...restrain trade criminal offenses. While the Sherman Act was for breaking up Monopolies, there was nothing in place to stop companies from using practices that would form a monopoly. Therefore, the government came up with the Clayton Act of 1914 this strengthened the Sherman Act by making it illegal for firms to engage in such practices. The communication, energy and water where industries were taking advantage of consumers. These three entities each have either have a high barrier to entry or is so unique that competitors stay out, they are therefor considered Natural Monopolies. They are business where the cost of service and or product can create a cost to the consumer that is lowest when created on a large scale typically with a single source supplier. A natural monopoly usually occurs when the first company to bring the service and or product to market that is in such demand and is still so unique that competition cannot easily survive. One example of a natural monopoly is AT&T, The cost of infrastructure (to run wiring to every home) did not allow any other company to enter the market. So AT&T at one point was the only local telephone services provider for the entire United States, until the company was split up by the...
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...This report is about the RFID project written for evaluation and implementation of project applicability for Officeworks Company. This RFID project for Officeworks is examined and finally decided for Officeworks. In this report, the background of both development of RFID and situation of the business case of Officeworks are given; team work and team roles are assigned as well as the project schedule is planned and executive; the following sections of analysis and solution are involved: team requirements, project scope and assumptions, project drivers and strategies as well as enabler, complementary and competing initiatives, strategic and economic benefit, investment requirements, outsourcing plan, and implementation roadmap. It is concluded that the RFID project is generally valuable and able to be implemented for Officeworks Company ranged stores. Some useful suggestion to successfully construct the RFID into Officeworks is also recommended. Based on the successful experience of Wal-Mart, the RFID is detailed analysed with suitable solutions given. To completely evaluate the project, the ROI model and vertical comparison are also used for the cost/benefit examinations. As the suggested implementation, implementing work flow with detailed sub-steps is developed as well. Table of Content 1. Introduction 1 1.1. Background of RFID 1 1.1.1. Definition and description of RFID 1 1.1.2. RFID technique and history 1 1.2. Background of Officeworks 1 1.3. Project Initiation 1 1.3.1....
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...and the name was shortened to PwC for rebranding purposes. (“Big four (audit firms)”1) According to company revenue records in 2014, PwC is currently the second largest professional services network in the world, and are considered one of the big four auditors, competing with Deloitte, EY and KPMG. (“Big four (audit firms)”1) In addition, PwC has firms across 157 countries with over 195,400 employees. Their total revenue in 2014 is around 34 billion dollars with 15 billion generated by their assurance service, 8.8 billion by their tax services, and 10 billion by their consulting services. (“Big four (audit firms)”1) Types of competition this enterprise faces: PwC is one of the big four auditing companies along with Deloitte, EY and KPMG, therefore making it an oligopoly. Oligopolies provide very similar products, where smaller firms follow the lead of the top four auditors in the industry and consist of fairly inelastic demand. (Richardson 1) Another reason PwC is classified as an oligopoly is because there are many barriers to establishing an auditing company with an established network of services and only the top four have managed to survive and stay in business. (Richardson 1) In addition, PwC’s competing companies; Deloitte, EY and KPMG are all fairly equal in size. For...
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... Stamford University Bangladesh Date of submission: 17th November, 2011 The Demand for financial Statement Information: * Introduction Financial statement is the product of a diverse set of demand and supply forces. Financial statement information is needed to facilitate decision making to facilitate the monitoring of management or to interpret contracts or agreement that includes provisions based on such information. Parties demanding financial statement information A. Shareholders, Investors and Security Analysts: Shareholders and other investors of corporation these parties range from individuals with relatively limited resources to large, well endowed institutions such as insurance companies and mutual funds. These decision made by the parties include not only which shares to day retain, or sell, but also the timing of the purchases or sales of those shares. In an investment focus, the emphasis is on choosing a portfolio of securities that is consistent with the preferences of the investor for risk, return, dividend yield, liquidity and so on. In that case, there is a fundamental analysis approach which examines firm, industry and economy related information and technical analysis aims to detect mispriced securities by examining trends in security prices, security trading volume, and other related variables. In decisions with a stewardship focus, the concern of shareholders is with monitoring the behavior of management and attempting to...
