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How the Drug Industry and Drug Companies will go through a complete change and look nowhere near what it looks like today. Huge changes are overtaking the Drug industry and old ways of doing things will go out the window. Patent expirations for blockbuster drugs, safety issues, increased regulation, rise of generics drugs, cost issues, outsourcing of manufacture and testing and some R&D, changes in marketing practices, slimming down of marketing and sales force personnel, new approaches to R&D- Novartis emphasizing science, Glaxo breaking up into smaller teams, and the growth of emerging markets. All this happens as the public in the USA looks at healthcare in anew way and the demand for healthcare expands quickly in growing developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America and Eastern Europe.

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Germany's Economic Affairs Ministry and Economy Minister Habeck have called for blocking of the sale of a Dortmund chip production company Elmos to Sweden based Silex, a unit of Sai Microelectronics of China, for 85 million euros. There is now significant debate within the German ministries about the degree of dependence on China. Habeck's move seeks to prohibit the acquisition of Germany technology companies by Chinese competitors on grounds of protecting public order and security.

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Northwestern University has its federal funding  frozen. $790 million federal funds are frozen by the US government for toleration of anti-semitism on campus in 2024 and 2025. Northwestern cut a deal with protesters putting out anti-semitic slogans following an encampment, that was followed by other universities, says this WSJ report. This is not in the tradition of US universities and the Nation founded with the Christian faith that includes the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish faiths as one indivisible faith. Northwestern and others fail when new drug research leads to discoveries funded by federal dollars. Yet the universities get their portion of the return from the pharmaceutical companies, which then charge the average public exorbitant prices, making the universities complicit in the huge burdens placed on the American people. Similar to a Catholic Church  working with the nobles in feudal times- placing ever higher burdens on ordinary working people. Another issue is that universities are investing in new buildings, raising their prices, and operating as if they are unaccountable to the people, as young American men are being pushed away by high prices and foreign students are taking their places.   ...

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The UK corporate tax rate is set to go down to 17% in 2020. To discourage the one fifth of British companies planning to move headquarters overseas the Theresa May government plans to accelerate the lowering of the corporate tax rate. The Trump administration is considering reducing the corporate tax rate down to 15%. Ireland has a tax rate of 12.5%. The move by the Trump administration would reduce the incentive for inversion by corporations trying to reduce taxes by moving overseas.

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AARP shows 29 million Americans working and taking care of older parents. Many work 40 hours a week and work an additional 20 hours helping elderly parents. About six out of ten people of this 29 million work full time. In 2024 a lot more people are living longer and older people prefer staying in their own homes and need help from family members. A simple fall or a cancer diagnosis can lead to long hospital stay, months of treatment, and worrying for family members. Company benefits in 2024 do not include senior or eldercare support or even accomodating employees caring for their parents. In America today federal and state laws do not protect people caring for elderly parents from discrimination in the workplace. Consider how this is affecting companies, as about one third who are caregivers say they are going to leave, and half of the employees leaving are senior manager and executives with much experience. This comes to about 5 million senior managers and executives that American industry can ill afford to lose as it competes with China, India and Europe. About half of all companies are making this a priority in 2024, according to Care.com. Citigroup added 2 weeks of paid leave to care for immediate family member. Companies allow employees to add older parents on their health insurance. These benefits are being added to maternity and paternity leave. The fact that Congress and state legislatures have failed to enact laws protecting caregivers is one more reason for the discontent and unrest in the US after the pandemic. ...

