Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length
URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT
Download 5,58 Mb.
|
- Bu sahifa navigatsiya:
- GEOGRAPHIC
- COMPANY
- SECTION
|
URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT: WINERIES (90%); WINE (90%); GRAPE VINEYARDS (89%); ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES (89%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (76%); WEALTHY PEOPLE (76%); FOOD & BEVERAGE CONSUMPTION (75%); ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE INDUSTRY (73%); CONSUMPTION (72%); SOFTWARE MAKERS (71%); HOTEL CHAINS (70%); HOTELS & MOTELS (68%) GEOGRAPHIC: MUMBAI, INDIA (72%) WEST INDIA (92%); AQUITAINE, FRANCE (79%); MAHARASHTRA, INDIA (79%); KARNATAKA, INDIA (55%) INDIA (99%); FRANCE (79%) LOAD-DATE: June 4, 2008 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH GRAPHIC: PHOTO: A DEVELOPING TASTE: In Nasik, the Napa of India, the Sula Vineyards are among the most famous.(PHOTOGRAPH BY SANTOSH VERMA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 694 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final China's Grief, Unearthed BYLINE: By MA JIAN. Ma Jian is the author, most recently, of the novel ''Beijing Coma.'' This essay was translated by Flora Drew from the Chinese. SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; Pg. 25 LENGTH: 972 words DATELINE: London FOR three days last month, China's national flag flew at half-staff in Tiananmen Square to honor the victims of the devastating earthquake in Sichuan. It was the first time in memory that China has publicly commemorated the deaths of ordinary civilians. Crowds were allowed to gather in the square to express sympathy for their compatriots. Despite a death toll that has risen to nearly 70,000, the earthquake has shaken the nation back to life. The Chinese people have rushed to donate blood and money and join the rescue efforts. They have rediscovered their civic responsibility and compassion. Their grief, shock and confused solidarity recall the hours that followed the Tiananmen massacre 19 years ago today, when the Communist Party sent army tanks into Beijing to crush a pro-democracy movement organized by unarmed, peaceful students. The protests had been set off by the death of the reform-minded party leader Hu Yaobang. College students had camped out in the square -- the symbolic heart of the nation -- to demand freedom, democracy and an end to government corruption. There they fell in love, danced to Bob Dylan tapes and discussed Thomas Paine's ''Rights of Man.'' The city had come out to support the protesters: workers, entrepreneurs, writers, petty thieves. After the tanks drove the students from the square in the early hours of June 4, 1989, nearby shop owners turned up with baskets of sneakers to hand out to protesters who'd lost their shoes in the confrontation. As soldiers opened fire in the streets, civilians rushed to the wounded to carry them to the hospital. But even as doctors were caring for students hurt in the melee, the party was rewriting history. It branded the peaceful democracy movement a ''counterrevolutionary riot'' and maintained that the brutal crackdown was the only way of restoring order. As leaders of the movement were rounded up and jailed, people who had donated food and drink to the students during their six-week occupation of the square began reporting them to the police. Realizing that their much-vaunted mandate to rule had been nullified by the massacre, the party focused on economic growth to quell demands for political change. Thanks to its cheap, industrious and non-unionized labor force, China has since become a world economic power, while the Communist Party has become the world's best friend. Watched on television screens around the world, the Tiananmen massacre was a defining moment in 20th-century history. Like Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968, it has become a global symbol of totalitarian repression. But in China the subject is taboo. Even in the privacy of their homes, parents dare not discuss it with their children. Blinded by fear and bloated by prosperity, they have succumbed to a collective amnesia. Some might object to recalling calamities of the past while China is struggling to cope with a present disaster. Already the Western news media has turned its attention away from political repression in China and Tibet, out of respect for the dead. When invited to speak at a London human rights event recently as a banned Chinese novelist, I was asked not to say anything negative about my country. But grief refuses to be channeled. It spills over. In Sichuan, it turns to anger as parents demand to know why 6,898 schools collapsed during the quake while government buildings remained standing. As the nation mourns, it will begin to remember the deaths it has been forbidden to recall: not only the thousands who were slaughtered in 1989, but the tens of millions who died under Mao's rule during the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The government leaders know that despite their efforts to erase history, the wounds inflicted by past repression are festering. With each anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre it becomes clearer that behind the bravado, the party is as fearful as a deer caught in the headlights. Last year, Tiananmen Square was patrolled once again by plainclothes policemen, ready to quash any attempts to remember the victims of the massacre. People involved in the democracy movement were removed from the city or placed under house arrest. Three editors of a Chengdu newspaper that carried a tiny advertisement saluting the ''mothers of June 4'' were fired