like cure genetic diseases, predict global climate change, and find new planets and stars. Researchers at Olson Laboratory, for example, use a massive supercomputer to evaluate drug candidates that might one day cure AIDS. This is no ordinary supercomputer, however. Their FightAIDS@home initiative is part of the World Community Grid, a global network where millions of individual computer users donate their spare computing power via the Internet to form one of the world’ most powerful computing platforms.
These changes, among others, are ushering us toward a world where knowledge, power, and productive capability will be more dispersed than at any time in our history—a world where value creation will be fast, fluid, and persistently disruptive. A world where only the connected will survive. A power shift is underway, and a tough new business rule is emerging: Harness the new collaboration or perish. Those who fail to grasp this will find themselves ever more isolated—cut off from the networks that are sharing, adapting, and updating knowledge to create value.
This might sound like hyperbole, but it’s not. Consider some additional ways ordinary citizens can now participate in the global body économiqe. Rather than just read a book you can write one. Just log on to Wikipedia—a collaboratively created encyclopedia, owned by no one and authored by tens of thousands of enthusiasts. With five full-time employees, it is ten times bigger than Encyclopedia Britannica and roughly the same in accuracy.4 It runs on a wiki, software that enables users to edit the content of Web pages. Despite the risks inherent in an open encyclopedia in which everyone can add their views, and constant battles with detractors and saboteurs, Wikipedia continues to grow rapidly in scope, quality, and traffic. The English-language version has more than a million entries, and there are ninety-two sister sites in languages ranging from Polish and Japanese to Hebrew and Catalan.
Or perhaps your thing is chemistry. Indeed, if you’re a retired, unemployed, or aspiring chemist, Procter & Gamble needs your help. The pace of innovation has doubled in its industry in the past five years alone, and now its army of 7,500 researchers is no longer enough to sustain its lead. Rather than hire more researchers, CEO A. G. Lafley instructed business unit leaders to source 50 percent of their new product and service ideas from outside the company. Now you can work for P&G without being on their payroll. Just register on the InnoCentive network where you and ninety thousand other scientists around the world can help solve tough R&D problems for a cash reward. InnoCentive is only one of many revolutionary marketplaces matching scientists to R&D challenges presented by companies in search of innovation. P&G and thousands of other companies look to these marketplaces for ideas, inventions, and uniquely qualified minds that can unlock new value in their markets.
Media buffs are similarly empowered. Rather than consume the TV news, you can now create it, along with thousands of independent citizen journalists that are turning the profession upside down. Tired of the familiar old faces and blather on network news? Turn off your TV, pick up a video camera and some cheap editing software, and create a news feature for Current TV, a new national cable and satellite network created almost entirely by amateur contributors. Though the contributors are unpaid volunteers, the content is surprisingly good. Current TV provides online tutorials for camera operation and storytelling techniques, and their guidelines for creating stories help get participants started. Viewers vote on which stories go to air, so only the most engaging material makes prime time.
Finally, a young person in India, China, Brazil, or any one of a number of emerging Eastern European countries can now do what their parents only dreamed of by joining the global economy on an equal footing. You might be in a call center in Bangalore that takes food orders for a drive-through restaurant in Los Angeles. Or you could find yourself working in Foxconn’s new corporate city in the Schenzen province of China, where a decade ago farmers tilled the land with oxen. Today 180,000 people work, live, learn, and play on Foxconn’s massive high-tech campus, designing and building consumer electronics for teenagers around the globe.
For incumbents in every industry this new cornucopia of participation and collaboration is both exhilarating and alarming. As New Paradigm executive David Ticoll argues, “Not all examples of self-organization are benign, or exploitable. Within a single industry the development of opportunities for self-organized collaboration can be beneficial, neutral, or highly competitive to individual firms, or some combination of at least two of these.” Publishers found this out the hard way. Blogs, wikis, chat rooms, search engines, advertising auctions, peer-to-peer downloading, and personal broadcasting represent new ways to entertain, communicate, and transact. In each instance the traditionally passive buyers of editorial and advertising take active, participatory roles in value creation. Some of these grassroots innovations pose dire threats to existing business models.
