BizResearch

The 200 top-performing CEOs in the world

  This is the first global ranking of CEOs based on company performance during their time in office. While this is the only place to access the top 200 list, the top 50 list will be published in the Harvard Business Review (Jan-Feb 2010) and is also available on the HBR's website.

Created by three INSEAD professors, the ranking is based on a global data set of some 2,000 CEOs of 48 nationalities and from companies in 33 countries. CEOs from companies in the S&P Global 1200 and S&P BRIC 40 lists since 1997 were measured on three metrics during their tenure: industry-adjusted total shareholder return (TSR); country-adjusted TSR; and change in market capitalisation. They were then ranked on each metric to form a combined rank.

The ranking reveals several surprises. One is that high-performance is fairly spread out across both countries and industries. No particular context has a monopoly on exceptional performance. The results drive home how important it is to use objective, long-term measures to assess CEOs and to inform succession planning.

See the table: http://knowledge.insead.edu/top-200-CEOs-091218.cfm

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International Private Wealth Management

The December 2009 edition of IFSL’s International Private Wealth Management report estimated that the global market for wealthy individuals with over $1m of investable assets fell by 19% in 2008 to $32.8 trillion.Assets of wealthy investors contracted by 22% in Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, but 8% in the Middle East and 6% in Latin America.

Read the report in full and see the full range of other reports on insurance, private equity, fund management and more on the highly useful IFSL website:

http://www.ifsl.org.uk/

If you are interested in Wealth Management you may also find the CapGemini World Wealth Report of interest:

http://www.us.capgemini.com/worldwealthreport09/

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Better-for-who? revisiting company promises on food marketing to children

Background: In January 2006, the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded that food marketing influences children’s food preferences, requests, diets, and health. One of the IOM’s recommendations was that food and media companies shift the mix of foods marketed to youth toward healthier foods within two years.  As a result the food industry formed the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), a self‐regulatory program administered by the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB).  Now, nearly four years since the IOM released its recommendations, how healthy are the products that companies market to children? The CBBB has been monitoring the CFBAI primarily using company reports, and adherence to pledges is high.  However, do nutrition standards and pledge adherence translate to fewer ads for foods of poor nutritional quality? To answer those questions, this study from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, analyzed the nutritional quality of foods and beverages that companies have approved for marketing to children, and tracked changes in the nutritional quality of foods and beverages marketed to children over time.

Main findings:

The percentage of approved products that met nutrition standards varied across food product types, from 0% of puddings, fruit‐flavoured snacks, and sweet snacks to 73% of yogurts.

The percentage of foods that met CSPI's nutrition standards varied across companies, from 0% to 100%. The majority of approved products from Burger King, Nestlé, Dannon and ConAgra met the standards, while the majority of products approved for marketing to kids by Pepsi, Kraft, McDonald’s, General Mills, Kellogg, Unilever and Campbell failed to meet the specified nutrition standards.

On Nickelodeon, the most popular children’s television station, ads for foods of poor nutritional quality decreased slightly, from about nine in ten (88%) to eight in ten (79%) food ads. The decrease was not statistically significant.

While the percentage of ads for foods exceeding the recommended limits for total fat, saturated plus trans fat, and sodium decreased, the percentage of ads for foods exceeding the recommended limit for added sugars increased.

The number of ads for foods that exceeded two or more limits for problem nutrients dropped from 29% of food ads in 2005 to 10% of food ads in 2009 (excluding brand ads).

One‐quarter of Nickelodeon’s TV food ads were from companies that do not participate in the Council of Better Business Bureaus' Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI).

Almost no ads from non‐CFBAI companies met CSPI's recommended nutrition standards for food marketing to children, while 28% of ads from CFBAI companies met the standards.

