Sep 19 2007 12:00AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (1) |
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It’s tough when the rules are rewritten and what you thought was, isn’t anymore. That’s what happened to Microsoft this week.

The Court of First Instance in Luxembourg said the European Commission acted properly in 2004 when it found that Microsoft had abused its near-monopoly position. Microsoft’s bill in fines and penalties could reportedly reach $2.77 billion.

What will this ruling mean to other tech cases? Does this spell trouble ahead for Apple, which dominates online music downloads? What about Intel?

In its ...Read More

Sep 18 2007 7:18AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (3) |
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I am struck by how much buzz there is about the social networking phenomenon. What Myspace started a few years ago is now branching out in numerous directions. Actually, what's happening is the opposite: social networking is becoming more niche oriented. 

The new trend in social networking is sites that are more vertical and target, say, specific professions, such as doctors (www.sermo.com) or those in advertising (www.AdGabber.com). LinkedIn is a professional site that is growing in popularity, and millions use it to exchange contact information and to recruit employees (although it doesn't target a specific profession as the sites I note above).

Other social networking sites are focusing on specific demographics, like the ...Read More

Sep 14 2007 8:37AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (2) |
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Most of us have heard of the Sports Illustrated curse (you know, when an athlete appears on the cover of SI, something invariably bad happens to him or her, like an injury or a slump). Now there may be an equivalent curse for CEOs.

Some researchers put this theory to the test, looking at executives who receive an award and seeing how their companies perform post-award.

Ulrike Malmendier, assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Geoffrey Alan Tate, assistant professor of finance at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, compiled a list of more than 250 CEOs who won awards from any of 10 different sources since 1975 and found that their companies underperformed afterward.

Sep 14 2007 7:09AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (5) |
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A leader does something that he knows is wrong, but he does it anyway and maybe more than once. Then he gets caught.

Last night I learned about the punishment that the NFL commissioner imposed on Coach Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots for using videotape to try to steal the New York Jets’ signals during last Sunday’s game. The storied franchise’s reputation is now tarnished (new label: “cheaters”), and this is probably just the beginning of the story.

I thought of the similarities between Belichick’s behavior and the behavior of several executives that has come to light in the past year. For some reason some CEOs also think it’s okay to cheat and lie and break the rules (read: backdating stock options). In many ca...Read More

Sep 11 2007 11:02AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (2) |
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Should your shareholders or employees know that you are divorcing your spouse—for the sake of the business?

Some researchers are looking into what effects a CEO’s personal life may have on job performance. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, reporter Mark Maremont analyzes an emerging area of financial research that looks at the lives of executives and possible links to stocks prices and corporate performance.

Will an executive’s mansion purchase lead to an underperforming stock? In the case of CEO Trevor Fetter of Tenet Healthcare, yes, according to the article. Researchers David Yermack of New York University and Crocker Liu of Arizona State University have studied executives’ home purchases in a paper, ...Read More