Publishers of music, literature, movies, software, and television are like canaries in a coal mine—the first casualties of a revolution that is sweeping across all industries. Many enfeebled titans of the industrial economy feel threatened. Despite heroic efforts to change, they remain shackled by command-and-control legacies. Companies have spent the last three decades remolding their operations to compete in a hypercompetitive economy—ripping costs out of their businesses at every opportunity; trying to become more “customer-friendly”; assembling global production networks; and scattering their bricks-and-mortar R&D organizations around the world.
Now, to great chagrin, industrial-era titans are learning that the real revolution is just getting started. Except this time the competition is no longer their arch industry rivals; it’s the uberconnected, amorphous mass of self-organized individuals that is gripping their economic needs firmly in one hand, and their economic destinies in the other. “We the People” is no longer just a political expression—a hopeful ode to the power of “the masses”; it’s also an apt description of how ordinary people, as employees, consumers, community members, and taxpayers now have the power to innovate and to create value on the global stage.
For smart companies, the rising tide of mass collaboration offers vast opportunity. As the Goldcorp story denotes, even the oldest of old economy industries can harness this revolution to create value in unconventional ways. Companies can reach beyond their walls to sow the seeds of innovation and harvest a bountiful crop. Indeed, firms that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators are positioned to form vibrant business ecosystems that create value more effectively than hierarchically organized businesses.
For individuals and small producers, this may be the birth of a new era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian renaissance or the rise of Athenian democracy. Mass collaboration across borders, disciplines, and cultures is at once economical and enjoyable. We can peer produce an operating system, an encyclopedia, the media, a mutual fund, and even physical things like a motorcycle. We are becoming an economy unto ourselves—a vast global network of specialized producers that swap and exchange services for entertainment, sustenance, and learning. A new economic democracy is emerging in which we all have a lead role.
............................................................................................................................................
Reproduced by permission of the publisher.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Excerpt: Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams
Published: October 11 2007 15:01 | Last updated: October 11 2007 15:01
This was one of six books shortlisted for the 2007 FT/Golman Sachs business book of the year award. Read the shortlist, plus synopses, reviews and judges comments. You can also vote on the best business book ever, as selected by top CEOs and other experts.
............................................................................................................................................
WikinomicsCall them the “weapons of mass collaboration.” New low-cost collaborative infrastructures—from free Internet telephony to open-source software to global outsourcing platforms—allow thousands upon thousands of individuals and small producers to co-create products, access markets, and delight customers in ways that only large corporations could manage in the past. This is giving rise to new collaborative capabilities and business models that will empower the prepared firm and destroy those that fail to adjust. The upheaval occurring right now in media and entertainment provides an early example of how mass collaboration is turning the economy upside down. Once a bastion of “professionalism,” credentialed knowledge producers share the stage with “amateur” creators who are disrupting every activity they touch. Tens of millions of people share their news, information, and views in the blogosphere, a self-organized network of over 50 million personal commentary sites that are updated every second of the day.2 Some of the largest weblogs (or blogs for short) receive a quarter of a million daily visitors,3 rivaling some daily newspapers. Now audioblogs, podcasts, and mobile photo blogs are adding to a dynamic, up-to-the-minute stream of person-to-person news and information delivered free over the Web.--
Individuals now share knowledge, computing power, bandwidth, and other resources to create a wide array of free and open-source goods and services that anyone can use or modify. What’s more, people can contribute to the “digital commons” at very little cost to themselves, which makes collective action much more attractive. Indeed, peer production is a very social activity. All one needs is a computer, a network connection, and a bright spark of initiative and creativity to join in the economy. These new collaborations will not only serve commercial interests, they will help people do public-spirited things like cure genetic diseases, predict global climate change, and find new planets and stars. Researchers at Olson Laboratory, for example, use a massive supercomputer to evaluate drug candidates that might one day cure AIDS. This is no ordinary supercomputer, however. Their FightAIDS@home initiative is part of the World Community Grid, a global network where millions of individual computer users donate their spare computing power via the Internet to form one of the world’ most powerful computing platforms.
