Thursday, December 20, 2007

REVENUE STRATEGY - HONDA

1. Honda will launch a hybrid-only model in 2009:
It will produce 200,000 of the new hybrids per year in Japan
It will sell them initially in North America, Europe and Japan.
It will offer the cars at a "more affordable price level" than currently available.
2. It will launch its first-ever hybrid sports car, based on the CR-Z concept car.
3. It will continue to look to fuel cell technology.
4. It will also begin leasing a small number of its FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles in Southern California for $600 a month.
5. It will introduce its new, clean, diesel engine technology into the U.S. in 2009
6. It is expanding capacity:
It is opening a new factory in Indiana in the US next fall.
It doubled capacity at its plant in Bangalore, India, to 100,000 this year and has begun building a second auto plant, which will be operational from 2009.
It will begin production at another new plant in Thailand in the second half of next year.
It is adding capacity at its Brazilian plant
It began construction of new factory in Argentina last month.
7. It does not have high expectations for plug-in hybrids, which can be charged overnight using a home electricity supply.

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - CHINA MOBILE

China Mobile Ltd. gained 6.5 million customers last month by scrapping charges for incoming calls and expanding in smaller towns and villages, where fewer people have mobile phones.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - BLUESCOPE STEEL

1. BlueScope Steel Ltd., Australia's largest steelmaker, agreed to buy four U.S. building material businesses for $730 million, betting commercial construction demand will defy a worsening homebuilding slump.
The acquisition will double BlueScope's sales in the U.S. commercial and industrial building market, adding 23 plants from California to North Carolina.
2. It will fund the acquisition with a 364-day loan.
3. It will study further acquisitions in the North American building products market.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - MORGAN STANLEY

1. Morgan Stanley wrote down its subprime-infected mortgage holdings by $9.4 billion.
2. It ousted Co-President Zoe Cruz, who had overseen the fixed-income unit responsible for the mortgage trades.
3. It quantified damages, quantified remaining exposure and assigned accountability.
4. It will eliminate 900 jobs, mostly in the mortgage units.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

Thursday, December 6, 2007

REVENUE STRATEGY - GENENTECH

1. Genentech espouses a radical set of management principles: Stay focused on the science. Tune out Wall Street's insistence on short-term profits. And leap at new drug opportunities "that other people think stink."
2. It had once increased research spending to 50% of the company's sales—more than twice what most drug companies spend on R&D resulting in a stream of hit drugs pushing sales up from $1 billion to $9 billion since 1999
3. It is taking on one of the most treacherous areas of medicine - diseases like multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and more than 80 other ailments that arise when the immune system becomes deranged, attacking the very tissues and organs it's supposed to protect.
4. It took insights of British physician Jonathan Edwards on its cancer drug Rituxan, that the drug's method of annihilating cancer-causing cells might also ease the agony of rheumatoid arthritis.
5. Its scientists rethought everything they knew about how the body's defense mechanisms go astray.
6. It launched a program to study the drug as a possible treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, MS, and lupus.
7. It deployed a third of its 1,000 researchers to pursue new drugs to fight autoimmune disease.
8. Its scientific journey has been guided by executives who more closely resemble the staff of an academic medical center.
9. It tries to hire scientists who could win the Nobel Prize not just someone who will do a good job.
10. Its CEO gets deeply involved in research even when it isn't anywhere close to yielding marketable products.
11. It has redesigned its Rituxan trials, building in extra patient checkups in hopes that physicians would spot dangerous side effects fast. It carefully tracks patients after they leave clinical trials.
12. It is looking for clues that will help "personalize" new drugs to groups of patients that are most likely to respond
13. It hired five autoimmune specialists from a single lab at the University of Minnesota to better match patients with drugs, 14. It is working on some completely new approaches to autoimmune disease considering ideas others might overlook.

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - GENERAL MOTORS

1. General Motors Corp., the world's largest automaker, plans to invest as much as $5 billion in China over the next five years to expand its share of the world's fastest-growing major car market.
2. It will spend about $1 billion a year on car and engine development, production facilities, technical and after-sales support and infrastructure.
3. It is investing $250 million to build a research laboratory in China
4. It relies on Asia and Latin America for profit in contrast to its home market, where it is closing factories and cutting jobs. It is cutting first-quarter North American production 11 percent after its U.S. sales dropped by the same rate in November. It will sell more than 1 million Cadillacs, Buicks, and other models in China in 2008, a more than 150-fold increase in sales over a decade.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - BRISTOL-MYERS SQUIBB

1. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. will focus on developing new drugs for cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
2. Its restructuring effort will allow the company to focus resources on developing new drugs and buying products and companies that can add to its lineup of experimental treatments
3. It reduced its sales force in 2002 to focus on specialist doctors instead of primary-care physicians as its drug portfolio changed.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - BRISTOL-MYERS SQUIBB

1. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. will eliminate about 4,300 or 10 percent of jobs over three years and close half its plants to trim $1.5 billion in costs.
2. It may seek buyers for its medical imaging, wound care and baby formula units. Mead Johnson Nutritionals, the infant-formula unit could be worth about $10 billion, while ConvaTec, the wound-care unit, may fetch $3.3 billion
3. It plans to reduce the number of brands from its older product lines by 60 percent by 2011.


[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

REVENUE STRATEGY - HEWLETT PACKARD

1. Hewlett-Packard, the biggest personal-computer maker, launched Innovation Program Office in 2006 to help buy hip, nimble startups for its huge Personal Systems Group and inject big doses of the small companies' creative juices directly into the HP culture. Startups are even providing HP with a new customer-based system that accelerates product development in other divisions.
2. It has learned how to (a) develop cool, high-margin products that appeal to new consumer groups such as video-game fanatics; (b) use social media to conduct Web-based consumer research; and (c) inspire engineers in HP Laboratories to turn concepts into products faster.
3. Its businesses (computers, printers and imaging machines, storage devices and servers, and info tech service) have shifted their focus from developing cool technologies to making products customers want.
4. It is trying to market personal computers today as being friendly, not just fast and powerful.
5. It is not just selling fast printers, but pitching terrific printing experiences.
6. It has developed the HP Blackbird 002 personal computer as the first fruit of acquiring Voodoo, a fan-based, gamer-driven PC company. The Blackbird is so user-friendly that consumers who want to customize it themselves can do so without using tools. It takes 10 seconds to replace or upgrade a hard drive. It's powerful and fast with room for five hard drives to accommodate rich graphics.
7. Its Snapfish Labs has boosted the rate of customer-focused innovation because consumers can weigh in early on potential HP products.
8. Its acquisition of Tabblo, acquired in 2007 suddenly injected a Web culture it never had before. Tabblo signed the contract and released its Flickr service in only six weeks—vs. an expected three to four months.
9. Its new strategy is innovation via absorption—infusing the acquirer's culture with the target's culture. It isn't business process re-engineering. This is a fundamental shift in the culture of an organization.

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

10. It has leaned on a network of more than 100,000 retailers to help sell PCs, particularly the notebook models favored by consumers.
11. It has spent more than $6.5 billion on six acquisitions to bolster returns in software and turn a money-losing unit two years ago into HP's fastest-growing business.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - HEWLETT-PACKARD

1. Hewlett-Packard Co., the biggest personal-computer maker, cut 15,000 jobs and closed offices since 2005
2. It will stop making digital cameras and seek an outside manufacturer.

3. It will buy back as much as $8 billion in shares.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - CHINA MOBILE

1. China Mobile Ltd., the world's biggest wireless-phone carrier by users, added record subscribers (about 6.6 million) in October by cutting prices and expanding in smaller towns and villages, where fewer people have phone services.
2. In February it started a caller-pays billing system, which doesn't charge users who receive calls.

[China will accelerate the process of granting licenses for providing third-generation mobile-phone services to fixed-line operators to help them compete in the nation's telecommunications market]

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - GERDAU

1. Gerdau SA, the largest Brazilian steelmaker, agreed to acquire Quanex Corp.'s vehicular metals unit which makes special bar quality, or SBQ, steel used to make axels and other critical parts of cars, trucks and other vehicles, to secure North American production of steel used in automobile parts and consolidate Gerdau as a global supplier and open new possibilities for growth in the global market.
2. It will pay $1.67 billion at $39.20 a share in cash for the unit after the spinoff of the company's building-products division exceeding the Nov. 16 closing price of $36.74 for Houston-based Quanex.
3. It will expand outside Brazil and target higher-value specialty products. It is expanding operations in the Americas, Asia and Europe to reduce costs and gain leverage with suppliers of scrap metal and energy.
4. It agreed to buy a 49 percent stake in the owner of Mexico's Aceros Corsa SA
5. Its Ameristeel unit in the U.S. acquired Midlothian, Texas-based Chaparrel Steel Co. for $4.22 billion.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - TRAVELODGE

1. Travelodge, the budget hotel chain plans to expand its presence in Spain after a pilot scheme. Spanish consumers' appetite for budget products - and rising internet usage - made it confident the move would be a success.
2. It would open about 100 hotels by 2020 in its £700m programme - initially targeting Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia.
3. It will open about 40 new hotels each year in the UK until 2020 - concentrating its programme in the Greater London area, as well as Wales and Scotland.