from their jobs. It turns out that the young clerk who had approved the ad hadn't grasped the significance of the date. She, like the rest of her generation, had been robbed of her own history. Still, a few brave individuals continue to speak out and remind the world what happened. In 2004, the poet Shi Tao sent to a Western democracy Web site a government document banning the news media from mentioning the June 4 anniversary. He was arrested and is now serving a 10-year prison sentence. Ding Zilin, the head of the Tiananmen Mothers Group who lost her 17-year-old son in the massacre, will this year defy the authorities and lay a wreath in the flower bed off Chang An Avenue where her son was shot dead. There is an expression in Chinese that says, ''One can only stand up from the place where one fell.'' If China is to truly stand up and deserve its powerful position in the international community, it must return to the place where it fell. The regime must reveal the truth about past crackdowns and apologize to the victims and their families; release the hundred or so people still jailed for their connection to the Tiananmen movement, and the tens of thousands of other political prisoners languishing in jails and labor camps. And it must introduce democratic reforms. The Chinese people have been reminded by the earthquake that lives are not expendable and that deaths cannot go unmourned. Now they have to extend that understanding to the victims of Tiananmen.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 695 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final Expertise Called Crucial to China Deals BYLINE: By JULIA WERDIGIER SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 9 LENGTH: 513 words Expertise can be more important than cash when it comes to winning investments in China, managers of four of the world's biggest buyout firms said on Tuesday. ''Just bringing capital to China is not sufficient, with China itself having more than $1 trillion in reserves,'' Daniel A. Carroll, managing partner of TPG's operations in Asia, said at the Boao Forum for Asia, a nonprofit event modeled after the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ''It's about offering expertise, which is about management.'' Eager to get a share of the fast-growing Chinese economy, private equity firms are adapting to meet demands by Chinese companies that go beyond financing. They include management skills, help in solving regulatory problems in cross-border takeovers and access to a network that allows them to expand abroad. As a result, buyout firms, which usually aim for a controlling stake in a company, are seeking smaller stakes and investments in state-owned companies. Mr. Carroll's comments were echoed by managers at the Blackstone Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Goldman Sachs, who shared a panel. The conference was held for the first time in London as the city competes for clout in the Chinese market. ''China is going to be a very, very important market for us long term,'' said Johannes P. Huth, a managing director at Kohlberg Kravis. ''The macroeconomic environment is very favorable, and the entrepreneurial culture attracts us.'' Global private equity firms have poured into China looking for ways to benefit from rapid economic growth, especially as growth in developed economies is slowing. Yet, competition for talent and investments is fierce and investment plans are limited by tight regulations that restrict the stakes of foreign firms in certain industries, including natural resources. Gerry Murphy, senior managing director at Blackstone Group in London, said investments in China generally involved more equity and less borrowed money, and were smaller than in developed markets. But private equity firms will want to exert the same influence over management decisions as elsewhere. Andrew E. Wolff, a partner and managing director at Goldman Sachs, said investments could range from backing private entrepreneurs to helping state-owned companies to reorganize ahead of an initial public offering. Private equity investors also could advise companies on possible takeover targets abroad. Natural resources and renewable energy are two particularly hot areas the company is eager to invest in, Mr. Wolff said. Mr. Carroll agreed but added that a 25 percent limit on foreign ownership in natural resources firms meant that TPG had focused more on investments in companies one step removed from the sector, like mining services firms. Evidence of the intensity of the competition among private equity firms for investments in these industries came when a Chinese businessman in the audience asked how his company could attract such funds. Almost all the private equity managers said they wanted to discuss a possible investment in his company.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 696 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
