Business Studies Blog

http://www.argmax.com – News links and other information about Economics by John Irons, Assistant Professor of Economics at Amherst College, Massachusetts, USA.:

www.bized.ac.uk – A business and economics service for teacher, lecturers and students:

http://www.economicsuk.com/ – David Smith’s EconomicsUK – “everything you need to know about the UK economy for both economists and non-economists.”

Resources for Economists on the Internet: http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/EconFAQ

The Learning and Teaching Support Network Centre for Economics: http://www.economics.ltsn.ac.uk/welcome.htm

World Wide Web Resources in Economics: http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/WebEc/

Societies, Research organizations and think-tanks

http://www.res.org.uk/ – The Royal Economics Society, a professional association which promotes the encouragement of the study of economic science in academic life, government service, banking, industry and public affairs

http://www.neweconomics.org/ – The New Economics Foundation

http://www.jubilee2000uk.org/ – Jubilee research- international debt and finance

Institute for Fiscal Studies: www.ifs.org.uk

Charities, Welfare, Environment, Development

Friends of the Earth- policy and research unit: http://www.foe.org.uk/campaigns/sustainable_development/

Oxfam policy and research: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/index.htm

The World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/en/

Joseph Rowntree Foundation: www.jrf.org.uk

UNICEF: www.unicef.org

UK Government Bodies and Organizations

Online access to UK government information: www.ukonline.gov.uk

Competition Commission: http://www.competition-commission.org.uk/

National Statistics (UK): http://www.statistics.gov.uk/default.asp

HM Treasury (UK): http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/

Land Registry (UK): www.landreg.gov.uk

Department for International Development: www.dfid.gov.uk

Department for Trade and Industry: www.dti.gov.uk

Environment Agency: www.environment-agency.gov.uk

UK Euro information website: www.euro.gov.uk

UK Parliament: www.parliament.uk

Scottish Executive: www.scotland.gov.uk

US Government Bodies and Information

CIA world statistics site: www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook

The Whitehouse: www.whitehouse.gov

Central Banks

The European Central Bank: http://www.ecb.int/

Austria: Oesterreichische Nationalbank

Belgium: Nationale Bank van België – Banque Nationale de Belgique

Denmark: Danmarks Nationalbank

Finland: Suomen Pankki – Finlands Bank

France: Banque de France

Germany: Deutsche Bundesbank

Greece: Bank of Greece

Ireland: Central Bank of Ireland

Italy: Banca d´Italia

Japan: http://www.boj.or.jp/en/index.htm

Luxembourg: Banque centrale du Luxembourg

The Netherlands: De Nederlandsche Bank

Portugal: Banco de Portugal

Spain: Banco de España

Sweden: Sveriges Riksbank

United Kingdom: Bank of England

United States: The Federal Reserve: http://www.federalreserve.gov/

The European Union

Europa: Portal site of the EU: europa.eu.int

The European Economic and Social Committee: http://www.esc.eu.int/

Euro: The European Commission: europa.eu.int/euro

European Central Bank: www.ecb.int

International Organizations

IMF, Washington: International Monetary Fund

OECD, Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development

World Trade Organization: http://www.wto.org/

The World Bank Development Report: http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/wdrpoverty/report/index.htm

OPEC: www.opec.org

World Health Organization: www.who.org

United Nations: www.un.org

Glossaries and other Reference Sources

The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: http://www.econlib.org/library/CEE.html

Encyclopedia of Economic and Business History: http://eh.net/encyclopedia/

Macroeconomics glossary: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/macro_online/display_glossary.html

Economics Departments, Institutes and Research Centers in the World: http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/EDIRC/index.html

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Going Public

dinesh bakshi — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:31:56 +0000

Go Public

Every closed company has the chance to go public, which means that they can sell half of their shares to the public and list them in the Bourse.

The decision of going public is a business decision taken after considering the benefits and consequences of going public. There are so many benefits a company can get by going public, but there are also some consequences that must be considered.

The most asked questions then are when does a company need to go public and when is the right time to do it. There are no strict rules regarding these matters because the choice to go public or not is depend on the company needs and the interest of the shareholders.

Benefits

Capital Access
Many companies face the problem of funding for the company’s development, working capital and business expansion. By becoming a public company, this problem of funding will be easier to solve because:

The company can sell their shares to the public. By this way, your company can obtain a huge amount of fund all at once with a relatively smaller cost of fund, compared to that obtained from the bank. Besides, in the future, your company can hold a secondary offering without any limit, if they have become a public company.
Public company has easier access to banking. By going pubic and having its shares traded in the Exchange, banking community will be able to know your company better and put their trust on it because they can learn your company’s financial condition anytime through the information disclosure announced by the company through the Exchange. This condition will not only make the process of your loan easier, but also give you additional benefit of low interest rate because the credit risk of a public company is relatively smaller compared to private enterprise.
Public company has easier access to money market by issuing short or long term bonds. Generally, buyers prefer if the bond issuer is a public company. By going public, your company’s image and name will be well known by the banking community. This condition will not only help you to issue the bonds, but will also give you the opportunity to issue them in a competitive interest rate because the market tends to trust going public issuers than private ones.