[Click here for full story at: BBCNEWS.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - STOCKPICKR.COM

1. Stockpickr.com website processes information from Securities & Exchange Commission filings and provides ready-made investment signals that are proven to work
2. It is free; it makes money from advertising.
3. It attracts traffic by allowing investors to view the portfolios and latest publicly available moves of hundreds of successful pros, including Warren Buffett, hedge fund great George Soros, or mutual fund manager and Yale professor Martin Whitman.
4. Its visitors also form a virtual community whose members interact with each other, answering one another's questions and sharing knowledge about various strategies.
5. One of the site's most popular features is a function to compare ordinary investors' picks with those of the pros.

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

Saturday, November 17, 2007

REVENUE STRATEGY - GOOGLE

1. Google the Internet search and advertising company will bid alone at January's auction of wireless airwaves, but it's likely to need a partner to develop a network
[The auction, scheduled for January, gives participants a rare opportunity to assemble spectrum for a national network in a single swoop, potentially creating a competitor to existing mobile service providers AT&T and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone.]
2. It appeared ready to commit at least $4.6 billion to bidding for spectrum.
3. It owns large quantities of the fiber-optic cables necessary for carrying wireless calls over long distances but may also need to rely on national carriers such as AT&T and Verizon
4. It has made strides in the area of mobile software.
5. Google and 33 other companies including Motorola (MOT) and LG Electronics announced the Open Handset Alliance and a new cell-phone-software platform named Android that's designed to make it cheaper and easier to create mobile applications and services.
6. It has hired Andy Rubin, Google's director of mobile platforms, with years of experience in phone design.
7. It maintains its own local wireless network at the site of its Mountain View (Calif.) headquarters
8. It isn't ruling out partnering to build a network, which has to be carried out quickly

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - GAP

1. Retailer Gap is building up its goodwill, which is likely to help its revenue in the long run.
2. It has pledged to do more to eradicate child labour after it emerged one of its Indian suppliers had been employing children as young as 10.
3. It will donate $200,000 to improve factory conditions in India as well as tighten up its own procedures.
4. It withdrew an order from sale after it was sub-contracted to a firm, which used children to embroider the product. The children involved will be paid until they reach working age, and then offered jobs.
5. It has suspended half its orders from its original contractor and put the firm on "probation" for the next six months.

[Click here for full story at: BBCNEWS.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - ANN TAYLOR STORES

1. AnnTaylor Stores Corp., the clothing retailer geared toward women 25 to 55, reduced inventory to counter slowing sales.
2. It reduced selling, general and administrative expenses as a percentage of sales.

3. It spent $15 million to buy back 500,000 shares.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - ANN TAYLOR STORES

1. AnnTaylor Stores Corp., the clothing retailer geared toward women 25 to 55, helped revenue by new stores, Web sales and purchases at factory stores. The retailer operates 921 stores.
2. It is adding bath products and a line of luxury apparel to its Ann Taylor chain
3. It is adding more printed, lightweight sweaters at Loft, its biggest chain, to draw in holiday shoppers as consumers rein in spending on clothes.
4. It plans to open a chain in the second half of 2008 targeting women in their 40s and 50s.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - STARBUCKS

1. Starbucks will slow the opening of new U.S. stores over the next year by less than 10%
2. It will introduce fewer new beverages.
[It is under a massive assault from McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts, and seemingly every other retailer with a brew pot in the back.]


[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - STARBUCKS

1. Starbucks will blanket the nation with TV commercials touting its holiday beverage and gift lines
2. It has reshuffled some executives
3. It was able to report a 4% increase in same-store sales with
a) two price increases and
b) the expansion of hot breakfast offerings to more locations.

[It is under a massive assault from McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts, and seemingly every other retailer with a brew pot in the back.]

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

Friday, November 16, 2007

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - KRAFT

1. Kraft, the food giant, is shedding its Post cereals biz in a complex $2.9 billion transaction with Ralcorp to focus on other promising, growing brands.
2. It has structured the deal in a way that minimizes taxes, making it the equivalent of a $4 billion cash deal.
3. In the all-stock deal, Kraft shareholders will get Ralcorp shares and end up owning 54% of the new company.
[1. Kraft had already exited brands like Milk-Bone, Cream of Wheat and Minute Rice in a bid for reliable growth.
2. It is delivering on the restructuring promised to shareholders earlier this year.]


[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - WOOLWORTHS

1. Woolworths Ltd., Australia's biggest retailer, is appealing a decision by New Zealand's antitrust regulator to block it from buying Warehouse Group Ltd., that country's biggest general merchandise retailer. Woolworths already owns New Zealand's second-largest supermarket chain
2. It plans a 40 percent reduction in annual carbon dioxide emissions and impact on the environment by 2015 from a current level of 3.7 million metric tons by
a) changing the company's car fleet to more efficient vehicles,
b) working with transport suppliers to lower emissions and
c) cutting annual water usage by 200 million liters within three years.
(less pollution = more goodwill = more revenue)

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - ORACLE

1. Oracle, one of the world's largest technology companies, has pledged to deliver Fusion a half-year early—in the first part of 2008. Fusion aims to
a) Knit together the best parts of Oracle's homegrown software and the array of products amassed through its acquisitions of PeopleSoft, Siebel Systems, and dozens of other companies and
b) Close ground on archrival SAP in the market for the software companies use to plan budgets, manage payrolls, and track customers.
2. It introduced a virtualization software product, dubbed Oracle VM that will help companies make more efficient use of their servers like the software from industry highflier VMware.
3. Its tight rein on expenses and strength in the flush energy sector could immunize it from the ills that have afflicted companies more closely tied to the beleaguered financial and automotive industries. 4. It benefits from the quarterly maintenance fees customers pay to keep up their software.

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - QUALCOMM

1. Qualcomm, one of the leading makers of chips that run cell phones, has been expanding into a range of other wireless technologies to move beyond its reliance on chips based on so-called Code Division Multiple-Access technology at a time when two of the biggest CDMA players, Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, are considering technologies that could lessen their demand for CDMA
2. It purchased Firethorn, a provider of mobile banking services and the proposed secure contactless payments system by waving a mobile phone past a scanner, for $210 million because of the growing number of people using cell phones to carry out financial transactions.
3. It had created Brew, a software platform that developers can use to build mobile applications such as games,
4. It has made various software purchases, including Trigenix, a maker of cell phone menus.
5. It has joined the Open Handset Alliance, an effort by Google to create a package of wireless applications and services. 6. It was also one of the creators of the Skypephone, a mobile device running Skype's Web-calling service.

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - SHINSEI BANK

1. Shinsei Bank Ltd. plans to team up with Indian billionaire Rakesh Jhunjhunwala to sell mutual funds in the world's second-fastest growing major economy starting operations early next year.
2. Joining forces with Jhunjhunwala would give Shinsei faster access to an industry where mutual fund assets almost doubled to $142 billion in the 12 months through October.
3. Shinsei will own 75 percent of the business and Jhunjhunwala will hold 15 percent, they said. The remainder will be owned by employees.
[The Tokyo-based banks are turning to other Asian markets for growth as profits plunge.]

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

Thursday, November 15, 2007

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - PROMISE CO

Promise Co., Japan's largest consumer finance company, plans 15 billion yen ($135 million) of cost cuts in the next two years after acquiring rival Sanyo Shinpan Finance Co., by:
a) Uniting the technology platforms of Promise and Sanyo Shinpan
b) Reorganizing their marketing channels around September next year, and
c) Job cuts
It is resorting to cost cuts as law changes in Japan force Promise and its competitors to reduce the interest they charge borrowers. It will cap interest at 17.8 percent, down from 25.6 percent, effective next month. The planned cost cuts represent about 4 percent of the company's planned sales expenses for this fiscal year.


