Compliance is at a tipping point. The role of the chief compliance officer has gained more prominence over the last decade and is evolving rapidly. Today's CCOs are in a position similar to that of CFOs 15 years ago, and face a similar opportunity and challenge: how to become a more strategic partner in the organization, a vital member of the C-suite.
If one had to choose a single word to describe the M&A market in 2013, it would be disappointing, and indeed many market participants have used this very term. But the exasperated deal makers have had little time to cry in their beer - they've been too busy. The M&A market took off like a rocket in 2014, fueled by the return of the megadeal (transactions with a value of more than $10bn), which has been in hibernation for the last several years. The momentum of the first quarter carried into the second, setting up 2014 as a potential bellwether for the market's longer-term evolution.
The World Trade Organization has slashed its forecast for world trade growth in 2014 to 3.1 percent, citing weaker-than-expected gross domestic product growth and muted import demand in the first half of the year.
Builder confidence in the U.S. new single-family home market was up for the fourth month in September 2014, to hit 59 on the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI). This four-point gain elevates the index to its highest point since November of 2005.
While the majority of respondents (72 percent) feel culture is extremely important to organizational performance, only 32 percent say their company's culture aligns to a great extent with their business strategy, according to a survey by Korn Ferry, a leadership and talent consulting services.
When people think "robots," they often envision vaguely humanoid sci-fi-movie beings with strange speech patterns. But today’s state-of-the-art robots are a far cry from that outdated stereotype. And they are showing up for work.
The value of exports from America's foreign-trade zones increased by 13.7 percent in 2013, to a record high $79.5bn in merchandise exported, according to figures released by the U.S. Foreign-Trade Zones Board in its Annual Report to Congress. At $835.8bn, the 2013 value of received merchandise into FTZs also reached a new high, surpassing the previous year’s record of $732.2bn – a 14.1 percent increase.
Major shifts in cost competitiveness around the world over the past decade are starting to spur a number of companies to change their global sourcing and manufacturing investment strategies, according to The Boston Consulting Group's report, The Shifting Economics of Global Manufacturing: How Cost Competitiveness Is Changing Worldwide.
Over the past decade, Chinese companies have built bulging order books in Africa, cutting their teeth in a part of the world where Western competitors, when present at all, have not brought their A team. The Chinese astutely calculate that the wealth they accumulate in Africa and the lessons they learn will serve them well as they push into bigger, richer, and tougher markets.
Shifting supply chains to become driven by IT means businesses can standardise their processes and become less likely to run out of stock, says Dominic Regan, EMEA director of supply chain applications at Oracle.