Competitive Advantage for Business Development
By going public, a company will receive a lot of competitive advantages for business expansion in the future, for example:

By becoming a public company, you can have the opportunity to invite your business partners such as your suppliers and buyers to become the shareholders. By doing so, your relationship will not only become a business relationship, but it will grow to a deeper kind of relationship that involves quality and loyalty. This is because as shareholders, they feel a higher commitment to participate in developing the company.
A public company is required by many parts to continuously improve the quality of its operational performance, such as in the service to its customers and other stakeholders, the reporting system and surveillance aspects. This condition will improve the product performance of the company from day to day and open the chance of expansion in the future. Many companies that go public are able to maintain their business for a long period.

Source of Funding for Merger or Company’s Acquisition
Business development though merger or acquisition is one popular way to improve the company’s business development. Shares of a public company traded in the Exchange have certain market value. Therefore, public company, whose shares are traded in the Exchange, will have easier access to gather fund needed for the merger by issuing new shares.

Improving Ability of Going Concern
The ability of going concern is the ability of a company to keep going in any condition, even in conditions that lead to bankruptcy, such as the failure to pay the company’s debts to the third party, the rift between company’s founders, or even the changes of the market movement.

By going public, a company will be able to maintain its business better than private company, as seen in the examples below:

In a family -owned business, a split may happen because of different ways of thinking between the owners. By going public, the problem can be solved without having to liquidate the company by selling all or some part of the shares ownership to other party through the Exchange. Besides, the offering basis price can be easily obtained since the share market price is always available in the Exchange.

By going public, many problems and constraints a company might face when trying to keep running and develop do not only become the matters of the founders, but also of many people that become the company’s shareholders.

If a company fail to pay its debts to the third party and restructuring is needed, going public will make the process easier. The debts can be conversed into shares, which then are sold to the public through share trading mechanism in the Exchange.

Publicity
By going public, a company is likely to receive attention from the media and financial community. It means that the company will get free publicity that will improve its image. A strong image of the company will bring positive influence to the company’s development in the future. This is very beneficial especially for smaller and medium companies because as they go public and have their shares traded in the Exchange, their image will be equivalent to that of big companies with wide scale business and long historical experiences.

Higher Company’s Value
By going public and having its shares traded in the Exchange, the valuation of the company’s value can be obtained at anytime. Every improvement in the company’s operational and financial performance will generally increase the price of its shares traded in the Exchange and also the value of the company as a whole.

Consequences

Sharing Ownership
It means that the percentage of ownership will be lessened. Many companies that plan to go public feel worried of losing their control of the company. Actually, it is nothing to worry about because the minimum amount of shares that has to be sold to the public through Initial Public Offering (IPO) will still maintain the founders’ control of their company.

Subject to the Prevailing Capital Market Regulations
The capital market does issue various regulations. But basically, all those have the purpose to help a company to develop better in the future. All shareholders, founders and management of the company need not to worry with many requirements they need to fulfill because there are quite many professional service that they can ask for help.

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Is Integration always beneficial for shareholders?

Prizzie — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:05:15 +0000

The simplest definition of integration is ‘bringing together two or more firms’. Integration is a form of external growth of a business. This can be achieved by merging or taking over another business, whether they are in the same industry or not.

The question is, is integration the best way of achieving benefits for shareholders?

There are several things to be considered. Firstly, let’s take a look of main benefits of integration. These are:

Merger does not require cash
Integration eliminates competitor
The business will gain possible economies of scale
Lower cost of production
More workforce
Increase power over supplier

However, the possible disadvantages are:

Differences in work culture may result in misunderstanding
Integration might demotivate workers as they have to adapt to a new working condition
Adaptation for managers in a new working condition, new systems and policy might lead to inefficiency in management.

In answering the question in the title above, we have to know what is the relation between the shareholders and the company, or how exactly do they get benefit from the company.

First of all, the objective of shareholders is to receive dividends from the after-tax profit. Therefore we could say that the benefit for shareholders depends on the liquidity of the company. If the company experiences a cash-flow problem, then the dividends for shareholders would decrease.

To summarize all this, integration could be the best way of achieving benefits for shareholders if the joining companies could manage the efficiency of the business by minimizing the possible problems that are stated above.

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Is integration the best way to achieve benefits for shareholders?