[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - DELPHI CORP

Delphi Corp., the largest U.S. auto- parts maker, has planned to change the payouts to creditors under its new Chapter 11 reorganization to plan exit from bankruptcy, giving creditors more securities instead of cash, because it wasn't able to obtain an exit loan as large as it had originally intended.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - WONSON INTERNATIONAL

1. Wonson International Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong metals and securities trader, will diversify and buy the Jiangxi Jiangzhou Chinese shipyard for HK$3.5 billion ($449 million), aiming to broaden its revenue base by capitalizing on rising Asian demand for vessels.
2. It will compete with shipyard rivals in South Korea and Japan by
a) expanding its capacity to 250,000 tons by 2010,
b) improving its manufacturing processes and
c) maintaining low costs

[Demand for vessels is rising because of rapid economic development in Asian nations such as China and India]

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - LAND SECURITIES GROUP

1. Land Securities Group Plc, the U.K.'s largest real estate investment trust, plans to split itself in three after a slide in the shares that has cut the company's market value by 3.6 billion pounds ($7.4 billion) this year.
2. Land Securities will separate Trillium, a property-management outsourcing company, from its London and retail property investment units over the long term.
3. It will form a venture with J. Sainsbury Plc, the U.K.'s third-largest supermarket chain called Harvest LP. Land Securities will contribute one supermarket in Hull operated by the grocery chain, while Sainsbury will contribute outlets in Thanet and Wandsworth.

[Land Securities is responding to
a) a drop in commercial property values,
b) higher borrowing costs
c) stricter controls on credit that have caused U.K. real estate stocks to decline 36 percent this year and
d) perhaps the belief that “REITs will only survive if they are specialists”]

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - MATSUSHITA ELECTRIC

1. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., the world's largest consumer electronics maker, plans to raise its lithium-ion battery output by 48 percent to meet demand for the product used in mobile phones and notebook computers.
2. It will spend 4.5 billion yen ($40 million) to build a new factory at the site of its existing Wakayama facility

The Nikkei newspaper speculates that it will spend 10 billion yen on the expansion.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - NOMURA HOLDINGS

Nomura Holdings, Japan's largest securities firm, last month reported its first loss in more than four years after the value of its U.S. mortgage investments plunged, forcing the company to:
a) close some operations,
b) cut staff and

c) shut its Chicago office.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - NOMURA HOLDINGS

Nomura Holdings Inc., Japan's largest securities firm, sold 65 billion yen ($583 million) of bonds in two maturities, offering wider spreads than in a previous sale
1. It priced 30 billion yen of 1.91 percent 10-year bonds to yield 40 basis points more than Japanese government debt with similar maturity.
2. It priced 35 billion yen of 1.39 percent five-year bonds to yield 33 basis points more than national debt.
3. In August it priced 34 billion yen of 10-year bonds to yield 32 basis points more than government debt.
4. It also priced 26 billion yen of five-year bonds to yield 27 basis points more than government bonds.

(A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.)

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - TELMEX

1. Telefonos de Mexico SAB, or Telmex, the largest fixed-line telephone company in Mexico, plans to spin off the faster-growing operations it has elsewhere in Latin America to unlock the value of the faster-growing part of his company. The new company, called Telmex International, will include carriers in Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Peru

[The plan mimics a 2000 move to turn Telmex's mobile-phone operations into America Movil SAB whose $105 billion market value is more than three times Telmex's. The plan also may insulate the non-Mexican part of the business from increasing antitrust pressure (Telmex has about 90 percent of Mexico's phone lines, and regulators in Mexico want to curb its dominance). ]

2. Telmex will also split the Mexican business into a unit that serves higher-income consumers and faces competition, and one that serves rural areas and faces no competition.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - GRAMEENPHONE

1. Grameenphone Ltd., the Bangladeshi mobile-phone company founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, may buy other operators for more airwave spectrum to accommodate its target of adding 7 million users a year, as competition intensifies from rivals including Orascom Telecom Holding SAE.
2. It plans to encourage users to make more calls and introduce services such as Research in Motion Ltd.'s Blackberry device to increase average spending from less than $5 a month
3. It invested about $300 million in each of the past three years to meet demand
4. Its Village Phone Program offers loans to villagers to buy handsets, which are then used in the community as pay phones, earning the operators income.

[Grameen Telecom Corp. started the phone company with the aim of bringing services to 100 million villagers in Bangladesh. (Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid)]

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - GENERAL MOTORS

GM has developed a hybrid technology that may be superior to Toyota’s for heavier vehicles. (Chrysler, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz interested in creating hybrid versions of their SUVs, turned to GM's technology.)
[In a few years GM may be earning more than a half-billion a year from other car companies licensing its technology, a big portion of which will be related to hybrids and plug-ins.]

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - UNILEVER

1. Unilever, the world's second-largest consumer-products company, is selling assets with revenue of about 2 billion euros ($2.93 billion) to focus on brands known worldwide.
2. It plans to cut as many as 20,000 jobs, or 11 percent of its workforce, to spur growth and improve profitability.


[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - MCCORMACK & CO

1. McCormick & Co., the world's biggest maker of spices, agreed to buy Unilever's Lawry's seasonings for $605 million, adding marinades and meat-tenderizer products.
a) The transaction is all-cash and includes the rights to the brands and related inventory.
b) It doesn't include a Missouri manufacturing plant or any workers.
c) It will add to profit immediately.
2. McCormick will use cash, committed bank lines and commercial paper borrowings to fund the purchase.
3. It agreed to pay Unilever a $30 million breakup fee if the transaction doesn't receive U.S. regulatory approval.
4. It raised prices and made purchases to meet a goal of increasing annual sales by as much as 6 percent.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

REVENUE STRATEGY - MOTOROLA

1. Motorola Inc., the largest U.S. maker of mobile phones, sued Hong Kong's VTech Holdings Ltd. for violating five Motorola patents: customized rings, keypads on thin phones, alerts for specific callers, ways to put icons on the phones and a method to display different functions, such as faxes.
2. It wants to block VTech from including the features on its phones, plus cash for past infringement.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - STX PAN OCEAN CO

STX Pan Ocean Co., South Korea's largest carrier of iron ore, grain and other commodities, raised 590.1 billion won ($647 million) in a Seoul share sale in September to expand its fleet as construction booms in India and China fueled demand for iron-ore shipments.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - CAPCOM

1. Capcom Co., publisher of the ``Resident Evil'' is seeking to revive earnings after losing arcade customers to home video game players such as Nintendo Co.'s Wii.
2. It is closing three unprofitable centers and opening eight larger stores that target women and families to help improve earnings at the arcade business
3. It will release new titles in the “Resident Evil”, “Monster Hunter”, and “Devil May Cry” game series.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - QANTAS

1. Qantas Airways Ltd., Australia's biggest airline, will buy 68 Airbus A320 family aircraft and 31 Boeing 737-800s worth at least $6.3 billion to help fend off competition from low-cost carriers. The smaller planes will give Qantas greater market accessibility and tax and fuel advantages. The narrowbodies will allow Qantas to increase its flight frequencies giving it a greater chance to carry more passengers
2. It plans to set up regional aviation bases in Darwin and Perth over the next two years through its Jetstar unit to serve Asian markets.
3. It was in talks with Jetset Travelworld Ltd. and others about its holidays unit.

[Budget airlines including Tiger Airways Pte and Virgin Blue Holdings Ltd. are adding flights in Australia to challenge Qantas and its Jetstar unit's 65 percent share of the market. Asia's surging travel growth and the emergence of low-cost carriers in the region has helped fuel demand for 737s and A320s, the world's two most popular planes.]

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - ROCHE

1. Roche Holding AG, the world's largest maker of medical diagnostic tests, has sought partnerships and purchases to strengthen ties between its diagnostics and pharmaceutical units.
2. In June, it began its tender offer for Ventana Medical Systems, the Tucson, Arizona-based maker of diagnostic tests for cancer.
3. It has extended its tender offer for the outstanding shares of Ventana three times
4. It has refused to raise the $3 billion or $75-a-share offer price.

[1. Ventana started negotiations with Roche after months of resistance.
2. It signed a confidentiality agreement with Roche that will allow Roche access to non-public information regarding Ventana to better understand the company's business prospects.
3. Its board still considers Roche's offer grossly inadequate.]

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - PORSCHE

1. Porsche, the world's most profitable carmaker, plans to boost its stake in fellow carmaker VW to 31% from 27% as it benefited from a strong financial performance from VW.
2. It reassessed the value of its VW stake and added a one-off positive charge to its accounts of 520.8m euros.