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The merger between U.S. based Omnicom Group and France based Publicis Groupe SA, two of the largest ad agencies. The merger is a response to the increasing shift to digital advertising, the shift to advertising being sold in automated trading, and data driven analysis. In all these shifts digital companies such as Google and Facebook have strong advantages. Around 22% of global ad spending is now digital, according to emarketer, with forecasts showing this going up to 27% by 2017. Automated buying of ad space is taking off. U.S. advertisers are expected to spend $3.4 billion on real-time bidding. Omnicom's CEO, John Wren tells analysts: "Digital buying of media is done by machines, as if you are standing on the floor of the Nasdaq as opposed to traditional media shop. I hold the long term belief that eventually traditional media, or a lot of traditional media is going to be purchased that way." Just as computers have upended the environment for traditional players such as the NYSE creating new opportunities for Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), computers and the internet are changing the advertising environment. CEO Levy of Publicis Groupe SA says the data explosion, Big Data, is also creating a new playing field in which companies such as Google and Facebook have advantages. In a statement about the deal he says: "the communication and marketing landscape has undergone dramatic changes in recent years, including the exponential development of new media giants, the explosion of Big Data, blurring of roles of all players and profound changes in consumer behaviour." The merger will provide the new company the scale to develop these resources to compete with digital companies like Google and new entrants such as Salesforce.com and Adobe Systems. Omnicom has agencies BBDO, TBWA Worldwide, media buyer OMD. Publicis has Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi, media buyer Starcom MediaVest and digital agency Razorfish. The new Publicis Omnicom Group will have combined revenue of about $23 billion for 2012, and passes WPP Group PLC's $15.95 billion revenue. It will still be much smaller than Google with about 3 times WPP's revenue, and Google's advantage in storing trillions of pieces of data about user behaviour....

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New graduates 22-26 years are facing a tough job market in June 2025. The US job market deteriorates for new graduates in the first quarter 2025. Companies are hesitant to hire new people with no experience.  The job market for 26-34 years and 35-44 years is a lot better. In fact for 35-44 years it is about 2% unemployment and for 26-34 years it is about 3% unemployment rate, compared to 6.6% for new graduates.

For high school graduates 18 years old unemployment rate is 14.5% and most high school graduates live with their parents.

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Hitachi's conversion to a leaner, more profit conscious company, learning from rivals, GE, Siemens, IBM and large Korean companies. CEO, Nakanishi, graduated from Stanford with a computer science degree in 1979, during a break from Hitachi. He takes a hands on approach to management and brings this approach to tough assignments to learn what is going wrong. He moved to San Jose, to figure out why the hard disk drive business Hitachi bought from IBM for $2.05 billion was losing money. There he found quality problems were causing 60% of the hard drives coming off the production line with defects. After fixing the problems and achieving 10% profit margins Nakanishi put the company up for sale. Western Digital bought the company for $4.8 billion. His hands on approach includes meeting directly with public officials and ministers in governments around the world that buy its nuclear plants, high speed trains and large machinery. To maintain its preferred bidder status Nakanishi met with Britain's transport minister during the switch in government to the Conservative party in 2010. In his approach he is part of a new breed of Japanese executives, some with education in the U.S., such as Toyota's new CEO, Akio Toyoda, and others such as Toshiba's CEO, Norio Sasaki, who are eager to break away from the mold. Like Toshiba, Hitachi has shifted away from its consumer product lines. Hitachi consumer products are expected to make up only 10% of sales in the coming fiscal year. Emphasis is on the industrial products from nuclear plants to power plant equipment and high speed trains that powered Hitachi from its early beginnings as a maker of mining equipment in the 1920's. These executives are vigilant about a "Not Invented Here Syndrome" typical of large Japanese companies. Nakanishi says there is a lot Japanese companies can learn from rivals about cost and strategies. The experience came with hard knocks. In March 2009, Hitachi announced the biggest loss for a Japanese company upto that time of $9.9 billion. As head of the power and industrial business Nakanishi lost a contract to build a power plant in the Unted Arab Emirates to Korean companies. Compared to Hitachi, Toshiba's strategy is to emphasize industrial products such as nuclear reactors but also keep a presence in consumer products because Sasaki's view is that consumer products require smaller investments and generate cash flow. Jurio Osawa, WSJ, April 9, 2012, Toshiba's Chief Takes Stock....

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Chrysler's sales are dropping the fastest of all the car companies . April 2009 sales dropped 24% from March 2009. Ford sales are doing better than Toyota, as they declined in April over same month prior year by 32%, compared to 42% for Toyota. It appears that the Buy American factor may be helping Ford Motor more than the other American car companies, and that Chrysler also suffers from the lack of new models with new technology and investment in new features. At GM the situation is better at Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC, where sales in April 2009 declined by 29%, over same month prior year, which compares with a 55% decline in sales, of Pontiac, Hummer, Saab, and Saturn brands which are likely to be dropped. See the related link on same day on steep fall in Chrysler sales.