Alicia_D_Dreamer — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:02:18 +0000

Integration is a form of external business growth, in which two firms come together, and form a larger firm. This union could be between any two firms, and it is not necessary that they come from the same industry. The two integrating firms may decide to combine their resources and become a new company altogether, doing away with their previous names. This is a merger. In other cases, one company would “acquire” the other by buying it over. The acquiring company then ‘grows’.

There are many reasons why two companies would choose to come together. The advantages vary from industry to industry, however the most common one is that the bigger business formed would be able to enjoy the benefits of being large.

A large business would be able to enjoy the economies of scale such as purchasing economies, marketing economies, financial economies, managerial economies and technical economies therefore reducing their costs. Being big, they would be able to reach more of the market for a product, and thus have a greater market share. They would also have more influence when dealing with suppliers since they could become the main buyer of raw materials. Being big also allows the business to spread its risk about different places or markets, and thus gives it more stability.

Usually two businesses integrate with the plan of obtaining synergy. It is believed that working together, the two firms would be able to produce more output than if they worked alone. Overlapping departments and functions in the companies could be removed, and they could reduce the total overhead costs. The integration also allows them to have more advantage competing with the other businesses. Integration works in the principle that the productivity of the new business as a whole would be greater than the total productivity of the two smaller businesses.

When a business does well, then shareholders may receive more dividends. This is one benefit of integration towards the shareholders when a business becomes big. Secondly, a big business would be more stable.

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Integration – Benefits and drawbacks

ayaznazir — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:57:13 +0000

Takeover/Merger

Change in the controlling interest of a corporation. A takeover may be in the form of a friendly acquisition and merger or an unfriendly bid that the management of the target company might fight with shark repellent techniques. In other words a takeover is when someone takes control of another business, ‘takes over the business’.

Benefits

Effective planning
Improved efficiency and fewer errors

Better access to information, leading to a more responsive service and better relationships with customers and suppliers.

Better use of staff time and greater job satisfaction for employees.

Reduced costs

Drawbacks to merging

Potential Lack of Immediate Liquidity.
Business Risk. The company’s core business could decline or management could take actions that adversely affect the company. The net result is that the stock price could fall.
Market Perception. The market may respond negatively to the merger, as in the case of Macrovision and Gemstar in which Macrovision’s share price fell 25% the day the merger was announced. The market may believe the purchase price was too high, the strategic fit was inappropriate or that the synergies cannot be realized. The merger could result in a lower share price for everyone.

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Business Crosswords

dinesh bakshi — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:01:18 +0000

There is a new website for business terms and crosswords. This website has hundreds of interactive crosswords for everyone. You don’t need to a have a business education background to solve these crosswords. Anyone who is interested in the field of business and wants to know enhance thier business vocabulary can come here and attempt these puzzles. Business students whether they are at GCSE level, A Level or University level can use it to enhance their business vocabulary.

The terms used in these crosswords are generally used in the day to day business proceeding. Simple language has been used and the terms.

How it works ? Its simple!

The crosswrords are arranged alphabetically. Choose one alpahbet and attempt all the terms starting with that alphabet!

More crosswords on Economics and Accounting will be added soon.

This is an evolving website so don’t forget to bookmark it and come back again to check what’s new!!

Check it out at http://www.business-crosswords.com

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Promotional Expenditure-Benefits and drawback

ayaznazir — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:06:32 +0000

Marketing is often listed as a single line item on a business expense account. This may infer that expenses for marketing are straight forward and easy to categorize. To the contrary, marketing is one of the most misunderstood and complicated areas of planning and running a business. Marketing is often referred to as a “necessary evil” for a business. Without it, sales will likely struggle and with it can come significant costs. Sometimes marketing expenditures are needed just to insure product awareness and to stay even with the competition rather than greatly expanding sales.
Marketing experts often prefer to consider expenses for marketing as investments rather than expenses because successful marketing efforts will increase sales.

Benefits & Drawback

Benefits to society from promotional expenditure :

It informs people about new products and this helps to increase competition firms.
Creating mass markets, promotion can help in reduce average costs of production through economies of large-scale production.
It allows income for TV, radio and newspaper businesses.

Drawbacks to society from promotional expenditure:

Waste of resources
Promotion is a powerful tool which encourages consumer to buy goods which they dont even need.
It promotes consumerism ( people who are judged by quantity of goods they own)

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Role Of Marketing Research

ayaznazir — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:35:47 +0000

What is market research?

Marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of data about issues relating to marketing products and services.