These changes, among others, are ushering us toward a world where knowledge, power, and productive capability will be more dispersed than at any time in our history—a world where value creation will be fast, fluid, and persistently disruptive. A world where only the connected will survive. A power shift is underway, and a tough new business rule is emerging: Harness the new collaboration or perish. Those who fail to grasp this will find themselves ever more isolated—cut off from the networks that are sharing, adapting, and updating knowledge to create value.
This might sound like hyperbole, but it’s not. Consider some additional ways ordinary citizens can now participate in the global body économiqe. Rather than just read a book you can write one. Just log on to Wikipedia—a collaboratively created encyclopedia, owned by no one and authored by tens of thousands of enthusiasts. With five full-time employees, it is ten times bigger than Encyclopedia Britannica and roughly the same in accuracy.4 It runs on a wiki, software that enables users to edit the content of Web pages. Despite the risks inherent in an open encyclopedia in which everyone can add their views, and constant battles with detractors and saboteurs, Wikipedia continues to grow rapidly in scope, quality, and traffic. The English-language version has more than a million entries, and there are ninety-two sister sites in languages ranging from Polish and Japanese to Hebrew and Catalan.
Or perhaps your thing is chemistry. Indeed, if you’re a retired, unemployed, or aspiring chemist, Procter & Gamble needs your help. The pace of innovation has doubled in its industry in the past five years alone, and now its army of 7,500 researchers is no longer enough to sustain its lead. Rather than hire more researchers, CEO A. G. Lafley instructed business unit leaders to source 50 percent of their new product and service ideas from outside the company. Now you can work for P&G without being on their payroll. Just register on the InnoCentive network where you and ninety thousand other scientists around the world can help solve tough R&D problems for a cash reward. InnoCentive is only one of many revolutionary marketplaces matching scientists to R&D challenges presented by companies in search of innovation. P&G and thousands of other companies look to these marketplaces for ideas, inventions, and uniquely qualified minds that can unlock new value in their markets.
Media buffs are similarly empowered. Rather than consume the TV news, you can now create it, along with thousands of independent citizen journalists that are turning the profession upside down. Tired of the familiar old faces and blather on network news? Turn off your TV, pick up a video camera and some cheap editing software, and create a news feature for Current TV, a new national cable and satellite network created almost entirely by amateur contributors. Though the contributors are unpaid volunteers, the content is surprisingly good. Current TV provides online tutorials for camera operation and storytelling techniques, and their guidelines for creating stories help get participants started. Viewers vote on which stories go to air, so only the most engaging material makes prime time.
Finally, a young person in India, China, Brazil, or any one of a number of emerging Eastern European countries can now do what their parents only dreamed of by joining the global economy on an equal footing. You might be in a call center in Bangalore that takes food orders for a drive-through restaurant in Los Angeles. Or you could find yourself working in Foxconn’s new corporate city in the Schenzen province of China, where a decade ago farmers tilled the land with oxen. Today 180,000 people work, live, learn, and play on Foxconn’s massive high-tech campus, designing and building consumer electronics for teenagers around the globe.
For incumbents in every industry this new cornucopia of participation and collaboration is both exhilarating and alarming. As New Paradigm executive David Ticoll argues, “Not all examples of self-organization are benign, or exploitable. Within a single industry the development of opportunities for self-organized collaboration can be beneficial, neutral, or highly competitive to individual firms, or some combination of at least two of these.” Publishers found this out the hard way. Blogs, wikis, chat rooms, search engines, advertising auctions, peer-to-peer downloading, and personal broadcasting represent new ways to entertain, communicate, and transact. In each instance the traditionally passive buyers of editorial and advertising take active, participatory roles in value creation. Some of these grassroots innovations pose dire threats to existing business models.
