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The small freshwater fish the 'delta smelt' is one of the reasons why water from Northern California cannot be brought into southern California to fight the wildfires, says DJT during a meeting in California on the wildfires relief efforts.

On his first day in the Oval Office, of the 26 executive orders signed by DJT we see an order on the delta smelt fish endangered species environmental laws- "Putting People Before Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California." The water in the San Joaquin Valley agricultural region of California comes from the rivers in the San Joaquin and Sacramento areas that flows into the sea. The effort to protect this fish means less water to agricultural farms in this part of northern California that helps feed the Nation, allowing this water to flow into the sea instead of to the other needs in the state.

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Blackberry's new smartphones fail to compete with phones from Samsung, Apple and other competitors. Under CEO Chen Blackberry sales decline further with a net loss of $423 million in the fourth quarter of 2013. Revenue decline was 64% to $976 million for the 4th quarter 2013. The cash position declined to $2.7 billion from $3.2 billion the prior quarter. In a remarkable reversal older Blackberry phones outsold new Blackberry 10 smartphones launched in 2013. Older Blackberry 7 models sales were 2.3 million compared to 1.1 million for the newer Blackberry 10 models, a situation unheard of in the smartphone industry.

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Natarajan Chandrasekharan, CEO of TCS, describes his approach to running TCS so that individual unit managers can use 100% of their processing power, and have the advantage of the scale and initiatives launched by the corporation as a whole. He says he finds people and builds teams and sees the big picture, but lets units operate independently with 100% of their processing power- calling it democratization. TCS stays ahead in new technologies of mobility, cloud, social, big data, analytics and robotics using its innovation labs in Santa Clara and Cincinnati in the U.S. with centers of excellence in India tied ot these labs. About $4-5 billion in new revenues are expected from these new technologies in 3 years. TCS, India's largest IT company, under Chandrasekharan has doubled its revenue since he took over during the financial crisis in 2009.

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Microsoft shares were up 7% after the announcement about the departure of Steve Ballmer from the CEO position. Steve Ballmer became president in 1998 to run Microsoft's operations. He was a college buddy of Microsoft founder Bill Gates at Harvard. Ballmer graduated from Harvard with a degree in mathematics and economics and worked for 2 years at P&G before Gates persuaded him to join him at Microsoft. For decades the duo of Gates and Ballmer ran the company till Ballmer was made CEO in 2000. Ballmer completes three decades at Microsoft. During most of this period Ballmer focussed on protecting the existing franchise of Windows operating systems software and the Office suite sold on all PC's except Apple Macs. Missteps include Windows Vista, which was followed by the more successful Windows 7. Windows 8 has failed to make a significant dent in the market. A poor decision in retrospect to acquire Yahoo for about $44 billion did not happen, as Yahoo did not pursue discussions. The efforts in smartphones with Nokia and the Surface tablet have failed to produce results. Under Ballmer Microsoft only gradually shifted to cloud computing. The departure of Ballmer comes as a major reorganization was underway in 2013, and the company was shifting its strategy to become a provider of devices and services in place of its main role making software sales for PC's....

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The Renzi government's new merit based appointments to CEO positions at Enel, Eni, Telecom Italia, Italiane Poste, and Finnemecanica, companies in which the government has large stakes. Women were appointed as chairwoman for Enel and Eni. This is part of an effort to revitalize Italian industry in the economic slump. The Italian government has a 30% and 31% stake in Eni and Enel. These companies represent about a third of the Italian stock market. Claudio Descalzi is the new CEO of Eni. He is seen as having as having an excellent record as head of the oil exploration division of Eni.

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A coordinated release of petroleum reserves from the International Energy Agency and 30 participating countries is planned in the event something like the attack on Saudi oil facilities happens. About 5% of the worlds oil supplies were put out in the attack. If 7% are lost then the IEA would step in to call for release of petroleum reserves of individual countries. As of July 2019 1.5 billion barrels of oil are in storage in emergency reserves. U.S. SPR reserves are estimated at 644 million barrels and the figures are 100 million barrels for each of Germany, Japan and France, and China at 344 million barrels. These man made caverns are as long as 2000 feet.

The last time this release happened was in 2011 after the Libyan war disruptions. 

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Former employees of Google and Facebook have joined together to form The Center for Humane Technology. It plans to fight tech addiction in schools. A ad campaign is planned with $7 million from Common Sense, capital it has raised, and $50 million in donated media and airtime by DirecTV and Comcast. The idea is to educate students, teachers and parents about overuse of tech media leading to depression, other dysfunctional health issues. 

In one report even Tim Cook, Apple CEO says he realizes the dangers and is trying to discourage such use by his nephew. Some early investors such as Roger McNamee say they are horrified at what has happened with overuse of social media, especially health effects for a generation of school children and young adults. 