Click here to read the full report

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Walker Review of Corporate Governance of UK Banking Industry

The final report on UK corporate governance in banks and financial institutions by Sir David Walker, former chairman of Morgan Stanley was released at the end of November.  The review was commissioned by Gordon Brown to examine corporate governance in the UK banking industry.  Recommendations from the review:

The main recommendation in the area of shareholder engagement is the creation of the Stewardship Code. The code, put together by the Institutional Shareholders Committee (IRC) sets out a series of best practices for engagement.  The report also recommends that the ISC stewardship code should be ‘ratified’ by the independent Financial Reporting Council (FRC) so that it’s status should be akin to that of the Combined Code that governs corporate best practice, with observance on a similar “comply or explain” basis.

The report also recommends overhauling the boards of banks and other big financial institutions by strengthening the role of non-executives and giving them new responsibilities to monitor risk and remuneration. It also recommends a stewardship duty on institutional shareholders to play a more active role as owners of businesses.

Regarding pay, the Review recommends extending the role of the remuneration committee to cover firm-wide remuneration policy as well as giving the committee direct responsibility for the pay of all highly-paid employees. At least half of variable pay or bonuses should be paid in the form of a long-term incentive scheme with half vesting after three years and the rest after five years. Two-thirds of cash bonuses should also be deferred.  There should also be greater pay transparency in the big banks by requiring public disclosure of the number of employees earning more than £1m, broken down by bands of pay.

Other specific recommendations in the report include:

• Chairman of board to face annual re-election
• Chairman of remuneration committee to face re-election if report gets less than 75% approval
• Most non-executives to spend substantially more time on the job
• Induction process for all non-executives and regular training
• Non-executives to face tougher scrutiny under FSA authorisation process
• Banks should have board level risk committees chaired by non-executive
• Risk committees to scrutinise and if necessary block big transactions
• Chief Risk Officer to have reporting line to risk committee
• Chief Risk Officer can only be sacked with agreement of board
• Remuneration committees should disclose right of high-paid employees to receive enhanced benefits

Click here to read the report

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The Power 100

Now in its fourth year, The Power 100, produced by IntangibleBusiness, highlights the key issues and trends in the spirits and wine industry. Nearly 10,000 brands in the spirits and wine sectors were researched for this ranking.  A panel of eight leading experts in the drinks industry independently ranked each selected brand to derive a list of the 100 most powerful spirits and wine brands in the world. Power is defined by a brand’s ability to generate value for its owner. The global recession is obviously the major issue of 2009 and beyond.

Highlights from the report:

This year all brands in the top 10 held their positions, increasing their total score by an average of 4%.  The report argues that there are a number of elements contributing to this trend. Consumers are experiencing an aversion to risk, reverting to the safe havens of the big, established brands rather than experimenting with new, unproven alternatives. Brand owners, too, are focusing on maintaining and growing the positions of their flagship brands.

The Top Ten

1. Smirnoff
2. Johnnie Walker
3. Bacardi
4. Martini Vermouth
5. Hennessy
6. Absolut
7. Jack Daniels
8. Chivas Regal
9. Baileys
10. Ballantines

This year the vodka market has surpassed all expectations. Led by Smirnoff, Absolut and others including Grey Goose, Stolichnaya, Skyy and Finlandia, this underlines vodka’s power in the market, fuelled by powerful branding, its versatility as a cocktail and mixer ingredient, its alignment with sophisticated marketing programmes and its capture of a still buoyant US market which may come under threat as the recession takes hold.  Johnnie Walker dominates its category. With an impressive increase in volumes coupled with a 2% improvement in its brand score, Johnnie Walker increased its total score by 6% in 2009. Being under the same ownership as Smirnoff, with Diageo, Johnnie Walker is in a privileged position within a company that appears able to do no wrong.