The New York Times on the Web When Intolerance Becomes Intolerable BYLINE: By MARCI ALBOHER SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; SHIFTING CAREERS; Pg. LENGTH: 1055 words Many career shifts involve an ''aha'' moment. In Lisa Sherman's case, the moment was not only the catalyst for a career change but also led her to tell her boss she was gay. And her experience ultimately became memorialized in a case study for the Harvard Business School. It all started in 1993 with a diversity training seminar at what was then Bell Atlantic, where Ms. Sherman was a vice president for marketing. She kept the fact that she was a lesbian to herself at work because, she said, she worried that being openly gay would derail her career. She was, by her own account, a master at what she calls the ''black art of pronoun puppetry, substituting 'him' and 'we' for 'her' and 'she.' '' During the seminar, participants were asked to write on flip charts, filling in the blanks on a variety of sentences: ''Blacks are ...,'' ''Asians are ...,'' ''Jews are. ...'' Ms. Sherman said that many of the answers reflected certain stereotypes. ''Latinos are family oriented,'' ''Asians are hard workers,'' ''Jews like big offices.'' (She admitted writing that last one.) But when she got to the page with gay people on it, she said that seeing the words written by her colleagues literally made her sick. ''Pathetic,'' ''perverse'' and ''immoral'' were among the ones she recalls. Some were written by people she had worked with for 15 years, many of whom she considered to be friends. At that moment, she said, she decided she had to leave the company since she could not imagine working with people who thought those things about her. But before she left, she made an appointment to see the chief executive of the company, Raymond W. Smith, with whom she had a good relationship. She told Mr. Smith, she said, what had happened at the diversity seminar, and in the process, told him about being a lesbian. Even though Bell Atlantic officially supported diversity, including sexual orientation, under its antidiscrimination policy, she said she wanted him to know the real atmosphere that people like her worked in. The meeting lasted several hours. She said she told him about her life and about her partner, a side of her personal life she had never shared with him. She called the meeting ''extraordinary,'' yet she stuck by her decision to leave the company, using this incident as a push to try other things in her career. After a foray into entrepreneurship and another stint in corporate America (both in environments where she was open about her sexual orientation), Ms. Sherman, who lives in New York, is now the executive vice president and general manager of Logo, the gay television channel owned by MTV. As she puts it, ''I went from being in the closet to being a professional gay person.'' Last year, Ms. Sherman told a version of this tale in a speech at the annual Reaching Out Conference, a gathering of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students in master's of business administration programs. After her speech, Jens Audenaert, a gay student in the audience, asked her if she would agree to be interviewed for a case study for a class at the Harvard Business School taught by Bill George, author of the book, ''True North'' and the former chief executive of Medtronic. Ms. Sherman agreed, and Mr. Audenaert wrote up the case with guidance from Mr. George. Mr. George said in an interview that he believed the case study was the first at Harvard to take a look at sexual orientation and leadership that also revealed the subject's name. But he said the case has far broader implications than the issue of sexual orientation. ''The color of our skin and our genders are obvious, but many of us have hidden differences,'' he said. And in using this case, he said he wanted students to ask themselves the question, ''Why am I afraid to tell you who I really am?'' The case consists of two parts, with the first part ending just as Ms. Sherman leaves the diversity training seminar. That way the students can place themselves in Ms. Sherman's shoes and discuss what they would do at that moment. According to the rules of the class, if students know the actual outcome of a case, they should debate the issues as if they did not know. The case identifies four courses of action. She could quit. She could ''face her reality and try to change her work environment for the better.'' She could meet with Mr. Smith and seek his advice. Or she could ''just continue to do her job and build her career without saying anything.'' ''The question is what would you do in this situation, and these are not easy questions,'' Mr. George said. ''Would you be a whistleblower? Ms. Sherman's coming out left its mark on Bell Atlantic, where her departure spurred Mr. Smith to take significant steps to enhance policies and instill the kind of inclusive culture that Ms. Sherman thought was lacking. Now the chairman of Rothschild North America, an investment firm, Mr. Smith said he was disappointed but not completely surprised by Ms. Sherman's colleague's comments in the training seminar. He testified before Congress in 1997 in support of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a proposed federal law that would prohibit discrimination against employees on the basis of sexual orientation. And he wrote accounts of that experience for internal company publications to ensure that the entire company knew his views. He also made sure that the company moved forward on changing its benefits policies to include domestic partners, something that Ms. Sherman told him was being delayed by the committee responsible for putting through the changes. ''I met with the group on a Thursday and made sure the policy was in place by the following Monday,'' he said. Mr. George said he believed that policies and training could create an inclusive culture and change the minds of people who ''wrote such ugly things.'' ''I've done it,'' he said. ''But, to be blunt, some of them will have to leave.'' Mr. Smith also takes a realistic view. ''In any organization, there will be people with these kinds of intolerant and illegitimate feelings, so you can't be surprised when people behave this way,'' he said. ''You do your best to enact policies, which can affect behavior if not what is in people's hearts. After a while, if people behave in a tolerant way, they may start to think in a tolerant way.''
