NEWS,23.1.2013

Emerging world challenges multinationals

The battle in emerging markets is heating up as competition between multinational companies and firms from the developing world increases, a report said.According to a report published by the Boston Consulting Group found that a new generation of global challengers consisting of 100 fast-growing and fast-globalising companies from the developing world, is on track to becoming global leaders in their respective industries. To keep up, Western conglomerates will have to know when to compete and when to work together with the new kids on the block. The report said the global challengers were not "mere curiosities operating in distant regions" but rather were "full-fledge competitors that would shape the global economy in the next decade".  These global challengers includ South African media giant Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce company; Trina Solar, the fourth-largest solar panel manufacturer in the world; Indian carmaker Tata Motors and software group Infosys; Russian firms Lukoil and Gazprom as well as Chile's Latam Airlines.  "If ever there was a wake-up call for business leaders in the West, this is it," David C Michael, coauthor of the report, was quoted as saying. "We have been monitoring the rise of global challenger companies for nearly a decade, and the ambition of these companies - what we call the accelerator mindset - has never been stronger," said Michael.  The report goes on to say that global challengers already outpace their competitors from the developed world in growth, job creation and productivity.  Their average revenue was $26.5bn in 2011, compared with $21bn for the S&P 500 nonfinancial companies.  In addition, in the last five years global challengers added 1.4 million jobs, while employment at nonfinancial S&P 500 companies remained flat, the report said.  Chinese and Indian companies dominate the list of global challengers but companies from Egypt, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are fast catching up, with the span of industries also widening.  The rise of emerging market companies presents opportunities that could be mutually beneficial to both sides, the report said.

Davos heads seek trillions in new revenue

Business leaders in Davos have plenty to worry about, from the eurozone to global geopolitical upheavals, but at heart their problem is simple: how to find new revenue in a low-growth world.Half a decade on from the financial crisis, investors want to see earnings driven by more than just cost cutting. Their focus now is on a return to sales growth, which presents the world's largest corporations with a $5 trillion challenge.That is the amount of extra revenue the 1 200 top global companies need to find each year simply to meet analysts' expectations, according to consulting firm Accenture. "The trouble is that stock markets' expectations of the ability of companies to grow far exceeds the underlying macroeconomic growth rates," said Mark Spelman, Accenture's global head of strategy. "So companies need to get beyond just thinking about emerging markets and rising middle classes and start to look at those segments where you are seeing significant consumer change, because there is a lot of latent growth in those segments." Increasingly, companies are seeking specific pockets of opportunity for sales growth. They remain cautious about major new investments, however, with confidence among managers in the near-term outlook for their businesses still weak. The annual PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of more than 1 300 chief executives worldwide found only 36% were "very confident" of their firm's prospects for revenue growth in the next 12 months, down from 40% a year ago.    The mismatch between the sputtering global market for goods and services predicted by macroeconomists and the lofty numbers forecast by analysts following individual companies is striking. In all regions, analysts' forecasts for company revenue growth are well above prevailing views on underlying economies. While the World Bank last week cut its 2013 global growth forecast to 2.4% - and just 1.3% in advanced economies - analysts see company revenues expanding by 7.8% in Asia outside Japan, 3.8% in the United States and 2.4 in the eurozone, according Thomson Reuters data. And consensus forecasts call for 2014 sales to pick up even further, especially in the US, where a recovery, it is hoped, could be spurred by rapid growth in shale oil and gas supplies. Companies in the middle of the current hoped-for recovery are wary, as reflected in results from two of Europe's biggest manufacturers on Wednesday. Siemens warned that industrial demand was weakening, while Unilever said economic conditions were "tough", though it had countered this by faster innovation in its products.  Longer term, CEOs are more optimistic, but there are bound to be questions over delivery, given that only around a tenth of companies in the S&P Global 1200 index have seen revenue growth outstrip economic growth in each of the past three years. In the fight to buck the slow-growth trend, nimbleness is key as companies move away from broad-based bets to more targeted strategies that they hope will win market share. "Uncertainty is itself becoming more of a certainty," said Jonas Prising, who heads Manpower's operations in the Americas and southern Europe. "In this new environment, strategic flexibility becomes all important."    Mergers and acquisitions would be one way for corporations to buy growth but CEOs remain reluctant to undertake large-scale deals, despite cheap credit and relatively low valuations. In fact, the focus of CEOs on M&A is at the lowest level in six years, according to the executives surveyed by PwC. "M&A activity is going to be very focused, very targeted and certainly nowhere near the levels that we saw over the past several years," said PwC International chairperson Dennis Nally. The calamitous nature of some bold deals from the recent past, such as those of miner Rio Tinto, whose CEO was sacked last week, will do nothing to encourage boldness by other business leaders. An important focus for companies now is on smarter ways to serve sections of their existing markets, while placing selective bets on new openings. For many, this involves embracing digital technology to keep pace with changes in how consumers buy goods and services - from shifting more resources to online sales to greater use of new tools to analyse behaviour. But new opportunities come in many guises. Luxury goods companies, for example, are aggressively growing their retail networks, especially flagship stores, particularly in growth markets, while companies in many sectors are chasing new service contracts that can lock in profits for years. Geography, too, remains a vital lever for managers to pull as they chase new sales. For Spanish companies struggling with a dire home market, Latin America has become a prime target because of their language advantage, helping the likes of telecoms giant Telefonica. Others are betting that the US market will indeed surge back this year, including German carmaker BMW and fashion house Hugo Boss. With $5 trillion to find, the world's business leaders can afford to leave no stone unturned.  

