As the dust settles on the recent frenzy of private equity deals (including transactions topping $20 billion), what lessons can companies glean? Directors and executives of public companies may now be slightly less fearful of imminent takeover, yet the pressure remains: They face shareholders who wonder why they aren’t getting private-equity-level returns. Rather than dismiss the value private equity has created as manipulated or aberrant, public company leaders should recognize the disciplined …

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The Senate Banking Committee just approved a tighter definition of currency “manipulation” and the Finance Committee recently increased the penalties for alleged currency manipulators. While both committees are trying to reduce the large U.S. trade deficit with China, it would be more fruitful to examine the reluctance of Chinese consumers to buy imported goods and services. They understandably have deep concerns about their country’s weak social safety net. And without adequate retirement security or catastrophic medical insurance, rational Chinese consumers ..read more

Almost 10% of U.S. public companies announced a record 1,420 financial restatements in 2006. It was a record — but continues an accelerating trend of financial restatements, from 2% in 2000 and more than 4% in 2004.

These restatements impose large costs on the capital markets. The GAO estimated that, between July 2002 and September 2005, the market capitalizations of restating companies decreased by a total of $36 billion in the days immediately following the initial restatement. Two academic studies have ..read more

Reiterating his Social Security reform proposals first outlined in a primetime news conference, President Bush called on Congress to consider his proposal to allow benefits for lower income earners to increase more quickly than for more wealthy individuals.

The idea the president is referring to is called progressive indexing. Its author is Robert Pozen. Mr. Pozen is chairman of MFS Investment Management in Boston and served as a member of President Bush’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security.

In the last decade, the number of mutual funds has tripled to more than 6,000 funds with more than $4 trillion in assets and more than 60 million individual shareholders. Yet there is no book on the mutual fund business designed for MBA and undergraduate business courses. The Mutual Fund Business, assembled by a leading industry expert, fills this gap.

The book is divided into four parts. Part I contains a general introduction to mutual funds, a short history of the ..read more