周四经管时间~~~
今天的TIME 1/2是一篇，TIME 3/4是一篇，TIME 5单独是一篇。越障同上周一样有两个选择，OPTION A来自Bloomberg的Editorial，OPTION B是Academy of Management上的一篇文章，其实是一篇类似“论文概要”的东西，其实很简单的啦，结构很清晰 而且基本没什么生词。前两周的越障都有点难了，所以今天放松一下啦~~~大家加油！
【PART I: SPEED】
Article 1: What Goldman's ICBC Sale Says About Chinese Banks
By Kyle Stock May 21, 2013
(Check the title later)
【TIME 1】
Goldman Sachs is selling its remaining stake in Industrial and Commercial Bank of China—at a discount, no less.
The news should worry anyone long on China’s banking sector. After all, it’s not often that Goldman is willing to offload anything for 2.5 percent less than recent market rates, which is what its $1.1 billion sale of ICBC shares amounts to.
A number of indicators show that Chinese banks might be slightly rotten, or at least overripe. Last quarter was the sixth straight period in which non-performing loans climbed in the country, according to a report from the China Banking Regulatory Commission. Meanwhile, Chinese lenders are sweetening deals in the face of competition. Among the nation’s 3,800 lenders (of which ICBC is the largest), net interest margin fell to 2.57 percent in the first quarter, from 2.75 percent in the preceding period.
The sheer pace of economic growth in recent years could cover up a lot of fishy loans—say, when a government official quietly recommends that a certain bank get behind a certain building project, regardless of its credit worth. But growth is slowing in China, which has sparked a lot of grumbling about shifty builders and unviable developments.
Last month, Moody’s lowered its outlook on China credit, citing a surge in lending by unregulated shadow banks and the tendency of legitimate banks to shuffle troubled assets off balance sheets. That kind of accounting sleight-of-hand poses systemic risk to companies such as ICBC, Moody’s said.
【TIME 1 ENDS – 246 WORDS】
【TIME 2】
In fact, Goldman may have timed its China foray perfectly. The latest sale represents the sixth and final time it has offloaded a chunk of ICBC stock. Goldman first bought into the bank in early 2006, snapping up a 5 percent stake for $2.6 billion. Just a few months later, ICBC raised $21.9 billion in a massive initial public offering, simultaneously listing shares on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges.
At the time, Chinese banks, like Porsches and polo ponies, were fashionable assets for Wall Street chiefs. They were a way to take a long position on China’s burgeoning economy while also getting a toehold in a tight banking market closely controlled by the government. The theory was: Western banks that had some skin in the game would be in a good position to snag lucrative work advising and underwriting as the country slowly opened its doors to international investment bankers.
UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland both bought into ICBC, though they sold those stakes during the financial crisis to bolster capital.
It’s questionable how much piecework the U.S. and European banks were able to grab. In 2006, Goldman Sachs was the No. 2 investment bank in China, with 9.4 percent of the market by revenue, according to Dealogic. Last year, it barely broke the top 10 and grabbed less than 3 percent of the spoils from selling stocks, bonds, and advisory services in China. As Chinese firms have grown in that time, they’ve showed a tendency to close ranks on outside firms and share business with domestic rivals.
Goldman declined to detail the size of its China business, saying only that the ICBC partnership was a strategic success and allowed the bank to gain a lot of expertise about the Chinese market. In truth, it might have gleaned the most valuable information possible: when to bail out.
【TIME 2 ENDS – 310 WORDS】
Source: Businessweek
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-21/what-goldmans-icbc-sale-says-about-chinese-banks#r=com-s
Article 2: What Bloomberg’s Snooping Scandal Says about Wall Street’s Culture
By Sam Gustin May 14, 2013
(Check the title later)
【TIME 3】
On Wall Street, it’s all about finding an edge — no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. Whether it’s a snippet of chatter in a restaurant, a stray comment on the squash court, or a scrap of barroom banter after work, Wall Street traders are constantly on the hunt for nuggets of information they can use to gain advantage over rivals. Because success on Wall Street is often measured in seconds, access to information equals money. That mentality also applies to the hypercompetitive world of financial journalism, as the unfolding Bloomberg snooping scandal demonstrates. With its wide-open office layout packed with shirt-sleeved employees hunched over banks of flickering data terminals, Bloomberg’s newsroom looks like a take-no-prisoners Wall Street trading floor. Apparently, it has been acting like one as well.
