Malaysian Palm Trees For China?

HONG KONG -- The Malaysian government is reportedly preparing something special for Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit to Malaysia next week -- a deal to sell 10% stakes in Sime Darby, the world's largest listed oil palm plantations group.Shares of Sime Darby Bhd ( smebf - news - people )continued to rise, adding 0.8% to 9.00 ringgits ($2.63) on Thursday afternoon, extending the rally which began in early September when local media reported that the Malaysian government had offered China a portion of the country's biggest listed company. Even though Prime Minister Najib Razak dismissed the reports, Sime Dary kept on climbing and reached its 52-week peak of 9.13 ringgits ($2.67) on Oct 23.The share sale speculation was spreading even faster this week after Beijing announced that Hu would visit Malaysia from Nov. 10 to Nov. 11 on his way to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Singapore. During his stay, Hu is scheduled to hold talks with Najib.Sime Darby didn't respond to the news reports. A 10% shareholding in Sime Darby Bhd was worth 5.4 billion ringgits ($1.6 billion), based on Thursday's share price. Formed by the merger of the Golden Hope Group, the Kumpulan Guthrie Group and Sime Darby Group in 2007, the new Sime Darby Bhd is now the world's largest listed oil palm plantations group by planted land area, and also the largest company by market value listed on Bursa Malaysia, with core businesses in plantations, property, motoring and heavy equipment, as well as energy & ...
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Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall

On June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Berlin Wall, the Brandenburg Gate rising behind him, to deliver a speech I had drafted. "General Secretary Gorbachev," the president said, "if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate."Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate."Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"Back in Washington a few weeks earlier, the State Department and National Security Council had objected to this passage, arguing that it would sound unduly provocative. Yet when I asked the president what message he wanted to convey to the East--conducting research in Berlin, I had learned that listeners throughout East Germany would be able to hear the speech on their radios--Reagan singled out this part of the draft. "That wall has to come down," the president replied. "That's what I'd like to say to them." The State Department and National Security Council made repeated attempts to strike the passage; the president overruled them. A year-and-a-half after Reagan delivered the address, the Berlin Wall came down.This may sound like an odd admission, but for years afterward I wondered whether President Reagan's Berlin Wall address had really mattered. Only a single piece of evidence that the speech had produced any practical results ever came to my attention. At lunch in the White House mess a week after the speech, a member of the National Security Council staff told me that our intelligence services had picked up unusual cable traffic between Moscow and East Germany. The Soviets, the cable traffic showed, wanted the East Germans to make the Berlin Wall less offensive to the West, opening more checkpoints or easing travel restrictions on people who wanted to visit their relatives. "Each generation of Soviet leaders," said the NSC staffer, who after opposing the Berlin Wall address had changed his mind about it, "needs to be reminded that the wall is a public relations disas...
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Pay For Results, Not Effort

Suppose you are a hedge fund manager, and you have a $100 million hedged position, but you can't trade for 15 seconds because your Internet router goes down. How much could it cost you? That question is posed by Morris A. Cohen, professor of operations and information management at Wharton. Even during the recent stock market slump, the sum would be considerable, which is why hedge fund managers want to make sure such incidents are few and far between. One way to do that, says Cohen, is to set up a performance-based contracting (PBC) arrangement with an IT service provider, which would charge a fee based on the amount of time it provides uninterrupted Internet access. But if you took Cohen's advice, would you be getting better value than if you paid the IT service provider for repairs every time your Internet connection was down? It's a question that Cohen has spent the past several years researching with Sang-Hyun Kim, a professor at Yale University's School of Management; Wharton operations and information management professor Serguei Netessine; and Wharton doctoral student Jose A. Guajardo. According to the researchers, they now have breakthrough evidence that supports PBC, which they outline in a forthcoming paper titled, "Impact of Performance-Based Contracting on Product Reliability: An Empirical Analysis."PBC--also known as performance-based logistics (PBL) or power by the hour (PBH) in some circles--isn't new, though its use has been limited. Often associated with maintenance agreements at aerospace and defense companies, it was first embraced by the likes of U.K.-based aircraft engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce ( ...
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British Aerospace Flying Steady

LONDON -- It's not hard to find storm clouds on the horizon for aerospace and defense companies. Airlines are still under pressure from falling passenger traffic and rocky finances, making them less likely to place orders for new planes or engines. As for defense, the Obama administration in the United States is trying to extricate itself from Iraq and clutching for some sort of end game in Afghanistan, while calling loudly for restraint in military spending.But British defense contractor BAE Systems ( BAESY - news - people ) and engine-maker Rolls Royce ( RYCEY - news - people ), which both reported six-month results on Wednesday, are actually surviving remarkably well in both their respective fields. Rolls-Royce is benefiting from its exposure to multiple stages of an engine's lifespan--not just the initial sale of the product but servicing and maintenance--as well as orders for planes bought in the tail-end of the boom times in 2008. BAE Systems, although it missed earnings expectations due to weakness in land vehicle sales, has a very diverse business and still expects "good growth" this year."If you compare ...
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T-Pain: Car Guy

This is T-Pain's year. After going unranked on last year's Hip Hop Cash Kings list, he skyrocketed to No. 9 on this year's list, raking in $15 million. (The fact that he named his bulldog "Forbes" might have led to some good karma, he says.) Best known for his recent hits "Blame It" (with Jamie Foxx) and "Buy U a Drank," the Grammy-winner from Tallahassee, Fla., is a car aficionado who owns a customization shop, Auto Extremes, in Conyers, Ga. He says he buys the cars just because he loves them, not for investment purposes, although his collection of 32 is worth more than $4 million at current market value. (See "Cars of the Cash Kings.")We took a tour of Pain's garage on a hot Atlanta afternoon to get the scoop. (See the video "T-Pain's Royal Rides.") Forbes: Tell us about your first car. T-Pain: My first car was an '84 Ford Taurus. It caught on fire from me trying to change the fuel pump, so that wasn't good at all. Dried leaves on the ground while I was trying to change the fuel pump. Don't do that. Do it on concrete. Your most recent purchase is a Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe, right? The Phantom is my newest baby. For me it was a jealousy factor. I just saw so many of my friends with Phantoms. DJ Khaled had one, and I think I work a little more hard than DJ Kahled, so I figured I deserve one. The Phantom is Raymond, because that was the first dude that bought it for $2 million. His name is engraved in the glove compartment, so I figured, why not call it Raymond? What makes you d...
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Hire Bigger Than You Are

Scottish advertising genius David Ogilvy (1911-1999) gave the world memorable ad campaigns such as "the man in the Hathaway shirt" and maybe the neatest headline ever for a car ad: "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock."Ogilvy also wrote two books regarded as classics in the ad game: Confessions of an Advertising Man and Ogilvy on Advertising. Ogilvy liked detailed research (he once worked at George Gallup's Audience Research Institute) and direct marketing. His insights on these subjects have value for Web commerce even today. You can bet Ogilvy's books are read at Google ( GOOG - news - people ).But Ogilvy on Advertising is also a great leadership book. Ogilvy describes how he built his ad firm into a global giant. Recruiting good people was the key. "When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain," wrote Ogilvy, "I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. If he has the curiosity to open it, and keep opening it until he comes to the inside of the smallest doll, he finds this message:"If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger ...
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