Click here to see the full ranking

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London’s Economic Outlook: Autumn 2009

The autumn 2009 edition of London’s Economic Outlook (LEO) is GLA Economics’ 15th London forecast. The forecasts are issued every six months to assist those preparing planning projections for London in the medium term. The report contains an overview of recent economic conditions in London, the UK and the world economies with analysis of important events, trends and risks to short and medium term growth. It the ‘consensus forecast’ – a review of independent forecasts indicating the range of views about London’s economy and the possible upside and downside risk.  It also contains the GLA Economics forecast for output, employment, household expenditure and household income in London

Selected findings from the report:

London’s economic output contracted at an annualised rate of -3.6% in quarter one of 2009 compared to -5.2% in the UK. Annual economic growth in London has been stronger than the UK as a whole since the third quarter of 2004

Annual employment growth in London remained negative in the second quarter of 2009 at -1.4% compared to -1.1% in the previous quarter. The total number of workforce jobs in London was just over 4.6 million in quarter two 2009

Public transport usage can provide a usage is a useful and timely indicator of economic activity in London.  This year has seen a continued slow down in the annual growth in the moving average of both bus and underground usage.

Annual house price inflation slowed in the second half of 2007 and turned negative in 2008, although there have been recent signs of some improvement in the market. Still with tightened lending criteria, subdued lending, and the continued economic downturn, house prices are likely to remain restrained for some time yet. Annual house price inflation in London as measured by DCLG, the Halifax house price index and Nationwide was very negative in the second quarter of 2009 and was close to the picture seen in the rest of the UK.

Click here to read the full report

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The 5th Global Economic Crime Survey

This survey from PwC investigates the root causes of economic crime and the way in which it affects businesses worldwide. More than 3,000 respondents in 54 countries completed a web-based survey. The aim of the survey was primarily to asses corporate attitudes towards economic crime in the current economic environment in order to understand how economic crime changes during a downturn.

Selected findings:

Despite the attention of regulators and companies' investment in controls, fraud remains one of the most problematic issues for companies around the world. 

The actual level of economic crime and associated financial and non-financial losses has not decreased. One third of companies fell victim to economic crime in the past twelve months.

Accounting fraud has increased.  This encompassed a variety of fraudulent activities including accounting manipulations, fraudulent borrowing/raising of finance, fraudulent application for credit and unauthorized transactions/rogue trading. Relatively high levels of bribery and corruption were also reported by respondents from the engineering and construction industries (47%) and energy and mining industries (43%)

Organisations that experienced economic crime reported that 53% of perpetrators were internal and 44% were external. The profile of the internal fraudster has changed with middle managers accounting for 42% of economic crimes, up 26% in 2007. 

The industry sectors that reported most economic crime are communications, insurance, financial services and hospitality and leisure.

The report concludes that companies cannot rely on fraud controls alone to detect and deter economic crime. Companies need to build loyalty to the organisation, give employees the confidence to do the right thing, and put in place clear sanctions for those who commit fraud, regardless of their position in the company.

The full report can be downloaded from PricewaterhouseCooper’s website

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Betting and Gaming 2009

This Key Note market report examines those betting and gaming activities requiring a licence from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and which are obliged to pay betting or gaming levies to HM Revenue & Customs.  The market is divided into the following betting and gaming activities: lotteries; casinos; licensed bingo; gaming machines; football pools; and bookmaking.

Report highlights: 

The UK’s betting and gaming industry has a substantial turnover and net expenditure on games of chance, including The National Lottery, increased by 19.6% in 2008 compared with the previous year, which was by far the largest increase recorded over several years. The betting and gaming industry usually rides out a recession well, not least because people feel they have more to gain with a modest wager when money is hard to come by otherwise.  However, National Statistics’ figures for the first quarter of 2009 show a sharp decline in expenditure on games of chance, and bookmakers on the high street have admitted to less footfall and lower wagers. There is little doubt, nevertheless, that the current economic downturn in the UK, along with the smoking ban and cheap broadband connections, has fuelled an increase in betting at home via the Internet, digital interactive television and the telephone; land-based operators will find it increasingly difficult to compete.