[Click here for full story at: BBCNEWS.COM]

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - ACTELION LTD

Actelion Ltd., Switzerland's largest biotechnology company, which moved an experimental drug Pivlaz aimed at reducing blood vessel spasms into late-stage clinical testing will make a 15 million Swiss franc ($13.3 million) milestone payment to former shareholders of the medicine's developer, Axovan, which Actelion acquired in 2003.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - TELSTRA CORP

1. Telstra Corp., Australia's largest telephone company, plans an initial public offering of its Chinese Web unit (SouFun Holdings Ltd., China's biggest online real estate broker) next year to finance expansion in the world's fastest-growing major economy. (The acquisition helped Sensis, Telstra's advertising and directories unit, post an 8 percent increase in revenue to A$1.97 billion)
2. SouFun plans to increase operations to 100 Chinese cities, from 75 now
3. Telstra may acquire other businesses in China to combine with SouFun before the IPO, 4. The IPO may fund plans for SouFun to expand its services beyond property and home-improvement listings.
5. Telstra will seek to offer Apple Inc.'s iPhone handset exclusively when it is introduced in Australia.
6. Gaining rights to distribute the iPhone may allow Telstra to add wireless users
7. Apple's phones may boost demand for Telstra's Foxtel and BigPond pay-television and broadband Internet operations.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - SOFTBANK MOBILE

1. Softbank Mobile, a mobile phone business of internet conglomerate Softbank, has decided to lease its mobile communications network to Disney as part of efforts to expand its profit base.
2. It has been expanding rapidly due to its popular discount fee plan, but it still has adequate capacity in its network.

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - WALT DISNEY

1. US entertainment giant Walt Disney plans to launch mobile phone service in Japan next spring.
2. Disney will develop mobile phone handsets with Softbank Mobile and sell them, and accept subscriptions through the Japanese mobile phone operator's nationwide sales network.
3. Disney is expected to offer content involving Disney characters and distribute cartoons to its subscribers
4. The US entertainment company will become the first mobile virtual network operator, or MVNO, in Japan to offer both voice and data communications service. Existing MVNOs in Japan offer only wireless data communications service.

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - LARGE US BANKS

1. Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., the three largest U.S. banks, reached an agreement on the structure of an $80 billion fund, known as the master liquidity enhancement conduit, or M-LEC, to help revive the market for short-term debt
2. The fund would buy some of the $320 billion in assets held by so-called structured-investment vehicles, known as SIVs.
3. The banks are pushing to have the fund in place by yearend because SIVs are unable to get short-term credit to finance their higher-yielding investments as losses on subprime mortgages drive investors from all but the safest government debt.
4. Citigroup took action on Nov. 5 to shore up its SIVs. The New York-based bank provided $7.6 billion of emergency financing to the seven SIVs it runs after they were unable to repay maturing debt.


[Structured-Investment Vehicles:
1. SIVs, pioneered by Citigroup in the 1980s, borrow in the short-term commercial paper market to invest in longer-dated securities ranging from mortgage bonds to bank debt.
2. SIV assets have dwindled by at least $75 billion since July as the companies struggled to raise short-term debt.]


[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - SONY ERICSSON

1. Sony Ericsson entered into an agreement with France's Sagem (SAF.PA) in March of this year to license certain hardware and software technologies to help it produce more cost-effective low-end phones.
2. It plans to expand its music offering service called PlayNow to include full-length music track downloads from a variety of major labels and broaden its offer to include more games and other content.
3. It is a backer and user of the Symbian operating system, as is Nokia. But to differentiate itself, Sony Ericsson utilizes a different user interface called UIQ acquired from Symbian and recently sold 50% of the venture to Motorola.

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - ABBOTT LABORATORIES

1. Abbott Laboratories won U.S. approval of a lower dose of the AIDS drug Kaletra in tablet form to treat children, the first step toward making the medicine available to 2.3 million children with the virus worldwide. The new tablets offer more flexibility in dosing. They can be taken with or without food and don't require refrigeration, an advantage in poorer countries.
2. In April, it cut the price of the drug to low and low-middle income nations by more than half, responding to pressure from the United Nations and Thailand's threat to make a generic version.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - EASTMAN KODAK

1. Eastman Kodak Co., the photography company reorganizing itself as more consumers opt for digital cameras, plans to sell its stake in China's biggest maker of photographic film, Lucky Film Co., ending a four-year partnership.
2. It is turning to digital products as demand for film wanes.
3. It has spent $3.22 billion since 2004 cutting jobs and closing factories as part of a four-year reorganization plan.

[Kodak failed to realize how quickly Chinese consumers would adopt digital cameras.
Many Chinese consumers leapfrogged film altogether and the first camera they ever bought was a digital one.]

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

Thursday, June 21, 2007

REVENUE STRATEGY - SUMITOMO FORESTRY

1. Sumitomo Forestry Co., a Japanese homebuilder and timber producer, plans to spend 360 billion yen ($2.9 billion) in 10 years to buy local real estate and foreign forests
2. It plans to reduce its reliance on home building (because Japan's population expected to shrink) by investing in foreign timber plantations and in Japan's real estate market as land prices rose for the first time in 16 years.
3. It will spend 160 billion yen overseas over a decade to secure timber supplies.
4. It will invest 50 billion yen over the next five years and 150 billion yen in the following five years to acquire land and develop residential properties and nursing homes in Japan.
5. It plans to buy 80 billion yen worth of assets in Oceania and North America over the next five years.
6. It plans to finance investments using cash generated each year and by borrowings from banks, as well as possibly through bond sales.

Real-time adjustments to changing demand patterns = more sustained revenue

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - TATA MOTORS

1. Tata Motors Ltd., India's biggest maker of trucks and buses, sold $450 million of bonds overseas to fund developing new cars and commercial vehicles and meet its plan of spending 120 billion rupees in the next four years to take on competition from Navistar Inc. and Hyundai Motor Co. that are expanding in India.
2. The five-year bonds can be converted into local shares at 960.96 rupees at a conversion premium of 40 percent from the stock's closing yesterday.

Without new models it is hard to sustain revenue in the automobile industry.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - ELECTRIM

1. Elektrim SA, a Polish telecommunications and power group, is demanding 2 billion zloty ($705 million) in damages from the Polish government in connection with a privatization agreement signed in 1999. (The government failed to meet the obligations of the contracts signed with Elektrim concerning sales of Zespol Elektrowni Patnow Adamow Konin SA, a Polish power plant).
2. It has threatened to take the matter to court if it doesn't get the payment by June 27.

Seek (in the fine print) and you shall (sometimes) find (revenue)

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - CONTINENTAL

1. Continental AG, the world's fourth-biggest tiremaker, is working on three to five relatively big acquisitions apart from Siemens AG's VDO automotive unit
2. It would consider buying VDO even if Siemens proceeds with its preferred option of holding an initial public offering for the automotive unit, because together they would about match the size of Robert Bosch GmbH, currently the world's biggest car-parts maker.

Competition can be self-improving

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - JESSOPS

Photographic retailer Jessops had pre-tax losses of £25.2m for the six months to 1 April.

So it plans to save £15m by:
a) closing 81 and relocating 3 of its High Street stores and
b) cutting 550 jobs.

Some shutters down + some lay offs = some expenditure reprieve

[Click here for full story at: BBCNEWS.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - CEZ

1. CEZ AS, the Czech Republic's biggest power company, is planning to start trading natural gas and financial coal contracts this year to benefit from price movements and to hedge supplies.
2. It has boosted staff at its Prague trading office this year and is looking for more traders. The trading expansion increases the focus on cross- commodity deals as markets become more interlinked and allows the opportunity to play on spreads between different commodities.
3. It plans to enter the continental gas markets at the Dutch, Belgian and European Energy exchanges
4. It intends to expand trading in emission permits before the end of the year to include Certified Emission Reduction credits. CERS are based on projects in the developing world that reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
5. It also plans to team up with partners to develop projects
6. It is planning a natural gas-fired plant in the Czech Republic to help meet peak-time demand.

Clairvoyance is the magic wand of revenue

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - RELIANCE COMMUNICATIONS

Reliance Communications Ltd., India's second-biggest mobile-phone company, will pay less interest on a $1 billion loan after its profit more than doubled to a record. It will pay about half what it pays on $500 million borrowed last year

[Banks are charging less interest because the company's profitability is improving its ability to pay debt !!

(Banks will be paid additional fees, including underwriting income, for participating in the loan).]

It pays to be profitable!

