Category: Business Strategy

The company had to come up with a new business strategies to generate profits and cash flow in order to survive. Kenneth Lay, CEO, hired McKinsey & Co. to help in developing Enrons survival business strategy. A gas pipeline company climbed it’s way into the worlds largest energy-trader by scamming investors, the accounting Enron scandal was a real systematic manipulation of fiduciary rules to create an illusion of a very successful company. Enron accounting scandal was discovered and proved that they made deliberate attempts to alter its financial statements to make them look more attractive to investors and lenders. Following these manipulations many parties have been affected and will continue to be affected in the future, more specifically, many years. The accounting Enron scandal that lead to the Enron collapse was due in great part in the activities of their C.E.O., Jeffrey Skilling. Not only was he in charge of controlling one of the largest energy companies in the world, he was also in charge of many other side undertakings that may have been in a conflict of interest with his main job as Chief Executive Officer of Enron. The baffling part of this situation was that the other members of the Board of Directors for Enron all voted on this and passed it. There are three specific ways in which the accounting Enron scandal occured by misrepresented figures on its financial statements.

The accounting Enron scandal case was broadcast on television news for months in 2002. The accounting Enron scandal story was around the news for a period before and after the downfall of the company. Now days, however, one seldom hears about Enron or its top executives ? and the reason is not because they are all lodged safely in a federal prison. Rather, it because (a) the president and the congress gain no longer gain points by grandstanding on the issue, (b) the Department of Justice finds its difficult to put the top brass in the docket, although the Department has pressured some lower-level Enron executives into confessions, and (c) the public appears to be beyond caring. The accounging Enron scandal, however, was and is an important development for American society. The scandal demonstrated just how easily ethical standards can be discarded at the highest corporate levels when the price is right. This paper examines the accounting Enron scandal from a perspective of ethics in management. The phrase ethics in management in management is an unfortunate one.It implies that the set of ethical principles applicable in corporate management may be somewhat different from the application of ethical principles in other societal endeavors. Perceptions of that sort by top managers at Enron may have made it easier for them to pursue the courses of action that landed themselves and the company in the troubles that eventually emerged. . . . es in the trading of energy market was the manipulation of prices to created inflated and unwarranted profits for Enron at the expense of utility companies and utility consumers. Ultimately, however, the inflated profits contributed to the creation of a false representation of Enron’s performance that created financial benefits Enron selected executives at the expense of investors and the public. Similarly, the immediate intent of deceptive accounting practices involving Enron and fictitious business entities was to shield from investor and governmental regulators the fact that Enron was not a profitable company as was being reported publicly. Additionally, however, the deals between the company and fictitious entities diverted large amounts of money from the company to selected high-level executives at Enron. These behaviors were injurious to Enron employees, investors, and consumers (Axtman & Scherer, 2002). One may attempt to assess the behaviors of the offending Enron executives (all at senior levels of the organization) within a framework of business ethics. The term “business ethics” appears to imply that behaviors that are ethically unacceptable in other facets of society may be acceptable in the business realm. The accounting Enron scandal will go down in history as one of the most notorious case for American society.

Can you think of a business that doesnt want to innovate and grow? The success and/or failure of an organization depend entirely upon the strategy formulation and the ability to execute that strategy. How do you decide upon a strategy?

Dr. Zunaira Munir (Founder and Managing Director of Strategize Blue) is a business strategist who focuses on innovative business growth strategies to help companies break out of competition and achieve profitable growth. With a client list that reads like a Who’s Who in Business, Dr. Munir addresses companies eager to grow and willing to innovate from organizations, large and small. Recent clients include Hewlett Packard, Coca Cola, T-Mobile, Center for Non-Profit Management, Ohio State University Medical Center, Technologico de Monterrey, American Advertising Federation, Banco Colombia, RJ Reynolds and California Chamber of Commerce to name a few.

Dr. Munirs specialized topic is Blue Ocean Strategy, a systematic approach to innovate and achieve profitable growth. It originates from the best selling book Blue Ocean Strategy (authored by Professors Kim and Mauborgne of INSEAD in 2005) that is known to have revolutionized business strategy worldwide.

Blue Ocean Strategy stresses businesses to make their competition irrelevant instead of continuously striving to beat it. As a senior member of the Global Blue Ocean Strategy Network, she works directly with Kim Chan and Renee Mauborgne.

