Entries from Chemicals & The Economy tagged with 'Unilever'
World Bank warns "real-side recovery is weak"
The risk of global recession continues to rise, with the World Bank last week warning that "the real-side recovery is weak and business sector confidence is low". Spain, the world's 12th largest economy, provides a good example of how the...
If you build it, they may not come
The story of the 1989 US movie Field of Dreams summed up the happy days of the economic supercycle that was then getting underway. Starring A-list players such as Kevin Costner and Burt Lancaster, its theme that "if you build...
Affordability a key trend for Western markets
The Red Queen in the classic book, Alice in Wonderland, would have recognised today's financial markets when she boasted "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Fellow blogger Doris de Guzman noted one great example...
V is for Volatility
Unilever CEO Paul Polman suggests we are living in a VUCA world, as we discuss in chapter 11 of Boom, Gloom and the New Normal. Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity make planning for the future more difficult than for a...
China fines Unilever for soap price increases
There seems little doubt that China is increasingly worried by rising inflation. The latest sign is Unilever, the giant consumer products company, being fined $300k (RMB 2 million), for discussing plans to increase prices due to higher raw material costs....
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...
Unilever focuses on long-term investors
Its now 18 months since Jack Welch publicly abandoned his views on the importance of shareholder value, and said it was "a dumb idea for executives to focus so heavily on quarterly profits and share price gains". This was very...
US consumers turn to Dollar stores
Major changes are taking place in US retailing. They echo the changing focus of emerging Asian markets. Taken together, these must have important implications for chemical demand. US retail markets have been evolving over the past 3 years, as the...
Brainstorming on biomass
The blog has come across a useful new tool for global brainstorming, run out of San Francisco by DiscoveryCast. They have recently organised a major event with Paris-based SpecialChem to review the current state of play in bio-based initiatives. This...
CEOs remain cautious over 2010 Outlook
The blog's quarterly survey of company Outlook statements shows CEOs remain very cautious. There has been a rebound after the destocking disaster of Q4 2008 - Q1 2009. But there seems little confidence that we will quickly return to the...
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