Home
FK_name FK_name's Library tagged → View Popular
Dorel posts record profits in third quarter
Head of Dorel Martin Schwartz shows off one the professional bicycles that his company makes. The company has had a heavy heft into recreational products.
Photograph by: Tyrel Featherstone, The Gazette
Consumer products giant Dorel Industries Inc. Thursday posted record third-quarter results despite the global recession, as strong juvenile products and home furnishings business in North America offset weakness in other divisions.
CEO Martin Schwartz said Dorel is not immune to the recession, but the variety of its products, geographic diversification and tight cost control have enabled it to meet its 2009 targets.
Recreation-leisure order levels have increased and juvenile products are benefitting from new lines in North America and Europe, he added. Home furnishings improved markedly, though currency factors may prove challenging.
September quarter earnings (all U.S. dollars) were $30.23 million or 91 cents a share, up 11.1 per cent from $27.2 million or 82 cents a share a year earlier. Revenue dipped 6.1 per cent to $518.5 million.
Nine months' earnings were $83 million or $2.49 a share, down 11.4 per cent from $93.7 million or $2.81 a share a year earlier, on revenue of $1.6 billion, down 6.3 per cent.
A decline in quarterly juvenile products revenue, felt mostly in Europe, was due to market conditions and currency factors, but moderated in the latest quarter. The quarter included initial North American shipments of the Air car seat that helps to protect children in side-impact collisions.More retailers will carry it from January and the technology is being extended to infant seats.
Recreation/leisure had lower revenue due mainly to declining sales to mass merchandisers. Sales at the Cycling Sports group were higher, but consumers are buying fewer high-end products and trading down.
Three acquisitions came in the quarter and in October.
The gains in home furnishings were led by domestically-produced furniture and futons. Lower material costs and a better currency environment helped and operating effic
Front Row Washington » Blog Archive » Another side of Sarah Palin: financial guru | Blogs |
05:13 October 8th, 2009
Another side of Sarah Palin: financial guru
Post a comment (142)
Posted by: Tabassum Zakaria
Tags: Front Row Washington, Barack Obama, dollar, Financial Times, Sarah Palin
The Financial Times, the salmon-colored authoritative newspaper that is closely read by traders and other financial types around the world, had an eye-opener for readers this morning. USA-POLITICS/PALIN
It wasn’t the front-page, four-column wide headline, “Obama’s critics pounce on falling dollar as fears grow over currency.”
It wasn’t the graphic showing a red downward line over a dollar bill.
The jolt comes at the start of the second paragraph in the top story of the day on the dollar, “Sarah Palin….”
The newspaper, whose articles can move markets, quoted the former Republican vice presidential candidate and ex-Alaska governor from her Facebook post on the need for energy independence. Palin links the dependence on foreign oil and large U.S. deficits to declines in the dollar .
“We can see the effect of this in the price of gold, which hit a record high today in response to fears about the weakened dollar,” Palin wrote.
Palin’s power for using her Facebook page to affect public opinion is not to be taken lightly. Remember “death panels” which turned the healthcare debate into rabid townhall meetings this summer — that phrase emerged from Palin’s Facebook page.
Others quoted in the same Financial Times article offered an opinion about Palin’s opinion.
Norm Ornstein, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, was quoted as saying there may be a legitimate debate over the dollar’s reserve status, “but Sarah Palin is not qualified to participate in it.”
What do you think of Palin’s financial comments? Is she qualified or not? Is her Facebook platform an effective political tool?
Click here for more Reuters political coverage
Photo credit: Reuters/KTUU-TV (Palin announcing her resignation as governor in July, video frame grab)
Post a comment (142) |
Share
| Trackback
Comments RSS
142 comments so far
Succession Planning Model, Business Succession Planning
What is Succession Planning?