Blue Ocean Strategy suggests that the traditional strategies are not sufficient to achieve or sustain profitable growth in the present day markets marked by cut-throat competition. Instead of striving to do better than the competitors for grabbing a bigger share of the market, it focuses on value innovating for creating uncontested market spaces where competition becomes irrelevant. It is about creating new wealth in the market instead of fighting over and distributing existing wealth in the market.

Additionally, whereas all other traditional approaches consider innovation to be a trial-and-error process that depends on an entrepreneurs creativity and risk-taking, Blue Ocean Strategy comes with a complete set of tools, frameworks and methodologies that make the innovation process systematic and replicable that anybody can learn and apply to achieve profitable growth. Challenging the traditional assumption that opportunities and risks always come together, Dr. Munir focuses on minimizing risks while maximizing opportunities to achieve business success.

The system is quite generalizable and scalable and has been applied for formulating national strategies; for achieving corporate success; for generating growth in small businesses as well as for an individuals success in career.

With a PhD in Innovation Management from Wuhan University of Technology in China and dynamic training and presenting experience in Asia, Europe, South America, as well as the U.S Dr. Munir continue to help companies develop concrete ideas and practical steps to create new market space

Brendan Murphy is the Marketing Manager for Strategize Blue http://www.strategizeblue.com, a Blue Ocean Strategy Training and Consulting company based in San Diego. He works under Dr. Zunaira Munir, the internationally exclaimed expert and keynote speaker on Blue Ocean Strategy.

Many small business owners are inspired by the green movement that is becoming more popular every day. The satisfaction that can be gained from not only creating a successful product but doing it in a way that has a positive impact on the environment can make all of the work creating an ecofriendly business takes worth the effort. Creating a successful ecofriendly business strategy can seem overwhelming at first, but if you follow these basic steps, you will avoid becoming overwhelmed with the process.

The most important part of establishing an ecofriendly business plan is also the first step you should complete and can sometimes take the longest. It is important not to copy someone else’s strategies if you want to create a plan that will be long lasting and work for your unique company. Whether you are creating a whole new product to sell on the green market, or just looking to incorporate green workplace practices and transform an existing product into one that is more ecofriendly, you should always start with what you know best. If you are passionate about your product and committed to making ecofriendly choices for your company, creating an ecofriendly business plan will feel more like an exciting learning experience and less like a chore.

Once you have researched the best way to turn your business into a green business and have invested in the products that help you create ecofriendly products, you will need to work on obtaining certification so that you can legally market your product to consumers. After all, besides wanting to reduce the chances your product will have a negative impact on the environment, consumer demand for products that are ecofriendly are getting a lot of attention from environmentally conscious consumers and advertisers. Being able to sell your product with advertising and packaging that says certified ecofriendly or certified green will help increase your sales and in many cases allow you to raise the cost of your item to accommodate any increase in production costs associated with producing a more ecofriendly item.

There are both domestic and international certifications you can apply for that all have their own guidelines that must be followed to receive a certified status. Most of these certifications apply to a specific type of product. For instance, in the United States, energy efficient appliances can receive and Energy Star rating while produce and other foods are evaluated and classified as organic by the Department of Agriculture. Many international groups exist as well. The best way to find out the requirements for each certification is to contact the individual groups directly through their websites.

Finally, creating an ecofriendly product is one thing, but running an ecofriendly business is another thing entirely. Companies who sell ecofriendly products should also take every possible step they can to make sure that the way they run their business is ecofriendly too. Every part of your business should be ecofriendly. Recycle in all your office and plant locations, do business with other eco-friendly companies, and even encourage your employees to commute in a more earth friendly way by offering incentives to people who bike or car pool to work.

Written by L. Reaves for Beacon Hill Associates, Inc., found at http://www.b-h-a.com – an environmental insurance broker and program administrator focusing on specialty insurance related to the environment and pollution.

You would certainly not like the idea of waiting for a period of 3 years or even more to buy your own home. In that case, many prefer to go for resale property. Buying resale property has several advantages. Not only you would be able to get a ready made flat to reside but also several other advantages.

The Advantages of Buying Resale Property

You get the opportunity to shift to the house immediately. This would be highly helpful especially when you have to shift to a shelter within a short time.

Many a times, you might be paying huge amount of money as rent and your calculations show that in the long run buying a property would be more economic than continuing to engage huge sums of money as rent. So, to lookout for a home within a short notice, buying resale property is indeed a good idea.