For two decades, reporters at Bloomberg News have been using special access to Bloomberg’s ubiquitous financial data terminals to glean sensitive — and potentially proprietary — information about Wall Street banks, hedge funds, and possibly even financial regulators, according to multiple reports. The blockbuster disclosure, first reported by the New York Post, has pulled back the veil on the cozy relationship between the company’s financial-data service and news-gathering divisions, and could undermine the reputation and client trust it has built over three decades since its founding by Michael Bloomberg, currently mayor of New York City.
On Monday, Michael Bloomberg declined to comment on the matter, citing an agreement he made with the city’s Conflict of Interests Board when he first took office in 2002, in which he said he would no longer be involved in day-to-day operations at the company. Michael Bloomberg has an estimated net worth of $27 billion, thanks in part to his majority stake in the company he founded.
Regulators at the U.S. Federal Reserve and Treasury Department — where Bloomberg terminals are widely used — are investigating whether any of their confidential data has been misused, according to Reuters, and the European Central Bank said it was in “close contact with Bloomberg” about any possible data breaches. As if that wasn’t enough, the Financial Times reported late Monday that in an apparently unrelated incident, more than 10,000 private messages between Bloomberg clients in 2009 and 2010 containing “confidential financial price information and trading activity” had been accidentally leaked online.
【TIME 3 ENDS – 377 WORDS】
The Bloomberg data scandal erupted after Goldman Sachs complained last month that a Bloomberg News reporter had called the bank to ask about a partner’s employment status after apparently tracking the executive’s activity — or lack thereof — on a Bloomberg terminal. Bloomberg has more than 315,000 terminal subscribers around the world, including at virtually every major investment bank, hedge fund, private-equity firm, and institution or regulatory agency that closely tracks financial markets. Each terminal subscription costs about $20,000 per year, and that revenue constitutes about 85% of the nearly $8 billion in sales that Bloomberg posted last year.
Each Bloomberg News journalist has access to a terminal, and was encouraged to “harness” its power to find sources or otherwise bolster his or her reporting, as part of Bloomberg’s hard-charging approach to news gathering. Terminal access has long been a sore spot for the company’s rivals, including Reuters and Dow Jones, which compete against Bloomberg as both providers of financial data and news-gathering operations. Because financial journalism is so fast-paced and data-driven, Bloomberg journalists’ special access could have given them an advantage over their competitors. Needless to say, it was hard not to detect a dose of schadenfreude as Bloomberg’s rivals pounced on the story.
Using their terminals, Bloomberg reporters could see a client’s contact information, login history, information about help-desk inquires and other “high-level types of user functions.” Reporters could see whether a client was examining stocks or bonds, but could not see not specific trades. The access was originally designed to allow Bloomberg’s sales teams to tailor service to clients more effectively, but apparently it had been extended to journalists as far back as the 1990s.
Top Bloomberg executives have reportedly been aware of the sensitive nature of the practice since 2011, when a Bloomberg TV anchor was reprimanded for making a comment on the air about the use of terminal data to track a story subject, BuzzFeed reported. After Goldman Sachs complained last month, Bloomberg cut off the special access for reporters. In a statement, Bloomberg LP CEO and President Daniel Doctoroff called the practice a “mistake,” and said the company had appointed a senior executive to the new position of client-data-compliance officer.
Meanwhile, Matthew Winkler, editor in chief of Bloomberg News, apologized for allowing journalists “limited” access to sensitive financial data about the company’s clients. “Our reporters should not have access to any data considered proprietary,” Winkler wrote in an editorial posted on Bloomberg’s website. “I am sorry they did. The error is inexcusable. Last month, we immediately changed our policy so that reporters now have no greater access to information than our customers have. Removing this access will have no effect on Bloomberg news-gathering.”
【447 WORDS】
【TIME 4】
Bloomberg terminals have become such a vital and ubiquitous tool on Wall Street that it’s unlikely that the company will face a massive client exodus, especially given the fact that Bloomberg will presumably be extremely sensitive about data security moving forward. Still, many on Wall Street were not amused by the episode, and it’s clear that Bloomberg’s reputation has taken a hit.
“If that’s true and they had access to all of that information, that’s totally ridiculous and Bloomberg should be thrown under the bus,” Michael Cohn, chief market strategist at Atlantis Asset Management, told CNBC. “That’s just so pathetic. I don’t understand how this policy got institutionalized in the first place, and how it was allowed to go on for so long.” But, he added, Bloomberg terminals are “irreplaceable in many ways.”
For years, financial journalists have suspected that Bloomberg reporters used the terminals to aid their work, but the full extent of the practice has never been previously reported — and there may be more revelations to come. On a certain level, one can’t blame the reporters for taking advantage of access they were encouraged by their leaders to use. One veteran financial journalist even called the controversy “overblown.” But the Bloomberg terminal snooping affair is noteworthy because it reveals how Wall Street’s ingrained culture of gaining an edge — no matter how small — over the competition seems to have been replicated at a news organization where the very mission was to report on Wall Street itself.
