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Petrobras CEO, Aldemir Bendine, faces the difficult tasks of regaining investor confidence, establishing better governance, and carrying out a divestment program to cut the debt load of $133.9 billion. He is a bank executive from Banco do Brasil appointed in February 2015 following the corruption scandal at Petrobras. The new board at Petrobras following the corruption scandal is now free of political appointees, and includes academics, business leaders and technical experts. Bendine says, today there is not the same atmosphere as in the past with political appointees, and he sees no chance for government interference.

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WSJ Owen Fletcher's interview with Robin Li, CEO of China's internet search site Baidu Inc. Li describes his plans for growth. He sees opportunities in a landing page where Baidu builds its own content and integrates the content on the search result pages. The Qiyi venture is a online video streaming site with Baidu search users directed to this site when searching for such content. Advertising would show up on Qiyi. Baidu has started a Japanese search site. Li is a 41 year old engineer who worked in Silicon Valley before starting Baidu in 2000. Baidu now has 70% of the Chinese search market compared to Google's 24%. Li says he follows China's laws and has found that most search users are interested in terms other than the censored ones- in entertanment, lifestyle and business fields.

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Philip Clarke has spent his whole working life at Tesco from stocking shelves when in school to other assignments. He takes over as CEO from Terry Leahy. He was store manager, product buyer, marketer and then joined the upper management ranks. Tesco is now one of the top retail chains worldwide, with 472,000 employees, and revenues of 56.9 billon pounds. As head of international operations he started Tesco in S. Korea by acquiring the 38 discount stores under the Homever name. And also made the move into India.

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After China returns 2 Boeing planes, Boeing CEO says the company will find other buyers and will not send planes to China.

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Russia and Ukraine agree to a Black Sea Maritime Ceasefire. Russia hopes this will remove a barrier to Russian agricultural exports. It wants western sanctions on Agricultural Bank of Russia and other sanctions that hurt Russian agricultural exports to be lifted.

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Daniel Zhang takes over as CEO from Jonathan Lu in May 2014. Jack Ma, executive chairman, says a post 70's generation is now taking over at the company. Alibaba revenues increased to $2.77 billion, with per share earnings before stock grants increasing by 7% to 48 cents per share, and earnings after stock grants declining 49% to $463 million or 18 cents a share. 2015 1st quarter results showed mobile transactions making up 51%, up from 27% a year earlier. Active users on mobile platforms were 289 million in March 2015, increasing from 163 million the prior year. The mobile monetization rate is decreasing to 1.73%- this is the metric of how much in transaction value becomes company revenue. Share price went up 10% to $88.15 from $80 in pre-market trading on May 7, 2015. Its IPO offering price was $68, and the high reached was $120.

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Iceberg 23a in the Antarctic Weddell Sea is shown here in spectacular photographs as it melts and breaks up. See these photos on the impact of climate change in real life in one of the remote areas of the world.

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Marathon Oil is is planning to sell its North Sea oil properties valued at about $3 billion and focus on North American production. Plans are for increasing capital investment by 13% to $5.9 billion in 2014 and a $2.5 billion share repurchase program. Marathon has sold assets of about $2.7 billion since 2010, and plans further asset sales including a $2.1 billion sale of assets in Angola projects. The strategy is to focus on N. American oil production. Occidental Petroleum, Apache Corp., ConocoPhilips, are also pursuing a similiar strategy by exiting the Middle East and focussing on N. American production.

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Southwest Airlines CEO Kelly says studies have shown passengers just want to know if their flight is going to go and at what time. So he stresses these things, because travel is not perfect and its how his airline handles these situations that matters. He says its not a reach to say that Southwest is getting the 5% of revenues that is the max he thinks you can get from baggage fees, by simply not charging as passengers hate these fees. He wants to use new technology to manage fares better. Asked about things getting bette, green shoots of recovery, he isnt optimistic. He says Southwest has to be prepared for a lot of uncertainty and instability, and operate with an abundance of caution. He goes on to say what he sees as different in this downturn. Saying he wishes that steroids were legal, because the speed at which we identify issues , study them and make decisions is unlike anything he has experienced before. In Southwest's culture this is the difference between furloughing employees, grounding planes, and reducing flights and running as close to normal as possible. The cushion is gone now, and he has to manage risk much more carefully. This is good advice for other executives....

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David Cote, CEO of Honeywell International, says U.S. corporations have $1 trillion sitting on the sidelines ready to be invested if business can be provided with more certainty about U.S. finances through successful deficit reducion negotiations. He is the most active CEO behind the Fix the Debt organization and is respected by both sides. In the fiscal cliff negotiations he has taken messages in both directions from Democrats and Republicans. Cote is a former executive of General Electric, who has led a turnaround at Honeywell. Large business stayed out of the deficit negotiations in 2011 which brough on the fiscal cliff arrangement of deep cuts in defense and automatic tax increases if no agreement is reached by Jan. 1, 2013. Cote and CEO's behind Fix the Debt have decided to engage with both political parties in the negotiations in 2011-2013.

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Intel Corp's chief operating officer, Brian Krzanich, a manufacturing expert, becomes the new CEO in May 2013, succeeding Paul Otellini. Software chief Renee James becomes the new president.

