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RIM's two co-CEO's, Jim Balsillie, and Mike Lazaridis, both resign. The board appoints Thorsten Heins, chief operating officer, to be the next CEO of Research In Motion on Jan. 22, 2012. The appointment comes at a time when RIM is under increasing pressure to reverse its position of decline in the smartphone industry.

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JP Morgan CEO Dimon, says the lack of enough worker training is hurting the U.S. with unemployment one or two percentage points because of this. The lack of enough training efforts by business and government to add technical skills to workers existing skills is resulting in many jobs going unfilled in manufacturing and other fields.

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How the focus on revenue and profits of Harold McGraw, who became CEO in 1998, and his efforts to make McGraw Hill a growth stock from a value stock created a culture that resulted in the ratings mess that has contributed significantly to the mortgage crisis. McGraw Hill's stock is down 43% from June 2007.

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How Pandit handled Citigroup through the crisis in the financial markets first with the collapse of Bear Stearns and then through recent weeks. How he tackled Citigroups problems and raised capital almost from the time he took over as CEO of Citigroup. The problems and challenges facing Citigroup and those facing Dimon at Chase Bank.

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Diversification has helped BHP weather the decline in commodities prices better than Rio Tinto, Anglo-American and Vale. BHP is expected to report profits of $12.5 billion for the last fiscal year. BHP is also in the oil and gas business, in addition to iron, ore, copper, coal and aluminium. This has made it possible to take writedowns of $5.5 billion and still make stable profits. Andrew Mackenzie, the new CEO of BHP, is a Scotsman who is focussing on the productivity of capital and cost-cutting. BHP announced $1.9 billion in cost savings since July 2012. Mackenzie's goal is to reduce capital expenditures from $18 billion today to $15 billion or less in 2-3 years. Capital is tied up in incomplete projects taken up in the boom period of higher prices, and the process of reducing capital expenditures is gradual. Capital expenditures in the mining business increased dramatically from $20 billion to $120 billion from 2003 to 2012. For most of this period China's economy registered growth rates of over 10%....

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Even as huge losses continued at RBS bank bonuses remained high. After $15 billion in losses at RBS in 2013, banker bonuses were $960 million for the year. Banker bonuses declined from 679 million pounds in 2012 to 576 billion pounds in 2013. New CEO Ross McEwan, says "I need to keep people engaged." He announced another reorganization. He says RBS "is the least trusted company in the least trusted sector of the economy." This follows public criticism of RBS for not lending enough to small business and unfair treatment of customers. The new plan is for cost cuts to save 2.2 billion pounds by closing 16 corporate call centers and 11 offices in London. Sales and restructuring cuts are planned for 3.1 billion pounds in savings.

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This article by Saeed Shah and Syed Hasan describes the Taliban factions from the tribal areas that control parts of Karachi, Pakistan's main commercial city on the Arabian Sea. It provides a detailed map showing the outlying areas around the city centre, especially the shantytown areas and the areas with Pashtun majority population controlled by Taliban with roots in the tribal areas. The Taliban charge taxes and adminster law in the areas they control. A major operation was launched since Sept. 2013 by the Sharif government to free this key city of Pakistan from Taliban control and the wave of kidnappings, extortion and other violence from Taliban members. About 168 police officers have been killed in the efforts to control the city, but areas under Taliban control are still hard to patrol by government police and special Ranger force. Karachi anxiously awaits the result of peace talks of the Sharif government with Taliban. If the talks fail and an operation is launched against Taliban in tribal areas the repercussions will be felt in Karachi. Shah and Hasan provide a excellent picture of the tribal loyalties, religious extremism and entrenched culture of violent activity that extends from the border tribal regions of Pakistan into the commercial centres such as Karachi that is a vexing problem for the Sharif administration, police, business and ordinary citizens....

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John Bolton on the efforts needed to secure nuclear and biological weapons in North Korea and to reunite the two Koreas, by joint concerted action between China, the U.S. and South Korea. Prof. Cha of Georgetown University, and the Editorial Board of the Washington Post call for similiar preparation and action on Dec. 20, 2011, soon after Kim's death.

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With the popularity of Apple iPhones and smartphones, Nokia has lost ground. Its share price is down 73% from 2007 end. It is looking for a new CEO. The lack of new mobile phones to compete with the iPhone and other smartphones and generate the kind of excitement that Apple's iPhone has generated, is Nokia's main problem.