Like Wall Street, financial journalism can be intensely competitive, with reporters seeking any sliver of advantage over rivals. For Bloomberg, the terminal-snooping episode underscores the importance of keeping the financial-data service and editorial sides of the business separate. On Wall Street, as in journalism, trust means everything. As Will Rogers is reported to have said, “It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute.”
【TIME 4 ENDS – 319 WORDS】
Source: TIME
http://business.time.com/2013/05/14/what-bloombergs-snooping-scandal-says-about-wall-streets-culture/#ixzz2U5dnNYYb
Article 3: The Unspeakably Wonky Idea That Can Solve the Corporate Tax Debate
By Christopher Matthews May 21, 2013
（Check the title later）
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul isn’t happy that Apple executives are being questioned by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations today regarding their tax avoidance strategies. Apple is completely justified, Paul argued, in paying as little in taxes as is legally acceptable. ”Instead of Apple executives we should have brought in here a giant mirror,” he said. “”Congress should be on trial here for creating a byzantine tax code.”
Though committee chair Carl Levin would probably disagree with Paul’s characterization of today’s hearing as a politically motivated witch hunt, Paul’s analysis is at least correct in the sense that corporations will always pay the least amount of taxes they can within the bounds of the law — and if anybody is to blame for low effective corporate tax rates, it’s Congress.
【129 WORDS】
【TIME 5】
So how can the law be crafted so that companies can’t engage in the sort of tactics that have allowed Apple to pay much lower tax rates that the law intends? One idea that’s been bandied about for many years, but which hasn’t made a lot of headway, goes by the not-so-glamorous name “formulary apportionment.” Under this system, the U.S. could tax companies based on what percentage of sales occur here. For instance, if Apple sold 30% of its products in America, then the U.S. government would tax 30% of Apple’s income at the statutory corporate tax rate of 35%.
This sort of system would work best if it were implemented internationally, but as the Brookings Institute points out in its analysis of formulary apportionment, the U.S. could move to this sort of system unilaterally because the move would actually incentivize companies to report their profits in America. This is because we’d be taxing only a fraction of profits regardless of where they’re reported, and this dynamic would motivate other countries to jump aboard a formulary apportionment system as well.
Some powerful, multinational corporations may oppose such a move for several reasons. The current system allows multinational corporations to play tax jurisdictions against each other, threatening to move profits and facilities away from high-tax countries towards low-tax ones. This strategy has worked quite well, as corporate taxes have been falling across the globe for several decades.
But lower corporate tax rates mean that the tax burden gets shifted towards individuals. In the end Americans and other governments may decide this would be the best way to promote economic growth. But that question ought to be debated and decided by democratic institutions, rather than a function of multinationals growing clout. Some economists argue, for instance, that we should eliminate the corporate tax altogether and raise taxes on sales and dividends. Such a system could be made robust and progressive, if that’s what we choose to do.
But as it stands, the expansion of free trade and an increasingly globalized economy have given a select few, powerful companies the ability live beyond the reach of the taxman altogether, and this should concern folks of every political stripe. You can believe in limited government and still believe that nobody should be above the law.
【TIME 5 ENDS – 380 WORDS】
Source: TIME
http://business.time.com/2013/05/21/formulary-apportionment-the-unspeakably-wonky-idea-that-can-solve-the-corporate-tax-debate/#ixzz2U6bjz2XK
【PART II: OBSTACLE】 OPTION A:
Article 4: Sanctions Alone Won’t Stop Iran’s Nuclear Push
ByTara MallerMay 23, 2013
(Check the title later)
This month, the U.S. expanded its already aggressive sanctions on Iran by penalizing several companies suspected of aiding the country’s nuclear program or helping the regime evade trade restrictions. The U.S. Senate also introduced legislation that could prevent Iran from accessing more than $100 billion held in overseas banks.
The goal of these actions is to get Iran’s ruling clerics to give up their pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Although harsher economic sanctions will undoubtedly ramp up the costs imposed on Iran, they won’t necessarily translate into desired political outcomes. Research indicates that many variables play a role in the success or failure of sanctions. Most important, for sanctions to achieve their goals they must be paired with a clear and comprehensive diplomatic road map -- one that’s lacking in Iran.