Publishers of music, literature, movies, software, and television are like canaries in a coal mine—the first casualties of a revolution that is sweeping across all industries. Many enfeebled titans of the industrial economy feel threatened. Despite heroic efforts to change, they remain shackled by command-and-control legacies. Companies have spent the last three decades remolding their operations to compete in a hypercompetitive economy—ripping costs out of their businesses at every opportunity; trying to become more “customer-friendly”; assembling global production networks; and scattering their bricks-and-mortar R&D organizations around the world.
Now, to great chagrin, industrial-era titans are learning that the real revolution is just getting started. Except this time the competition is no longer their arch industry rivals; it’s the uberconnected, amorphous mass of self-organized individuals that is gripping their economic needs firmly in one hand, and their economic destinies in the other. “We the People” is no longer just a political expression—a hopeful ode to the power of “the masses”; it’s also an apt description of how ordinary people, as employees, consumers, community members, and taxpayers now have the power to innovate and to create value on the global stage.
For smart companies, the rising tide of mass collaboration offers vast opportunity. As the Goldcorp story denotes, even the oldest of old economy industries can harness this revolution to create value in unconventional ways. Companies can reach beyond their walls to sow the seeds of innovation and harvest a bountiful crop. Indeed, firms that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators are positioned to form vibrant business ecosystems that create value more effectively than hierarchically organized businesses.
For individuals and small producers, this may be the birth of a new era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian renaissance or the rise of Athenian democracy. Mass collaboration across borders, disciplines, and cultures is at once economical and enjoyable. We can peer produce an operating system, an encyclopedia, the media, a mutual fund, and even physical things like a motorcycle. We are becoming an economy unto ourselves—a vast global network of specialized producers that swap and exchange services for entertainment, sustenance, and learning. A new economic democracy is emerging in which we all have a lead role.
............................................................................................................................................
Reproduced by permission of the publisher.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
vietnam abn amro
http://www.abnamromarkets.com/showpage.asp?frmCookiesErlaubt=true&strosl=Russia&locale=EN&N=0&strotl=Region&Ne=10100000+10120000+10130000&nav=1&pageid=10&certid=65492&R=101065492
Monday, March 26, 2007
gorton/lime/ propgram trading
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/26/news/bxlime.php
Mark Gorton, the 'classic entrepreneur' behind Lime Group.
By Lisa KassenaarBloomberg News
Monday, March 26, 2007
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if ((!document.images && navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Mozilla/2.') >= 0) navigator.userAgent.indexOf("WebTV") >= 0)
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NEW YORK: Step off the elevator into Lime Group's offices atop an 11-story brick building in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York and into a crowd of more than 60 stone Buddhas and Asian lions, all handpicked by the company's founder, Mark Gorton.
To the right, down a staircase, is a metal door that leads to Lime Brokerage, which Gorton says trades stocks faster than any other company on Wall Street - as many as 6,000 orders a second. At the end of a long hall is LimeWire, maker of the world's most-popular Internet file-sharing software, with 50 million monthly users. The U.S. recording industry says the product is designed for infringing upon music copyrights - an accusation Gorton denies - and is suing for damages of at least $450 million.
Gorton himself sits at a corner desk with a group of mathematicians writing algorithms for Tower Research Capital, Lime Group's quantitative hedge fund, a firm with $117 million in assets. His next project, scheduled for this spring, is Lime Medical, which will sell software intended to help U.S. doctors reduce paperwork. He is also developing LimeSpot, Internet-based software to help people build and share Web sites. And he runs a nonprofit Web-based venture in urban planning, part of his pet project to reduce traffic in New York.
"He's a classic entrepreneur," said Fred von Lohmann, an intellectual property attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco. "He has a lot of businesses going at the same time, and if they don't work out, he'll start three more."
Gorton agreed.
"My to-do list doesn't ever seem to end," he said. "The biggest problem is that I may not be able to keep the focus; I can get distracted."