Succession planning is a process of determining critical roles within the company, identifying and assessing possible successors, and providing them with the appropriate skills and experience for present and future opportunities.succession planning model
In other words succession planning comprises of these important steps -
* Recruitment and staffing - you recruit superior and right employees
* Training and development - you train the employees to develop their knowledge, skills and abilities
* Performance and Compensation management - prepare them for advancement or promotion into ever more challenging roles
* Other (in which talent management plays a role) - you are prepared to retain or replace superior employees
Typical activities covered by succession planning include -
* Determine what roles and skills are critical for the growth of the company
* analyze and address the gaps revealed by the planning process
* identify and understand the developmental needs of employees to fill those positions
* ensure that all key employees understand their career paths and the roles they are being developed to fill
* train people for skills and positions that are not presently existing in the company
* understand the time needed to backfill key roles
* enrich succession plans through regular executive discussion of people and posts
* identify top performers in all departments and make sure that they are engaged and satisfied to stay with you for a long period
* continually review and check the process of succession and whether planned individual development has taken place
Succession planning is a process by which successors are identified for key positions throughout an organization including vital roles in each department of the organization. It should take into account the strategic vision and objectives of the organization. With good succession planning in place, employees are ready for new leadership roles so when someone leaves th
China pet shops offer 'lucky' tattooed fish - Yahoo! Canada News
Fri Aug 14, 3:13 AM
BEIJING (AFP) - Pet shops in a city in southwest China are offering fish tattooed with patterns and lucky characters intended to bring their owners good fortune and happiness.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Qingshiqiao pet market in Chengdu sells a variety of ornamental "fortune fish" decorated with flowers, rainbows and characters, the Huaxi Metropolis Daily reported Thursday.
Tropical parrot fish are usually used for tattooing, often with the Chinese characters meaning "May your business boom," the regional newspaper said on its website.
A dealer said lasers were used to tattoo the fish.
An ordinary parrot fish sells for just 10 yuan (1.5 dollars) while a tattooed one goes for at least 25 yuan.
A set of four fish tattooed with the characters for "Good Fortune," "Luck," "Long Life," and "Happiness" can cost 120 yuan, the paper said.
Tattooed fish first appeared on the market in 2005 but only became popular in the past year or two.
While some shoppers interviewed by the paper said the idea of tattooed fish was novel, others thought it was cruel.
Fisheries expert Zhang Zhicheng said no one had studied how the tattoos would affect the fish.
"To use a laser to tattoo will surely affect the fish. It's like tattooing a human being's body, it breaks the physiological balance of the fish and damages the skin's protective surface," Zhang was quoted as saying.
Pets have become more popular in China in recent years with the country's increasing prosperity.
Chinese Expand Rio Tinto Allegations - NYTimes.com
The two side failed to reach an agreement last month on prices for this year’s contracts. One of the lead negotiators for Rio Tinto was Stern Hu, an Australian national who was detained on July 5 for what Beijing says was stealing state secrets and harming China’s economists interests.
Questions for Pwn2Own hacker Charlie Miller | Zero Day | ZDNet.com
On a scale of 1-10, how impressive was the Nils’ sweep of exploiting all three main browsers?
I was surprised. For IE 8, I’d give him a 9 out of 10. For Safari, maybe a 2. It’s just too easy to pop Safari. For Firefox on Windows, I give him a 10. That was the most impressive of the three. It’s really hard to exploit Firefox on Windows.
Really? What’s the difference between what you can do on IE but can’t do on Firefox?
The technique he used works against IE but not Firefox. It allows you to place code in a specific spot in memory. Mark Dowd and Alex Sotirov talked about this at last year’s Black Hat. You can use a technique to make .net not opt into the mitigations and jump over hurdled easily. With Firefox, you can’t do that.
For all the browsers on operating systems, the hardest target is Firefox on Windows. With Firefox on Mac OS X, you can do whatever you want. There’s nothing in the Mac operating system that will stop you.
You talked earlier about the value of vulnerabilities. Was it a surprise that he (Nils) basically gave up three “high-value” bugs for $5,000 each?