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 697 of 1231 DOCUMENTS The New York Times
Late Edition - Final At a Global Media Company, a Fresh but Less Sexy Approach BYLINE: By MARK LANDLER and DOREEN CARVAJAL; Mark Landler reported from Berlin, and Doreen Carvajal from Paris. Edward Wyatt contributed reporting from Los Angeles. SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1 LENGTH: 1540 words DATELINE: BERLIN When Hartmut Ostrowski was an up-and-comer in Bertelsmann's printing and services division in the 1990s, his bosses were discouraged from speaking at meetings of the top executives. In the glamorous world of Bertelsmann, a global media empire with music, television, and publishing properties -- Germany's answer to Time Warner -- services were viewed as strictly a backstage function. Now, with Mr. Ostrowski at the helm of Bertelsmann, the stagehands are striding into the spotlight. Two weeks ago, he named Markus Dohle, a 39-year-old German who runs the company's printing operations, as chief executive of Random House, the world's largest consumer book publisher. It is roughly akin to putting the head mechanic in charge of an entire airline. While Mr. Ostrowski, 50, acknowledges the risk of choosing an executive like Mr. Dohle, he is not about to apologize for the new focus on Bertelsmann's nuts-and-bolts side, or for a strategic rethinking that will result in the company's getting out of one media business, its American book clubs, and very likely a second, music. For Bertelsmann, which has been home to legendary music executives like Clive Davis and literary tastemakers like the book publisher Sonny Mehta, Mr. Dohle's promotion is just one part of a broader cultural makeover. In coming days, Bertelsmann plans to intensify talks with the Sony Corporation about selling its half of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the joint venture started in 2004, according to people with knowledge of the talks. Mr. Ostrowski declined to comment on the future of the music partnership, as did representatives of Sony BMG. Bertelsmann has often said it could be either a buyer or seller in the joint venture. But Mr. Ostrowski, who wins praise from his colleagues for his straightforward style, did not mince words about the industry. ''The good thing is, more people are listening to music than ever before,'' he said. ''The bad thing is, it is not easy to monetize it.'' Mr. Ostrowski knows he is viewed by critics inside and outside the company as an agent of retreat: pulling Bertelsmann away from the dazzle of recording stars like Alicia Keys to the humdrum world of offset printing and call centers. He flatly rejects that thesis, declaring that Bertelsmann will remain a player in media and in the United States. ''There's no doubt we will continue to build our media businesses,'' he said in an interview at Bertelsmann's stately office in Berlin, which resembles a Prussian army headquarters. ''We are, and will continue to be, a media company.'' Still, while Bertelsmann has struggled with weak advertising and consumer spending, not to mention the migration of traditional media to digital distribution, Arvato, its services arm, has chugged along -- generating a quarter of Bertelsmann's $29 billion in annual sales. In addition to printing plants in Europe and the United States, Arvato runs call centers for Lufthansa, handles billing for ads on Google, and manages public services for cities in Britain and Germany. ''The service business is good for our media business; we can be proud of it,'' Mr. Ostrowski said. ''It spreads our risk and gives us opportunities that other media companies don't have.'' While he declined to say how much of Bertelsmann's revenue would come from services in a decade, it is clear its share will rise significantly as the company sheds media assets. But the strategy carries considerable risk, according to observers, as well as several current and former executives. ''Bertelsmann has always had executives rising out of Arvato, but now everyone is coming from Arvato,'' said Thomas Schuler, a German journalist who has written a book about the company. Besides Mr. Dohle and Mr. Ostrowski, Gunter Thielen, chairman of Bertelsmann's supervisory board, came from Arvato, which is based in Gutersloh, the dozy Westphalian town where Bertelsmann is based. Though Arvato operates around the world, its bosses share a worldview that is, if not parochial, then rooted in a particular place. Mr. Dohle, for example, once joked with a local journalist, Stefan Brams, that he built his home in Gutersloh so close to the printing plant that he could hear the roar of the presses. By living near the headquarters, executives said, Mr. Dohle was also on hand for social gatherings, like Bertelsmann's annual spring party, that brought him into contact with the family of Reinhard Mohn, which controls the company and played a role in his appointment. In dispatching Mr. Dohle to New York, Mr. Schuler said, ''Ostrowski is trying to establish somebody loyal to him there, so he really has someone he knows and he thinks that he can trust.'' Like other Arvato-trained executives, Mr. Dohle is known for his entrepreneurial zeal, according to people who know him. On his desk is a corporate motto that translates as ''Make it simple. Just do it.'' The