Gorton, 40, is an electrical engineer and former bond trader who has degrees from Harvard, Stanford and Yale. The Lime companies are slices of Gorton's view of the digital future - one in which the right software will smooth almost any human interaction, from trading stocks to swapping songs, from recording a patient's medical diagnosis to placing speed bumps on city streets. His 140 employees are mostly computer scientists in their 20s and 30s who share his ideals, particularly that software should be open source - that it can be modified by any of its users.
"It's the ideas that push things forward for him," said Rob Hranac, who worked for Lime from 2001 to 2003 as a software developer in the charity wing and now heads business development at Berkeley Transportation Systems in Berkeley, California. "The money is a vehicle to get things out there."
Even though it is private, Lime Brokerage has attracted the notice of Scott Appleby, an analyst who follows publicly traded financial exchanges at Deutsche Bank Securities in New York. "Lime is a leader, and this is the future of part of the broker-dealer world," he said. "Their pipes are built in such a way that you can get a lot of orders done in a short time."
But Gorton has his eye on other goals.
"I've beaten the markets a half dozen times and will do it a half dozen more," he said. "As a personal challenge, it doesn't mean that much anymore."
What means more, he said, is traffic. Gorton, who cycles six miles, or 10 kilometers, to work down the Greenway on the West Side of the New York borough of Manhattan and dreams of his three children riding their bikes on a car-free Broadway, said he spent $2 million last year on projects to promote pedestrian traffic and cycling in New York.
Since September, he has more than doubled the staff to 27 people at The Open Planning Project, the nonprofit group known as TOPP, which is developing software for a wiki, or collaborative Web site, to let anyone add to the urban planning in a given locale.
Gorton traded bonds for almost five years on the proprietary fixed-income desk at the investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston. In February 1998, Gorton and Alistair Brown, a Credit Suisse colleague and fellow engineer, rented a small office in Manhattan and started Tower Research with money they had earned at the investment bank.
Brown, who has an engineering degree from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, and who used to build computer systems to execute trading strategies at Credit Suisse, now is chief executive of Lime Brokerage.
Its trading is carried out by a hundred computers at a facility in Jersey City, New Jersey, where more than 50 customers, mostly hedge funds, also have their equipment. Those computers are set to profit from market inefficiencies that would be lost if their orders had to travel across town on a telecommunications line, said the chief technology officer of Lime, Anthony Amicangioli, who holds an electrical engineering degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and joined Lime in 2003 from Juniper Networks.
Lime's computers grab price quotes from exchanges like the Nasdaq Stock Market and the New York Stock Exchange in one-tenth of a millisecond. That is more than twice as fast as other companies offering so-called data delivery, Amicangioli said.
Once Lime grabs the price quotes, the system executes trades in less than a millisecond.
Brokers working to shave times are increasingly important as so-called program trading explodes, said Brian Hyndman, senior vice president of Nasdaq Transaction Services. That activity - by Lime and rivals accounts for about 40 percent of the roughly 2.3 billion shares traded every day on Nasdaq, Hyndman said. That is up from about 5 percent in 1999.
Mark Gorton, the 'classic entrepreneur' behind Lime Group.
By Lisa KassenaarBloomberg News
Monday, March 26, 2007
ord = Math.random() * 10000000000000000;
document.write('');
on error resume next
p139172_FlashMode7=(IsObject(CreateObject("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.7")))
if ((!document.images && navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Mozilla/2.') >= 0) navigator.userAgent.indexOf("WebTV") >= 0)
{document.write('');}
NEW YORK: Step off the elevator into Lime Group's offices atop an 11-story brick building in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York and into a crowd of more than 60 stone Buddhas and Asian lions, all handpicked by the company's founder, Mark Gorton.
To the right, down a staircase, is a metal door that leads to Lime Brokerage, which Gorton says trades stocks faster than any other company on Wall Street - as many as 6,000 orders a second. At the end of a long hall is LimeWire, maker of the world's most-popular Internet file-sharing software, with 50 million monthly users. The U.S. recording industry says the product is designed for infringing upon music copyrights - an accusation Gorton denies - and is suing for damages of at least $450 million.