While global Internet-based gambling is booming, online gambling operators based in the UK risk being overtaken by European rivals, owing to the Government’s tax policy for gambling. They are losing market share to off-shore competitors, who pay much lower tax and, therefore, have more to invest in marketing, etc. The bingo industry was particularly hard hit in the 2009 Budget when the Chancellor of the Exchequer increased its level of tax from 15% to 22% with little or no prior warning. The bingo community is at loss to understand why the pursuit, which is seen as relatively ‘soft’ gambling with the majority of its players being women who place small bets, should be singled out for this tax hike, while other ‘hard’ gambling pursuits such as casinos are subject to 15% tax. The recession, tax regime and smoking ban have deeply affected the profit margins of the industry and have resulted in the closure of several clubs and, of course, job losses.

The full report is available to current staff, students and faculty from Key Note Online which can be found on the A-Z list of library databases via Portal.

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Qualitative Study into Machine Gamblers

The Gambling Commission commissioned GfK NOP Social Research, working in partnership with Dr. Mark Griffiths (Professor of Gambling Studies at Nottingham Trent University), to undertake qualitative research with British machine gamblers. The research examined players’ motivations and the potential impact of social responsibility measures. Its overall aim was to provide the Gambling Commission with an exploratory look at the impact of gaming machine features on problem and non-problem gamblers in Britain.  The research found that machine gambling behaviour is affected by three main types of characteristics: personal, structural and situational.  Within these categories, a number of factors were found to be key drivers of machine gambling behaviour:

Personal
Enjoyment: including escapism and the thrill and excitement of machine gambling motivated by its speed and the sense of real-time risk.

Social: for many machine gambling was seen as a social activity while for problem gamblers it tended to be more solitary

Mastery: there was a perception amongst players that through continual playing  ‘tricks’ could be identified to increase the likelihood of winning.

Financial: problem gamblers often played to win (or would chase their losses), while regular gamblers usually saw money as a way of facilitating continued play.

Structural:
Near miss1: perceptions of a ‘near miss’ encouraged people to continue playing and sometimes to extend their pre-defined budget for that particular day.

Speed and simplicity: the instantaneous thrill and real-time risk of machine playing was intensified by speedier and simpler games.

Frequency of payout: many were encouraged to continue playing when they won small payouts, as it made them feel that they were on a lucky streak.

Situational
Machine density and access: all machine gamblers believed that machines were easy to access and cited a range of venues where they could play the gaming machines in their local area. The availability of machines was not considered a barrier to machine gambling.

Presence of others: as identified above, some were attracted to a specific venue due to the opportunity it provided for social interaction; problem gamblers often preferred more solitary, asocial gaming environments.

Click here to read the full report

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Driving Brand Loyalty in Food and Drinks

This latest market research report from Business Insights examines current issues in brand loyalty.  Research shows that the economic recession has changed the priorities of marketers from attracting new customers to brands to focusing more on increasing loyalty amongst existing customers.  Food and drinks brands are generally weak at involving consumers after purchase. However, leading brands and loyalty schemes, like Coke Zone, highlight that post-purchase consumer engagement can be used to leverage future sales.  New models aimed at developing brand loyalty should therefore place an important role on post-purchase consumer engagement and determining appropriate metrics for tracking this. 

The report also contains the results of a survey conducted by Business Insights of top industry executives across both food and drinks manufacturers in Europe and in the US in August 2009.  Findings indicate that many marketers currently feel that levels of brand loyalty for foods and drinks are only moderate and that levels of brand loyalty are set to fall over the next five years.  Significantly fewer marketers (51%) believe that premium brands have had their loyalty negatively affected by the current recession than believe that all brands in general have been affected (78%).  The survey also finds that marketers are underestimating the growing importance of new technologies in engendering brand loyalty. While offline media are still the most important in influencing product choice, online media are increasingly important area that should be addressed.

Finally, two extended case studies are presented. The first is Kellogg’s Special K, who are connecting with consumers through a dedicated website offering a combination of product and general dietary and health information, as well as facilitating a forum on which consumers can exchange information and ideas. The second is Whole Food Markets which offers consumers a strong brand based upon (what it refers to as) ecologically sound organic produce.

This market research report is available to current London Business School staff, students and faculty from Business Insights which can be found on the A-Z list of library databases via Portal.

