Archive for April, 2011

Passion for international adventure did not stop a group of Thunderbird School of Global Management students from responding recently when a call for help came five miles away at Polar Ice in Peoria, Arizona. A team of six students in the global strategy class of Thunderbird Professor Andreas Schotter, Ph.D., stepped forward quickly when Arizona Runners Hockey, a nonprofit youth league run by parent volunteers, asked for free consulting services. “Most of us come to Thunderbird to get the global degree, but it is important that we also give back to the community here,” said project participant Manuela Emmrich ’11, a German MBA student who will graduate Friday and start work with consumer products company Henkel International. | Video: Thunderbird and Arizona Runners Hockey (2:46)
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By Thunderbird Professor Glenn Fong, Ph.D.

Thunderbird offers more than traditional international relations or MBA programs because the grand global challenges of the 21st century call for mixed mode, cross-sector solutions. In practice, the public, private, and nonprofit sectors are not demarcated from each other. No one company, NGO or country can solve issues such as sustainable development, human rights, conflict resolution or global economic recovery. We need organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, USAID, Dell and Microsoft. | Video: A Degree for Diplomats (2:44) | Glenn Fong in the April 18, 2011, issue of “Foreign Affairs”
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Brilliant business ideas do not impress StockTwits CEO and co-founder Howard Lindzon, a 1991 Thunderbird School of Global Management graduate. As a startup investor, he looks instead for passionate people. “Great entrepreneurs can turn really bad ideas into great outcomes,” Lindzon said April 21, 2011, during a campus visit. “It is rarely the idea. From my experience investing for 15 years in startups, we all have ideas. Ideas and entrepreneurs are completely different things.” | Video: Investing in People (1:27 | Alumni Impact Blog: Market investor builds StockTwits for himself (and 300,000 friends)
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Brazil and other Latin American economies will have new opportunities to supply China’s growing demand for natural resources when the expanded Panama Canal opens in three years, a project executive said April 19, 2011, at Thunderbird School of Global Management. “The expansion of the Panama Canal will have a definite impact on trade between China and Brazil,” said Jose Barrios Ng, Ph.D., deputy administrator of the Panama Canal Authority. “What the expansion will allow is the passage of major ships that are too big now for the current dimensions of the canal.” | Video: China Awaits Expansion (1:47) | Video: A Logistics Marvel (1:42)
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By Michael Moffett and Kannan Ramaswamy, Thunderbird Professors

The battle for Hermès, a family-controlled public company that makes high-fashion bags outside Paris, is much more than a fight between luxury goods organizations. The case highlights the dangers of going “a little bit public.” As a result of pressure by some family members to cash out of Hermès in the early 1990s, the company listed 25 percent of its voting shares on the public market. The listing provided an outlet for family members who wished to sell their shares at market price and exit the company. But the move also opened the door for a takeover bid by the LVMH conglomerate, which makes Louis Vuitton bags. Any private/family-owned company that decides to become publicly listed and traded opens the door to such a possibility. Read our full guest blog in the March 8, 2011, online edition of the Harvard Business Review.

By Laurence E. Lipsher, 1965 Thunderbird graduate

Opening the mailbox is a different experience for British and U.S. expatriates in Hong Kong. When letters arrive from HM Revenue & Customs for British managers, they think nothing of it. But when letters arrive from the Internal Revenue Service for U.S. managers working abroad, the normal response is panic. Their palms go sweaty and their hearts pound when they see the return address. As a U.S. accountant and tax specialist who has lived and worked in China for more than 20 years, I have watched the contrasting scenes unfold many times. U.S. expatriates live in a culture of fear. And the environment is getting worse. | Video: Foreign Correspondents’ Club luncheon with Laurence Lipsher (36:09)
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U.S. companies content to compete at home without overseas expansion will soon have a new reason to watch emerging market growth in faraway places. Jim Seymour, managing partner at Pontefract Global Strategies, said emerging market companies will come to them. “Much more competition will come from overseas,” he said April 8, 2011, during the Global Private Equity Investing Conference at Thunderbird School of Global Management. “Emerging market companies — whether from China or India or Mexico — are going to compete here in the U.S.” | Video: Here Come the Emerging Markets (2:23)
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Clean energy, aerospace and other high-technology companies looking for well-funded partners will find new opportunities in the next decade as China goes shopping for outward-bound mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures. “There is a move to put a lot of Chinese money into Western economies,” AEA Investors Asia Chairman William A. Owens said April 7, 2011, during Thunderbird’s seventh annual Global Private Equity Investing Conference in Glendale, Arizona. “The Chinese believe it is a very good thing in terms of acquiring companies that have particularly relevant technology.” | Video: China’s Outbound Merger Strategy (2:XX)
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Memories linger of China’s deadly military intervention in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, but retired U.S. Navy Admiral William A. Owens said the People’s Liberation Army has worked to redeem itself in recent years — including efforts to promote Chinese business. “We have stereotypes of the PLA in the West that I think are wrong,” Owens said April 7, 2011, during Thunderbird’s seventh annual Global Private Equity Investing Conference in Glendale, Arizona. “They have performed remarkably well in times of great trauma in China.” | Video: China’s Business-Friendly PLA (2:52)
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Global investors looking for signs of recovery need to pay close attention to U.S. consumers, Thunderbird School of Global Management Professor F. John Mathis, Ph.D., said April 7, 2011, during an interactive alumni webinar. “The U.S. will drive the world’s recovery at this stage,” Mathis said. “I don’t think China or India will be able to sustain such high growth rates unless the U.S. recovers.” Mathis said real consumer income has bounced back in the United States, although employment gains have been slow. He said negative events such as the Middle East uprisings, the Japanese tsunami and the budget deficit debates in Washington, D.C., have created uncertainty and slowed a consumer confidence recovery that started in 2010. | Video: Global Economic Outlook with F. John Mathis (1:03:40)
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