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Category Archives: Finance
;The Outlook for the Brazilian Real
Recent oil discoveries, the hosting of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, as well as improved sovereign ratings from credit agencies, have firmly placed Brazil as a ‘must-have’ investment in every emerging market focused portfolio. However, investor interest … Read More…
Understanding the Recent Growth in Food Prices
The last year has seen an all too familiar pattern of food price hikes, not dissimilar to what we experienced back in 2007-2008. The 2008 food price hikes were driven by several factors, including high oil prices and the increasing … Read More…
Delinquency Modeling Using Survival Analysis
For financial services organizations in the business of lending, understanding which customers should be granted a particular loan, and, importantly, how much, has been a central question that not just drives their profitability, but, as we have seen in the … Read More…
Precious Metals – The Outlook for Silver and Gold
“The ultimate asset bubble.” This is how George Soros described gold last year, even as his fund took sizable long positions in the precious metal. Why not take advantage of rising values (so long as the bubble doesn’t burst), particularly … Read More…
The Cloud and Corporate Computing Capacity
A lot has been written about ‘cloud computing’ as the next megatrend that is set to change the IT landscape. Cloud computing is defined as a system where scalable and elastic IT capabilities (both hardware and software) are provided as … Read More…
Nuclear Energy in Germany
Nuclear energy has been heralded by many as one of the most important solutions to the growing energy demands of the world, particularly given concerns regarding increasing greenhouse gas emissions and the rising price of oil. The popularity of nuclear … Read More…
Understanding the Concept of Market Basket Analysis
Retailing today is nothing if not a hypercompetitive industry. A complex & rapidly changing landscape, stiff competition, and ever more demanding customers are pushing progressive retailers to rethink how they operate. Their responses have included strategies of scale (consolidation, growth, … Read More…
Success in Mergers & Acquisitions
Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) activity is par for the course in the corporate world these days. Over the last several decades, there has been a consistent increase in both the number and value of transactions taking place, not only in … Read More…
What’s Next for the Chinese Yuan?
On February 17th, in a significant announcement by Chinese authorities, plans to allow domestic trading of Yuan options against other currencies from April onwards were rolled out, with the fundamental aim of assisting Chinese exporters and importers hedge against currency … Read More…
China and its Influence on the Global Rare Earth Metals Market
“The Middle East has its oil, China has rare earth metals.” —Deng Xiaoping, Chinese President (1992) Take an even a cursory look at any major business media today and China’s influence in the minerals and metals commodity markets is inescapable. … Read More…
6 Key Actions – Aligning supply chains with corporate strategy.
The supply chain and procurement executive(s) has a ‘seat at the executive table’. To illustrate its potential impact from a pure economic perspective, where else in an organization does one executive have the ability to influence and manage the cost … Read More…
Is There Any Value in Forecasts?
With most companies either in or rapidly approaching their business planning cycles, executives and analysts alike are hard at work trying to predict how the next fiscal year will unfold, making a range of decisions from where best to focus … Read More…
Tags analytics, business leadership, Business Planning, Business Process Outsourcing, business strategy, credit crunch, Finance, Financial Services, Forecasting, fundamental research, Growth Strategy, Investments, Knowledge Process Outsourcing, KPO, Management Consulting, Outsourcing, Procurement, research, Strategy, Supply Chain, Wall Street outsourcing Leave a comment
Asset Bubbles and Bursts: The Re-emergence of Rational Valuation
Aswath Damodaran, the famed NYU finance professor and High Priest of quantitative valuation, shares a lot with Edward Altman, his equally famous colleague at NYU. (Damodaran penned “Investment Valuation: Tools and Techniques for Determining the Value of Any Asset”, a … Read More…
Tags analytics, Automotive, business leadership, business strategy, Corporate Restructuring, credit crunch, Distressed Investments, Finance, Financial Research, Financial Services, fundamental research, Investments, Knowledge Process Outsourcing, KPO, research, Strategy, Strategy Research, US Auto Parts, Value Investments, Wall Street outsourcing Leave a comment
“Is it Safe?” The Outlook for Investment in Emerging Markets
There’s a classic scene in the 1976 hit movie, The Marathon Man, in which Laurence Olivier, playing a skilled dentist who is also a Nazi war criminal, is torturing a young Dustin Hoffman. Using his medical know-how and some frightening … Read More…
Awaiting The Green Revolution…
At a recent address to the NYU Money Marketeers, a New York-based association of financial market participants, Kenneth Volpert, head of the Fixed Income Group at Vanguard, reviewed just how far and how fast the credit markets had improved since … Read More…
The (Ir)rationality of Markets
The Financial Times recently reported on a recent survey by the British Chartered Financial Analyst Institute of its members, which found that an increasing proportion believed that markets did not behave rationally: The British CFA recently asked members for the … Read More…
The Credit Crunch and Outsourcing
The recent tumult in the markets – and its reverberations from Wall Street to Main Street – have made the business news channels compulsive viewing for executives across the globe. One group of professionals that have been keeping a close … Read More…
The Smart Cube Financial Services Survey : Implications of The Credit Crunch
Listen or read any news site or publication over the last several months and talk of the economy is never far behind. Recession or no recession, individuals and corporations alike are clearly acting as if we are in one. Housing … Read More…