Bennett Stewart is an expert in shareholder value and corporate performance management, and CEO of EVA Dimensions, a financial technology firm that provides software tools, databases and training and support packages that help companies to test and automate Best-Practice EVA, and investors to earn excess returns alpha. This article was excerpted with permission from the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, from “Best-Practice EVA” (March 2013).
Every business leader needs a way to amplify his or her business instincts and galvanize a team of players to win. The bad news is, conventional financial metrics will inevitably mislead business leaders and their teams into making suboptimal decisions that leave a lot of value on the table because all the measures have blind spots — they hide the truth or tell half-truths.
Earnings, for instance, can easily be inflated with balance sheet investments that don’t earn a decent return, and ROI-fixated companies will limit investments to the highest returns and forfeit lots of profitable growth opportunities that would increase the firm’s value. (read more…)
Prudential Investments Mutual Funds, part of Prudential Financial, spends a lot of time providing thought leadership with input from Prudential Financial’s affiliated institutional managers. A topic it has recently given much attention to is fixed-income choices in defined-contribution (DC) plans. In 2012, Prudential Investments Mutual Funds published the white paper, Insights on Investing: Fixed Income Options within DC Plans, for the purpose of initiating dialogue with advisors and consultants.
In this three-part blog series sponsored by Prudential, we will examine how fixed income can enhance retirement menus. This interview was originally published in the November 2012 issue of Financial Advisor magazine.
In today’s Part 1, the experts explain why offering a wider selection and variety of fixed-income choices to DC plan menus can potentially provide higher returns, greater diversification and less volatility to retirement portfolios.
Part 2 of the interview will look at ways to construct a better portfolio.
Part 3 of the interview will explain how financial advisors can help in this effort. (read more…)
This year’s Union of European Football Association (UEFA) Champions League final is set to be an all-German affair between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund on May 25 at London’s Wembley Stadium. Next to the World Cup, the UEFA Champions League final is one of soccer’s most-anticipated events. Recognizing the growing global appeal of the final, UEFA made the decision a few years ago to switch the game from a weeknight to a Saturday so it could attract more viewers from around the world.
Big Business for UEFA
These championships are big business in Europe. The annual estimated gross commercial revenue expected from the 2012/2013 UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Super Cup is €1.34 billion or about $1.73 billion, according to UEFA. This compares to annual revenues of $9.5 billion for the NFL, $7.5 billion for Major League Baseball, $4 billion for the NBA, $3.4 billion for the NHL, and $300 million for Major League Soccer. (read more…)
When evaluating the health of the U.S. economy, most Americans look at unemployment figures as a key statistic. Many, however, ignore another key statistic: Americans who receive disability benefits.
In December 2011, the Social Security Administration noted that by county, more than 55 million Americans received disability (OASDI) benefits. Up from 44.7 million in 2001, this number has steadily increased in the past several years. As a comparison, in December 2011, 14 million Americans received unemployment benefits.
Illness or an accident prevents many Americans from working. They need disability benefits to survive. A recent story on NPR’s “This American Life” titled “Trends with Benefits” reported that in several counties, almost 1 in 4 working-aged residents receive disability benefits. What do we know about these counties? Is unemployment high there? Is education attainment a factor? Do these residents work out? The NPR story described one case where a doctor diagnosed a disability based partly on a patient’s education. (read more…)
Alan Jay Kaufman is chairman, president and CEO of independent wholesale insurance brokerage Burns & Wilcox, as well as Kaufman Financial Group, its parent company. He recently answered SmartBrief’s questions about leadership, continuing education and other issues in insurance.
How would you describe your leadership style?
It is framed from a variety of experiences. I learned a great deal from my father, the late Herbert W. Kaufman, who founded Burns & Wilcox in 1969. I find that my work ethic, leadership style and entrepreneurial spirit are complemented from years as an attorney in private practice.
My father built Burns & Wilcox into a nationally recognized wholesale broker and underwriting manager. When I took over the leadership of the company, my focus was the future growth of Burns & Wilcox and the Kaufman Financial Group. We expanded internationally and added other leading companies that deepened our expertise and made us more globally competitive. (read more…)
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