Gorton himself sits at a corner desk with a group of mathematicians writing algorithms for Tower Research Capital, Lime Group's quantitative hedge fund, a firm with $117 million in assets. His next project, scheduled for this spring, is Lime Medical, which will sell software intended to help U.S. doctors reduce paperwork. He is also developing LimeSpot, Internet-based software to help people build and share Web sites. And he runs a nonprofit Web-based venture in urban planning, part of his pet project to reduce traffic in New York.
"He's a classic entrepreneur," said Fred von Lohmann, an intellectual property attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco. "He has a lot of businesses going at the same time, and if they don't work out, he'll start three more."
Gorton agreed.
"My to-do list doesn't ever seem to end," he said. "The biggest problem is that I may not be able to keep the focus; I can get distracted."
Gorton, 40, is an electrical engineer and former bond trader who has degrees from Harvard, Stanford and Yale. The Lime companies are slices of Gorton's view of the digital future - one in which the right software will smooth almost any human interaction, from trading stocks to swapping songs, from recording a patient's medical diagnosis to placing speed bumps on city streets. His 140 employees are mostly computer scientists in their 20s and 30s who share his ideals, particularly that software should be open source - that it can be modified by any of its users.
"It's the ideas that push things forward for him," said Rob Hranac, who worked for Lime from 2001 to 2003 as a software developer in the charity wing and now heads business development at Berkeley Transportation Systems in Berkeley, California. "The money is a vehicle to get things out there."
Even though it is private, Lime Brokerage has attracted the notice of Scott Appleby, an analyst who follows publicly traded financial exchanges at Deutsche Bank Securities in New York. "Lime is a leader, and this is the future of part of the broker-dealer world," he said. "Their pipes are built in such a way that you can get a lot of orders done in a short time."
But Gorton has his eye on other goals.
"I've beaten the markets a half dozen times and will do it a half dozen more," he said. "As a personal challenge, it doesn't mean that much anymore."
What means more, he said, is traffic. Gorton, who cycles six miles, or 10 kilometers, to work down the Greenway on the West Side of the New York borough of Manhattan and dreams of his three children riding their bikes on a car-free Broadway, said he spent $2 million last year on projects to promote pedestrian traffic and cycling in New York.
Since September, he has more than doubled the staff to 27 people at The Open Planning Project, the nonprofit group known as TOPP, which is developing software for a wiki, or collaborative Web site, to let anyone add to the urban planning in a given locale.
Gorton traded bonds for almost five years on the proprietary fixed-income desk at the investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston. In February 1998, Gorton and Alistair Brown, a Credit Suisse colleague and fellow engineer, rented a small office in Manhattan and started Tower Research with money they had earned at the investment bank.
Brown, who has an engineering degree from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, and who used to build computer systems to execute trading strategies at Credit Suisse, now is chief executive of Lime Brokerage.
Its trading is carried out by a hundred computers at a facility in Jersey City, New Jersey, where more than 50 customers, mostly hedge funds, also have their equipment. Those computers are set to profit from market inefficiencies that would be lost if their orders had to travel across town on a telecommunications line, said the chief technology officer of Lime, Anthony Amicangioli, who holds an electrical engineering degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and joined Lime in 2003 from Juniper Networks.
Lime's computers grab price quotes from exchanges like the Nasdaq Stock Market and the New York Stock Exchange in one-tenth of a millisecond. That is more than twice as fast as other companies offering so-called data delivery, Amicangioli said.
Once Lime grabs the price quotes, the system executes trades in less than a millisecond.
Brokers working to shave times are increasingly important as so-called program trading explodes, said Brian Hyndman, senior vice president of Nasdaq Transaction Services. That activity - by Lime and rivals accounts for about 40 percent of the roughly 2.3 billion shares traded every day on Nasdaq, Hyndman said. That is up from about 5 percent in 1999.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Friday, January 12, 2007
russian stocks valuations
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