- ECONOMIC STRATEGY
- FINANCIAL REPORTING AND RISK MANAGEMENT
- STRATEGIC CONSULTING
- FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
- FORENSIC PRACTICE AND LITIGATION SUPPORT
- CORPORATE STRATEGY: HOW ENTREPRENEURS CAN SURVIVE IN AN HYPERCOMPETITIVE WORLD
- INNOVATION
- CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND INTERNAL CONTROL
ECONOMIC STRATEGY
To get success in our own organisation is necessary to know how the rest of the worldwide players are doing. That is strategy, as Professor Marcelo Elizondo says. Marcelo has an MBA at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, España; lawyer at the University of Buenos Aires and post degree specialization in Harvard University (USA) and in Strategy in University of Chile. He is Santa Fe Business school director in that field of knowledge.
Read about him:
A very profitable period for Latin America. Over the last years Latin America economy has been better off than many other economies in the world. In fact, that good period is expected to continue in 2013. As a result, it is foreseen the following increase in the gross product all 2013 year long:
- Worldwide level: 3%
- The United States of America: 2%
- Euro-Zone: 0.2%
- Japan: 1.1%
- Asia: 6.8%
- Latin America: 3,9%
Continue Reading Professor Marcelo Elizondo conclusions at http://www.consultoradni.com/latin-america-country-by-country/
FINANCIAL REPORTING AND RISK MANAGEMENT
Jim Peterson is a US-trained and qualified lawyer, concentrating for over thirty-five years on complex multi-national matters involving corporate financial information.
In both law firm and individual practice, he has represented global companies, the international accounting firms and their professional groups in disputes, negotiations, government agency proceedings and standard-setting, as well as advising at senior levels in the underlying strategic debates. You can find anything you need to know about those matters at Santa Fe Academic Board seminars.
Some Jim’s recent conclusions:
Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) chairman James Doty, described the changes proposed on August 13 to the long-standard auditors’ report to “mark a watershed moment”.
The releases from the large firms ranged from the straight-forward (PwC) to the enthusiastic (KPMG), with the expected cheer-leading coming from their flacks; muted criticism from Tony Catanach’s Grumpy Old Accountants and the corporate bar; along with a predictable flag of litigation risk from the Journal of Accountancy.
With formal comments due to the PCAOB by December 11, and as the polite applause dies down, a cooler perspective should see this tinkering as no more a “game change” than raising the stakes from a penny to a nickel.
Continue reading Jim in http://www.jamesrpeterson.com/
STRATEGIC CONSULTING
Our Academic Board member Professor Andrea Pitasi has a PhD in sociology, and a Master in Political Sciences. He is professor at the University of Bologna and Scientific Director Honorary President at the World Complexity Science Academy.
The global challenges of our times involving the new shapes of intellectual capitalism, energy policies, demographic explosion and the link convergent technology development-welfare options, cannot be faced locally though an old-fashioned institutional point of view. A new mindset is required, and Professor Andrea Pitasi calls it the mindset of the Wide Horizon Leader.
WHLs are hypercitizens. They are cosmopolitan and entrepreneurial – whatever their job might be. They trust in and support the organizational autonomy of emerging networks from the planetary “societal trends”, and they know science is not perfection.
Continue reading at www.andreapitasi.com
FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
Academic Board member Claudio Zuchovicki, holds a Master degree on Administration and a post degree in Finances in Chicago. He is professor at several universities on financial matters, and a permanent writer on matters of his specialty.
Today majority of advices we receive on what to do with our finances in the complex economic world we are living, are born on the executive desks of the main financial companies, mainly investment banks or rating agencies. The problem that is arising on that type of advices is that the producers of such information are part of the system, and therefore are judge and part at the same time.
I understand and justify their need to inform to the public, because at the end of the day, that is their business, that is to produce an investment rotation (understand it as to produce more commissions in operations where the risk is being taken by others named “clients”) and to get from those clients more business showing efficiency on their predictions.
Now the question is: We the readers of those predictions, those who receive their advices, what it is supposed we have to do?
Continue reading Claudio Zuchovicki at www.solofinanzaspersonalesblogspot.com.ar
FORENSIC PRACTICE AND LITIGATION SUPPORT
Our director Pablo Fudim, holds a degree as Public Accountant, Certified Internal Audit (USA), Quality Evaluator (Internal Audit Society, USA), Anti-corruption post degree and a Master in Intelligence (UNLP). He is visitor professor at several Latin American universities.