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - RELIANCE COMMUNICATIONS

1. Reliance Communications is spending $2.5 billion this year to extend its network in India
2. It plans to sell stakes in a unit that owns its wireless towers to raise more funds.

Expanding in an under-penetrated market = easier revenue

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - LATTELECOM

1. Lattelecom SIA, Latvia's biggest phone company, may start mobile services and expand abroad after the preliminary approval of a 290 million-lati ($559 million) management buyout including the 49 percent stake owned by TeliaSonera AB, the Nordic region's biggest telephone company.
2. Its management has three months to raise the cash.
3. It aims to finance 75 percent of the buyout with debt, and 25 percent with equity, using money from management, employees and private equity.

Management taking over 51% government co = increased revenue?

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - ACTIONS SEMICONDUCTOR

In March 2006, the U.S. International Trade Commission said Actions Semiconductor had infringed on two SigmaTel patents for an audio-processing chip and imposed a 29-cent tariff on each chip when sold in the U.S.

1. Actions Semiconductor Co., a Chinese maker of chips for portable electronics, settled all patent litigation with SigmaTel Inc., a maker of mixed-signal multimedia semiconductors, and will begin importing its products to the U.S.
2. The companies agreed to a cross- licensing deal, which will allow Actions' products to be imported to the U.S. without restrictions.

Avoid stepping on others toes. It is expensive.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - CHINA LIFE INSURANCE

China Life Insurance Co., the nation's biggest insurer, will get around the restrictions barring Chinese insurers from investing in property by a partnership between its China Life Asset Management Co. and U.S. private equity firm Aetos Capital LLC to invest in the Chinese property market.

Where there is a law there may be a loophole for revenue.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - JET AIRWAYS

1. Jet Airways (India) Ltd., the nation's biggest carrier, will add 13 new Avions de Transport Regional propeller aircraft to serve on routes to smaller cities that aren't popular enough to fill larger jet planes.
2. It will lease six 75-seater ATR 72-500s from TAT Group
3. It has also ordered another seven that it intends to sell to a lessor before delivery.

Matching products with customers = sustainable revenue

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

REVENUE STRATEGY - HENNES & MAURITZ

1. Hennes & Mauritz AB, Europe's second-largest clothing retailer, added shops and hired celebrity designers to compete with Inditex SA, which surpassed the Swedish company as Europe's biggest clothing seller two years ago.
2. Its M by Madonna range, such as silk dresses priced at $69.90, went on sale in March. Same-store revenue gained 17 percent in March, the fastest pace in at least 15 months, as the Madonna range hit store shelves. Sales growth fell to 8 percent in April.
3. It will collaborate with designer Roberto Cavalli.
4. It will continue to look for more collaborations to boost sales
5. It is adding its first stores in Asia. China will be an important market. It opened stores in Hong Kong and Shanghai. It is preparing to expand into Japan next year
6. It opened stores from Slovakia to Qatar during its second quarter. It added 83 outlets in its first half, and will open 95 shops during the rest of the fiscal year, mainly in the U.S, France, Spain, Germany, the U.K. and Italy.
7. It buys more than 60 percent of its clothes in Asia and sells them at about double the price.

More outlets + more celebrity designers = more revenue

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - GOOGLE

Google’s YouTube’s revenue model is uncertain and lagging way behind television:

But:
1. It announced new customized versions of the site in the Netherlands, Poland, France, Spain, Italy, Ireland, England, Japan, and Brazil. It is aiming to entrench its position around the world.
2. The long-term goal is to drive YouTube beyond PC screens and onto other video displays: mobile phones, handheld players, and most important, the living room TV. So it recently inked a deal with Apple to put YouTube videos on Apple TV
3. It is experimenting with ways to present ads that are more localized and entertaining.

Sometimes revenue emanates from keeping the faith in the latest human fetish

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - FEDEX

1. FedEx Corp., the world's largest air- cargo carrier, succeeded in expanding air freight delivery business in the U.K., China and India. It is relying on growth overseas to help offset an industrywide contraction in U.S. air-freight volumes as U.S. economic growth slows.
2. In May, it started overnight delivery to 19 cities on China's east coast
3. This month it started offering day-specific delivery to 200 Chinese cities.

Is China the vortex of every new revenue rush?

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - HOME DEPOT

1. Home Depot Inc., the world's largest home-improvement retailer, is reversing previous management plans to expand HD Supply and agreed to sell its contractor-supplies unit to three buyout firms for $10.3 billion amid the most severe housing recession in 16 years
2. It may purchase a record $22.5 billion or 30 percent of its stock to reverse two years of declining shares.
3. It will finance the buyback with proceeds from the sale, existing cash and $12 billion of bonds.
4. It increased the number of directors needed to approve executive compensation and agreed to disclose some political donations for the first time.

Should businesses have special task forces for continuously paring down the latest unproductive expenses not always immediately visible to pre-occupied line managers?

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - HEDGE FUNDS

1. Hedge funds like Ellington Management Group LLC are “disintermediating”, that is cutting mortgage firms like Bear Stearns Cos. out of the middle and buying mortgages on their own, eating into fees that mortgage firms earn from securitizing mortgages.
2. Instead of buying such bonds at markups of 1 percent or more, Ellington expects to make better returns by taking over bad debts and pressing borrowers to pay up.
3. It is targeting delinquent or poorly written loans. Bad bets on mortgages have discouraged bankers from bidding, leaving firms like Ellington Management Group to snap up home loans for as little as 30 cents on the dollar.
4. Ellington has bought mortgages this year with an unpaid balance of more than $3 billion, including $170 million purchased for about $58 million from New Century Financial Corp.
5. It signed a letter of intent to buy Fremont General Corp.'s residential-mortgage business, including employees responsible for collecting on the loans.

(But wringing returns from bad loans may get tougher as two dozen state lawmakers consider more than 70 bills to protect homeowners)

Removing middlemen = more revenue

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - MICROSOFT

Microsoft Corp. agreed to buy a stake in Sichuan Changhong Electric Co., China's second-biggest TV maker as part of plans to develop software that connects televisions to the Internet for China.

Because:
1. Microsoft is losing U.S. users for software that connects televisions to the Internet (Comcast Corp. will stop using Microsoft's applications for Internet TV services in Washington State).
2. China may pass the U.S. this year to become the market with the most high-speed Internet connections in the world, a service that enables users to watch films and TV shows over the Web.
3. Sichuan Changhong is looking for new products like Internet TVs because demand for their cathode-ray tube TVs is declining.

They will jointly develop computers and TVs that connect to the Web.
1. Microsoft will buy the 15 million new Sichuan Changhong shares for 6.27 yuan each. Microsoft agreed not to sell the shares for three years
2. Microsoft will provide Sichuan Changhong with software technologies to help develop electronics products.
3. Sichuan Changhong will use money from the share sale to Microsoft to help buy 75 percent of Dutch company Sterope Investments BV, owner of South Korean plasma-panel maker Orion PDP Co. 4. Sichuan Changhong will raise 2.5 billion yuan for the acquisition by selling 400 million new shares to 10 institutional investors.

Revenue is in knocking open another door when one door closes, and converging to diversify

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - X5 RETAIL

1. X5 Retail Group NV, Russia's largest supermarket chain, plans to sell 9 billion rubles ($345 million) of bonds next month partly to refinance debt to simplify borrowings structure, decrease costs of debt servicing, increase brand loyalty among professional investors.
2. It will buy back 4.5 billion rubles of bonds sold by a unit of its Pyaterochka chain, and repurchase 1.5 billion rubles of bonds in ZAO Trade House Perekrestok.
3. It will offer to buy back the bonds within three years at their nominal value


Refinancing debt can reduce expenses especially if you have combed through the fine print

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - X5 RETAIL

1. X5 Retail Group NV, Russia's largest supermarket chain, plans to sell 9 billion rubles ($345 million) of bonds next month partly to fund expansion.
2. It will expand through store openings and acquisitions to tap rising Russian spending.
3. It is bidding for the Korzinka chain of 21 outlets in Lipetsk, central Russia for $110 million.
4. It also announced plans to raise $1 billion this year through a secondary share sale to fund expansion. It plans to increase the size of both its main chains and also develop a superstore network.