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...with MPL A fiduciary relationship is one of confidence and trust whereby one party assumes particular obligations to act in good faith and not against the interest of another (i.e. counterparty). Fiduciary duty arises automatically when the relationship is one of agent and principal; trustee and beneficiary; director and company; partner and partner; or employer and employee. In its dealings with MPL, OB appears to be primarily engaged in a banker and customer relationship. As this does not fall under any of the categories of relationships specified above, there is no inherent fiduciary relationship. That being said, OB may have assumed a fiduciary capacity under common law, subject to satisfying the conditions arising from the Hospital Products Ltd vs United States Surgical Corporation (1984) 156 CLR 41 case. OB would be a fiduciary to MPL if it can be shown that it was acting in its interest and in a dominant position rendering MPL vulnerable to potential abuse. On the given facts, there is no clear-cut case to suggest that MPL, by virtue of its directors’ expertise, is vulnerable to abuse by the dominant OB. Therefore OB does not owe MPL a fiduciary duty on the basis of this test. In this case OB goes on to interest other lenders to finance MPL’s loan, thereby assuming the role of “Arranger” of a syndicated facility. On the given facts, there is no evidence that MPL had consented to such arrangement, although there are no facts to the contrary either. For this I consider the...
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...depends, among others, on reputation effects and the number of developers. The chapter also develops a short case study comparing Windows and Linux and identifies new directions for open source software research. Keywords: Open Source Software, operating systems, technology platforms, Linux, innovation incentives. JEL Classification: L 10, L86, L3 1. 10.1 INTRODUCTION Open source software is an emerging type of software that may fundamentally affect the business and economic features of the software industry. Linux, an open source operating system, has been the prominent example of the potential of the open source movement, competing against Microsoft Windows, the incumbent operating system. 208 Nicholas Economides and Evangelos Katsamkas This chapter analyzes the incentives to invest in application software and an operating system under two different software ecosystems: one based on an open source operating system, such as Linux, and the other based on a proprietary operating system, such as Microsoft Windows. We build a model extending Economides and Katsamakas (2005) to compare the innovation incentives of application developers and operating system developers for Linux and Windows. In our model, firms and...
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...had made it possible for the company to go further than producing PCs chips to manufacturing information and communication appliances as well as internet related services. After competition had increased form other companies such as Dell and Cisco, Intel under the stewardship of Barrett then decided to withdraw from new markets consequently withdrawing from the production of network servers and routers. This was because the two companies that were customers for Intel’s chips (Dell and Cisco) had started competing with Intel in other markets. Other changes with regard to cutting down on production and services by Intel were, the closing down of an e-commerce service for small businesses (I Cat), web broadcasting for shareholder meetings was also terminated as well as cutting back on web- surfing applications in other countries other than Spain. Other changes that occurred in the first three years of Barrett were reorganizations in the company. Due to inadequate coordination and as a result of duplication where units in the same organization were competing against themselves, Barrett decided that it was necessary for there to be reorganization in the company. The first reorganization to take place was creating a new wireless unit that combined newly acquired assets such as DSP communications inc. that was a chipset supplier for digital communications with Intel’s flash memory operations. This change took place in the first year of Barrett’s tenure. Another reorganization change...
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...organization Objectives of the Assignment ▪ To show ability in finding facts and defining the problems for the purpose of establishing the framework for idea generation. ▪ To display the competencies of using the creative tools and techniques for idea generation. ▪ To exhibit the competencies in evaluating ideas and making comparison against available alternatives. QUESTION You are Product Development Manager of an existing company that manufactures consumer products. The company plans to introduce a new product and sustain their competitive position in the market. As such, you are assigned by the company’s CEO to come up with a new product offering and present a proposal of the new product concept that appeal to the market. Your proposed product concept needs to be realistic and marketable within five (5) years. It is important that your product concept be able to show how innovative in comparison to the available alternatives in relation to Building security and control system. Source: http://theconstructor.org/building/building-security-control/6973/ In addition, the value it can specifically provide to the targeted market. You are required...