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European Business: Facts and Figures 2009

This publication from Eurostat provides a comprehensive picture of the structure, development and characteristics of the European business economy and its different sectors. It presents the latest available statistics from a wide selection of statistical sources. The main source of analysis is derived from structural business statistics (SBS).  Other data sources which are used extensively throughout the publication include short-term statistics (STS), the labour force survey (LFS), PRODCOM (statistics by product) and external trade.  In addition, use has also been made of specialist sources for particular areas, notably transport, energy, research and development, environment, tourism and information society statistics.

The report covers: production and employment; country specialisation and regional distribution; cost structure, productivity and profitability; external trade, and more. It divides ‘the business economy’ into 25 main sectors from mining and quarrying, through manufacturing activities, to energy transmission and recycling, construction and a range of services. Each of these sectors are analysed in detail in separate chapters.  It does not cover agriculture, forestry and fishing, nor the public administration and largely non-market services such as education and health.

The first chapter provides a general overview of the EU’s business economy, with comparisons across the main sectors. In addition, it provides information of a horizontal nature based on data on business demography and foreign controlled enterprises, as well as size class analysis of enterprises’ population. A particular effort has been made in this edition to include, where available, data at the most detailed activity level (NACE Rev. 1.1 four digit or class level) and to facilitate further comparisons across the different activities of the business economy.

Click here to see the full report

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Global Advertising

This latest industry profile from Datamonitor provides an overview of the advertising industry which includes agencies providing advertising including display advertising services. The industry value reflects income of the agencies from such services.  For the purpose of this report the global figure is deemed to comprise of the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Europe.
 
Highlights from the report:
 
The global advertising industry has seen consistent growth in recent years but the recession is expected to trigger a deceleration in the industry in 2009 followed by a slow recovery moving forward to 2013.
 
The global advertising industry generated total revenues of $90.8 billion in 2008, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.8% for the period spanning 2004-2008. In comparison, the European and Asia-Pacific industries grew with CAGRs of 5.9% and 7.5% respectively, over the same period, to reach respective values of $24.9 billion and $21.6 billion in 2008.
 
The food, beverage & personal/health care segment was the industry’s most lucrative in 2008, generating total revenues of $21.5 billion, equivalent to 23.7% of the industry's overall value. The retailer segment contributed revenues of $11.9 billion in 2008, equating to 13.1% of the industry's aggregate revenues.
 
The performance of the industry is forecast to decelerate, with an anticipated CAGR of 3.2% for the five-year period 2008-2013, which is expected to drive the industry to a value of $106.1 billion by the end of 2013. Comparatively, the European industry will decline with a compound annual rate of change (CARC) of -1.2%, and the Asia-Pacific industry will increase with a CAGR of 4.4%, over the same period, to reach respective values of $23.4 billion and $26.8 billion in 2013.
 
This industry profile is available to current London Business School students, faculty and staff from Marketline. This service can be found on the A-Z list of library databases within Portal.

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State of Internet Security, Q1-Q2 2009

The latest Security Labs report from Websense has found that Web 2.0 sites are increasingly being used to carry out a wide range of attacks.  Efforts to self-police these sites have also been largely ineffective. Websense research showed that community-driven security tools (asking users to report inappropriate content) on sites like YouTube and BlogSpot are 65% to 75% ineffective in protecting Web users from objectionable content and security risks. Their research also discovered that over 200,000 phony copycat sites have been created, all including the terms Facebook, MySpace or Twitter in their URLs. These sites are created in order to take advantage of the huge number of users of social networking sites. Facebook copycat sites lead the sector with more than 150,000 known fake URLs.

Attackers also capitalized on major events during the last six months, such as the economic recession, to take advantage of job seekers looking for employment by using various exploits to infect victims’ computers.  Similarly, celebrities and politics continued to be used as lures by spammers and cybercriminals. At the end of June, the sudden death of Michael Jackson prompted spammers to send malicious email messages using news of the event as a social engineering technique to lure people to their sites.