question, observers said, is whether Mr. Ostrowski can transplant that kind of drive to Random House without harming its creative culture. Some doubt it. ''He is losing the cultural core of Bertelsmann,'' said a former senior executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to criticize Mr. Ostrowski publicly. The makeover of Bertelsmann dates back to 2002, when the Mohns, led by the family matriarch, Liz Mohn, forced out their ambitious chief executive, Thomas Middelhoff, in favor of Mr. Thielen (Mr. Middelhoff, now chief executive of Arcandor, is a board member of The New York Times Company). It has accelerated under Mr. Ostrowski, who took over in January and has embarked on an unsparing review of Bertelsmann's diverse assets. First to go will be the company's money-losing North American book clubs. Bertelsmann has retained Morgan Stanley to solicit bids for the unit, and hopes to select one by the end of the summer, according to the chief financial officer, Thomas Rabe. Second, perhaps, will be Bertelsmann's share in Sony BMG, depending on how the talks go. Mr. Ostrowski is clearly not satisfied with the performance of those businesses. With the exception of the RTL Group, Bertelsmann's highly profitable European television and radio group, all of the company's media divisions reported lower sales and profits in 2007. The deteriorating results at Random House were one reason that Mr. Ostrowski pushed out Peter W. Olson, the chief executive. Bertelsmann did not conduct a conventional search for his successor, executives said, and passed over a natural choice, Gail Rebuck, who heads Random House's British division and has delivered profits while other units lagged. Her handicap, they noted, was that she is British and does not speak German, unlike Mr. Olson, an American who speaks fluent German and took part in meetings in Gutersloh with ease. Acknowledging that his choice had raised eyebrows, Mr. Ostrowski said he appealed to the publishers of Random House to give Mr. Dohle a chance. Some at Bertelsmann liken him to a young Mr. Middelhoff, an unpolished gem who grew into a charismatic media executive. In Los Angeles last week, Mr. Dohle had a coming-out party at the industry trade fair, BookExpo America. He mingled easily with Mr. Mehta and Barbara Walters, whose memoir was recently published by Knopf. Asked what kind of books he reads, Mr. Dohle cited ''You're in Charge, Now What?'' a management book by Thomas J. Neff and James M. Citrin, published in 2005 by Crown Business, a Random House imprint. Quaffing cocktails on Melrose Avenue is worlds away from Gutersloh, where Arvato functions as a sort of engine room for Bertelsmann's more glamorous businesses. Its sales have grown 73 percent since 2003, to $7.6 billion, though profits were flat last year. Arvato has made inroads into new areas like municipal administration, where it essentially takes over services like car registrations and even tax collection from local authorities. In the Bavarian city of Wurzburg, Arvato operates an Internet site that is designed to allow citizens to carry out an array of bureaucratic chores from home. With strained budgets in cities and towns across Germany, Bertelsmann believes this could be a vast new market. But it is not without risk. Opposition leaders in Wurzburg criticized the Arvato contract, saying other arms of Bertelsmann could misuse private data it got as a result of its municipal work. The city's mayor, who had championed the project, was voted out of office recently. Skeptics also point to a privately owned German mail-services company, the Pin Group, which fell into deep financial trouble after the government introduced a minimum wage for postal workers. As Mr. Ostrowski looks for ways to jump-start Bertelsmann, some say he will be hamstrung by a balance sheet that carries about $10 billion in debt -- a legacy of the company's buyout of its sole outside investor, Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, in 2006. Mr. Ostrowski said Bertelsmann could spend 5 billion euros to 7 billion euros on acquisitions over the next five to seven years -- too little for a blockbuster deal, but enough for its ambitions. ''We are not looking to be the biggest media company,'' he said. ''We are looking to be the best.'' Download 5,58 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham:
|
Bosh sahifa
юртда тантана
Боғда битган
Бугун юртда
Эшитганлар жилманглар
Эшитмадим деманглар
битган бодомлар
Yangiariq tumani
qitish marakazi
Raqamli texnologiyalar
ilishida muhokamadan
tasdiqqa tavsiya
tavsiya etilgan
iqtisodiyot kafedrasi
steiermarkischen landesregierung
asarlaringizni yuboring
o'zingizning asarlaringizni
Iltimos faqat
faqat o'zingizning
steierm rkischen
landesregierung fachabteilung
rkischen landesregierung
hamshira loyihasi
loyihasi mavsum
faolyatining oqibatlari
asosiy adabiyotlar
fakulteti ahborot
ahborot havfsizligi
havfsizligi kafedrasi
fanidan bo’yicha
fakulteti iqtisodiyot
boshqaruv fakulteti
chiqarishda boshqaruv
ishlab chiqarishda
iqtisodiyot fakultet
multiservis tarmoqlari
fanidan asosiy
Uzbek fanidan
mavzulari potok
asosidagi multiservis
'aliyyil a'ziym
billahil 'aliyyil
illaa billahil
quvvata illaa
falah' deganida
Kompyuter savodxonligi
bo’yicha mustaqil
'alal falah'
Hayya 'alal
'alas soloh
Hayya 'alas
mavsum boyicha
yuklab olish