Spar Group, a supplier of retail merchandising and other marketing services, has announced the structuring of a new joint venture in China with its new partner Shanghai Wedone Marketing Consulting.
Shanghai Wedone Marketing Consulting is a comprehensive marketing management company that provides brand communication and retail marketing management service in China.

The new joint venture will provide merchandising and marketing services and have national market presence in the country.

The new joint venture will be called SPAR (Shanghai) Marketing Management Company. Spar will own 51% of the joint venture while Shanghai Wedone Marketing Consulting will own 49% in accordance with the laws of China. The new company will provide merchandising and related marketing services to manufacturers and retailers throughout China. Read the rest of this entry »

Cutting costs can be quick and easy, but it isn’t a guarantee that you can grow profitability, according to a new report by Boston Consulting Group. Asset managers that BCG tracked in 34 major markets around the world for its study, “In Search of Stable Growth: Global Asset Management 2010,” were able to reduce expenses last year by an average of 7 percent. Yet operating margins were off by 19 percent and net revenues fell by 11 percent. In tough times, the gap between top performers and those further down the scale widens, Boston Consulting Senior Partner Monish Kumar said today at a press program in New York City to discuss the results. The top 20 percent of managers produced 88 percent of net sales last year, while holding just 23 percent of AUM, the report said.

The good news: “As an industry overall, asset management remains an incredibly attractive space,” said Brent S. Beardsley, BCG partner and managing director. Operating margins, boosted by better product mix and higher AUM, were forecast for 31 to 35 percent for this year; it’s not as good as the historic peak of 40 percent back in 2006 but far better than many other businesses.

There’s still plenty of work ahead for asset managers. The report measured the value of professionally managed assets in 2009 at $52.6 trillion, up 12 percent, but only about 1 percent resulted from new net inflows. The playing field is changing. Read the rest of this entry »

Lincolnshire-based Hewitt Associates, a global human resources consulting and outsourcing company, Tuesday said it entered into an agreement to acquire EnnisKnupp, a provider of investment advisory services to large institutional investors.

This acquisition will boost Hewitt’s existing investment consulting capabilities in the United States and support its global growth plans. EnnisKnupp provides investment consulting services to corporations, public funds, endowments, foundations and non-for-profits.

Once this transaction is complete, Hewitt will be one of the largest providers of investment consulting services globally with nearly $3 trillion in assets under advisement.

Financial terms were not disclosed. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close later this year.

Insurance broker Aon Corp. announced its acquisition of human-resources consulting and outsourcing company Hewitt Associates Inc. for $4.9 billion in cash and stock to expand its consulting business.

Aon will pay $50 per Hewitt share, representing a 41 percent premium to Hewitt’s closing stock price of $35.40 on Friday.

Aon plans to integrate Hewitt with its existing consulting and outsourcing operations and operate the segment under the newly created Aon Hewitt brand, the company said.

“This merger will give us a broader portfolio of innovative products and services focused on what we believe are two of the most important topics in the global economy today – risk and people,” Aon chief executive Greg Case said on Monday. Read the rest of this entry »

Strong brands have the power to create business value. They impact much more than revenues and profit margins. Strong brands create competitive advantages by commanding a price premium and decrease the cost of entry into new markets and categories. They reduce business risk and help attract and retain talented staff.

Millward Brown Optimor created the BrandZ Top 100, a ranking that identifies the world’s most valuable brands measured by their dollar value. Our brand ranking provides key insights and actionable information for finance, marketing and business professionals on how to manage and grow their brand assets.

Millward Brown Optimor congratulates all companies featured in this year’s BrandZ ranking: being among the world’s most valuable brands demonstrates successful business and brand management. Read the rest of this entry »

The companies in this year’s 500 list slashed costs so fast and so deeply especially labor that even in a feeble recovery, their earnings soared.

The long-awaited recovery is now under way, but it’s a slow, painful slog that’s short on trust and confidence and long on a drumbeat of numbers that mostly shift from dreadful to less depressing. Twenty-seven months after the recession began, unemployment is stuck at 9.7%. Housing starts are dragging near half-century lows. Consumers are finally spending again, but they’re still too fearful about their jobs and homes to crowd malls and auto lots with the buoyant abandon that heralds a full-rigged revival, the kind Americans are used to.