Strategies that focus solely on economic sanctions usually fail, for several reasons. Although states that are politically fragile and economically weak may sometimes be easier to coerce through sanctions, they also may present unique challenges. Tufts University professor Daniel Drezner has described a “sanctions paradox” that is particularly salient with Iran. He argues that states targeted with sanctions are often primed for failure because they already have higher expectations for future conflict and are therefore more concerned about material and reputational losses. As a result, “the target will be concerned about any concessions in the present undercutting its bargaining position in future interactions.”
Threats, Costs
Colonel Phil Haun, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, has examined why weaker states may be resistant to complying with demands from stronger ones despite increasing costs. One reason is that concessions may threaten the survival of the regime or the state itself.
Other research indicates that sanctions are less likely to be effective against autocracies, such as Iran, than against democracies. Under a dictatorship, there’s a more tenuous link between the population, which feels the costs of sanctions most directly, and the regime that has the ability to modify the state’s behavior.
Are there ways to ameliorate these challenges?
In my research, I looked at more than 100 episodes in which the U.S. imposed sanctions on other countries. I found that diplomatic engagement makes sanctions more effective, whereas disengagement has the reverse effect. When the U.S. closes its embassy in a targeted country, for instance, the probability that sanctions will fail increases to 73 percent from 42 percent.
That’s because engagement produces better intelligence on the targeted country and enhances communication channels. It improves the ability to convey demands, target the correct entities, monitor the impact of sanctions on the ground and calibrate policies over time. Diplomacy also provides a window into the regime’s decision-making processes, motives and vulnerabilities. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, for example, relies heavily on intelligence from within a country to assist in making sanctions policies.
Increased diplomatic interaction also helps clarify the nature of the demands on a sanctioned country and resolve ambiguity. A 2011 study of almost 900 sanctions episodes over three decades found that specific demands had a success rate of 53 percent, whereas only 18 percent of ambiguous demands were met. These findings suggest that strong parallel diplomatic efforts have the ability to directly strengthen punitive economic measures.
Success Story
Libya offers a compelling example. From 1980 to 1989, U.S. policy toward Libya was predicated on diplomatic isolation while economic sanctions were being imposed. During this period, there was a significant reduction in communication between the U.S. and Libyan officials, and there was a decline in intelligence gathering. Minimal progress was made in cracking down on terrorism or in trying to undermine or remove Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s dictator at the time. When diplomatic engagement was renewed from 1999 to 2006, sanctions were much more successful. Libya acknowledged responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing and paid compensation to victims’ families. It also agreed to give up its weapons of mass destruction and admit international inspectors.
In Iran, imposing higher financial costs for the regime’s failure to halt nuclear armament is necessary, but not sufficient. Although talks have thus far been marked by delays and disagreement, the U.S. and the five other powers negotiating with Iran must still be willing to sustain diplomatic engagement, unambiguously articulate their demands, and set forth a road map for compliance and the eventual removal of sanctions.
There is no shortage of ideas for increasing such engagement. A plan to re-establish full diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Iran over time, starting with direct talks between high-level officials, would be a good first step. Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett have proposed a deal to extend security assurances to Iran, lift sanctions and acknowledge the regime’s place in the international order in exchange for Iran ending its pursuit of nuclear weapons, support for terrorism and opposition to an Arab-Israeli agreement. Other scholars have suggested establishing an international group that would enrich uranium for peaceful purposes inside Iran, with greater supervision.
Breaking through the barriers to engagement is never easy and often politically unpopular. But it is possible. Even during the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan was willing to engage directly with the Soviet Union. The U.S. should focus on trying to come up with new and creative diplomatic efforts that give it greater insights into the Iranian regime’s decision-making. Doing so might create openings that transform the dynamics of the relationship.
【OBSTACLE OPTION A ENDS – 895 WORDS】
Source: Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-22/sanctions-alone-won-t-stop-iran-s-nuclear-push.html
OPTION B
Article 5:
Pain or Gain: Is There a Bright Side to Juggling Work and Family Roles?
Research Brief by Stuart D. Sidle, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of New Haven
Much has been written in recent years about the stress faced by families juggling parenting and workplace responsibilities. And after reading about that stress, it's a wonder that moms and dads can even get out of bed in the morning, much less go to work. How do they do it? Perhaps the answer is that many working parents experience benefits from juggling multiple roles? Benefits that help balance out the negative consequences.
Although research has demonstrated the stressful nature of conflicting work and family roles, little attention has been paid to the bright side of managing the demands of home and office. Fortunately, new research suggests that participating in family roles makes it easier to thrive in work roles and that participating in work roles makes it easier to thrive in family roles. This research on work-family facilitation is shedding light on how people managing these dual roles maintain their well-being and stay productive. Indeed, Elianne F. van Steenbergen, Naomi Ellemers, and Ab Mooijaart (Leiden University) recently examined how work and family roles can enhance each other through four types of work-family facilitation.
