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25 Aug - 7 Sep
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How Mutual Fund Managers Exploit Opportunities to Maximize Fees
According to the mutual fund industry's harshest critics, fund managers cannot properly serve investors when they must also serve their own bosses – the management companies' owners, public or private. Fund company owners make bigger profits when investors are charged high fees; investors get higher returns when fees are low. Yet industry defenders have long rejected the critics' charges, arguing, among other things, that the need to compete puts a natural brake on the impulse to maximize fees. Who's right? New research by Wharton management professor Nicolaj Siggelkow supports the critics.
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United Airlines' Pension Problem: Who, Ultimately, Is Going to Pay?
United Airlines' proposal to halt payments to its pension funds suggests serious problems for the nation's pension-guarantee system, according to Wharton faculty and pension experts. The troubled airline, which declared bankruptcy in December 2002, said in July that it would stop funding its pension plans while it struggles to restructure under bankruptcy protection. The question is, how many other companies will renege on their pension obligations? And if the pension system collapses, will taxpayers foot the bill, just as they did for the S&L crisis in 1989?
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Venezuela's Fate Is Tied to Oil, and That's the Problem
The link between the August 15 presidential referendum in Venezuela and the state of the global energy markets is clear. Once incumbent Hugo Chávez demonstrated his ability to get re-elected, oil markets calmed down, at least temporarily, even though Chávez is unpopular among foreign economists and analysts. Uncertainty about the future of the Chávez regime had been one of several factors pushing world oil prices to record highs in recent months. But looking ahead, how solid is Chávez's support, and what would happen to this struggling economy if oil prices drop?
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Lenovo Chairman Liu Chuanzhi: "We Have Decided to Refocus on PCs"
Lenovo Group - or Legend Group, as it used to be called - has long been regarded as one of China's best-known business success stories. As strong economic growth in the past two decades spurred demand for computers in China, the company grew into the country's (and Asia's) largest PC maker. Lately, though, Lenovo Group has stumbled a little as domestic market share has declined and efforts at diversification have failed to pay off. Lenovo's chairman Liu Chuanzhi recently spoke to Wharton's Michael Useem and other experts about the company's challenges, past experiences and future plans.
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Guilt is Good: A New Approach to Environmental Problems
Fines, fees, pollution credit-swaps – policymakers have advocated many different approaches for sustaining the economy, often with mixed success. Now two Wharton professors - Paul Kleindorfer and Ulku Oktem - have concluded that re-framing environmental issues in such a way that individuals feel encouraged to take a personal initiative may be a better approach. They presented their research at the first UN Global Compact academic conference in Turkey. The second phase of the conference, titled "Bridging the Gap: Sustainable Environment," takes place in Philadelphia on Sept. 17 and 18.
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Going Once, Going Twice ... Glamour, Greed and Fraud at Sotheby's and Christie's
Christopher Mason, author of The Art of the Steal: Inside the Sotheby's–Christie's Auction House Scandal, thinks billionaire Albert Taubman got a raw deal when he was sent to jail for price-fixing two years ago. But the book is more than a defense of the famed shopping center developer who became owner and chairman of Sotheby's in 1982. It is a detailed, gossipy account of the inner workings of the two firms known for auctioning the multi-million dollar paintings, diamonds, emeralds and other possessions of the rich and famous. While the art world this week buzzes about the August 22 theft of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" from Oslo's Munch Museum, The Art of the Steal talks about a different kind of theft, focusing on the background behind the auction houses' price-fixing conspiracy, who was involved and how it came to light.
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