Geoff Colvin's Blog, page 12

Making big drugs during troubled times - (Jul. 9, 2009)

Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer's job is to produce blockbuster drugs. Will health-care reform make that harder?(Fortune Magazine)—These are momentous times for Amgen, the world's largest biotech company. The health-care revolution brewing in Washington could be dramatically good news or bad for a business whose drugs tend to be life-changing—and highly expensive. Also on deck this year is a critical FDA decision on Amgen's denosumab, a possible blockbuster treatment for osteoporosis and bone cancer o...

National healthcare may never happen - ( Jul. 7, 2009)

Americans love the idea of insurance for all - until they realize how much it will cost them.NEW YORK (Fortune)—The latest polling looks great for President Obama: It shows that Americans love national health care. If history and polling trends are any guide, however, that will change. Voters right now are in what the famous pollster Daniel Yankelovich called the Wishful Thinking stage—a moment in the life of an opinion analogous to the dreamy early days of a relationship. Yankelovich believe...

Bussiness gets taxed, workers get hurt - (Jun. 29, 2009)

The Obama administration wants to whack companies with stiff new taxes, but the real victims are already suffering enough.(Fortune Magazine)—Sometimes what's politically irresistible is economically nonsensical, as we may soon be reminded. The Obama administration, desperate for revenue and spotting an easy target, is proposing three hefty tax increases on business. If the administration gets its way, the result will be bad news for all Americans. The first instance of dangerously mixing poli...

Geoff Colvin on The Upside of the Downturn

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The Upside of the Downturn - (May 28, 2009)

This recession will change the course of your career. Whether you're damaged or strengthened depends on the way you respond. Can you rise to the challenge?(Fortune Magazine) -- The recession that followed World War II was hard on everybody, but it was especially tough for Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. Supplying equipment to the government had been a big part of their young company's business, and that revenue mostly disappeared when the war ended. Beyond that problem, the overall economic co...

When government calls the shots - (April 1st, 2009)

(Fortune Magazine)—Forget about the debate over stimulus "coordination" coming out of the March G-20 meeting, or whether some countries, like France and Germany, should do more. The fact is, between China's $586 billion stimulus, Japan's $200 billion, and U.S. government outlays that will soon be the highest share of GDP since World War II, we're already looking at more than $2 trillion of added government spending worldwide in response to this recession. That's an unprecedented global wave, ...

Layoffs cost more than you think - (March 17, 2009)

(Fortune Magazine)—As Warren Buffett likes to say, "It's better to be approximately right than precisely wrong." Every CEO should remember those words when confronting the powerful temptation to lay people off. When you're desperate to save money, calculating the savings from firing staff is easy. But figuring the costs - the real costs - is hard. In fact, you can't do it precisely. So a lot of managers, rather than trying to get the costs approximately right, just assume that they equal the ...

Chris Dodd wants to scrap your bonus- (March 6th, 2009)

p>(Fortune Magazine)—When Senator Chris Dodd, (D-Connecticut) crammed what he dubbed "tough new limits" on "lavish Wall Street bonuses" into the stimulus package, he may have created a bigger problem for the economy than the one he was trying to solve. The reason? His plan inadvertently rewards nonperformance and will drive talented financiers away from the companies that need them most. "There will be a flood of top performers leaving for positions that have no restrictions," says Richard Sm...