By not ending too early, the current financial and economic crisis can actually be beneficial for shareholder value, says Urs Peyer, INSEAD associate professor of finance.

The crisis will weed out companies that have the wrong ideas about shareholder value and the wrong implementation methods because such companies will likely be among the first to fail, says Peyer.

Peyer, who was a speaker at the INSEAD Leadership Summit held recently at the school’s Europe campus in Fontainebleau, explains that creating shareholder value is not about focusing on share price management. Indeed, the job of CEOs is not to manage earnings expectations but to create value. Read more..

Hedge funds have come in for scrutiny of late, particularly for their role in the financial crisis. According to Christopher Fawcett, CEO of Fauchier Partners, which manages hedge fund and alternative investment portfolios, hedge funds have become a scapegoat as they are an easy target.

“I think there is a general tendency when things are going wrong, to find something or somebody to blame. And in the early stages of the crisis, the banks were not being directly blamed – and the hedge funds were.” Read more..

Looking at the global economy today, we can see that a much greater proportion of the world operates under the philosophy called ‘market capitalism,’ observes Subi Rangan, associate professor of strategy and management, and the Shell fellow in business and the environment at INSEAD.

“Compared to ten, and certainly 100 years ago, business today makes a huge set of decisions and is becoming a prime resource allocator.” Read more..

They say it’s never a bad time to invest in leadership. But is that still true, even during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression? Unilever, the food and personal care products giant, thinks so and is putting its money where its mouth is.

Earlier this year, Unilever donated three million euros to INSEAD to establish a research fund to study leadership, especially gender diversity in leadership, an issue of particular concern to the company.

“If we can only solve the gender diversity issue in our business our talent supply issues will be a long way in the direction of being solved," says Unilever’s Chief Human Resources Officer Sandy Ogg.

“For us, this incredibly strategic investment is about the quality and quantity of leadership supply that we have available." Read more..

Should Russia join NATO? Sixty years ago, the trans-Atlantic military alliance was created to protect Western Europe and the United States from Soviet aggression. Now a leading expert on European security says the West should strengthen ties with the Soviet Union’s successor, including membership in the 26-member alliance.

“Why not take Russia, in the long run, into NATO?” asks Horst Teltschik, former national security advisor to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl from 1982 to 1990 and international consultant. Read more..