...9-707-446 REV: JANUARY 28, 2008 JOHN R. WELLS Providian Financial Corporation Introduction On October 3, 2005, Washington Mutual acquired Providian Financial Corporation, the ninthlargest credit card issuer in the U.S., for $6.5 billion. At the time, Providian had approximately 10 million customer relationships and a balance of $18.6 billion. For some observers, the transaction was merely the end of another chapter in the history of the fast consolidating credit card market.1 For Providian CEO Joseph Saunders it was vindication of four years’ hard work in turning around a company that many thought was close to bankruptcy. Saunders reflected, “I actually think that we took over a company that many people—maybe even most people—thought was going to fail”; he added, “Providian is no longer just a turnaround story, we are a success story.”2 Company History Providian began as Commonwealth Insurance, which was founded in 1904. The company survived the depression of the 1930s and, in the late 1960s, formed Capital Holdings to acquire other insurance enterprises and financial services companies. In the 1980s Capital Holdings started targeting low- and middle-income people when it established itself in Kroger grocery stores and in certain Bank of America branches. The 1984 acquisition of First Deposit Corporation from Parker Pen marked the beginning of the compnay’s focus on credit cards, which “later became [its] primary profit-making operation.”3 In the 1990s, Capital Holdings...
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...that the Chinese business system operates is known as ‘overseas Chinese management’ (Petzall, Abbott & Timo 2007). Although both the Japanese and Koreans and the Asian Chinese are collectivist, community is more important to the former, while family ties and ‘guanxi’ are more significant to the latter (Petzall, Abbott & Timo 2007). ‘Guanxi’ is a special relationship between two individuals due to the existence of particularistic ties who are obliged to maintain a long-term relationship with mutual commitment and loyalty (Chen & Chen 2004). Overseas Chinese management is practiced by ethnic Chinese nationals in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and other Asian countries who run their own businesses. According to Petzall, Abbott and Timo (2007), these traditional Chinese family firms are usually small-scaled businesses that employ no more than 200 people. Being small-scaled, there is little need for labour specialization and a high degree of structure and formality within the organization. Thus, there are few rules and standard procedures and low files and records in such small family businesses. Although there is no clear hierarchy of authority, the assumed important positions like owners, executives and managerial roles are held by family members and by others who have that special ‘guanxi’. Decision-making is highly centralized in these Chinese family firms with managers keeping organizational information among themselves, showing little trust towards the employees, or the so-called...
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...Gateway Inc. Theory in Practice Eduardo Ordóñez Professor Meilich BUS 444 May 7, 2004 Ticker: GTW Stock Exchange: NYSE Website: www.gateway.com Company Description Gateway Inc. was first incorporated in Iowa in 1986, with the name of Gateway 2000, Inc. It was then reincorporated in South Dakota in December of 1989 and later in Delaware in January of 1991. In 1993, the company went public, trading on the NASDAQ before transferring its stock to the New York Stock Exchange in 1997. Today, the company’s corporate headquarters are located in California in the city of Poway. As a major supplier of personal computers and related products and services, Gateway Inc. is a firm currently competing in the computer manufacturing industry along with Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Toshiba, Apple, and others. It does not only manufacture PCs and laptops, the company also offers servers, workstations, an assortment of computer accessories (monitors, printers, software, memory, etc.), and a line of digital electronics. Gateway Inc. has a broad target market. It consists of small to large business, government and educational institutions, and home and home office. It sells its products nationally through a number distribution channels, including its Website, telephone call centers, and retail stores. The company’s mission is “to be the leading integrator of personalized technology solutions,” by “improving the quality of life through technology,” via “leadership...
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...9-709-426 REV: AUGUST 25, 2009 DAVID B. YOFFIE MICHAEL SLIND NITZAN ACHSAF LinkedIn Corp., 2008 Late in June 2008, a year and a half after becoming CEO of the online professional networking service LinkedIn, Dan Nye announced that a new funding round had given the company a $1 billion valuation. Investors, led by the private equity firm Bain Capital Ventures, had purchased a 5% stake in LinkedIn for $53 million. As a result, Nye now had ample resources to put toward accelerating his company’s already phenomenal growth. LinkedIn, based in Mountain View, California, had signed up more than 23 million users for its service, and that figure was increasing at a rate of 1.2 million new users per month.1 (See Exhibit 1 for information on LinkedIn’s membership growth.) Among members of the service were top executives at every company on the Fortune 500 list.2 “LinkedIn is now so prevalent and so valuable that you have to join it,” said Nye, a Harvard Business School graduate (Class of 1994) and a former executive at Advent Software and Intuit.3 Nye understood that LinkedIn, like the ambitious professionals whom it served, could not stand still. He had arrived at the company in February 2007, and since then LinkedIn had launched a European-based operation, opened up its platform to third-party software developers, and increased its head count from 60 to 310.4 A mere half-decade after its founding, the company had already turned profitable, and it was on track to bring in revenues...