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Adam Neumann, the 40 year old startup founder of WeWork, which is basically a subleaser of real estate space, resigns. Aggressive brash attitude, a party heavy lifestyle, unpredictable decision making,  are cited by WSJ as reasons he lost the confidence of investors. Mr. Dimon of JP Morgan Chase was a key banker for the company. Chase under Dimon pursued startups in the hope of doing the IPO's. The company has substantial losses, and new management was brought in after Softbank decided Neumann should leave. Growth was fast, losses also mounted fast to $1.6 billion. WSJ says many investors decided that WeWork was not a tech company so much as a overvalued real estate company that engaged in business of leasing office space tricked out in millenial friendly decor. The greed for outsize returns has led to the accumulation of capital that could otherwise be spent wisely on infrastructure and other improvements in health and education, even though many of the gains in tech are behind us.  Recently the head of Uber was also asked to resign for an aggressive approach and questionable management style, also with substantial losses, and new management brought in. Fast expansion in an imprudent manner affects established companies. It led to collapse of India's Jet Airways, Britain's Thomas Cook in 2019. Yet the huge amount of capital of tens of billions of dollars wasted as investors seek outsize returns and are disappointed, is a pattern seen mostly in capital markets in the U.S. and to a lesser extent in Europe, China, Japan. The ideas piggyback on some aspect of tech already developed and are not major tech advances by and of themselves, and many as in the case of WeWork are touted as tech because of the catch and appeal of the word for everyone hoping to make an outsize return.    ...

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This story by Asa Fitch of the WSJ shows how NVIDIA co-founder Jensen Huang, built NVIDIA into a major semiconductor company. He did this by developing faster chips for graphics and other uses using parallel processing instead of sequential processing. It is now a rival to Intel as it plans an acquisition of ARM Holdings in Britain. Huang started NVIDIA in 1993 when computer users wanted faster computer graphics.  NVIDIA has about $10 billion in sales compared to larger rival Ital with $72 billion in sales. With its efforts in AI and other tech fields NVIDIA now surpasses Intel in valuation. Softbank bought ARM Holdings in 2016 for $32 billion. It is now looking to sell ARM to NVIDIA or another buyer. Problems it faces in the acquisition is British laws that may decide to prevent approval for sale of the company and the loss of jobs. ARM based in Cambridge has 6700 employees. ARM makes the chips for smartphones. The trade war between the U.S. and China and the sale of ARM chips to Huawei are also factors that will be considered in British approval or disapproval of this sale of a British company owned by Softbank of Japan.  ...

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Global oil demand is expected to shrink in first quarter 2020, for the first time in 10 years, according to the International Energy Agency. China made up three fourths of growth in oil demand in 2019. The border closures, flight cancellations, and factory closures, are affecting Chinese oil consumption as a result of the coronavirus. China's growth in first quarter is expected to be 3-4% than a year earlier.

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Bayer CEO, Marijn Dekkers, plans to divest its plastics business, called Material Science. The plastics division requires large investments with lower returns than can be made in health care or the agricultural crop science business. Crop Science generated earnings before interest and taxes of 1.81 billion euros in 2014, and Health Care helped by 5 new prescription drugs reported EBIT of 3.58 billion euros, compared to poor returns of 555 million euros on the polyurethane and polymers used for laptops to soccer balls in the Materials Science division. CEO Dekkers is a Dutch born executive who worked for 25 years in the U.S. Since taking over in 2010 he has brought a significant culture change to Bayer, by insisting on speed and agility from executives. Division heads with marketing backgrounds are preferred to science degrees, and the planning orientation of the company is being changed to one where the company executives are not afraid to take risks based on incomplete information. Dekkers prefers an IPO for the $10 billion plastics business to generate more cash and reduce the debt of 20 billion euros. He acquired the over the counter drug business of Merck for $14.2 billion, and has boosted drug sales with the introduction of Xarelto in partnership with J&J, eye treatment Eylea, cancer drugs Stivarga and Xofigo, pulmonary hypertension drug Adempas. Sales of these 5 drugs are expected to go up from 2.9 billion euros in 2014 to 4 billion euros in 2015, contributing significantly to Bayer's profits. Dekker's venture capitalist type focus on profit margins is showing results in share price performance- Bayer's share price has advanced 60% in 2015 mid-March price of 145.85 euros compared to the prior year month. In the small town of Leverkusen, Germany, where Bayer is located, there were initially fears that Dekkers was "too American" and too focussed on shareholder value to understand the need to respect tradition. Since then Germans have realized that Dekkers understands tradition and is only bringing necessary change- the transition to being a life sciences company makes sense to shareholders in Germany, for employee representatives on the supervisory board the guarantee of current level of 17,000 jobs in the plastics division for a few years shows his concern for job protection during the transition period. For Dekkers who left Holland in 1985, and has a U.S. passport with an American wife and kids who speak no Dutch or German, the important thing is to get the right balance- he says the system of 99-1 where 99% of the information had to be in before a decision could be made is making the change to 90-10 where only 90% of the information is now necessary to go ahead, even if he would like to see it at 80-20. Bayer still sponsors the local soccer team known as Bayer Leverkausen, and 26 other clubs. Dekkers steps down at the end of 2016....

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Amitabh Kant reflects on his 6 years at Niti Ayog planning for development in India. He says energy transition is an important part of development for India. The integration of India as a major part of a new supply chain for the free world is a critical part of India's development. Kant talks about the aspirational districts program that covers transformation of the lives of 80% of India's people living in 112 districts. Moving India up by 79 positions on the World Bank Ease of Doing Business rankings is also one of the tasks he looks back at with a sense of achievement. Parmeswaran Iyer who headed the Swachh Bharat and Jal Jeevan Missions will now be new head of NIti Aayog, the organization that is driving India's development to 2030 and 2040. Niti Ayog stands for National Institute for Transforming India. Its pillars are- 1. Pro-people  2. Pro-Activity  3.Participation 4. Empowering 5. Inclusion of All 6. Equality 7. Transparency It has a maximum of 4 members. Suman Bery is vice chairperson appointed in March 2022. The members are appointed by the prime minister. It is different from the earlier Planning Commissions under Nehru in that it does the work of being a think tank yet the allocation of funds and decisions come under the prime minister and the finance ministry. ...