Swiss aims to ban 'mercenary' firms

The Swiss government said on Wednesday it aims to ban any companies offering mercenary services in conflict areas, in a bid to preserve Switzerland's cherished neutrality and ensure it respects international law. "The Federal Council wants to ban from Switzerland companies offering mercenary services," it said in a statement."The new law would make it illegal for security companies based in Switzerland to directly participate in hostilities within the context of an armed conflict abroad," it added.In the proposed law, which will need parliamentary approval before it can take effect, all companies headquartered in Switzerland would be required to declare all their security-linked activities abroad, the government said.This would allow Swiss authorities to determine whether the activities fell within the law or whether they should be banned, it said.The new rule would apply not only to companies that offer security services in Switzerland and abroad but also holding structures of firms that only do their business overseas."Security companies will not be permitted to carry out activities susceptible to enabling serious human rights violations," the government said, adding that firms would for instance be blocked from running prisons in countries known to use torture.The Swiss government had said it was necessary to regulate private security firms after Britain's Aegis Group Holdings, one of the world's biggest security companies operating in crisis or conflict zones, moved its headquarters to Basel in 2010.Around 20 security companies in Switzerland offer similar services.It will likely take another two to three years before the new law passes through both houses of the Swiss parliament, and it could take another year or so after that before it goes into effect, government spokesperson Luzius Mader told AFP.

NEWS,24.08.2012

dear folLowers, i will return with new post on 16^th september

 

Mission Accomplished for Big Oil?