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...Economics for Everyone: Going Global–FDI Fables–FDI in Multibrand Retail......................................................... 2 Special report - Business in India: Inbound and outbound deals: Their oyste ....................................................... 12 Growing confidence dented by politicians .............................................................................................................. 16 BEST CROSS - BORDER M&A DEAL .................................................................................................................. 18 The Literature on Chinese Outward FDI ................................................................................................................ 19 Page 1 of 36 © 2012 Factiva, Inc. All rights reserved. Economics for Everyone: Going Global–FDI Fables–FDI in Multibrand Retail Economics for Everyone: Going Global–FDI Fables–FDI in Multibrand Retail India Infoline News Service 5,801 words 2 May 2012 Indiainfoline News Service INFOIN English Copyright © 2012. Indiainfoline Ltd. FDI- Foreign Direct Investment Context: NEWS FDI in multi-brand retail to go ahead,TNN (TIMES OF INDIA) Govt says committed to multi-brand retail FDI FE BUREAU Aviation FDI: Cautious, Centre set to take allies on board, BUSINESS STANDARD India has been ranked at the third place in global foreign direct investments in 2009 and will continue to remain among the top five attractive destinations for international investors during 2010-11...
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... DECEMBER 2005 www.corporateleadershipcouncil.com LITERATURE KEY FINDINGS Developing Asian Leaders Finding 1: Many Western companies believe they will gain competitive advantage by developing senior Asian leaders due to decreased staffing costs and better navigation of local culture compared to that of expatriates. That said, significant challenges exist for developing local talent, such as a lack of formal extensive education, Western management skills, and language skills. Advantages of Developing Asian Leaders Asian Trend: Sourcing Locally A Hudson Recruitment survey of 500 multinational companies indicates that 87% of companies do not plan to bring in new expatriate employees in the near future. This strategy is expected to avoid the increasing salary costs and lack of local market knowledge common 2 among expatriate new hires. Trend: Developing talent locally—According to a Deloitte Touche Tomatsu study (n=680), local employees will significantly outweigh expatriate talent in senior management positions in China in the coming years. Leaders at multinational firms expect expatriates to only hold 26% of senior positions that they currently hold. Therefore, to compete with other companies in the future, companies should invest now 1 in developing their local leaders. 2 Expatriates are expensive—The primary driver behind localization of the senior leadership in China is cost savings. Costs of expatriates include housing assistance, relocation...
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...British Telecom-Case Study TMGT 513 Assignment #2 – Case Study Scenario TMGT 513.01B Knowledge Management for Engineering and Technology 1Q. Characterize the company's current KM status. - Answer: KM Tools play a major role in business process in service based companies like British Telecom. KM Solutions are needed for the companies which are operated globally worldwide and are independent of region in which there are located. Currently British Telecom uses a service called as “Intellect” for knowledge management. This system basically takes many of the available resources of the old research library, includes a few more sources, arranges and puts the entire thing on the web, where it's accessible to a worldwide British Telecom employees. This web based system is medium of broadcasting their data, news and research on practically every topic on the BT corporate radar. Identify and describe some existing KM initiatives at the individual, group, and organization levels? The knowledge workers are delineated on an individual level utilizing expertise profiles which is also known skill model, on a group level to render groups of practice, and endeavor level to depict the skill profile of departments (Woitsch and Karagiannis, 2002). Knowledge Management initiative at individual level was handled by Information Resource Center (IRC) staff of BT by emailing a newsletter weekly to every employee in the company. Intellect service allows the individual to subscribe...