Amazingly, as consumers struggle, U.S. corporations are staging a nearly unprecedented comeback that’s largely escaping notice. The gargantuan, dispiriting job cuts that seem to dominate the news have also been the spur for an epic resurgence in profits. For 2009, the Fortune 500 lifted earnings 335%, to $391 billion, a $301 billion jump that’s the second largest in the list’s 56-year history, approaching the increase in the robust recovery of 2003. For last year the 500 raised their return on sales from less than 1% to 4%. That’s close to the list’s 4.7% historical average.

Hence, the 500′s profits virtually returned to normal after years of extremes — bubbles in 2006 and 2007, collapse in 2008 — despite a feeble overall recovery that’s far from normal. This year’s list — reminder: the Fortune 500 ranks U.S. companies by revenue — is packed with changes that reflect and spotlight the trends reshaping corporate America. The homebuilders that occupied 14 places in 2007 and three last year, including Centex and Pulte, have all disappeared, casualties of shrinking sales. No fewer than nine newcomers from recession-resistant health care joined in 2009, among them drugmakers Genzyme (sales: $4.5 billion) and Allergan ($4.5 billion). Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve seen the television commercials and the product reviews.

But maybe, like many gadget lovers, you’re still debating whether you really need this new touch-screen computer from Apple.

To help you make sense of the hype, here are answers to 10 common questions about the iPad, Apple’s much-anticipated “slate” computer, which goes on sale Saturday.

Is there anything else you’d like to know? If so, please post in the comments section below and we’ll do our best to answer your questions.

1. How is the iPad different from a laptop?

The word “laptop” is getting somewhat brushed aside for a truckload of new, confusing categories.

The Apple iPad falls into the slate (some people say tablet) category of portable personal computers, because, unlike a laptop, it doesn’t have a hardware keyboard.

Another key difference: To type and to navigate through files and photos on the iPad, you touch its screen in the same way you operate an iPhone or iPod Touch. That’s possible on some laptop models, but not many. Read the rest of this entry »

HTML 5 in Internet Explorer may mean Microsoft is rejoined the league of civilized nations on browsers, but another Microsoft technology remains under lock and key more firmly than ever.

Microsoft’s Silverlight media player has, with version 4 due next month, gone from being closed source but able to work on other platforms – the Mac – to being increasingly tied to Windows.

An up-coming feature called COM Automation has been introduced that potential lets content in Silverlight and Silverlight applications work with documents in Microsoft’s Office stored on a PC. Also, COM Automation could access other system capabilities like a USB security card reader.

COM is a Microsoft architecture, not found on the Mac, so this means Silverlight is beginning to be built by Microsoft to give Windows a leg up over the competition. Read the rest of this entry »

Dell is broadening its storage product range by OEMing EMC’s Celerra and Data Domain products, and developing its own object storage product.

The background to this is the continuing and dramatic rise in the amount of semi- and unstructured information. This leads to a sheer storage capacity problem and to infrastructure problems, particularly when organisations need to respond to sudden and unpredictable changes in IT demand.

Dell is responding to that by increasing the ability for its customers to virtualise their IT environments, manage them more efficiently with infrastructure products, and equip their data centres with both servers and storage better suited to what it calls the virtual era.

The Reg covers the server, cloud and infrastructure parts of today’s Dell announcement set elsewhere; here we concentrate on the storage which focuses on the efficient storage of billions of files and objects.

Dell is introducing three new storage product sets: the DX object store; DD deduplication systems; and the NS unified file and block storage systems Both the DX and NS products are OEM’d from EMC whereas the DX is not. It appears that Dell decided not to take EMC’s Centera object storage product set. Read the rest of this entry »

Even in these tough times, surprising and extraordinary efforts are under way in businesses across the globe. From politics to technology, energy, and transportation; from marketing to retail, health care, and design, each company on the following pages illustrates the power and potential of innovative ideas and creative execution.
HP Acquires 3Com for $2.7 Billion, Brings Fight to Cisco DreamWorks Animation Has Become a Tech Incubator What Ever Happened to HP’s Augmented Reality Game? Topics:Innovation, Most innovative companies, Hewlett-Packard Company, PG&E Corporation, Amazon.com Inc., General Electric Company, Samsung Corporation Read the rest of this entry »