In 2011, after nearly nine years of war and occupation, U.S. troops finally left Iraq. In their place, Big Oil is now present in force and the country’s oil output, crippled for decades, is growing again. Iraq recently reclaimed the number two position in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), overtaking oil-sanctioned Iran. Now, there’s talk of a new world petroleum glut. So is this finally mission accomplished?Well, not exactly. In fact, any oil company victory in Iraq is likely to prove as temporary as George W. Bush’s triumph in 2003. The main reason is yet another of those stories the mainstream media didn’t quite find room for: the role of Iraqi civil society. But before telling that story, let’s look at what’s happening to Iraqi oil today, and how we got from the “no blood for oil” global protests of 2003 to the present moment.Here, as a start, is a little scorecard of what’s gone on in Iraq since Big Oil arrived two and a half years ago: corruption’s skyrocketed; two Western oil companies are being investigated for either giving or receiving bribes; the Iraqi government is paying oil companies a per-barrel fee according to wildly unrealistic production targets they’ve set, whether or not they deliver that number of barrels; contractors are heavily over-charging for drilling wells, which the companies don’t mind since the Iraqi government picks up the tab.Meanwhile, to protect the oil giants from dissent and protest, trade union offices have been raided, computers seized and equipment smashed, leaders arrested and prosecuted. And that’s just in the oil-rich southern part of the country. In Kurdistan in the north, the regional government awards contracts on land outside its jurisdiction, contracts which permit the government to transfer its stake in the oil projects  up to 25%  to private companies of its choice. Fuel is smuggled across the border to the tune of hundreds of tankers a day.In Kurdistan, at least the approach is deliberate: the two ruling families of the region, the Barzanis and Talabanis, know that they can do whatever they like, since their Peshmerga militia control the territory. In contrast, the Iraqi federal government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has little control over anything. As a result, in the rest of the country the oil industry operates, gold-rush-style, in an almost complete absence of oversight or regulation.Oil companies differ as to which of these two Iraqs they prefer to operate in. BP and Shell have opted to rush for black gold in the super-giant oilfields of southern Iraq. Exxon has hedged its bets by investing in both options. This summer, Chevron and the French oil company Total voted for the Kurdish approach, trading smaller oil fields for better terms and a bit more stability.Keep in mind that the incapacity of the Iraqi government is hardly limited to the oil business: stagnation hangs over its every institution. Iraqis still have an average of just five hours of electricity a day, which in 130-degree heat causes tempers to boil over regularly. The country’s two great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, which watered the cradle of civilization 5,000 years ago, are drying up.  This is largely due to the inability of the government to engage in effective regional diplomacy that would control upstream dam-building by Turkey.After elections in 2010, the country’s leading politicians couldn’t even agree on how to form a government until the Iraqi Supreme Court forced them to. This record of haplessness, along with rampant corruption, significant repression, and a revival of sectarianism can all be traced back to American decisions in the occupation years. Tragically, these persistent ills have manifested themselves in a recent spate of car-bombings and other bloody attacks.In the period before and around the invasion, the Bush administration barely mentioned Iraqi oil, describing it reverently only as that country’s “patrimony.” As for the reasons for war, the administration insisted that it had barely noticed Iraq had one-tenth of the world’s oil reserves. But my new book reveals documents I received, marked SECRET/NOFORN, that laid out for the first time pre-war oil plans hatched in the Pentagon by arch-neoconservative Douglas Feith’s Energy Infrastructure Planning Group (EIPG).In November 2002, four months before the invasion, that planning group came up with a novel idea: it proposed that any American occupation authority not repair war damage to the country’s oil infrastructure, as doing so “could discourage private sector involvement.” In other words, it suggested that the landscape should be cleared of Iraq’s homegrown oil industry to make room for Big Oil.When the administration worried that this might disrupt oil markets, EIPG came up with a new strategy under which initial repairs would be carried out by KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Long-term contracts with multinational companies, awarded by the U.S. occupation authority, would follow. International law notwithstanding, the EIPG documents noted cheerily that such an approach would put “long-term downward pressure on [the oil] price” and force “questions about Iraq’s future relations with OPEC.”At the same time, the Pentagon planning group recommended that Washington state that its policy was “not to prejudice Iraq’s future decisions regarding its oil development policies.” Here, in writing, was the approach adopted in the years to come by the Bush administration and the occupation authorities: lie to the public while secretly planning to hand Iraq over to Big Oil.There turned out, however, to be a small kink in the plan: the oil companies declined the American-awarded contracts, fearing that they would not stand up in international courts and so prove illegitimate. They wanted Iraq first to have an elected permanent government that would arrive at the same results. The question then became how to get the required results with the Iraqis nominally in charge. The answer: install a friendly government and destroy the Iraqi oil industry.In July 2003, the U.S. occupation established the Iraqi Governing Council, a quasi-governmental body led by friendly Iraqi exiles who had been out of the country for the previous few decades. They would be housed in an area of Baghdad isolated from the Iraqi population by concrete blast walls and machine gun towers, and dubbed the Green Zone.  