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Tesco plans to hire 20,000 new employees to help improve the shopping experience at Tesco stores in Britain. This would also act as a"shot in the arm" for the UK economy, says Tesco UK CEO, Richard Brasher. Official figures show 2.67 millon people in Britain are unemployed, with unemployment at 22% for young people ages 16-24.

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The WSJ's Susan Carey's interview with Doug Parker, the CEO of US Airways, on the difficult days before the merger with American Airlines was approved by the U.S. Justice Department. In the days prior to this, Parker says he had a big job to do to convince skeptical managers at both airlines that the deal would go through.

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Stewart says regulators let Barclays off lightly. Prof. John Cofee of Columbia University Law School, an expert on the subject, says the regulators were toothless in the LIBOR case. In fact under the settlement Bob Diamond was allowed to continue as CEO. He resigned only after UK prime minister David Cameron called for him to accept responsibility and resign.

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Exxon's position with cash on hand of $37 billion gives it agood position from which to invest in partnerships with Petroleo Brasileiro for exploration on the Atlantic coast of Brazil, or to acquire another oil company. It may also consider investments in possible oil finds in places like Greenland, New Zealand, Madagascar or the Black Sea.

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The resignation of Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo, from his positions at the company on Jan. 17, 2012. Yahoo hired a new CEO, Scott Thompson, from eBay's Pay Pal unit n 2011. Yang started Yahoo with David Filo. They setup "David & Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web," a list of favorite websites, as computer science students at Stanford in 1995. What followed was a trajectory similiar to the one observed today for Facebook- by 1999 the company was valued at $120 billion in the dot com bubble. A decade later Google, a newcomer with a search algorithm, replaced Yahoo as the most widely used search engine. Yahoo and its peer site AOL from the 1990's never recovered from the technological change in the internet with broadband and a new generation of search engines. Yang holds a 3.8% stake in Yahoo. Yahoo has a 40% stake in Ali Baba, which was formed when Yahoo turned over its Chinese operations to Ali Baba in exchange for a large stake in operations. Yahoo is planning to sell its stake in Ali Baba....

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Toyota's changes in its global architecture in 2011-2013. Reorganization to build amore tight knit management structure for better responsiveness and decisionmaking. The focus is on getting rid of bureaucracy after years of growth that led to excessive and sometimes indirect reporting layers. For instance, chief engineers now report directly to top product planning executives to speed decisionmaking and make new product introductions faster. Regional managers are now shrunk to three groups: North America and China; Japan and Europe; Australia, Russia and emerging markets. It is interesting to note that China and the U.S. are put together- the logic is based on the idea that the buyers in each group tend to have similiar buyer behaviour for vehicles, say Toyota managers. Another significant effort focusses on increasing the use of standardized parts to 50% for vehicles that are of similiar size. The Prius C, the redesigned Camry and the Etios subcompact in India, were cited recently by CEO Akio Toyoda as examples of products that have utilized these changes in methods and approach....

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New UBS CEO, Sergio Ermotti, plans to scale down UBS investment banking operations because of stricter regulations and a changing market environment. He said in an interview that UBS will go back to what it was in the 1990's, that he now sees the investment banking boom of the last ten years as an aberration. He also sees rival banks taking the same route. The plan is to shrink risk-weighted assets from 300 billion Swiss francs today to 145 billion Swiss francs by scaling back or exiting in areas such as asset securitization, complex fixed income structured products and trading in some equity products. UBS will cut 2000 investment banking jobs to 16,500 in 2013. The focus will shift to foreign exchange, commodities and mergers and acquisitions. Investment banking made a profit for only one of the last 4 years, taking up two thirds of the bank's capital and earning 26% of the group's the pretax profit in the last year. The new plan will reduce the size of the investment bank so that it makes up less than half of the group assets by 2016....

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Chevron CEO John Watson says the U.S. needs more affordable energy, and this means it needs to find more fossil fuels. It needs more oil gas and coal. He says the U.S. should take advantage of its own fossil fuel resources. People want strong environmental standards, but as Watson puts it, their top most priority is affordable energy which creates economic growth and jobs. He criticizes the Obama administration for not pushing ahead with developing of U.S. offshore oil, because BP's problems were not systemic and industry wide. He calls for dramatically increasing U.S. oil production, and doing this immediately. Worldwide Chevron plans to invest $26 billion for its exploration budget, and plans to drill in Australia, Western Africa, Gulf of Thailand and other locations. Watson points out that the dynamics of oil production are affected by two factors, price and technology. With current prices at over $100 a barrel more oil is accessible. At these prices new technologies can make it possible to use existing older wells to increase production. He cites the example of Bakersfield, where steam flooding is helping get 70 to 80 barrels out of every 100 barrels in the ground, when in the past Chevron could only get 10-20 barrels of oil. Another technology he mentions is hydrofracking for producing large and cheap supplies of natural gas. Chevron acquired Atlas Energy for $3.2 billion in 2010 to enter this market. Watson's overall emphasis is on the U.S. going for affordable energy and affordable conservation that will create economic growth and a better future....

