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Chemicals and the Economy

Political, Social concerns drive non-Western companies

Last week’s New Normal seminar in Houston continued the success of the Singapore and Frankfurt events. It sparked lively debate about the major opportunities for future growth in the New Normal. These include: • The over-55 age group in the West – already 272m in number • Those millions emerging from poverty in the East […]

Politics, beliefs return to dominate economics

The 10000 readers who downloaded the blog’s first Budget White Paper in December 2009, ‘Budgeting for a New Normal’, will remember the issues highlighted in the triangle above. At the time, they were being widely ignored, as policymakers assumed that the economy would soon return to its previous SuperCycle. Today, this optimism has been revealed […]

Shared Value can unleash next wave of global growth

GE’s then CEO, Jack Welch, launched the Shareholder Value concept in 1981. It has since led many investors to adopt a purely short-term focus on financial metrics, rather than longer-term opportunities. The only problem is that, as Welch admitted 2 years ago, it was “a dumb idea“. Now, one of the world’s great management thinkers, […]

Value creation for People, Planet and Profit

The financial crisis has highlighted the need to move away from the simplistic approach of the “shareholder value” cult, where short-term targets dominate company thinking. Even Jack Welch, former GE CEO and original instigator of the approach, now agrees that the concept was “a dumb idea“. The blog therefore welcomes DSM’s new approach to the […]

Returning Boards to their proper role

Today sees a supportive follow-up in the Financial Times to yesterday’s posting about LloydsTSB, and its willingness to rebuff those who parroted the ‘shareholder value’ mantra. The man who led the bank’s director development programme reveals that its former Chairman, Sir Brian Pitman, ‘drummed into us that the board’s main focus was to ensure continuing […]

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