There, the politicians would feast, oblivious to and unconcerned with the suffering of the rest of the population.The first post-invasion Oil Minister was Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, a man who held the country’s homegrown oil expertise in open contempt. He quickly set about sacking the technicians and managers who had built the industry following nationalization in the 1970s and had kept it running through wars and sanctions. He replaced them with friends and fellow party members. One typical replacement was a former pizza chef.The resulting damage to the oil industry exceeded anything caused by missiles and tanks. As a result the country found itself -- as Washington had hoped -- dependent on the expertise of foreign companies. Meanwhile, not only did the Coalition Provisional authority (CPA) that oversaw the occupation lose $6.6 billion of Iraqi money, it effectively suggested corruption wasn't something to worry about.  A December 2003 CPA policy document recommended that Iraq follow the lead of Azerbaijan, where the government had attracted oil multinationals despite an atmosphere of staggering corruption (“less attractive governance”) simply by offering highly profitable deals. Now, so many years later, the corruption is all-pervasive and the multinationals continue to operate without oversight, since the country’s ministry is run by the equivalent of pizza chefs.The first permanent government was formed under Prime Minister Maliki in May 2006. In the preceding months, the American and British governments made sure the candidates for prime minister knew what their first priority had to be: to pass a law legalizing the return of the foreign multinationals tossed out of the country in the 1970s to run the oil sector.The law was drafted within weeks, dutifully shown to U.S. officials within days, and to oil multinationals not long after. Members of the Iraqi parliament, however, had to wait seven months to see the text.The trouble was: getting it through that parliament proved far more difficult than Washington or its officials in Iraq had anticipated. In January 2007, an impatient President Bush announced a “surge” of 30,000 U.S. troops into the country, by then wracked by a bloody civil war. Compliant journalists accepted the story of a gamble by General David Petraeus to bring peace to warring Iraqis.In fact, those troops spearheaded a strategy with rather less altruistic objectives: first, broker a new political deal among U.S. allies, who were the most sectarian and corrupt of Iraq’s politicians (hence, with the irony characteristic of American foreign policy, regularly described as “moderates”); second, pressure them to deliver on political objectives set in Washington and known as “benchmarks” -- of which passing the oil law was the only one ever really talked about: in President Bush’s biweekly video conferences with Maliki, in almost daily meetings of the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, and in frequent visits by senior administration officials.On this issue, the Democrats, by then increasingly against the Iraq War but still pro-Big Oil, lent a helping hand to a Republican administration. Having failed to end the war, the newly Democrat-controlled Congress passed an appropriations bill that would cut off reconstruction funds to Iraq if the oil law weren’t passed. Generals warned that without an oil law Prime Minister Maliki would lose their support, which he knew well would mean losing his job. And to ramp up the pressure further, the U.S. set a deadline of September 2007 to pass the law or face the consequences.It was then that things started going really wrong for Bush and company. In December 2006, I was at a meeting where leaders of Iraq’s trade unions decided to fight the oil law. One of them summed up the general sentiment this way: “We do not need thieves to take us back to the middle ages.” So they began organizing. They printed pamphlets, held public meetings and conferences, staged protests, and watched support for their movement grow.  Most Iraqis feel strongly that the country’s oil reserves belong in the public sector, to be developed to benefit them, not foreign energy companies. And so word spread fast -- and with it, popular anger. Iraq’s oil professionals and various civil society groups denounced the law. Preachers railed against it in Friday sermons. Demonstrations were held in Baghdad and elsewhere, and as Washington ratcheted up the pressure, members of the Iraqi parliament started to see political opportunity in aligning themselves with this ever more popular cause. Even some U.S. allies in Parliament confided in diplomats at the American embassy that it would be political suicide to vote for the law.By the September deadline, a majority of the parliament was against the law and  a remarkable victory for the trade unions it was not passed. It’s still not passed today.Given the political capital the Bush administration had invested in the passage of the oil law, its failure offered Iraqis a glimpse of the limits of U.S. power, and from that moment on, Washington’s influence began to wane.Things changed again in 2009 when the Maliki government, eager for oil revenues, began awarding contracts to them even without an oil law in place. As a result, however, the victory of Big Oil is likely to be a temporary one: the present contracts are illegal, and so they will last only as long as there’s a government in Baghdad that supports them.This helps explain why the government's repression of trade unions increased once the contracts were signed.  Now, Iraq is showing signs of a more general return to authoritarianism (as well as internecine violence and possibly renewed sectarian conflict).But there is another possibility for Iraq. Years before the Arab Spring, I saw what Iraqi civil society can achieve by organizing: it stopped the world’s superpower from reaching its main objective and steered Iraq onto a more positive course.Many times since 2003 Iraqis have moved their country in a more democratic direction: establishing trade unions in that year, building Shi'a-Sunni connections in 2004, promoting anti-sectarian politicians in 2007 and 2008, and voting for them in 2009.  Sadly, each of these times Washington has pushed it back toward sectarianism, the atmosphere in which its allies thrive.  While mainstream commentators now regularly blame the recent escalation of violence on the departure of U.S. troops, it would be more accurate to say that the real reason is they didn’t leave far sooner.Now, without its troops and bases, much of Washington’s political heft has vanished. Whether Iraq heads in the direction of dictatorship, sectarianism, or democracy remains to be seen, but if Iraqis again start to build a more democratic future, the U.S. will no longer be there to obstruct it.  Meanwhile, if a new politics does emerge, Big Oil may discover that, in the end, it was mission unaccomplished.