Expanding in an expanding economy = revenue

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - CADBURY SCHWEPPES

1. Cadbury Schweppes Plc, the world's biggest candy company, plans to cut 7,500 jobs and sell the U.S. drinks unit that makes Dr Pepper and 7-Up to shore up profit and raise funds for expansion. The job cuts will help increase profit margins from about 10 percent to the “mid teens” by 2011.
2. It may auction the division, pushing the price above the rumored 8 billion pounds
3. Its sale of the drinks unit would result in a return of capital to shareholders.
4. It plans to close about 15 percent of its confectionery factories.
5. It sold its European soft-drinks division to buyout firms Blackstone and Lion Capital LLP last year for $2.2 billion.
6. It will split its Europe, Middle East and Africa unit and move out of its headquarters in London's Mayfair district to improve profitability.
7. It set aside money to pay an impairment charge following an accounting scandal at its Nigerian unit.
8. It will spend about £450m in a one-off charge for the reorganization. It will rename itself simply Cadbury after the sale of the drinks unit.


If you take care of the pennies the pounds will take care of themselves?

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - CADBURY SCHWEPPES

1. Cadbury Schweppes Plc, the world's biggest candy company, has announced candy purchases in Turkey, Romania and Japan,
2. It plans “bolt-on” deals rather than larger acquisitions.
3. It boosted sales at the beverage unit rose 44 percent to 2.57 billion pounds in 2006, by acquisitions, as Cadbury spent $420 million to buy bottlers to help streamline U.S. distribution.
4. It has acquired Turkey's Intergum for $450 million and a 93 percent stake in Romanian candy maker Kandia-Excelent to expand in emerging markets. 5. It will buy Sansei Foods Ltd., a Japanese maker of sugar-free throat sweets.

More revenue is certain if you conquer more markets and more products

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - KARSTADTQUELLE

1. KarstadtQuelle AG has sold property to pay down debt
2. It has disposed of less profitable stores
3. It is spinning off the Neckermann mail-order unit. 40 and 50 percent of the unit will be sold to financial investors in the second half.

Expenses are optimized when costly debt is paid off unprofitable businesses disposed

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - KARSTADTQUELLE

1. KarstadtQuelle AG is changing its name to Arcandor as part of an overhaul
2. In December it bought a 50 percent stake in Thomas Cook to balance its store and mail- order income with earnings from tourism.
3. Thomas Cook would merge with MyTravel Group Plc of the U.K. to fight competition from online bookings and discount airlines.
4. Last month, it agreed to buy Home Shopping Europe to increase mail-order revenue generated via television.
5. It is planning to open flagship stores under the KaDeWe or Karstadt brand in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Istanbul, Dubai and possibly Qatar.

Revenue can come from manageable diversification

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - ING GROEP

1. ING Groep NV, the Netherlands' biggest financial-services company, agreed to buy Oyak Bank of Turkey for $2.67 billion because Oyak Bank established in 1984 has 1.2 million “active retail customers” and 360 branches and about 5,000 employees in Turkey, whose economy has grown at an annual average pace of more than 7 percent since 2002 and bank loans to consumers in Turkey increased to $39.5 billion at the end of May, more than 20 times the level four years earlier.
2. It will integrate Oyak Bank into its retail banking business.

More revenue is in growing economies.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - WHITBREAD

1. Whitbread Plc, the owner of the Premier Travel Inn budget lodging chain, is building up the lodging and cafe divisions
2. It plans to rename Premier Travel Inn as Premier Inn, which will cost 13 million pounds ($25.8 million) together with 9 million pounds of capital spending.
3. It plans to start a joint venture in India investing up to 150 million pounds, which will open 80 hotels with 12,000 rooms over the next 10 years. It aims to have several hundred hotels in India and China in five years.
4. It started building its first hotel in Dubai as part of a joint venture with Emirates Group, and has identified more sites in the Gulf region.
5. The company aims to expand Premier Travel Inn by 3,000 rooms in the U.K. this fiscal year after adding 2,500 last year and plans to have 50,000 rooms worldwide by 2010.
6. It has set a goal of tripling its Costa Cafes to 2,000 outlets in five years.

Old revenue trick: Go forth and multiply your outlets.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - FORD MOTOR

1. Ford is looking to sell Jaguar and Land Rover to
(a) Eliminate the risk of further losses from antiquated manufacturing facilities in Britain, onerous labor pacts, and a bloated workforce. (For the year ended Dec 31, 2006, Land Rover sales are down 13% and Jaguar down 36.5%)
(b) Use cash from the sale to accelerate its North American restructuring
2. It wants to sell the brands as a package since the engineering, purchasing, and distribution of the two brands have become interdependent as Ford has tried to find efficiencies running the businesses. Jaguars and Land Rovers are even manufactured at a common plant today.
3. It may reduce the number of far-flung dealers it has selling Fords in one retail channel and Lincoln Mercury vehicles in another. It may shut down Mercury and sell Fords and Lincoln in one channel. A second distribution channel could be Volvo and Mazda.

Dispose of products revenues with uncertain to save on their unproductive expenses

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - SYNTHETIC GENOMICS

1. Synthetic Genomics Inc., has filed controversial patents on synthetic bugs, which could make fuels such as ethanol or hydrogen. It is within weeks or months of creating the world's first free-living artificial organism - a tiny bacterium with only a few hundred genes. The benefits of such research could be enormous: not just drugs and fuels but also bugs that clean up pollution or flash when they detect explosives, plus a far deeper understanding of the basic mechanisms of biology.
2. It announced a deal with energy giant BPPLC to find and modify naturally occurring microbes that can turn coal or oil below the earth's surface into cleaner fuel.

Product differentiation = revenue

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - ROYAL PHILIPS ELECTRONICS

1. Royal Philips Electronics NV, the world's largest maker of light bulbs, agreed to buy Color Kinetics Inc. for 592 million euros ($795 million) to extend its market lead in high-power light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. (Color Kinetics had sales of about $65 million last year).
2. It will pay $34 in cash for each Color Kinetics share, 14 percent more than yesterday's closing share price of $29.79. The purchase price is based on an enterprise value of 516 million euros and also includes about 76 million euros of cash on the balance sheet of Color Kinetics.

Revenue can come from finding the right business to buy out

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - STERLITE INDUSTRIES

1. Sterlite Industries (India) Ltd., the copper and zinc producer controlled by billionaire Anil Agarwal, sold $1.75 billion of stock in the U.S., the biggest overseas share sale by an Indian company.
2. The proceeds will be used to finance
(a) a 2,400-megawatt power plant in eastern Orissa state that will cost about $1.9 billion, and
(b) to buy the government's 29.5 percent stake in Hindustan Zinc Ltd

[Steelmakers including Arcelor Mittal and Posco have announced ventures in Orissa giving Sterlite bulk users for the power plant; India's economic expansion has caused electricity demand to exceed supply; India must add 70,000-megawatt capacity in the next five years to ease a shortage;
Sterlite owns 65 percent of Hindustan Zinc Ltd]

Revenue comes from fulfilling a need well

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - YAHOO!

1. Yahoo! Inc. has inducted founder Jerry Yang as chief executive officer gearing up for a long fight with Google Inc.
2. It will hire engineers and improve the company's technology to regain ground.
3. It will focus on generating more money from its Web pages as new sites such as YouTube and Facebook compete for advertisers.
4. It reorganized in December to enable the company to make swifter decisions about products
5. It will in part dismantle the reorganization announced only six months ago.
6. It will combine the advertiser group with the audience group.
7. It is looking for a technology chief. to replace Farzad Nazem, who departed recently.
8. It has tried to tap into the frenzy for social networking with some small successes, such as Yahoo Answers, a volunteer question-and-answer service, and the purchase of the fast-rising photo-sharing service Flickr.
9. It bought the rest of Right Media, in which it purchased a 20% stake last year, but at a much higher valuation

Old revenue mantra: Find or create a need and fulfill it better than others

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - DELL

1. Dell will open a factory in the southern Indian city of Chennai next month as India is Dell's largest-growing country in the world - the market in China is slowing down just as India is accelerating.
2. It will be able to avoid import duties that it currently pays
3. It has invested just $30 million only has plans to employ about 400 workers to make desktop computers. By the end of the year it will also make notebook PCs
4. It will be able to diversify its customer base and go after the consumer and small-business markets from its present focus on the corporate customers.