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The system of using performance evaluations for "forced" or "stack" ranking of employees started with Jack Welch at General Electric. Microsoft adopted the system under Ballmer till 2013, when it decided that the need for teamwork was more important and discontinued the practice. Welch used it to get rid of "underperformers" or managers who did not conform to his requirements when he became CEO of General Electric. It was his personal style and way of bringing change to GE. The practice of "forced" ranking increases competition inside the company instead of teamwork, say managers, and leaves a lot to the caprice of individual managers. In December 2013 Ballmer facing criticism from his Board for missing some of the disruptive technologies in the information tech business and falling behind Apple and Google, sought the advice of Alan Mulally of Ford Motor Company. Mulally had to fight entrenched Japanese competitors and pull Ford out of a crisis in which even Ford's logo had been put up as collateral for loans. Meeting for 4 hours on Mercer Island in Seattle Mulally told Ballmer that he focussed on teamwork and simplifying the way Ford did things. Ballmer phased out the "forced" ranking system as one of the last major steps before he leaves Microsoft. In today's environment for tech companies of intense competition worldwide and disruptive technologies without teamwork and employees looking to come up with new and exciting products the future is surely lost. Having the "bottom" 50% of the employees compete for limited positions can be dangerous or suicidal without the dominant position in markets that GE and Microsoft had. It also makes no sense to substitute internal competition and capricious manager behaviours for teamwork. It is the responsibility of managers to do as much as possible to make good hiring decisions, and then motivate and help employees to achieve their best performance with frequent helpful feedback, and to promote teamwork. This is the lesson Ford learned through its crisis and Microsoft is now learning....

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Most experts are critical of president Trump's use of language "fire and fury" to North Korea for its missile tests and threats to the U.S.  The closest one gets is the language used by Harry Truman during the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs.  Mr. Feaver, a national security expert and Senator Cardin say Mr. Trump is using the same language that the north Korean leaders is using and this simply raises the tensions. Feaver was adviser to President George W. Bush on the National Security staff. He says Bush's statement "bring 'em on" to Baath loyalists and militants targeting U.S. troops was a mistake, as well as some other Bush statements in the war against Saddam Hussein who Bush said he wanted "dead or alive."  Victor Cha, a former National Security Council official under president Clinton, says Bill Clinton used language that acted as deterrance to the the North Korean government when he said at the demilitarized zone in Korea, any attack would be "the end of their country." Cha sees Trump's language as a form of deterrence to avoid any miscalculation. Feaver says the language is dangerous, and the only way he can see it being thought out is that 30 years of diplomatic effort have left us with little improvement with North Korea, and the idea that lets try using the same language as the other side. Yet even here he sees it as escalating the rhetoric when nuclear missiles are involved. ...

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The advanced technology on the Noble Bully 1 oil drilling rig in deep waters 140 miles south of New Orleans. It is jointly owned by Shell and Noble Corp. The technological improvements on the rig could only have been imagined a few years ago. A Eiffel tower shaped structure is completely enclosed in the rig compared to open derrick structures used on earlier rigs. The technology includes GPS, wind sensors, motion sensors, hydraulic systems, computer controlled thruster propellers on the bottom of the vessel to drill wells with precision. It can operate in water 8250 feet deep to 12,000 feet with safety upgrades, and upto 40,000 feet. A similiar ship Noble Bully 2 operates on the coastal part of Brazil. A new platform called Olympus will be a tension leg platform floaing on the sea like a cork, held together by tying it to the ocean floor using cables. The project is called the Mars B development. New sensors use seismic technology with devices closer to the ocean floor in the Gulf picking up data. The data is sent to Shell scientists working onshore and produces four dimensional maps of oil reservoirs using computer chips. The cost savings for the smaller structure include less steel and less fuel used, zero toxic emissions, and operating with 160 workers- 40% less workers than previous rig designs. Veteran drillers say its a lot better working environment and lot safer. Chief drillers sit in "drill chairs" and adjust the speed and direction of drill pipes using joy sticks and computer screens. It is this kind of technology that countries like Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and India need to develop their off shore oil fields, creaing new opportunities for oil companies such as Chevron, Shell, BP, Exxon and Total. The new technology equiped drilling ships, platforms and LNG processing ships are a way for Shell to reduce costs and improve capital efficiency, the new focus for CEO Van Beurden in 2014-2015....