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The CEO of Blackstone assesses the impact of Dodd-Frank legislation five years later in 2015, and says the regulations need to be reexamined for changes.

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This article appeared after a GM drop in sales of 16%, and headline stories in the Wall Street Journal. This is an account about the turmoil in the boardroom about GM chairman Wagoner's future. It raise new questions about Wagoner's future considering huge gap in the way GM sees itself and car buyers see GM.

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Kraft reaches an agreement to acquire Cadbury at 830 British pence per share in a meeting between Ms. Rosenfeld, Kraft CEO, and Cadbury CEO, Mr. Carr. This is about 50% premium over the price of Cadbury shares in Sept, 2009. Cadbury CEO Carr was opposed to the merger of the two companies and stated he saw "no strategic, operational, managerial or financial reason" for the two companies to merge. Cadbury described the Kraft management as one that had unattractive categories and which "under-delivers." In the end Carr was pushed into the deal because hedge funds had acquired about 30% of Cadbury shares in hopes of making gains, creating the danger that Cadbury could end up with a lower offer. The acrimony is likely to make a merger of the two companies difficult and costly. Kraft coveted Cadbury for its penetration of emerging markets, but lacks the experience and talent in this area of its own to carry out a smooth merger of vastly different companies with different focus.

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Apple CEO Cook's blue collar roots in Alabama. He says he has worked at an aluminium factory in Virginia and a paper factory in Alabama, and grew up spending a lot of time in factories. Cook was hired by Steve Jobs to fix Apple's manufacturing operations after Jobs rejoined the company in 1997. At that time Apple's manufacturing plants had serious quality problems and high levels of rework in plants, and Apple had high levels of inventory. Cook was largely responsible for the new manufacturing setup at Apple. Jobs did not get it into the details of manufacturing- being more interested in the design aspects of the product- and people close to Apple say Jobs rarely visited Apple plants. This gives Cook greater credibility as Apple tries to change the way its products are made in China. Under Cook Apple has joined the Fair Labor Association and initiated FLA inspections of Foxconn plants making Apple products.

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Admiral Mullen and General Petraeus have grown impatient with Pakistan's and the ISI's support for the Haqqani network, a Taliban ally that works as a proxy for Pakistan's military and intelligence services. Recent disclosure of Pakistan's military and civilian leadership's effort at a Kabul meeting to have the Afghanistan government distance itself from the U.S. have added to concerns. The appointment of Gen. Petraeus to lead the CIA, including direction of the drone campaign, is expected to continue the tension in the relationship.

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Pemex (Petroleos Mexicanos) CEO Emilio Lozoya is fired and replaced by Gonzalez Anaya, a close friend of finance minister Videgaray, as the company experiences a liquidity crisis by Jan. 2016. Anaya is known for cost cutting as head of Mexico's government healthcare institute. This report in the WSJ cites a Pemex official who says at one point in Jan 2016 Pemex was down to $8 million in cash. Under Lozoya Pemex failed to introduce financial discipline ahead of collapsing oil prices. Anaya is expected to cut spending by 19% or $5.8 billion. Mexico's governemt made a capital injection into Pemex of $4.2 billion to pay debts to suppliers, and offered tax relief of $2.8 billion. Pemex output is down to 2.2 million barrels a day in March 2016, decline of 4.5%. Pemex cuts will come in putting off exploraion spending of $800 million in one field in the Gulf of Mexico and paying less to rent oil platforms.

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George Paz, the CEO of Express Scripts, is the man who engineered the acquisition of Medco Health Solutions, creating the largest company in the pharmacy-benefit business.

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Oswald Grubel, CEO of Swiss bank UBS, resigned on Sept. 14, 2011, after the loss of $2.3 billion in irregular trades made at its London trading desk.

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John Browett, CEO from 2007 of Dixons Retail PLC, and a former executive of Tesco for its online operations, was appointed head of retail operations at Apple.

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Peter Loscher's ouster as CEO of Siemens after a 6 year tenure following corruption scandals at the company. Missteps in earnings led the Board to take action.

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Doug Parker, CEO of US Airways, will lead the new management team after the merger with American Airlines (AMR). He completed an earlier merger with America West.

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Only 61% of shareholders present at the annual general meeting voted in approval of the management at Deutsche Bank in May 2015. Legal settlements and lack of trust in strategies of management have hurt credibility. A large part of the lack of credibility comes from the culture at Deutsche Bank which is seen as slow to change. Co-CEO Jain was head of the investment bank when traders engaged in activities that are causing large legal settlements for wrongdoing. Strong criticism came at the annual meeting from shareholders. Han-Martin Buhlmann of the shareholder association VIP raised the question: "Mr. Jain, are you the solution to the problem or part of it?" Alison Esse, managing director of change consultancy, The Storytellers, says shareholders had voted no-confidence against senior management because they lack the credibility to restore the reputation of the bank.