More investment, lower prices and wider customer base = more revenue

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - TESCO

1. Tesco Plc, Britain's biggest retailer, began lowering prices on more than 3,000 products from books to bicycles by as much as 34 percent starting this week, equating to 270 million pounds to stimulate growth.
2. It added about 2,000 premium products to encourage consumers to spend more, even as it reduces prices on other goods as interest rates rise.
3. It added organic cranberries and green beans, smoked herring with crushed peppercorns and “localchoice” milk bought from farmers near individual stores during the quarter as customers seek more information about the origins of their meals.
4. It is accelerating expansion outside groceries and offered 155.6 million pounds to buy Dobbies Garden Centres Plc on June 8.
5. It is adding stores outside the U.K. to gain scale and increase its bargaining position with suppliers. It operates in 13 countries from China to Poland and is scheduled to open its first U.S. stores this year. It will add 7 million square feet of store space outside the U.K. this year

Revenue is in mastering the price elasticity of demand

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - IMMERSIVE MEDIA

1. Immersive Media has been trying to make the Web three-dimensional.
2. It developed an 11-lens camera, called a Dodeca 2360 whuch takes 11 simultaneous video or still shots, which are seamlessly stitched together by a software program so that viewers can shift continuously from one perspective to the next.
3. It has been priced at $100,000.
4. It partnered with Google (because of its tight grip on online mapping ) to fix Dodeca cameras to the roofs of cars, drive them through every street in every major city, and piece the resulting 360-degree images together with existing online maps.
5. It is trying to push the technology into new arenas, including entertainment and advertising. The benefit would be to engage viewers in an entire scene built around a product or service, where you can walk around and get different perspectives.

Product differentiation = revenue

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

Monday, June 18, 2007

REVENUE STRATEGY - SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS

The semiconductor industry is seeing intensifying competition and capacity addition, driving prices and profitability downwards.

1. Samsung Electronics' semiconductor unit has even sold chips below manufacturing costs.
2. It has been placing more emphasis on developing NAND flash chips, which can store information even when the power is switched off, and are widely used in handheld products such as music players, digital cameras, and portable media players, and provide an alternative profit driver when DRAM chip prices are falling. (More costly than conventional hard drives, flash drives are faster, more reliable, and consume less power).
3. On June 14 it opened a $3.5 billion state-of-the-art NAND plant in Austin, Tex., where it already has a memory chip factory.
4. It hopes that one eventual driver of demand will be notebook PCs, which will be equipped with NAND-based drives, called solid-state drives or SSDs. Although more costly than conventional hard drives, flash drives are faster, more reliable, and consume less power
5. It has built up a superior product mix - its memory chip business is the biggest in the world.
6. It has developed the capability of delivering custom-made memory devices for game consoles; handsets doubling as music players; and high-end servers—that all allow fatter profits.

Revenue below manufacturing costs is a cancer for any business outside of “Catch-22”. A business needs to focus on profitable sources of revenue to survive.

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - CINVEN

1. Cinven Ltd., manager of a 6.5 billion-euro ($8.7 billion) buyout fund, agreed to buy British United Provident Association Ltd.'s U.K. hospitals for 1.44 billion pounds ($2.85 billion) as the government sends more patients to private facilities to reduce waiting times.
2. It will finance the deal with 369 million pounds of cash from its latest buyout fund, and the rest with loans secured on BUPA's real estate assets. It may consider selling shares of the business on the stock exchange at a later date.

Revenue is in noticing and heeding customer diversions

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - APPLE

1. Apple Inc.’s new iPhone’s will run longer than those found in rival devices that deliver e-mail and Web access: a) Eight hours of talk time,
b) Six hours of Internet use,
c) Seven hours of video playback or
d) 24 hours of audio playback
2. It replaced the plastic top surface of the phone with optical- quality glass to make it clearer and more scratch-resistant.
3. It is offering two models: a 4-gigabyte version for $499 and an 8-gigabyte model for $599.
4. Both feature a 3.5-inch color display that's powered by a touch screen rather than buttons and a physical keyboard.

Product differentiation is the masterkey to revenue

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - MICROSOFT

1. Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker and First Consulting Group Inc., health-care consulting firm, will sell software, called FirstPoint, that helps pharmaceutical companies track and organize documents for creating drugs.
2. Microsoft has made two acquisitions in the health-care software field in the last year and now has about 500 workers in the area, up from five in 2002.
3. FirstPoint will be much easier to use and help drugmakers slash development time by 30 percent

Revenue is in finding and fulfilling a need

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - BANK OF AMERICA

1. Bank of America Corp., the second- biggest U.S. bank, will retain the U.S. Trust name for its private wealth-management business when it buys the business from Charles Schwab Corp for $3.3 billion.
2. It will add about $100 billion in assets under management, bringing the total to about $270 billion. 3. The new unit will serve clients with more than $3 million in assets to invest.

You get more revenue from:
1. Using a business name that has ‘a name’
2. More active assets
3. Wealthier customers

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

Friday, June 15, 2007

REVENUE STRATEGY - TELECOM

1. Over the past year the telecom industry has roared back to life from the doldrums because of a steady rise in appetite for broadband Internet connections, which enable easy consumption of watch-my-cat video clips, iPod music files, and such Web-inspired services as free Internet phoning.
2. About half of the Internet's transmission capacity was going unused in 2002. Today that pipeline has almost doubled in size, and yet the unused portion is down to about 30%.
3. Telecom investment plays a vital role in stimulating economic growth and productivity - more so than money spent on roads, electricity, or even education.
4. Communication assets generate massive benefits by slashing the cost of doing business across the economy.
5. A high-speed data network suddenly makes it easier and cheaper for all kinds of workers to place orders, service customers, and drum up new business.

So:
1. Capital spending is on the rise as companies invest to build high-speed networks.
2. Qwest Communications International Inc is planning expansions of its backbone in order to support growth in Internet applications and video
3. The Bell phone companies, meanwhile, have consolidated and are furiously developing services they hope will let them capitalize on the billions they're investing to build speedy new networks.
4. Web companies such as Google are making a push to introduce more competition into the wireless industry and loosen the Bells' control over the Internet's distribution.
5. Apple Inc.'s iPhone may herald a new round of disruption for the big telcos because it surfs the Web, takes pictures, plays music and makes phone calls. Customers could start demanding a full range of Internet service on their phones and new freedom in their service plans. That could create ever more demand for servers and routers, video services, and upgraded wireless networks.
6. Level 3 Communications refinanced its massive debt at lower rates and pulled off 10 acquisitions worth more than $4 billion. More than half of its network traffic today is from Web video.
7. Verizon will soon offer services that allow consumers to personalize and share photos, videos, and other media among their cell phones, PCs, and TVs. In July the company will launch an interactive media guide for Verizon's FiOSTV service; by clicking on it, couch potatoes can access all of the photos, music, and videos they have stored on a PC. Later it will allow TV customers to create their own personalized video channels.
8. In 2004 critics laughed when Cisco rolled out an audacious new router, the CRS-1, capable of transmitting the entire contents of the Library of Congress in a few seconds. This year, thanks to the video bandwidth hogs, sales of the CRS-1 are expected to hit $1 billion, more than double the figure for 2006.
9. Mergers and acquisitions reflect the promise of revenues in telecom:
(a) In February 2004, Cingular Wireless agreed to buy AT&T Wireless Services for about $41 billion.
(b) In December, Sprint announced a deal to buy Nextel Communications for $35 billion.
(c) A month later, SBC Communications said it would buy AT&T for $16 billion.
(d) A month after that, Verizon struck a deal to acquire MCI, the former WorldCom, for $8.4 billion.
(e) On June 5 2007 Silver Lake Partners and the Texas Pacific Group agreed to pay $8.2 billion for networking gear-maker Avaya.

Luck, fate, destiny – they all can impact revenue after hard work has played its part

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS

Fraudulent products hurt sales and reputations of companies such as Nestle SA, Procter & Gamble Co. and Unilever and may pose health risks.

The boom is being driven by:
1. The Internet, which makes it easier to find customers
2. The development of cheap, high-quality printing equipment that allows criminals to mass-produce packaging
3. Increasing trade with Asia, where trademark rules are less rigorously enforced.
4. A lack of consumer awareness, making copying household goods less risky than targeting luxury handbags and watches.

So:
1. Unilever's stops the goods before they enter Europe or North America, where it's trickier to track them down. It registers brands locally and depends on salespeople and distributors in Asia to gather evidence of fakes.
2. PepsiCo Inc. of Purchase, New York, works with national authorities to protect its brands.
3. Red Bull GmbH, maker of the world's most popular energy drink, has a global network of samplers who seek out rip-offs.

Counterfeits hit revenues directly first and then indirectly via reputation.
Counter-counterfeiting = revenue squared ?