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Nokia announced a loss of 929 million euros for the first quarter of 2012. Sales declined from 10.4 billon euros to 7.4 billion euros in the same quarter prior year. The only bright spot for the company is that the Lumia 900 sold throught AT&T has made a successful launch in the U.S. Nokia CEO Elop says the phone is sold out in stores in the U.S. Lumia sales were 2 million in the 1st quarter of 2012, at an average price of 220 euros ($290). Nokia's strategy now is to bring the Lumia line including the lower end Luma 610 phone to Asian markets by June- to China, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia. Nokia's biggest problem is the older Symbian phones, which consumers are passing by and which now have to be discounted rapidly or replaced quickly with the Lumia line. The other related problem is falling margins on basic phones as Chinese competitors discount heavily- basic Nokia phone prices fell 18% to 33 euros ($43) from 40 euros or($52) the prior year. The speed in the drop in business for mobile phones can be guaged from the sales decline of 40% in the 1st quarter from $9.3 billion to $5.6 billion. Things are made worse by the 772 million euro ($1 billion) charge taken for Nokia Siemens Networks, a network joint venture with Siemens. Sales for Nokia Siemens fell 7% in the first quarter to $3.8 billion. Nokia Siemens has 53 contracts to build new mobile networks with Long Term Evolution Technology more than competitors Ericsson and Huawei, according to Nokia Siemens. Everything now depends on the speed with which Nokia can move to its Lumia line across the board, especially in China....

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How Lehman Brothers CEO underestimated the situation facing his firm and failed to realize the true extent of the economic environment that the country is facing. He did not move fast enough for the speed with things deteriorate in this new environment which is nothing like the environment they faced before. In the end he held out for a better deal when he was negotiating with potential partners till the other side walked away. As a trader who led the firm for 14 years he was used to snap decisions so when he negotiated with Korea Development Bank and things were difficult he grew frustrated according to the Wall Street Journal and threw up his arms and the meeting ended. After the two sides parted subsequent talks faltered. At that August meeting the Korea bank proposed to invest $4 billion to $6 billion into Lehman and on the other side the CEO of Korea Development Bank had once been the head of Lehman Brothers in South Korea. The Journal report says that the Koreans felt their approach was realistic and were prepared to move forward but that Mr. Fuld was holding out for a better deal. The Koreans would have received a large stake in the firm. But not reaching the deal in the negotiation with the Koreans in June and then again in August and not marking down the firm's large holdings of real estate to reflect new conditions, and relying too much on the access to capital from the Fed, may all prove to be the undoing of Lehman because its stock has dropped precipitiously in the last few days losing more than 40% of it value in one day and then continuing down a slippery slope. Mr Fuld has led the company for 14 years and is the decision maker in this company, being called by employees as "the chairman" or "the gorilla". In these 14 years he gained a reputation for driving hard deals and in this case he may have not realized the crtical situation the company faces required a more urgent approach and a willingness to consider different deals some of which may have led to giving up some of the complete independence with which he operated....

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Pfizer shares fell by 2.5% as the deficit deal of August 2 was announced. The deal envisages cuts to Medicare. Pfizer CEO Ian Read says the pharmaceutical industry is not immune to the macroeconomic trends. Another trend he described in an interview is the shift in buying drugs- with high unemployment people either going without prescription drugs or switching to low cost generics.

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The new iPad introduced in March 2012 with HD screen resolution and LTE capabilities is also priced at $499, with the older version priced down to $399. The iPad sales for the 4th quarter 2011 were larger than the PC sales of any individual manufacturer of PC's, according to Apple CEO, Tim Cook, showing the potential and demand for the tablet computers.

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Lauren Weber interviews online recruiting company Monster CEO, Sal Iannuzzi. Monster is seeing its business upended by social recruiting, niche job boards, and company career websites enhancements. Its share price is down to $7 from a high of $50. The company is developing its own product for social recruiting using Facebook app. Monster's Iannuzzi is also exploring options for sale of the company.