If you are an individual who loves to be located at a prominent position, go for resale property options. You would find as they were built quite early, they are usually located at good locations, at the heart of the city. In contrast, the latest residential developments are usually found in the suburban regions.
Though buying resale property would be advantageous to many respect, but you need to be careful while buying one. Your resale property is old after all and hence, you need to be assured of the fact that the building is still tough and durable.

Important Checklist for Buying Resale Property

Before you enter the flat, engage some professionals to check the plumbing and electrical works. Inspect whether the repair has been properly done or not. Try not to buy a property which is more than 10 years of age.

Your property must definitely be in good shape so that you do not have to spend much on its maintenance.

Check all the legal documents. The title of the property must be the name of the seller. Check whether all the duties and the dues are paid.

Inspect whether the property you are buying has any illegal constructions or not. In that case, you may get in touch of a lawyer or a civil engineer to learn about it.

Avoid buying resale property for investment purpose. If you are purchasing the property to expect huge returns, this won’t be a good business strategy. Purchasing resale flats is worthwhile only if you have plans to shift to the place immediately.

Let’s get started by concentrating on the S&P 500 – it is intrinsically an index of the 500 largest companies in America. Indeed, it is more. Contrary to popular misconception, the S&P 500 is not a simple list of the largest 500 companies by market capitalization or by revenues.

Rather, it is 500 of the most widely held U.S.-based common stocks, chosen by the S&P Index Committee for market size, liquidity, and sector representation. “Leading companies in leading industries” is the guiding principal for S&P 500 inclusion. We are starting here to achieve safety and diversity.

If you use the S&P 500 as your investment base you won’t have to worry if the CEO has resigned, the CFO has just been indicted, the stock has missed its forecast or any number of things that make stock prices flagellate unsuspecting investors and traders.

You ask: How can you make money investing on the S&P 500?

Consider its graph, the white, bottom most curve on the chart. As you can see, the S&P 500 goes up and down similar to stocks and hasn’t done so well over the past 3 years.

Wouldn’t we do better with a mutual fund? [Actually, you’re getting warmer.]

According to the Motley Fool, “During the 1990s, the S&P 500 has provided an annualized return of 17.3%, compared with just 13.9% for the average diversified mutual fund.” Over the past 3 years only 10 mutual funds had more than a 12% total return [data through 6/4/2010 from 12,392 funds, Morningstar]. You can see that the S&P 500 has not done well, but you would have actually done worse using mutual funds.

Instead of considering mutual funds I’m going to restrict our consideration to just two ETFs, i.e., SSO and SDS. I said simple; this is simple.

We’re going to invest in SSO when the market is rising and SDS when it’s falling. Both SSO and SDS are based on the S&P 500. They track its traded index, SPX. [You have to trade SPX because the S&P 500 is an index that isn’t traded.] The SPX is among the most traded equities and is also one of the most liquid. As an investment it brings diversification.

SSO and SDS are mirrors of each other. Whenever SSO rises the SDS falls, and vice versa. This allows us to trade in rising and falling markets. Simply, pick the correct ETF.

These ETFs have one other unusual property. They move twice the speed of the SPX; they are leveraged 2 to 1. [Proshares has a number of similarly behaving ETFs. They are called Ultra ETFs.]

You said: This would be a safe investment strategy! These are leveraged! Isn’t it safer to invest in sound American stocks?

Rather than give a large list of recently failed stocks, I decided to find if there were any stocks among the current S&P 500 that I would like to have held over the past 3 years. Only 2 emerged, Family Dollar and Autozone. More than 15% of the S&P 500 had more than a 75% draw-down and an additional 35% had losses over 50% at some time during the 3 years. These statistics do not include companies like Enron and Lehman that are no longer included. If they were included these statistics would be much higher.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not much of a stock picker. I want something truly safe. If you are comfortable with your results trading stocks, don’t bother reading further.

What about investing in utilities?

When I began investing, my Dad told me that utilities were always a safe investment. They paid a good dividend that never went down. Their customer base is locked in. Their rates are determined by the states and these always increase. What could be safer?

During the last 3 years, Duke Energy fell over 40% from a high of 20.66 to a low of 12.39. Over the same period, the index of gas utilities had a high of 33.84 and a low of 20.11. Electric utilities fared worse falling from a high of 40.01 to a low of 20.85. Even utilities don’t look safe anymore.