Previous studies have suggested that the stress encountered by employees experiencing incompatible roles at work and home falls into four categories: strain-based conflict, time-based conflict, behavioral conflict, and psychological conflict. In contrast, van Steenbergen and her colleagues make the case that there are four parallel categories that describe the ways multiple roles can benefit a person. These four categories of work-family facilitation differ from the four types of work-family conflict by accentuating the positive outcomes that occur from balancing multiple roles.
The first stress category is strain-based conflict, when a work or family role exhausts one to the point where it becomes too challenging to succeed in both venues. Alternatively, van Steenbergen and her colleagues propose energy-based facilitation. This is when energy gained from one role makes it easier to perform in other roles. For example, a person may feel pumped up and energized from the workday, something that makes it easier to return home engaged and ready to participate in family activities.
The second is time-based conflict, which exists when pressures from one role make it impossible to engage in another role. Alternatively, van Steenbergen and her colleagues explain that some people experience time-based facilitation. When people in competing roles realize how precious their time is, they start prioritizing and using time at home and at work more productively than ever before. Some learn to become true time management architects, figuring out ingenious ways to balance their family time and work time.
The third is behavior-based conflict, which results from incompatible behaviors demanded by competing roles. For example, a business executive in a fast-paced firm might be expected to be hard-charging and results-focused, but these same behaviors at home might lead to conflict with family members. Alternatively, van Steenbergen and her colleagues contend that people faced with competing roles may actually experience behavior-based facilitation. In other words, the new behaviors learned for one role can make it easier to fulfill requirements in another role. For example, a project manager can apply his or her skills at home when organizing carpools or planning a birthday party. Likewise, some managers may leverage their experience from raising children to help them figure out how to motivate and direct challenging employees.
Finally, the fourth category studied was psycho logical conflict, which occurs when distractions due to worries from one role leave someone unable to focus effectively while performing another role. On the flip side, psychological facilitation occurs when participation in multiple roles helps someone keep everything in perspective. For example, workplace politics may suddenly seem petty while caring for a sick loved one. Similarly, petty disagreements with neighbors and family members may feel less consuming when someone is focused on major workplace events.
In reaching their conclusions, van Steenbergen and her colleagues studied employees of a global financial services company. They began with a pilot study of interviews with 25 individuals, something that helped develop their four categories for classifying work-family facilitation. Next, van Steenbergen and her colleagues surveyed a random sample of the 750 employees at the same firm to assess the prevalence of work-family conflict and work-family facilitation. The results generated from the 352 returned surveys clearly demonstrated the value of looking at work-family facilitation along with work-family conflict.
Essentially, van Steenbergen and her colleagues found that including the categories of facilitation in addition to assessments of work-family conflict provided a more complete picture of how people cope with managing multiple roles. As expected, those with work-family conflict reported stress. But those who experienced facilitation reported positive work-related attitudes and outcomes such as organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and increased productivity. Incidentally, work-family facilitation and work-family stress are not mutually exclusive. An employee who experiences the stress of work-family conflict may also experience work-family facilitations. The findings from these studies help us understand why some people who are faced with work-family conflict are still able to maintain their well-being while staying productive and satisfied at work.
Another interesting aspect of this study is the gender differences found. Overall, women reported higher levels of strain-based work-family conflict and psychological work-family conflict than did men. On the other hand, women experienced more facilitation between work and family roles than did men. Moreover, women reported higher job performance when they felt that their home life was providing them with new skills and psychological benefits at work. And men reported higher job performance when their home life energized them for work.
Van Steenbergen and her colleagues hope that these findings will help organizations understand that the demands of juggling work and family roles are not always an impediment to workplace success. As a matter of fact, in many cases employees who combine roles may be more energized, motivated, and efficient. That said, companies should not ignore work-family conflict. As a matter of fact, organizations would be wise to help employees reduce feelings of work-family conflict to reduce stress and burnout. Moreover, firms should take steps to spark the experience of facilitation. Something that may increase feelings of satisfaction and enhance productivity. In a nutshell, the stress of juggling work and family may keep employees up at night, but those who experience facilitation will still be eager to get out of bed in the morning to face their jobs and families.
【OBSTACLE OPTION B ENDS – 1059 WORDS】
Source: Van Steenbergen, E. F., Ellemers, N., & and Mooi jaart, A. (2007). How work and family can facilitate each other: Distinct types of work-family facilitation and outcomes for women and men. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12(3), 279-300.
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发表于 2013-5-23 22:37:34
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