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...accordingly. You might even have to look these up. • Know what opportunity costs are:Opportunity cost is the benefit that you might have gained from choosing the next-best alternative . • Know the definition of economics (Micro and Macro):Microeconomics is the study of individual choice, and how that choice is influenced by economic forces. Macroeconomics is the study of the economy as a whole. It considers the problems of inflation, unemployment, business cycles, and growth. • Know what the invisible hand is:The invisible hand is the price mechanism, the rise and fall of prices that guides our actions in a market . • Know about mergers:a statutory combination of two or more corporations by the transfer of the properties to one surviving; corporation any combination of two or more business enterprises into a single enterprise; an act or instance of merging. • Know about patents :A patent is legal protection of a technical innovation that gives the person holding it sole right to use that innovation —in other words, it gives the holder a monopoly to produce a good. • Know excise taxes and tariffs:An excise tax is a tax that is levied on a specific good . The luxury tax on expensive cars that the United States imposed in 1991 is an example. A tariff is an excise tax on an imported good . • Know what sunk costs are:A marginal cost is the additional cost to you over and above the cost s you have already incurred . That means not counting sunk...
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...External and Internal Environments (Maersk) Generia Simmons BUS 499 Capstone Professor Clayton Sinclair May 5, 2013 Choose the two (2) segments of the general environment that would rank highest in their influence on the corporation you chose. Assess how these segments affect the corporation you chose and the industry in which it operates. The two segments of the general environment that would have major influence over Maersk would be technological segment and physical environment segment. I chose physical environment segment because Maersk realizes the physical changes that they’ll have to make concerning the physical environment. The need to shift to a low carbon economy is what society and businesses need to focus on due to climate change. Climate changes are the key environmental issue in the Maersk group. It’s possible that this is an issue for all shipping companies and all locomotives as well. The Maersk Group has accomplished an 8% improvement in CO2 efficiency since 2010. In 2007, Maersk oil saw a reduction of 86% in Co2; also in 2007 Maersk line saw a 25% CO2 reduction per container. The improvements are mainly due to Maersk Line's advancement in energy efficiency (Maersk.com). Maersk set a target goal for (2010-2020) to reduce CO2 by 20%. The technological segment of Maersk encompasses many different aspects. For the shipping industry, mobile communication offers the chance to employ new and efficient ways of addressing fleet management, improving communications...
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...Economics of health care Name Date 1 There are four main primary structures namely; perfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly and monopolistic competition. Perfect competition is a result of large number of firms selling homogeneous goods competing with each other in a non restricted market and having perfect knowledge of market. Monopoly is a market whereby there is one dominant firm, there is restriction to entry (Myers, Tauber, & American Marketing Association, 1977). This firm creates shortages in order to push up prices. They produce at higher cost due to lack of competition. In oligopoly there are few firms selling same products. A time they collude to push up the prices but due to mistrust they end up competing with each other. Monopolistic competition is the last one whereby there are several firms in a single industry, selling similar but differentiated products. In this kind of market, consumers benefit from different prices and varieties. Prices differ due to different production cost. Firms in this market also don’t influence the products and prices of others. 2 In the long run all factors of production are fixed. In the long run monopolistically competitive firm will operate at a higher cost. It can neither allocate nor produce efficiently. Firms will be making alt of profits in some markets then others will enter in large numbers to compete for the same profit hence driving prices downwards and profit. As firms enter they will be making profit but the...
