Everyone has the idea of owning good companies. The problem is that they have high prices in relations to assets and earnings, and that takes all of the fun out of the game.
Dominant companies have a special responsibility to ensure that the way they do business doesn’t prevent competition… and does not harm consumers and innovation.
The tobacco companies and snooker were as thick as thieves.
I don’t like to play anywhere with a banner for Carlsberg or vodka or whatever. I’m not a drinker myself, and I don’t like feeling like I’m working for the liquor companies.
All economically well-off nations have used what has been dubbed ‘cheque-book diplomacy,’ and China does so, too. Apart from funding government-to-government lending, China has also been able to create global companies and global brands that have contributed to Chinese soft power.
We’re all vulnerable to social approval. The need to belong, to be approved or appreciated by our peers is among the highest human motivations. But now our social approval is in the hands of tech companies.
We invite American companies looking to raise capital to list on the Bahrain Stock Exchange. The region has a liquidity oversupply approximating $1 trillion and this pool of capital can be tapped into by creative American companies. The next Facebook may very well get funded on the BSE.
I’ve never gone into business to make money. Every Virgin product and service has been made into a reality to make a positive difference in people’s lives. And by focusing on the happiness of our customers, we have been able to build a successful group of companies.
One startup I dream of funding is the one that kills the record companies.
More and more, in any company, managers are dealing with different cultures. Companies are going global, but the teams are being divided and scattered all over the planet.
Sooner or later, you will see a China-based company that really has a global impact, and I think Baidu has a chance to become one of those companies. We should be able to compete on a global basis.
What is more important is that Foreign Service Officers understand business, about the needs of U.S. business and how to help U.S. companies make the right connections abroad.
There was a time when I was wondering about this business of going public, so I visited about a half-dozen companies in the Boston area, all of them formed by MIT faculty and all had gone public.
From cell phones to computers, quality is improving and costs are shrinking as companies fight to offer the public the best product at the best price. But this philosophy is sadly missing from our health-care insurance system.
Insider trading tells everybody at precisely the wrong time that everything is rigged, and only people who have a billion dollars and have access to and are best friends with people who are on boards of directors of major companies – they’re the only ones who can make a true buck.
It’s happening: Lou Dobbs’ dream come true and Silicon Valley’s worst nightmare. We’re already seeing the reverse brain drain as smart immigrants take their U.S. educations and experience building companies and creating technology back to their home countries.
I don’t invest in companies where my mental model is that they need to get themselves acquired in the next few years – or ever.
Our Congress passes laws which subsidize corporation farms, oil companies, airlines, and houses for suburbia. But when they turn their attention to the poor, they suddenly become concerned about balancing the budget and cut back on the funds for Head Start, Medicare, and mental health appropriations.
Many entrepreneurs, and the venture investors who back them, seek to build billion-dollar companies.
Like the vast majority of my constituents, I continue to be concerned about record profits reported by petroleum companies at a time when consumers are paying record high prices for gasoline.
If companies can refuse to provide coverage for women, what other objections to the Affordable Care Act will we see based on ‘religious grounds’? For that matter, will ‘religious freedom’ be used as an excuse to discriminate against other minorities and disenfranchised groups across the board? Where will it end?
I love entrepreneurship because that’s what makes this country grow, and if I can help companies grow, I am creating jobs; I am setting foundations for future generations. It sends the message that the American Dream is alive and well.
Great companies, I think, are the ones that see what they’ve built and can build on top of it and iterate their product.
We need a number of solutions – we need more efficiency and conservation. Efficiency is a big one. I think car companies need to do a lot better in producing more efficient cars. They have the technology, we just need to demand them as consumers.
Not everybody is created equal, and it’s important for companies to identify those high potentials and treat them differently, accelerate their development and pay them more. That process is so incredibly important to developing first-class leadership in a company.
People think that the big companies make songs and their artists just release it. It’s not like that.
When it all started, record companies – and there were many of them, and this was a good thing – were run by people who loved records, people like Ahmet Ertegun, who ran Atlantic Records, who were record collectors. They got in it because they loved music.
I don’t think that old-fashioned idea of record companies exists any more.
Tobacco companies are legally operating entities in Australia. If the Government thinks that they should not make donations to political parties, well then they should ban them operating as legally structured entities in Australia.
I think that if you’re going after large banks and large financial companies to try to make sure people are being treated fairly, you’re going to make some enemies, and you’re going to make people uncomfortable.
Companies can’t delegate social media to the new college grad and think they have it covered.
Here in America we so are for family values, yet insurance companies do not cover all fertility procedures.
The financial capital is being concentrated by corporations, institutional investors, and even our pension funds, and being reinvested in companies that repeat this process because it provides the highest return on that financial capital.
Fully 57 percent of American college students are women. Life insurance companies sell more policies to women than to men. As women continue to draw on experience and education, they’re accelerating their numbers in upper management, too.
Several of the energy companies want to do the right thing. It’s a matter of leveling the playing field though for them and that’s why corrective action here is necessary.
All of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake news. We must try to squeeze this without stepping on freedom of speech and of the press, but we must also help the reader.
My motivation has always been to do technology apps and companies, not making money. Just because the money’s come, nothing’s changed.
Insurance companies can no longer refuse to cover Americans with pre-existing conditions.
I think, as e-commerce grows as a category, most e-commerce companies are focused on women because they are the decision makers and the consumers. When you think of e-commerce, and fashion is a big part of that, women are much more in tune with what other women are looking for online.
Companies are communities. There’s a spirit of working together. Communities are not a place where a few people allow themselves to be singled out as solely responsible for success.
If you want quality service, you have to pay for it. You don’t buy into waste. I have great misgivings about the amount of advertising that we see in the health care field, some by hospitals, a lot by drug companies.
France has a very important relationship with Germany. But that does not mean that we agree about everything or that two of our universities or companies are not going to compete.
If you thought the advent of the Internet, the spread of cheap and efficient information technology, and the growing fragmentation of the consumer market were all going to help smaller companies thrive at the expense of the slow-moving giants of the Fortune 500, apparently you were wrong.
More and more companies are reaching out to their suppliers and contractors to work jointly on issues of sustainability, environmental responsibility, ethics, and compliance.
The world is changing. Networks without a specific branding strategy will be killed. I envision a world of highly niched services and tightly run companies without room for all the overhead the established networks carry.
It’s competition that forces companies to get out of their complacency.
China also has moved away from its original status of purely producing basic, what you call, consumer commodities and Chinese companies are moving beyond China to various parts of the world.
The most impactful way consumers can assert their power is to become mindful shoppers, giving their dollars only to socially responsible companies. In today’s world of social media and smart phones, this is easy to do.
Koch companies employ 60,000 Americans, who make many thousands of products that Americans want and need.
