Features

Cannes, France: It looks like a second Normandy landing here in the south of France: As Europe’s recovery settles into a long upward leg, U.S. investors are invading, grabbing buildings and real estate securities like they’re going out of style. And that surge will likely multiply the shares of real estate investment companies beginning to […]

What’s upbeat, on the rise and ranges between 4 and 6.3 percent? Answer: current gross domestic product forecasts for four of Southeast Asia’s biggest economies. Indeed, the 2000 economic outlook for Malaysia (where growth over 1999 is expected to hit 6.3 percent), Singapore (6 percent), Thailand (5 percent) and the Philippines (4.5 percent) is decidedly […]

Traditional businesses can rest easier: NASDAQ’s recent violent nature is a symptom of the impending collapse of dozens of former online darlings. As it turns, out solid business plans, management-team depth, effective business models (however boring), customer service, competitive advantages, and (duh) profits really do matter. The dot-com’s e-retail strategy — spending millions of dollars […]

Newfoundland & Labrador’s call center industry, though small in comparison to larger provinces, is growing. In fact, it’s grown by 20 percent since January 1999. The Atlantic province’s cost-competitive operating environment is one of the major lures attracting that growth, but another is equally important: labor. Newfoundland & Labrador’s per-capita labor pool, for instance, is […]

Frankly, most companies would die for problems like Capital One Financial’s (www.capital1.com): five straight years of 20 percent-plus earnings growth and a spot in Fortune‘s “100 Best Places to Work.” But Capital One’s blistering growth had burned a gaping hole in its corporate real estate (CRE) strategy. Like some steroid-fueled bullfrog, the Signet Bank spin-off […]

“Many already use the Internet, yet I doubt many are using it for construction management. The speed of connectivity and the range of companies committed to working on the Internet are growing so fast that this will cease to be a business obstacle within a very short time frame. Your entire team will build the […]

Ever since Michael Hammer, the guru of Business Process Re-engineering, made the observation years ago that the business world has not adequately considered the effect re-engineering has on the notion of workplace, work space design experts have struggled to understand the relationship between the two concepts. What role does workspace really play in productivity? Can […]

Polled corporate executives pinpoint today’s top 10 U.S. labor markets Today’s drum-tight U.S. labor evokes James Marshall’s 1848 wisdom. Building a sawmill near Coloma, Calif, Marshall spied glittering flecks. He dipped his hand into the icy American River and then roared, “By God, boys, I believe I’ve found a gold mine!” The California Gold Rush […]

Labor may be spare, but it’s out there. And broad-ranging corporate strategies are finding it. What would you ask for if you could get just about any expansion incentive imaginable? That was the situation for United Parcel Service (UPS) in 1998. Its new cargo-sorting hub would employ 6,000-plus with a US$250 million annual payroll. Clearly, […]

Universities and proactive businesses are crafting ever-more-relevant job training programs designed to give employers in their area an edge in the labor pool. Work-force training programs are seeing substantial inflows of capital as state and local economic development agencies seek to make their available workers more competitive. This is among the findings of a recent […]