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The western pharmaceutical companies see the potential for a big increase in sales in developing countries with better pricing to reach a larger number of people. Earlier this year Glaxo said it planned to reduce prices to two thirds of the levels in western countries, and charge 25% of prices in western nations to people in the 50 poorest countries. As a result Glaxo now forecasts a 10% increase in sales in 2010 in the Asia-Pacific area, after a 9% increase in 2009. The overall impact on public health will however be limited as even with this price reduction these medicines will benefit a fraction of the people. Today the combined pharmaceutical sales in Asia, Africa and Australia are $90.8 billon. According to IMS seventeen economies including China, India, Russia and Brazil will see pharma spending grow by $90 billion in a five year period 2009-2014. Of this China's demand will grow by $40 billion in this IMS Report on "phamemerging" economies. The upshot: phamemerging will account for 20% of global sales by 2013, up from 16% in 2008....

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Norway has stepped up to meet Europe's need for oil and gas. About one third of the gas consumed in Europe comes from Norway. After the war started Norway increased gas exports by 8% in 0223 shipping more of it by undersea pipelines to Northern Europe. This increased oil and gas exports from $25 billion in 2021 to $125 billion in 2022. Like Saudi Arabia the government owns not only the oil and gas fields but also has large stakes in the companies that extract oil and gas. For a small country bordering Russia with 5.5 million people this put it in a higher status to meet Europe's plea for energy so that it could heat homes and would not have to shut down some of its industrial capacity. And it left no stone unturned to do this. Petoro CEO Kristin Kragseth says that we knew that Norway was always important but we did'nt realize how much. Petoro made $50 billion in 2022 almost three times what it made in 2021. Another of Norway's oil companies Equinor made $75 billion in adjusted earnings in 2022. Political sentiment has shifted too so that climate change that was a priority still is but Norway is willing to increase production for a few years to meet needs of Europe.     ...

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Micron Technology, GlobalFoundaries, Intel, Samsung are planning large investments with the assistance of governments in US, and Japan. Taiwan Semiconductor plans to build a chip plant in Japan. US has allocated $52 billion for domestic investments by chip companies. In recent decades bad policy has led to chip making demise in the US which the Biden administration is determined to reverse by boosting US chip production. Intel Corp has announced large investments in US and Europe, Micron is expected to follow in this direction.

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Norfolk Southern fails to limit exposure of State courts. The Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision says states can require companies to submit to their jurisdiction as a condition of doing business within their borders. Justice Neil Gorsuch writing for the Court said that the Pennsylvania law does not violate the Constitution's Due Process Clause. The case comes from a retired worker at Norfolk Southern now living in Pennsylvania who said he developed cancer after exposure to carcinogens in Virginia and Ohio.

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Anil Ambani's Reliance Communication's is being investigated in India's Telecom scandal.The shares of his public companies have fallen by 50% or $17.9 billion since August 2009, according to an estimate by Bloomberg. A report by Kotak Securities Ltd, says Reliance Communications reported higher revenue numbers to investors than it showed to telecom regulators. This has led to a government audit of Reliance Commmunications. The market value of his publicly traded companies fell on Feb 9, 2010, by $2.9 billion, when an Indian accountants association questioned Reliance's finances that day. Total debt of Reliance Commnications, Reliance Power and Reliance Infrastructure Ltd, is $10 billon larger than cash and equivalents according to Bloomberg.