From my point of view, it’s the story of the turtle and the hare. Stocks behave like the hare. You cannot predict in which direction they are going to run.

These two ETFs, SSO and SDS, in comparison are turtles; admittedly turtles with racing stripes. At this point we do not have anything more than a rough plan for investing in the S&P 500. This is not enough to qualify as an investment strategy.

We shall begin to upgrade this plan into a practical trading strategy. First, we need an unbiased indicator to determine on which ETF we should place our money, SSO or SDS. Any day, the majority of pundits on CNBC will tell you the market is going to rise. But on the same day, many of their pundits will provide reasons why it will fall. So, you cannot rely on them. Also, the Futures, prior to the Open, seem no more reliable for choosing either SSO or SDS.

After many years of trying, I developed a market timer that combines the market movement of the SPX with market sentiment. I call this the SPXTimer. There are many market timers available. I’ll let you be the judge which to choose.

They are invaluable for making a well guided decision about which ETF to select. Mine gives you three choices. When it’s bullish take SSO; bearish SDS and when it’s neutral stay in cash. What could be simpler?

The red curve, third from the top judging from the right hand side of the chart, shows the results of trading SSO and SDS from 9/12/2007 until 5/5/2010 only using the SPXTimer. $10,000 invested on 9/12/2007 grew to $13,737. Most investors and funds didn’t do that well over this difficult period.

I think you will agree, these results are not very good in terms of what you would hope to achieve. Look at the yellow oval in the middle the graph. During that interval of time, the investment fell from a high of $14,469 down to $11,158. That’s a big hit. We would like to sleep well at night; that fall would make sleep very difficult.

Sometimes these ETFs do not move in sync with the market timer. A little patience is required before charging into the market. I added a mild momentum constraint to the strategy to ensure the entry is in sync with the timer. The ETF’s momentum, not necessarily the price, is required to be rising over 2 days. [A service bureau provides me with this information.] Sometimes this constrains delays entry for several days.

The blue curve provides the results of adding this constraint. Here, based solely on the S&P 500, my market timer and an entry constraint, the $10,000 investment grew smoothly to 16,525. That’s over 20% per year! There were pull backs, but you could sleep soundly.

I was still concerned with giving back profits. After each big run-up in profit, it seemed there was a comparably big pull back. Many investment managers recommend adding to a position as it is rising in value.

I decided to try subtracting from the position size as the profit rises. If timed properly, this might reduce the amount of profit given back. Plus, it would reduce the risk while adding some of the profit to the bank. To do this, I decided to incorporate the following Money Management with the two strategies that were in place.

Say you started with $10,000. The idea is to keep the money at risk between $9,000 and $11,000 [+/- 10% of the initial investment].

Whenever your equity grows over $11,000 sell enough shares to withdraw $1,000. This should reduce your money at risk to under $11,000. The next time it appreciates over $11,000, do it again.

If, on the other hand, the investment falls below $9,000 add $1,000 worth to the ETF investment.

The results are remarkable. This investment, the yellow, top-most curve, grew to $17,780. That’s close to 30% annually; not bad for a turtle! The chart doesn’t show this statistic, but 75% of these trades were winners.

I repeated this test on three more broad based indexes: the Nasdaq 100, S&P Mid-Cap 400 and the Russell 2000 changing only the two ETFs. Each did better. The statistics of these investments, starting on 9/12/2007 with $10,000 and ending on 5/5/2010, are shown in the table below. All data is based on back-testing, not actual trades.

The basic plan: buy one of these ETFs when bullish and the inverse ETF when bearish, or stay out of the market in cash, is as simple as it can get. The SPXTimer brings order and safety to the investment because you know whether to buy the bullish ETF or the bearish ETF. The entry condition, combined with this money management strategy, will improve your investment results beyond what you might hope to achieve with stocks or mutual funds – with much less risk. Now isn’t that what you wanted all along?

Footnote
You may be wondering about the choice of dates; particularly since on 5/6/2010 the Dow fell over 1000 points in less than a half hour. Many of these ETFs were first introduced in 2006 and 2007. As a result, data was not collected for the SPXTimer prior to mid 2007. The start date corresponded to the first change to a bullish signal. On 5/5/2010 the timer signaled a close for all bullish positions. Prices in the table reflect the Open of 5/6/2010.