Pablo cites de last recommendation issued by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners:
The field of risk management has attracted increased mainstream attention in the wake of the economic meltdown as the public has begun to comprehend the negative effects of uncontained risk. Unfortunately, many risk management professionals tend to underestimate the role of fraud in the scope of their professional duties.
With organizations losing an estimated 5% of their annual revenues to fraud, the need for a strong anti-fraud stance and proactive, comprehensive approach to combating fraud is clear. As organizations increase their focus on risk, they should take the opportunity to consider, enact and improve measures to detect, deter and prevent fraud. This course will explain how organizations can integrate anti-fraud initiatives into their risk management programs to:
- Develop a system of internal controls to address the entity’s fraud risks
- Identify, assess and manage fraud risks from all sources
- Support fraud risk management initiatives by establishing an anti-fraud culture, and promoting fraud awareness throughout the organization
- Address and respond to any identified instances of fraud
CORPORATE STRATEGY: HOW ENTREPRENEURS CAN SURVIVE IN AN HYPERCOMPETITIVE WORLD
Manuel SBDAR holds a degree in Economic Sciences in Argentina and a MBA in ESADE Business School, Barcelona. Founder and former director of Executive Education Program at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, and former director of ESADE Business School in Buenos Aires Executive Education; and presently director of MATERIABIZZ Business School.
SMEs are, under any circumstance, terminally ill patients. They have just few minutes to abandon the living world. Clinic researches say that eight out of ten of those companies disappear before the sixth year of life.
So what to do? What not to be done?
We have to mix all the cards from the same deck and start playing again. This last is not a trivial decision. The first thing is to be willing to do so. To break, destroy, sweeping away everything and thinking from scratch.
Why do I exist? I am sure that the reason that supports your company today is quite different form of that of five years from now. There are two main arguments supports that affirmation: the first is that we are not alone in the market, the second is that nothing lasts forever.
It is necessary to build up a new matrix that could allow us to position our company again on the peak of the market. It would be easier to apply again the already known Ansoff matrix, using what I know what to do and searching for new markets and new demanders. In those new markets there already exist other people that do not want you to be. Even more, they are waiting for you to push you out.
Continue reading Manuel Sbdar at www.materiabiz.com
INNOVATION
As our President has expressed in several documents, innovation is the final decision emergent from complex systems applied to the social economic environment.
What is a corporation? Just an idea that a group of living beings transforms in an organization. It is a philosophy that after being consented generates a model that is the matrix along the different decisions shall be implemented. That model shall produce rules that will coordinate the daily work.
But although philosophy has a very strong level of stability, that set of ideas that have generated a corporation are a product of the habitat in which that business unit will live.
And because life is emergent and mutant, innovation is definitely the way to update the corporation profile to new demand requisites, new market values and a permanent changing environment.
Without innovation, corporations will die -like dinosaurs did some 66 millions of years ago, although when they were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for 135 million years.
Seminars on innovation are conducted by Alfredo Spilzinger.
CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND INTERNAL CONTROL
As it was said by the International Finance Corporation in the seminar paper “Corporate Governance and Development”, there exist as very strong link between corporate governance and economic development and well-being.
That is, that better-governed corporate frameworks benefit firms through greater access to financing, lower cost of capital, better firm performance, and more favorable treatment of all stakeholders. Numerous studies agree that these channels operate not only at the firm level, but also in sectors and countries—with corporate governance being the cause.
There is also evidence that when a country’s overall corporate governance and property rights systems are weak, voluntary and market corporate governance mechanisms have more limited effectiveness. Importantly, the dynamic aspects of corporate governance—that is, how corporate governance regimes change over time and what the impacts of these changes are –are receiving more attention. Less evidence is available on the direct links between corporate governance and social outcomes, including poverty and environmental performance. There are also some specific corporate governance issues in various regions and countries that have not yet been analyzed in detail. In particular, the special corporate governance issues of banks, family-owned firms, and state-owned firms are not well understood; neither are the nature and determinants of public and private enforcement.
Consequently, and following that consensus, our Business School conducts permanent seminars to facilitate SANTA FE ASSOCIATES member firms to implement controls and to identify policies needed to be applied on corporate governance to reach a global benefit.
The said seminar is leaded by Professor Pablo Fudim and a set of very qualified professionals.