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Short time work programs, paid leave, aid to small business for employee retention with the government paying a big percentage of wages, and unemployment benefits till companies rehire employees with government paying for this, are all different ways in which the U.S. and Europe are coping with the coronavirus crisis.  In the U.S. 22 million have applied for unemployment benefits with the U.S. government picking up a substantial part of the wages till companies rehire these employees. In the UK the government has launched a program that gives 2500 pounds or $3100 to each worker each month upto 80% of the worker's pay. The money is sent to businesses for retaining employees. This could cover estimated 8.3 million workers in the UK at a cost of $52 billion. The U.S. has a similar program with the first phase $377 billion already distributed to small businesses which requires retention of employees for government forgiveness of these loans. The basic idea is retain employees who could stay at home or be in short work programs or work from home. The French government is paying the wages of 9.6 million workers, almost half of workers in the private sector by sending the money to 785,000 small businesses. In Germany the Kurzarbeit program covers 725,000 companies which supports the wages of employees in a downturn and is financed from a special fund. The cost for Germany, France and Spain is about $147 billion or 135 billion euros for such programs. The European Union will step in with a 100 billion euros loan package. ...

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This video in The Indian Express shows how president Biden invoking US defense act provisions to ensure supplies of vaccine ingredients to US companies prevents exports to countries that badly need it. India has surpassed 300,000 daily cases of coronavirus on April 22, and India's largest vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute of India says vaccine manufacturing in India is restricted because of president Biden invoking that law. 

India's vaccination drive is stalling because of not enough vaccine supplies.

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Moderna has made the initial batches of doses of the vaccine for the variant of coronavirus including South African variant, and shipped these to the National Institutes of Health in the US. If the test results are positive the vaccine for variant could be given authorization by the third quarter of 2021. It is becoming crucial to stay ahead of variants developing from the coronavirus and pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, J&J, Astra Zeneca are working on the technology to tackle this.

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This report in WSJ shows how European countries are maintaining salaries of employees who would otherwise be laid off. Governments have setup programs in France, Britain, Germany and other countries to provide employers with the money for 80-84% of salaries up to 2500 pounds ($3165) in Britain and 5330 euros a month in France. As a result 1 worker out of three in the private sector in France for subsidy applications for 6.9 million workers are already received. For the German program 2.4 million workers will get this benefit. About 1 million companies in Europe retain employees with this program of governments simply sending out the salaries with funds directly to households. This helps to keep out the stress for families, particularly families with children. It is as if the employees are not really laid off but asked to stay at home for manufacturing facilities and work from home in shorter hours where work can be done remotely.  Money is quickly deposited into the bank account of employees in these countries, though it is slower in Italy and Spain. It is as if the European approach is put the whole economy on pause for 2 months and restart it almost like before with only a small dent in employment once the coronavirus is pushed out with lockdowns and strict control actions. This will cap German unemployment at 5.9% compared with 5% last year, only a modest increase. The cost is not that much considering what it accomplishes. 10 billion euros is the cost in Germany where the state fund for this has 26 billion euros. 10 billion pounds in Britain. And 20 billion euros in France.  The U.S. adopts a similar approach also through its $349 billion program which provides loans to companies with less than 500 employees to meet payroll for 8 weeks and pay some overhead. Loans are forgiven based on job retention and employees on the payroll and only if the employees are retained. Another program is for companies larger than this. And a third program targets entire industries such as airlines, aerospace, and companies in other industries so that they do not have to layoff employees. U.S. unemployment insurance is modified to work along similar lines maintaining incomes of employees laid off because of the pandemic. Another program sends checks directly of $1200 to households with lower incomes to help them and to help people at poverty level or without jobs. The thrust of both the European and American efforts is the same, lose as few jobs as possible, keep people's incomes steady, and do this in a way that the economy can pick up quickly to the former level in as short a time as possible. Compared to Europe U.S. unemployment will be higher predicted at 9.8% with the expected rebound lowering the unemployment in 2021. ...