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...standard of living and can be used to foster new ideas and products. There are currently two opposing policies of how to conduct trade, protectionism and free trade, also called laissez-faire. A county’s comparative advantage at producing certain products causes many debates over why one way of trade is better than another. Tariffs, embargo’s and quota’s that are put on trade are forms of protectionism, which is the restriction of trade between states/countries. Protectionism is preferred in some groups for a variety of reasons, one of the reasons is that, it is thought that protectionism can protect ‘infant’ or new companies and industires.1The idea behind this is that it helps protect domestic companies that are just starting from foreign competitors that could introduce products at a lower cost. Tariffs are then set up, to make the foreign goods artificially expensive allowing the new or ‘infant’ firm to set up until they are able to compete on equal footing.1 Another argument in favor of protectionism is that one country might be able to use it as a threat against another country to force a reduction or removal of their protection against its exports.3If the threat worked then that country using it as such would gain twice, from its free trade and from the other country.3 Unemployment due to exporting jobs to foreign markets is a popular argument used in defense of protectionism.2 The rationale behind this is that, products that are produced more cheaply or efficiently in other...
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...market. These companies must follow the foreign exchange market closely and should develop appropriate hedging strategies to protect them. Exchange rate risk is the unexpected exchange rate that may cause an organization to lose or gain income. Currency hedging is a method of minimizing the exchange financial rate risk within an international organization. Global Companies involved in operations should have good understanding of the financial risks that the company could go through prior to starting its venture. Exchange Rate Mechanisms Currency hedging is “a particular hedging strategy used to reduce risks in the foreign exchange market which are used as in any hedging situation, where one security would be offset by another security, such as holding a short and long position of the same security at the same time, (Investor Words, 2009).”This content can be found on the following page:http://www.investorwords.com/6779/ Is impossible to predict how much the currency will be worth on the exact day that company will be converting it. With hedging, the uncertainly is gone. When companies decide to expand their business into growing globally the company will have to deal with many new issues that would not have affected them if they would have continued doing business locally. The exchange rate is a very important factor when doing international business. This must be continually monitored. Any changes in the exchange rate can globally affect the company. A significant growth in number...
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...DECEMBER 21, 2012 CORPORATES RATING METHODOLOGY Global Pharmaceutical Industry Summary This rating methodology explains Moody’s approach to assessing credit risk for companies in the pharmaceutical industry globally. This document is intended to provide general guidance that helps companies, investors, and other interested market participants understand how key qualitative and quantitative risk characteristics are likely to affect rating outcomes for companies in the pharmaceutical industry. This document does not include an exhaustive treatment of all factors that are reflected in Moody’s ratings but should enable the reader to understand the qualitative considerations and financial information and ratios that are usually most important for ratings in this sector. This rating methodology replaces 1 the Global Pharmaceutical Industry Methodology published in October 2009. While reflecting many of the same core principles as the 2009 document, this update provides a more transparent presentation of the rating considerations that are usually most important for companies in this sector and incorporates refinements in our analysis that better reflect key credit fundamentals of the industry. No rating changes will result from publication of this rating methodology. This report includes a detailed rating grid and illustrative mapping examples that compare historical performance on factors in the grid to ratings of companies covered by this methodology. The purpose of the...
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...Fine Foods is experiencing security issues associated with operating on the Internet. Learning Team A will act as the public relations team and will create and identify ways to address the issue. This paper will focus on the target audience for the public relations campaign, discuss ethical implications related to the public relation issues, develop a market research plan to support our PR campaign, analyze how the public relation campaign will affect the marketing function, and analyze the similarities and differences between proactive and reactive public relation. Organization’s Public Relations Issues Kudler Fine Foods is experiencing security issues associated with operating on the Internet. One Public Relations issue that Kudler’s is going to face is reassuring consumers the safety of their credit card information. Another issue is consumer privacy. The consumers will need reassuring that their home addresses were not accessed, keeping their privacy. When Kudler’s Internet was accessed, some of their accounts were gotten into. Kudler Fine Foods will have to reassure the company’s product providers that the information of the provider’s other consumers were not accessed because of to Kudler’s security issues. Both the consumers and the product providers will have to be reassured that safety has been taken to insure that this does not happen again. Target Audience Buyers and sellers are using the Internet to purchase and sell products more and more. In the United...
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