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...Manager: Business Development, Strategic Market Group (Enterprise Application Services) Responsibilities: • Positioning and branding : Defining and building the value proposition for the business and its offerings helping create winning propositions and messaging for EAS (Enterprises Application Services) • Acquire and develop knowledge of vertical/horizontal industry practices, trends, benchmarking data, and create competitive analyses. • Formulate strategy and plan for implementing and leveraging online communities, discussion forums, and other collaborative technologies. • Engenders enthusiasm for the work to be done, honors commitments and contributes proactively to ensure optimal positioning of SAP, while encouraging idea generation and creativity for each pursuit • Identifies and actions hot issues/topics/trends within the service line that require specific focus to rapidly capture the related knowledge assets • Analyst Relations: Proactive management of key influencer relations across major analyst firms, ensuring positive movement on analyst surveys and relationships • Customer relationship management: Managing key customer connects, ensuring support to Account based marketing activities, Building a sustain CRM campaign, with customer testimonials and case studies • Marketing strategy: Involvement in the business planning and market segmentation which involves...
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...security environment, the protection of an organization’s information security system has become a business imperative . With the access to the Internet by anyone, anywhere and anytime, the Internet’s “ubiquitous presence and global accessibility” can become an organization’s weakness because its security controls can become more easily compromised by internal and external threats. Hence, the purpose of the research paper is to strengthen the awareness of ethical hacking in the Chartered Accountants (CA) profession, also known as penetration testing, by evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of the information security system. 2 1 II. What is Ethical Hacking/Penetration Testing? Ethical hacking and penetration testing is a preventative measure which consists of a chain of legitimate tools that identify and exploit a company’s security weaknesses . It uses the same or similar techniques of malicious hackers to attack key vulnerabilities in the company’s security system, which then can be mitigated and closed. In other words, penetration testing can be described as not “tapping the door” , but “breaking through the door” . These tests reveal how easy an organization’s security controls can be penetrated, and to obtain access to its confidential and sensitive information asset by hackers. As a result, ethical hacking is an effective tool that can help assist CA professionals to better understand the organization’s information systems and its strategy, as well as to enhance the level...
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...expectation for success. Ercil’s team felt that NECE’s microcontroller unit (“MCU”) business,1 which supplied chips to major automobile manufacturers, operated at a world-class level with high growth potential and solid margins. NECE’s Computing, Consumer and Discrete businesses were generally competitive. However, the Communications business, which supplied semiconductors for mobile phones, appeared to be a constant drag on NECE’s cash flow and earnings. Specifically, Perry believed that NECE could significantly improve its valuation by restructuring the Communications business and refocusing resources on the other businesses, including the MCU division. Numerous meetings with NECE management had left Ercil optimistic about the probability of a successful restructuring as the NECE management seemingly shared Perry’s vision for the future of the company. More than a year after...
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...Harvard Citation Style Examples for UWA Material Types: Books and eBooks Journal Articles Internet/ Websites Cases and legislation Company information Conference papers and proceedings Newspapers Multimedia Standards and patents CMO Lecture notes Theses Personal Communication Citing information someone else has cited Books & eBooks Material Type Book: Single Author In-Text Example (Holt 1997) or Holt (1997) wrote that... (McCarthy, William & Pascale 1997) Reference List Example Holt, DH 1997, Management principles and practices, Prentice-Hall, Sydney. Book: 2 or 3 Authors McCarthey, EJ, William, DP & Pascale, GQ 1997, Basic marketing, Irwin, Sydney. Book: More Than 3 Authors (Bond et al. 1996) Bond, WR, Smith, JT, Brown, KL & George, M 1996, Management of small firms, McGraw-Hill, Sydney. Book: No Author (A history of Greece 1994) A history of Greece 1994, Irwin, Sydney. Book: Editor (ed. Jones 1998) Jones, MD (ed.) 1998, Management in Australia, Academic Press, London. Book: 2 or More Editors (eds Bullinger & Warnecke 1985) Bullinger, HJ & Warnecke HJ (eds) 1985, Toward the factory of the future, Springer-Verlag, Berlin. Book: Translator & Author (trans. Smith 2006) Colorado, JA 2006, Economic theory in the Mexican context: recent developments on the ground, trans. K Smith, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Book: Organisation as Author (Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics Australian...