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FR24 points out that it is not that unusual to see prosecution of French former presidents and prime ministers for campaign financing irregularities or putting political party officials on public payrolls. It shows that this happened to president Chirac, president Sarkozy, and prime minister Fillon. In fact former prime minister Fillon was doing well in the elections after the presidency of Socialist president Hollande. The revelation that he had put his wife on public payroll as parliamentary assistant with little work led to Mr. Macron taking his place as the leading candidate. No jail terms were served for these charges under French law. Here it is important to note that French law limits spending on election campaigns to 22 million euros and Sarkozy exceeded that number. In the US and India there are no such strict limits. So are France's leaders that much worse than the American leaders who spend and collect money lavishly? Or in India where the campaign financing has the result of making it hard to build the infrastructure desperately needed by a young aspiring population. Framers of the Indian constitution including Gandhi and Nehru intent on getting the British out never realized that political parties would look to public funds as ways to finance their campaigns, leaving less for the intended purpose of building roads and bridges making the country a poor place to invest in and entrenching underdevelopment and poverty.  In the US tech companies in Silicon Valley or banks in New York and Silicon Valley, pharmaceutical companies and companies in other sectors, are able to gain monopoly positions or favored regulatory setups for their industries by funding election campaigns for Congress. When this results in egregious behaviour such as the 2009 financial crisis or the current banking crisis this behaviour causes severe damage to ordinary Americans much worse than what Mr Chirac or Sarkozy were prosecuted for.  South Korea has a long history of prosecuting former presidents. Three presidents have been prosecuted so far. One president served as much as five years for a jail term. ...

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Samsung's decision to go with Android rather than its own inhouse developed software for its smartphones, and the execution of the new plan, was pivotal in its recent success. This is what differentiates it from Nokia and Research in Motion, companies which decided to develop their own software. In the case of Nokia, it made a costly switch from its Symbian software to Microsoft software. Samsung's other business in chipmaking is not as profitable, with margins dropping to 9.5%. Operating profit declined in the fourth quarter in the chip business, dropping by half from the prior quarter. The rapid changes with one costly error changing the whole playing field, also shows the precarious nature of the mobile phone business with changing leaders every few years, from Motorola to Nokia, to Samsung and Apple.

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The WSJ editorial had this to say about Congressman Barney Frank who spent 7 years on the board of Signature Bank after working on regulatory reform for the Obama administration following the 2008 financial crisis. The two roles contradicted each other, regulation of banks and being on the board of a bank which lobbied for loosening regulation and worked with crypto asset companies. The Biden administration rolled up the Signature Bank following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. 

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Chile's new Constitution draft document of 499 pages scales back mining, decentralises power and grants social rights. Rewriting the Constitution was one of the demands of protests that lasted for months leading to the election of president Boric. After decades under a constitution written by Gen. Pinochet that favored mining companies and industry Chileans protested the way pensions were organized and the way Chile was run that neglected the working class and middle class families.

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When you compare the US to the European Union or India one can see how America is failing its people in offering basic public services that other countries do routinely. Jennifer Pahlka is the author of- Recoding America: How America is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better. Pahlka points out the problem in the US where private companies obstruct the delivery of basic services that the government can provide, just for their own profit. They throw in a carrot so that there is an excuse for not doing anything about this. For example tax preparation companies tell the IRS not to develop a simple tool available to all taxpayers to file their own taxes easily which is already filled with basic details. The carrot so that no one complains is that they will offer free tax preparation services to low income people. In the EU and many other countries tax preparation is done using tools offered by the tax agencies for easy preparation. In India it was possible to make it through the pandemic for large parts of a population of 1.4 billion because checks could be deposited directly into people's bank accounts. Digitization is used in India to make certain there is delivery of public services directly to each person. ...

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After a second round of price increases P&G's last price increase of 10% leads to first quarter revenues up 4% on sales volume declines of 3% for the first quarter of 2023. The company making Gillette razors, Charmin toilet paper and Tide detergent for household supplies has shown the persistence of inflation as companies increase prices to pass on the increase in price of raw materials. Some of this money will go to buy back stock- P&G plans to buy back $8 billion of its own stock. Companies such as P&G are countering criticism of price increases by saying they offer premium products or use the term "irresistable superiority" says this report in NYT. This leads to "profit price spiral" and adds to "wage price spiral" effects. A executive board member in eurozone says half of the price increases in EU can be attributed for the last quarter of 2023 to company profits.

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Japan has 1300 companies that have been around for 200 years. And one construction company for 1400 years, that specialized in the restoration wood work for Buddhist temples using ancient techniques handed down from generation to generation of carpenters from 578.  Prince Shotoku in 578 used the artisans from this company to build the Shittennoji Buddhist temple in Japan. What are the secrets of their longevity, what difficulties were overcome are shown in this amazing 15 minute NHK Japan video.