Peter Jefferson is a full-time researcher for www.businessdistrict.com, a task he took on in 2011 when the site was launched. He brings to the position a wealth of practical experience in the field of fiscal policy, having consulted with various government bodies on revenue collection, expenditure and economic growth. Contact Peter at peter[at]businessdistrict.com
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The Alabama-based but German-owned steel plant ThyssenKrupp Steel USA will be sold to two competing buyers for $1.55 billion.
The sale was finalized after an extended period of competition for the purchase between ArceloMittal, headquartered in Luxembourg; and Japan’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. In the end ThyssenKrupp Steel, the German owner of the plant, agreed to sell to both companies.
The sale is expected to benefit Nippon and ArceloMittal by expanding their energy and car manufacturing businesses.
ThyssenKrupp decided to on-load their US steel plant when the price of steel fell, leading to financial loss for the company as well as large write-downs for the lowered value of the plant.
A new mega-airline company will be created when American Airlines and US Airways take advantage of the Department of Justice’s decision to allow the two companies to merge, making them the world’s most expansive airline.
Last August the US government tried to prevent the merger, claiming competition would be restricted, causing ticket prices to rise on hundreds of routes around the country.
The airlines counter that this deal actually will increase competition now that there is a real competitor to United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, two companies which recently grew after their own mergers.
Tuesday’s settlement with the Justice Department still requires the approval of a federal judge in Washington, DC. One requirement of the agreement is that American and US Airways will need to give up their take-off and landing rights at Reagan National in DC and La Guardia Airport in New York. They will also need to give up some of their gates at airports in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Miami, allowing low-cost carriers to have them. This move is to offset the impact of the merger on smaller airlines, increasing competition.
Eric Holder, the attorney general, said that the agreement would increase competition on nonstop and connection flights all over the country. The Justice Department said that the relinquishing of gates and routes at the country’s major airports by the newly merged entity was a “groundbreaking” move.
US Airways Chief Executive Doug Parker, who will head the newly merged company said,
“This is very good news and we are grateful to all who have made it happen.”
He added his thanks to politicians and business leaders who supported US Airways and helped push for the merger. The companies are expected to complete the move to merger in December.
Jeff Bezos is the CEO at Amazon, one of the most amazing companies to have emerged in the universe of on-line retailing. There is no question that he is a business genius, innovating and guiding his company to ever more successful approaches to customer service and sales.
Here are a few valuable quotes from Bezos showing just small bit of his acumen, giving us mere mortals some insight into how his mind works.
• Do not rest on your laurels, as Bezos said, “A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny does not last.”
• What is the driving force behind innovation? Bezos knows: “I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.”
• On the importance of responding to customers and their needs: “If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.”
• Afraid of criticism? That can harm your business: “If you never want to be criticized, for goodness’ sake don’t do anything new.”
Among Bezos’ other accomplishments, aside from his success at Amazon, is the purchase of the Washington Post for $250 million in early 2013; and the funding of the building of a 10,000-year clock inside a mountain in the Sierra Diablo Mountain Range in the West Texas desert.
An indication of the displeasure stockholders have had with Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is the fact that upon the announcement that he will soon be leaving Microsoft’s stock price rose more than 8 percent. When investors calmed down a bit from the happy news the stock did return to a more reasonable level.
Celebrating Ballmer’s departure are critics who point out that he placed the future of Microsoft in the hands of the wrong products, fell behind in the race to the switch to mobile computing, was not really up to the task of choosing good design options, and, to top all these mistakes, is also a poor public speaker.
Microsoft has not yet picked Ballmer’s successor. Recent reorganization at Microsoft did not make it a priority to establish a natural process for succession. Therefore for the next 12 months Ballmer will stay put while John Thompson, the company’s leading independent director, heads up the search committee.
Bill Gates is also on the search committee, so be prepared for his name to be floated as a possible replacement for Ballmer, but this option seems unlikely. More probable is one of the following candidates:
Tony Bates: Executive at Skype, this past summer he also managed business development for Microsoft. He was at Cisco Systems for a while.
Julie Larson-Green: She was once considered Ballmer’s natural successor. Microsoft’s reorganization placed Green at the top of MS’s devices division.
Qi Lu: Veteran of Yahoo search, Lu also worked on Bing for MS and came out as another winner in the MS makeover this summer. He is now the head of apps and services.
Five other possibilities include Tami Reller, Steven Sinofsky, Stephen Elop, Paul Maritz and Kevin Johnson.
In case you have been feeling bad about Ballmer losing his job, his 333 million shares in Microsoft should help him ease his transition.
Mitek Systems Inc. (MITK) has come out with a great system for depositing checks via the iPhone. The company is of course thinking much bigger than this and is integrating smart phone technology into the financial service industry. There are many uses for this kind of technology. The Mobile Receipt technology can also take pictures of receipts and convert the information into expense reports. The Mobil Phax technology lets you photograph a full size page and send it as a fax. There are more services available and I am sure that as time goes on, more and more services will be developed.
What about marketing these iPhone, banking products? So far seven of the top ten banks in the United States are using Mitek technology. In this last quarter, new customer signings have more than doubled, reaching 181 banks and financial organizations. Some of the client organizations are Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Capital One, and PayPal. Charles Schwab reported that in the first 6 months of use, mobile check deposits increased from zero to forty percent of all bank deposits. Mitek is changing the financial world very quickly.
Some of the managers and directors of Mitek are Dr. Grigori Neponmniachtchi, Josh Roach, John M. Thornton, Drew Hyatt, James B. DeBello, Sally B. Thornton, William P. Tudor, and Russell C. Clark.
