A tale of two banks: hallmarks of the changing financial landscape

It would be difficult to find two financial institutions more indicative of the plus and minus sides of the financial tsunami that hit the world of banking this year: on the one hand, ING, the venerable international Dutch bank, forced to go to the government for a 10 billion euro bailout and now facing public evisceration at the hands of EU regulators. On the other hand, Standard Chartered Bank, a bastion of banking in Asia since the era of British imperial rule.

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Who supervises the board? In Indonesia, that's the job of another board

Indonesia's two-tier board system works well and could be a model for other countries. That's according to the president of the supervisory board of commissioners at major telco PT Telekomunikasi, Tanri Abeng, who says he's "a little bit critical" of the single-board system used elsewhere.

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Government, business and labour: working together for a successful Singapore amid the economic downturn

While many countries are seeing unemployment rates rising sharply, Singapore's has only gone up by about one per cent over the past year to 3.4 per cent and remains one of the lowest in the world, despite the global slowdown.

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Welcome, 'Stateholder'

The amount of government capital injected into the so-called "private economy" since mid-2008 is unprecedented, say Robert Gogel and Ludo Van der Heyden. The United States and United Kingdom led the way, but many other countries drifted into the same uncharted waters. So now what?

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Why an MBA oath?

Business schools have become an easy target as the butt of jokes about the causes of the current economic crisis, says INSEAD professor Craig Smith. His response to the question, 'why an MBA oath?' is simply: 'Why not?'

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Why MBAs should not sign the Harvard Business School oath

INSEAD professor Theo Vermaelen argues that the MBA oath is a misplaced response to the financial crisis.

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With an economy that's set to grow at around 10 per cent despite the financial crisis, labour costs among the lowest in the world and a huge untapped domestic market with pent-up consumer demand to match, China beckons every businessman with an eye on containing costs and expanding his reach. But, business person beware, cautions INSEAD Emeritus Professor of International Political Economy Jonathan Story, who has just written a new book, 'China Uncovered - What You Need to Know to Do Business in China'.

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It's a $20 billion company with a formidable staff strength of 20,000, but the spirit of innovation (and enterprise) is alive and well at Google Inc, 11 years after the company was founded.

"One of the things I think is special to innovation at Google ... is that, as much as you can do a lot with Google today, it is just as appealing to the novice, as it is was on day one, and that is something that is difficult for most technology businesses to accomplish," says Dave Girouard, President of Enterprise at Google.

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Davos in Delhi: how India figures in the global agenda

The global economic recovery is for real and is being led by emerging countries such as India. That was one of the two key messages from the recently-held India Economic Summit here, jointly hosted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

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Private equity in Asia: stepping back from the brink

Back from the abyss. That's perhaps an apt description of the private equity (PE) industry in Asia, which saw deal flows grind to a virtual halt between the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of this year in the wake of the global financial crisis.

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Mapping out the challenges for social innovation research

Social entrepreneurs and enterprises may have limited resources but they're resourceful and are capable of tackling failed markets, as well as intractable 'wicked' problems. But the key question, according to Pamela Hartigan, Director of Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Said Business School, Oxford University, is how far can social innovation help forge a new global order that is more sustainable, responsible, and humane than what has gone before?

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Vision entrepreneurs: helping the poor to get back to work

Eyeglasses have been around for at least 800 years. Yet hundreds of millions of people in the developing world still suffer poor vision, degrading their ability to learn and work, which affects their livelihood.

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