Other highlights from the report:

• Websense Security Labs identified a 233% growth in the number of malicious Web sites in the last six months and a 671% growth during the last year. 

• 61% of the top 100 sites either hosted malicious content or contained a masked redirect to lure unsuspecting victims from legitimate sites to malicious sites.

• 95% of user-generated comments to blogs, chat rooms and message boards are spam or malicious.

• 87.7% of email messages were spam, representing a 3% increase over the last six months.

• Shopping remained the leading topic of spam (28%), followed closely by cosmetics (18.4%), medical (11.9%) and education (9.5%). Education themed spam has nearly doubled over the previous period and may be related to the recession as spammers seek to exploit people looking to gain new skills or obtain fake qualifications to help their job prospects.

Click here to read the report in full

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Renewable energy 2009

This Key Note Market Report analyses the UK renewable energy market, with particular emphasis on biomass, hydropower, wind/wave power and solar energy. UK renewable energy use in 2008 was 5.9 million tonnes of oil equivalent (toe), an increase of 14.4% on the previous year. Biomass was the main contributor to this total, with the next most significant renewable sources being transport fuels, wind power and hydropower. Recent years have shown rapid growth in wind power, especially offshore wind farms.  There has also been strong growth in renewable transport fuels (biodiesel and bioethanol). Generation of electricity is the major use of renewables, the main sources here being landfill gas, followed by wind and wave power and hydropower. The use of renewables for generating heat is dominated by biomass (mostly wood combustion).

Key Note suggests that the market for renewable energy is being driven by two main factors: energy security and a reduction in carbon emissions. Energy security is becoming a more significant factor as output from the UK’s offshore oil/gas industry decreases. Unless changes are made to the UK’s energy sourcing strategy, more imports of fossil fuels would be required to make up for this decline in indigenous production.

In terms of reducing carbon emissions, in July 2009 the Government published The UK Renewable Energy Strategy to show how the UK can reach its goal of producing 15% of its energy from renewables by 2020.  The UK Low Carbon Industrial Strategy, another government report also published in July 2009, gave details of the UK’s commitment to reduce its carbon emissions by at least 26% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. Again, this will involve a major contribution by the renewable energy market (as well as nuclear power). Nuclear power has now received the government go-ahead and major energy companies are planning to renew the UK’s ageing nuclear power stations.

This report is available to current London Business School staff, students and faculty from Key Note Online which can be found on the A-Z list of library databases within Portal

A hardcopy of this report can be found in the market reports collection located on the first floor of the library.

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The Carbon Management and Offsetting Trends Survey Results 2009

This report from EcoSecurities in partnership with ClimateBiz and Baker & McKenzie provides an authentic insight into the thoughts and opinions of multinational and regional organisations with regards to carbon management strategies and offsetting. Furthermore, the report examines the critical factors which drive end-users to purchase carbon offsets as well as the buyers’ desires in terms of project type, location and standard. This year’s survey involved over 300 corporations, covering a wide variety of geographies and industry sectors.  Specifically, 280 responses were received from a diverse range of organisations and an additional 31 responses received from carbon companies. Encouragingly, despite the gloomy outlook for the world’s economy in 2009, green issues have remained high on the agenda with both senior management and corporate boards.
 
Some of the key findings include:

Over three quarters of companies have implemented or have started developing a carbon management strategy

Two thirds of respondents have already offset their carbon emissions or will consider offsetting in the future

Environmental benefits (91%) were highlighted as one of the main motivations for interest in carbon offsets, closely followed by carbon neutrality and marketing (89%)

72% of participants nominated the US as the most desirable geographic region for purchasing offsets; this may reflect the desire for domestic projects as 56% of the respondents came from North America. Africa and South America were also rated as highly desirable locations for emission reduction projects

Respondents prefer renewable energy projects above any other project type with solar scoring 92% and wind 86%

The full report can be downloaded from the EcoSecurities’s website (pre-registration required)

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