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...» Admin Sign In Quick Links Skip to main content UWA Information Services LibGuides Harvard citation style Library Site Search UWA Website Harvard citation style This guide shows students and staff how to reference using the Harvard Referencing style. Last Updated: Feb 16, 2012 Introduction URL: http://libguides.is.uwa.edu.au/harvard All examples Print Page EndNote Print Guide RSS Updates Reference formats Comments(0) Questions and comments All examples Search: This Guide ●Search Harvard all examples PDF Harvard All Examples - PDF In-text citations Two or more works cited at one point in the text If two or more works by different authors or authoring bodies are cited at one point in the text, use a semi-colon to separate them: (Larsen 2000; Malinowski 1999) The authors should be listed in alphabetical order. Two or three authors or authoring bodies When citing a work by two or three authors or authoring bodies, cite the names in the order in which they appear on the title page: (Malinowski, Miller & Gupta 1995) In-text and reference list examples Books & eBooks Material Type In-Text Example Reference List Example Book: Single Author Book: 2 or 3 Authors Book: More Than 3 Authors Book: No Author Book: Editor Book: 2 or More Editors Book: Translator & Author Book: Organisation as Author Book: Chapter or Article in Edited Book Book, edition other than first. E-book E-book: Chapter or Article in an Edited E-book Book:...
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...1 Basic concepts of information retrieval systems Introduction The term ‘information retrieval’ was coined in 1952 and gained popularity in the research community from 1961 onwards.1 At that time the organizing function of information retrieval was seen as a major advance in libraries that were no longer just storehouses of books, but also places where the information they hold is catalogued and indexed.2 Subsequently, with the introduction of computers in information handling, there appeared a number of databases containing bibliographic details of documents, often married with abstracts, keywords, and so on, and consequently the concept of information retrieval came to mean the retrieval of bibliographic information from stored document databases. Information retrieval is concerned with all the activities related to the organization of, processing of, and access to, information of all forms and formats. An information retrieval system allows people to communicate with an information system or service in order to find information – text, graphic images, sound recordings or video that meet their specific needs. Thus the objective of an information retrieval system is to enable users to find relevant information from an organized collection of documents. In fact, most information retrieval systems are, truly speaking, document retrieval systems, since they are designed to retrieve information about the existence (or non-existence) of documents relevant to a user query. Lancaster3...
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...9-710-429 REV: MAY 2, 2011 JUAN ALCÁCER TARUN KHANNA MARY FUREY RAKEEN MABUD Emerging Nokia? It was December of 2009 and D. Shivakumar, the Managing Director of Nokia India was catching up over coffee with Colin Giles, his counterpart in the China office, and Chris Braam, who was in charge of operations in the Middle East and Africa. The gathering was somewhat celebratory in nature: Giles had recently been promoted to global head of sales. Before Giles left his Greater China market role, his colleagues wanted to get his thoughts on Nokia’s future in the region. The three men had no doubt that Nokia’s strategy in emerging markets had been successful: Nokia was the market leader in India and China, with market shares of 60% and 40%, respectively.1 The company also had made inroads into Africa and South America. However, Nokia had lost ground in the developed world: the company only sold one in 10 handsets in the U.S. (compared to one in three in 2002),2 and it had recently pulled out of Japan after 20 years of operations. Nokia’s revenues in Europe declined by 15% in the fourth quarter of 2009.3 However, Nokia was famous for its ability to reinvent itself. From its beginnings as a paper mill turned rubber manufacturer turned electronics company, and finally, as the world’s largest producer of mobile phones, Nokia possessed an unmatched ability to face obstacles head on and come out on top. Said former CEO Jorma Ollila, “Finns live in a cold climate. We have...
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...os t 9-806-105 REV: NOVEMBER 9, 2006 THOMAS R. EISENMANN rP KERRY HERMAN Google Inc. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. — Google’s mission statement yo In December 2005, Google paid $1 billion for a 5% stake in Time Warner’s America Online (AOL) unit. The implied $20 billion valuation for AOL came as a surprise; JPMorgan had recently valued the unit at $13.7 billion.1 However, the partnership was important to Google, which had signed a fiveyear deal to continue providing web search results and search-based advertising to AOL, as it had done since 2002. Google was expected to earn about $600 million in gross advertising revenue from AOL searches in 2005.2 The share of ad revenue that Google would pay to AOL was not disclosed, but seemed likely to exceed the 85-90% estimated for the prior deal.3 No tC op In addition to its $1 billion equity investment, Google would provide a $300 million credit for ads on Google promoting Time Warner products and would showcase Time Warner content in a special box on some Google search results pages. Critics complained about reports that Google would provide Time Warner with information about its search algorithms in order to help its partner’s pages secure higher positions in search results. Commenting on Google’s accommodations to AOL, author John Battelle said: “Each of them represents a step closer to a slippery slope. What they...
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