Thursday, August 7, 2008

Hi folks! I wasn't able to blog for a few days due to some problems.
I came across a rather interesting survy in the US called Harris's Poll. Their recent survey indicated which industries are rising in public esteem and ones going down. Not surprisingly tobacco and oil companies consistently score far lower than any other industries. Managed care and health insurance, cable companies, pharmaceuticals and airlines also got low scores.
The industries which have fallen the most in public esteem are oil companies, airlines and pharmaceutical companies.
What is surprising is that people have the highest esteem for supermarkets. The retail industry is bound to rejoice at that!
Search engines, hardware and software makers and, perhaps also surprisingly, hospitals also receives good marks.
Do you think in a poll conducted in India would have similar results??

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Women in the Boardroom

A recent study conducted by New York-based not-for-profit organization Catalyst has revealed that companies that hire more women at senior executive positions stand to improve financially.

It wqs found that companies which had at least 30 per cent women on the board performed better. Also, boards that had more women in 2001 saw their numbers rise further by 2006, indicating that women on top bring in more women.

Catalyst based its study on an analysis of 359 Fortune 500 companies starting in 2000 and thereafter once again in 2006. Companies with maximum women directors and corporate officers also showed improved financial numbers as against companies that lacked women at the top.

The study also said that the number of Fortune 500 companeis that had more than 25 per cent or more of women, was also growing in numbers consistently. While only 30 companies fitted the bill in 2001, the number went up to 68 in 2007.

In Feb 2008, PepsiCo's India-born chief Indra Nooyi was among Forbes' list of 10 best women chief executive officers of large corporations based on their total return to investors since each woman took the top job.

Forbes gives top rank to Catherine Burzik, head of Kinetic Concepts, a medical technology company, and number two to Meg Whitman of eBay, the online marketplace. PepsiCo under Nooyi, who took over as CEO in October 2006, gave investors annual return of 9.4 percent, and 13.1 percent cumulative. Standard & Poor (S&P) annualised return is 2.6 percent while industry average annualised return is 0.4 percent, according to the magazine.

Paying a compliment to the women CEOs on the list, Forbes magazine said stock performance had as much to do with corporate leadership as it had to do with the state of the marketplace.

The magazine said of about 1,000 public companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue, there are 30 female chief executives in its database. A dozen of these companies have shown total returns greater than their industry peers, with a minimum length of time in office of the CEO of a year and a half. Nooyi's strategy and style of functioning at the global food and soft drinks behemoth has been analysed by Fortune magazine in a cover story in its current issue.

The magazine had earlier rated her the world's most powerful businesswoman in 2006 and 2007.