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - SPICEJET

1. SpiceJet Ltd., India's second-biggest low-fare carrier, is spending as much as $400 million to buy 10 new Boeing Co. planes.
2. It aims to carry six million passengers in the current financial year

The calculus of over-investment can prevent inadvertant self-destruction

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - APPLE

1. Apple launched Safari, a new web browser for Windows. It was previously only available for Macintosh computers.
2. It was twice as fast as Internet Explorer.
3. It is hoping to replicate the success of iTunes, which has proved enormously popular on both Macs and Windows machines.
4. It issued an update to the program, to fix some of the potential security flaws.

Mega-Revenue trick: Create a killer product and hitch it to a star.

[Click here for full story at: BBCNEWS.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - COLGATE-PALMOLIVE

1. Colgate-Palmolive Co., the world's biggest toothpaste maker, is collecting fake toothpaste from stores in four U.S. states and contacting all the company's accounts in the country to make sure they have no counterfeit products.
2. It will spare no effort to help consumers avoid counterfeits
3. It will pull fakes from store shelves
4. It is increasing the number of workers manning a consumer hotline and extending the hours during which calls can be made.

Fighting counterfeits brings revenue

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

Thursday, June 14, 2007

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - HON HAI PRECISION

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the world's biggest contract-manufacturer of electronics, is cutting costs by building production sites in Vietnam, India, Brazil and China.

Look (at logistics too) before you leap (into cheap production sites)

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - SIGMA PHARMACEUTICALS

Sigma Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Australia's biggest contract maker of drugs, may make a rival offer for the vitamin-making unit (which makes Cenovis and Nature's Own brands) of Symbion Health Ltd., Australia 's largest health-care company.

Acquisitions that avoid cannibalization of own products allow greater revenue.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - JSM INDOCHINA

1. JSM Indochina Ltd. plans to raise as much as $690 million in an initial public offering to invest in real estate projects in Vietnam and Cambodia as well as other countries in Indochina.
2. It plans to invest at least 50 percent of its gross asset value in Vietnamese-based projects with the focus on Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and other cities.

More investment = more revenue.
More over-investment = more expenditure

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - BOEING

Boeing Co., the world's second- largest commercial airplane maker, had introduced the new fuel-efficient 787 aircraft. This will add to the number of new planes purchased to retire older ones. (Of aircraft being added over the next two-decade period, 18,200 will be used for growth and 10,400 to replace aging planes.)

Frugal products = generally more revenue

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - NISSAN MOTOR

1. Nissan Motor Co., Japan's third- largest automaker, buys minicars from other manufacturers including Suzuki Motor Corp. instead of building them itself.
2. It will outsource the manufacture of Clipper Rio to Mitsubishi Motors Corp.

Outsourcing manufacture = (i) outsourcing some costs of bad times and (ii) outsourcing some revenues of good times

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - NISSAN MOTOR

Nissan Motor Co., Japan's third- largest automaker, introduced
a) the Atlas F24 light-duty truck and
b) Clipper Rio minicar
to stem a decline and revive domestic sales.

New product = new scope and new hope for revenue

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - NEWS CORP

News Corp. plans to sell nine Fox-affiliated television stations in U.S. cities including Denver and Memphis, Tennessee as:
1. Industry revenue growth slows.
2. It proceeds with a $5 billion bid for Dow Jones & Co., owner of the Wall Street Journal.

Soccer rule: When in doubt kick it out
Adapted business rule: When in doubt about revenue kick its related expenses out

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - CADBURY SCHWEPPES

1. Cadbury Schweppes Plc, the world's largest confectioner, will sell or spin off its U.S. drinks unit to focus on Dairy Milk chocolate and Trident gum.
2. It will split its Europe, Middle East and Africa unit and move its head office out of London to improve profitability.
3. It agreed to sell its Australian jams and jellies division to H.J. Heinz Co. as part of a plan to raise 250 million pounds from disposals of smaller assets.

Sticking to the knitting can terminate sub-optimal expenses

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - EADS

1. European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) is unable to arrive at consensus because of internationally polarized management and shareholding.
2. Instead, the shareholders were allowed to decide themselves on what should happen with the meagre earnings. By a majority vote it was decided they should be distributed.

Should the mob ever rule? It is such an expensive proposition


[EADS leadership contingents are now mutually paralyzing each other to the detriment of the company:
1. It was unable to increase capital stock in order to cover the rising financial costs associated with the new A350 long-haul airliner.
2. It was unable to convince shareholders to renounce their dividend payments due to the delayed production of the A380 superjumbo.
3. It was unable to agree to establish a convertible loan
4. It gave former Airbus CEO Noël Foergard $11.3 million when he resigned about a year ago - despite the billion-euro debacle over the delays in the production of the superjumbo A380.
5. Its two main shareholders DaimlerChrysler and Lagardère want to withdraw from the aviation industry in the medium term and are therefore not particularly enthusiastic about investing more money in the company.]

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

REVENUE STRATEGY - RELIANCE INDUSTRIES

Reliance Industries Ltd., India's biggest company has committed to spend $25 billion on drilling, refining, chemicals and supermarkets.

But:
1. It is facing delays in delivery of drilling rigs to develop the gas field discovered in the Krishna Godavari basin.
2. It is forced to curb exploration because of a shortage of rigs and contractors,

So:
1. It may bid and work together for the first time with BP Plc, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. for drilling rights in India:
a) To share rising exploration costs, resources, technology, knowledge, experience and risks and
b) Gain the expertise, equipment and experience gained by Exxon and BP for more than a decade in deep-sea areas such as the Gulf of Mexico.
2. It is banking on rigs from Transocean Inc., the world's largest offshore oil and gas driller, to drill in water depths of 7,000 to 10,000 feet and ensure India's biggest gas project starts on schedule.
3. It is directing rigs to drill wells used in developing the field, at the expense of exploration in new areas
4. It has more than 100 employees sitting with various contractors across the world to ensure that supply schedules are met.
5. It is in talks with GAIL (India) Ltd. and Bharat Petroleum Corp. to use their pipelines to sell part of the output. (GAIL's pipelines, which have a capacity to supply 140 million cubic meters a day of gas, are run at about 55 percent of capacity because of a lack of supply).

Alliances can remove obstacles to revenue.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - LEHMAN BROTHERS

1. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was on the brink of failure in 1998 but pushed ahead with a plan to diversify beyond its U.S. bond-market base.
2. It has become the largest broker of shares on the London Stock Exchange and third-biggest on U.S. bourses.
3. Its team of U.S. equity-research analysts has ranked first in Institutional Investor magazine's annual survey for four years.
4. In 2003, it became a bigger player in money management with the $3.2 billion purchase of Neuberger Berman Inc.
5. It boosted profit faster than Morgan Stanley or Merrill by resisting pressure to slash costs during industry downturns. While Morgan Stanley fired more than 10,000 people following the dot-com bust of 2001, Lehman hired more than 3,000.
6. It relied on hiring to catch up on overseas business.
a) In the past four years, it lured Christian Meissner, Goldman's co-head of European equity capital markets; Morgan Stanley energy banker William Vereker; Francesco Mengozzi, the ex-CEO of Italian airline Alitalia SpA; and Edmond Alphandery, a former French economy minister.
b) In Asia it hired Pankaj Vaish from Citigroup Inc. to run Indian equities and fixed income; economist Kenichi Kawasaki from the Japanese government; and Goldman's John Adair in Japan.

Diversification and hiring and guts are ingredients of revenue.

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

EXPENDITURE STRATEGY - LEHMAN BROTHERS

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has developed the culture and the trust with employees, which lets it reduce pay when times are tough so it can avoid reducing payroll.

Trust can turn lose-lose situations into win-win

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]

REVENUE STRATEGY - INDITEX

1. Inditex SA, Europe's largest clothing retailer, expanded its Zara, Berksha and Massimo Dutti chains in Spain, France and China. It has more than tripled in size in six years to 3,200 stores, surpassing Gap Inc. and Hennes & Mauritz AB, and is opening at least one store each day. It is targeting 4,000 outlets by 2009.
2. It has spent about 4 billion euros over six years, and expects to add as many as 520 shops in the year to January.
3. It aims to boost sales at stores open a year or more by 4 percent to 5 percent over the medium term.
4. It can get new garments from the design board to store shelves within two weeks because it buys about half its apparel in Spain or nearby countries such as Morocco.
5. Its store managers use handheld computers to select the garments they want from collections, and cash registers relay information on sales to Inditex's headquarters.
6. It orders 50 percent to 60 percent of the apparel in each new collection before the clothes go on sale, compared with 80 percent to 100 percent for competitors, giving it more flexibility if consumers' tastes change.

Reputation can convert store additions into profitable revenue additions

[Click here for full story at: BLOOMBERG.COM]