When real money is at stake, it tends to clarify the mind, and for over a decade, Anne-Marie Fink has had literally billions of dollars resting on her assessments of companies. As an equity analyst and professional investor, she has been charged with understanding whether businesses are solid, long-term moneymakers–or rotten tomatoes–before investing with them. She has had unusual access to an incredible variety of businesses, from entertainment conglomerates to newspapers, Internet companies, airlines, railroads, furniture manufacturers, auto suppliers, staffing agencies, and others. Well known for her ability to drill down to the details and understand what makes a business tick, she has skillfully dissected the story of many a CEO and talked with people up and down the ranks, as well as customers, suppliers, regulators, distributors, bankers, and rivals–anyone who could give her insight on a company’s operations. The result is a book of great originality–an unusual and perceptive look at business that busts myths and conventional thinking. Based on what she and her investing colleagues have seen firsthand, Anne-Marie Fink’s The Moneymakers provides a highly pragmatic framework for thriving in our hypercompetitive world. They include: • Shrink to grow: Why expanding a bad (low-return) business means you just have more of a problem, and how a step backward is often the best way forward. • Good performance requires inefficiency and duplication: How maximum efficiencyproduces suboptimal results by stifling innovation. • Don’t be a customer fanatic: How to know when to listen to and when to ignore your customers. • Economics always trumps management: Ignore bedrock economic laws–such as supply and demand–at your peril; it is akin to ordering the tides to stay in place. • Why happy employees don’t make for high-performance workplaces. • Problems in business are like cockroaches–there’s never just one: How to catch problems before they infest your company. • Avoid the trap of profitless growth: Additional profitis an illusion if it consumes too much capital. • Megatrends start as ripples: How to position your business to ride long-term waves, not be drowned by them.

Economic power is becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few, even as democratic movements worldwide allow for political power to be dispersed among the many. With their access to influence, the wealthy can shape and constrain the political power of the rest of the world. As the economic dominance of an elite minority coincides with the forces of globalization, is oligarchy becoming the dominant political regime? This collection explores the renewed relevance of oligarchy to contemporary global politics. By drawing out lessons from classic texts, contributors illustrate how the character of oligarchical regimes informs contemporary political life. Topics include the relationship between the American government and corporations, the tension between republican and oligarchical regimes, and the potential conflicts that have opened up between economic management and political life. On Oligarchy deftly illuminates the significance of this regime in the context of pressing global economic and political issues.

Executive Intelligence zeros in on leadership smarts and notes that in all lists compiled by leadership experts, head hunters, and boards of directors the one and only trait that appears in all is intelligence. Obvious? No, because typically leadership savvy regularly trumps smarts. That is unfortunate because it obscures the cultivation and development of how leaders think, speculate, conceive, and problem solve their own firms and the way they lead. Executive intelligence like emotional intelligence acts like an advanced scout sizing up situations, identifying mine fields, creating contingencies, developing last minute ways out, and then acting like the artful dodger. In the process, the leader develops a special kind of intelligence tied to and defining the kind if leader he or she is; and that ultimately generates the leader's edge and comparative advantage.

"Templar presents 100 golden behaviors for creating wealth, making it grow, and making it last--rules that work and techniques readers can begin using immediately"--Publisher description.