Word: retailing
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...Germany the third most attractive country in which to invest, behind China and the U.S. Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank reported healthy profits in the first three months of 2004, after heavy losses for the same period last year, a sign that German banks can succeed by cutting excess retail staff and pruning bad debt. Media companies like Axel Springer, publisher of Bild and Die Welt, are bouncing back from a crippling advertising drought. Companies are winning important labor concessions. Siemens just sealed deals with workers in two of its mobile-phone factories to increase the workweek from...
Germany's biggest problem is Zukunftsangst (fear of the future). Uncertainty has led to declining membership in political parties, an increase in stress-related illness and consumers who cocoon at home rather than go out for a little retail therapy. It has more and more people "going to Balconia"--passing up a traditional holiday for staying home to water the geraniums. And as companies move production farther east, to the new E.U. member states and Asia, to avoid strict employment laws and high labor costs, German industry is gradually being hollowed out. In 1993, for example, Siemens employed...
Spurning conventional retail wisdom, designers like Bernard Willhelm and Kostas Murkudis sell their clothes in anonymous shops in the Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg districts; shoppers track down the addresses through friends, clubs or posters plastered around the city. Many retailers take out short leases, so their establishments come and go in a matter of months, while the locations of shops like Apartment and clubs like Fun are passed on by word of mouth. Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo was so inspired by Berlin's transient scene that she opened her own "guerrilla" Comme des Garcons store in East Berlin in February...
...buying frenzy. A desire to boost earnings with new retail customers, combined with a general pickup in mergers and acquisitions, has rekindled a decades-old trend of bank consolidation. The banking industry has announced $114 billion worth of M&A's so far this year, including the $58 billion blockbuster that brought together...
Bank One and J.P. Morgan Chase. Now the pairings are trickling down the asset chain. In late August Citigroup said it was buying its way into retail banking in Texas by acquiring privately held First American Bank. Two days later, Canada's Toronto-Dominion Bank announced it would spend $3.8 billion for 51% of Banknorth Group, based in Portland, Maine, which is itself expanding southward by acquisition...