Marketing research is concerned specifically about marketing processes. The goal of marketing research is to identify and assess how changing elements of the marketing mix impacts customer behavior. Marketing research is often partitioned into two sets of categorical pairs, either by target market:

Consumer marketing research, and
Business-to-business (B2B) marketing research

Or, alternatively, by methodological approach:

Qualitative marketing research, and
Quantitative marketing research

Consumer marketing research is a form of applied sociology that concentrates on understanding the preferences, attitudes, and behaviors of consumers in a market-based economy, and it aims to understand the effects and comparative success of marketing campaigns.

Business to business (B2B) research is inevitably more complicated than consumer research. The researchers need to know what type of multi-faceted approach will answer the objectives, since seldom is it possible to find the answers using just one method.

There are four key factors that make B2B market research special and different to consumer markets:

The decision making unit is far more complex in B2B markets than in consumer markets
B2B products and their applications are more complex than consumer products
B2B marketers address a much smaller number of customers who are very much larger in their consumption of products than is the case in consumer markets
Personal relationships are of critical importance in B2B markets.

Quantitative research is basically an observation, test marketing and consumer surveys, etc. (Primary Research)

On the other hand, qualitative research is an individual interviews with groups. (Primary Research)

Why do business do market research?

To find out the market trends, market demand and customer needs, etc.
To minimize the risk factors.
To see the visibility of the business.
To find out the profitabilty of the business.
Business expansion.
To observe the competitors.

Find more revision notes on Marekting on dineshbakshi.com

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What does Competition Commission do?

Prizzie — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:10:36 +0000

Government has many ways of controlling businesses in the economy. Government attempt to encourage and promote competition between firms by passing laws which:

Control monopolies and make it possible to prevent mergers,
Limit or outlaw uncompetitive practices between firms.

One of the ways is by setting up Competition commissions which prevents unfair competition. Competition commissions usually look into

1. Antitrust pleas

Competition is a basic mechanism of the market economy and encourages companies to provide consumers products that consumers want. It encourages innovation, and pushes down prices. In order to be effective, competition needs suppliers who are independent of each other, each subject to the competitive pressure exerted by the others.

Competition Commission might inquire cases where they find that

Agreements between two or more firms is restricting competition
Firms in a dominant position may abuse the position

2. Mergers

Some mergers may reduce competition in a market, usually by creating or strengthening a dominant player. This is likely to harm consumers through higher prices, reduced choice or less innovation. Increased competition within the market and globalisation are among the factors which make it attractive for companies to join forces.

3. Cartels

A cartel is a group of similar, independent companies which join together to fix prices, to limit production or to share markets or customers between them.

Instead of competing with each other, cartel members rely on each others’ agreed course of action, which reduces their incentives to provide new or better products and services at competitive prices. As a consequence, their clients (consumers or other businesses) end up paying more for less quality.

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Is social responsibility a must for a business?

ayaznazir — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:40:58 +0000

What is Social Responsibility?

Social responsibility is an ethical or ideological theory that has a responsibility to society. This responsibility can be “negative”, meaning there is a responsibility to refrain from acting ( resistance stance) or it can be “positive”, meaning there is a responsibility to act (proactive stance).

Is It a must?

There are certain companies who still care for the “social responsibility” such as:

ASNAPP project (Agribusiness in sustainable natural African plant products). This project was initiated in 1999 to help develop the natural products sector in Africa by promoting income-generating activities for rural entrepreneurs in such a way that improves the livelihoods of rural communities.

Another one is Oxy Company, is a petroleum corporation business. This company focuses on social responsibility such as corporate governance, labor practices and human rights. Including health, environment and safety (HES) policies, objectives, performance and activities of the company and its subsidiaries (collectively, Oxy).

If each business organizes a social responsibility, contributing a hand for these upcoming issues of global warming due to environment problem, it could be much better in order to save our extinct habitat and also nature live. This could be a very vital perspective in a few years time.

Benefits of Social responsibility

Building a reputation as a responsible business sets you apart. Companies often favour suppliers who demonstrate responsible policies, as this can have a positive impact on how they are perceived by customers.

Some other benefits:

A good reputation makes it easier to recruit employees.
Employees may stay longer, reducing the costs and disruption of recruitment and retraining.
Employees are better motivated and more productive.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) helps ensure you comply with regulatory requirements.
Activities such as involvement with the local community are ideal opportunities to generate positive press coverage.
Good relationships with local authorities make doing business easier. See the page in this guide on how to work with the local community.
Understanding the wider impact of your business can help you develop new products and services.
CSR can make you more competitive and reduces the risk of sudden damage to your reputation (and sales). Investors recognize this and are more willing to finance you.

Drawback of CSR

Some perceived drawbacks for a business to enact corporate social responsibility could be:

Use of money for things not directly related to the business
Shift of focus away from a corporations main business concerns
The notion that a company should be solely profit driven
Extra staff required to fulfill corporate social responsibility jobs required for a company to undertake its CSR initiatives.

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