It’s clear he’s incredibly talented. I was shocked when I saw someone sign up to go after IE 8. You can get paid a lot more than $5,000 for one of those bugs. I’ve talked to a lot of smart, knowledgeable people and no one knows exactly how he did it. He could easily get $50,000 for that vulnerability. I’d say $50,000 is a low-end price point.
For the amount of time he spent to do what he did on IE and Firefox, he could have found and exploited five or 10 Safari bugs. With the way they’re paying $5,000 for every verifiable bug, he could have spent that same time and resources and make $25,000 or $30,000 easily just by going after Safari on Mac.
Despite Recession, More Than 50% of Marketers Increase Spending on Social Media - ReadWriteWeb
Jargon-mania: A Social-Enterprise Lexicon | The Inquisition | Fast Company
Jargon-mania: A Social-Enterprise Lexicon
BY Jeff ChuFri Mar 27, 2009 at 1:46 PM
Jargon Cloud
There's nothing like a conference to breed and spread fresh jargon. At the Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurship, they've included "impact," "accountability," "social business," that old standby "best practices," and of course "social entrepreneurship." Paul Farmer, of Mountains Beyond Mountains and Partners in Health fame observed wryly in his panel discussion that "metrics is the second-most fetishized word here after scale."
Over the three days of the Skoll Forum, I've collected new (to me) and noxious terms that popped up in the panel discussions I attended. I'll be clear: It's not the concepts that offend me so much as the gobbledygookishness of these phrases, which somehow is directly proportional to the likelihood they'll enter wider industry use.
I've added more terms culled from #swf09 tweets as well as other delegates' keen ears. Consider this a public service announcement: Beware these terms. (Definitions provided where possible.) Thanks to @jessicashortall for her assiduous hunting as well. And if you've got more, please comment!
Disconnected ambiguity
Empowerment coefficient
Humanity scouts - people who go ant-like ahead of others and show the way forward. Syn.: pioneer.
Humanizing capitalism – as in, capitalism that humanizes.
Interconnected prosperity - "Hope, joy, empathy, community." Kumbaya!
Justice entrepreneur - I do not have a clue what this means. Someone who makes money from justice? Sells justice? Makes money from getting justice for others?
Participative capital
Spinternet – Spin + internet.
Spontaneous community - Syn.: slum.
Strategic apex - Not to be confused with the nonstrategic kind.
Toxic accountability - "The problem is not a lack of accountability, but too much of the wrong kind."
Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Management, Ethonomics, Skoll World Forum, buzzwords, jargon, catchphrases, social entrepreneurship, words, language
iFive: Amazon's Jeff Bezos Gets to Work, Austin Shares Smart Cars, and 50 Cent Isn't Twittering? in Today's Innovation News | This Week in Lidsky | Fast Company
# New York's financial sector and Detroit's automotive business have already had their economic comeuppance. Is Los Angeles' entertainment industry next? Yes, box office is up this year, but Steven Pearlstein sounds the warning shot, suggesting that it needs to reinvent its business model or risk what happens "when an arrogant and insular industry comes to view its dominance as inevitable and its outsized compensation as an entitlement." I sure am glad that the media doesn't suffer from those problems. Am I right or am I right, unwashed masses? [via Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein]
# Can't live without your laptop and flat-panel TV? You're not alone. Best Buy gave the economy a boost with a positive quarterly earnings report yesterday, suggesting that robust sales for those devices mean that a portable computer and big, sleek TV are now necessities
Backbone Magazine - About Us
Backbone magazine was launched in January 2001, at the height of the technology bubble. We continued to publish throughout the tech meltdown and beyond, working as an active participant in the changing business world. Our primary focus has been on how tec
Selected Tags
Related Tags
Sponsored Links
Top Contributors
Groups interested in business
-
Free economics debates
Items: 4 | Visits: 166
Created by: Joel Liu
-
Sell FM
Sell, Sell, SellFM Talking ...
Items: 6 | Visits: 150
Created by: Ma Theresa Camartin
Highlighter, Sticky notes, Tagging, Groups and Network: integrated suite dramatically boosting research productivity. Learn more »
Join Diigo