Businessmen of the Year

Rebecca Buckman, 12.08.08, 12:00 AM EST

China's Yang Yuanqing and American William Amelio pursue a different PC strategy for Lenovo, challenging mindsets and market dips along the way.

Forbes Asia's first such honorees from a Chinese company are actually not to be found in China in the normal course of business. Silicon Valley correspondent Rebecca Buckman did get lucky on her visit to the Beijing offices--Lenovo Group Chairman Yang Yuanqing was in China for a Wal-Mart conference and other company business. Usually he's in Raleigh, North Carolina, as Buckman's story that follows explains. ceo William Amelio can be anywhere: working out of his office in Singapore, jetting to a foreign locale or hunkering down in a hotel (as long as it has a gym). Such is the stuff of a modern technology concern, although Lenovo is clearly a special case.

In this year of crashing markets few companies are immune from the effects. Yang and Amelio now have something else to work through. But the record to date, including managing the absorption of a signature Western brand, bodes well for the future of a global company with Chinese characteristics. As tech analyst Ezra Gottheil says, "They're trying to pull something off in two years that takes most companies five or ten." And they're doing pretty well.

Thanks to some timely tailoring, shares of Gap (GPS) jumped 27% on Nov. 21 even as the retailer's sales fell 8%.

The reason for the favorable reaction was another round of successful cost-cutting at Gap, which boosted profits despite the reluctance of consumers to spend at Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy stores.

Across the economy, corporate executives are looking to follow a similar strategy. As a potentially nasty recession sets in and revenues drop, firms are forced to cut their way toward higher profits.

Some analysts predict the Gap can continue boosting profits next year even as revenues decline. But eventually, many analysts say, Gap must find a way to draw more shoppers' dollars—not just cut costs through inventory controls, shrinking real estate holdings, or other measures.

A Short-Term Strategy

"While expense management has been impressive, we continue to wonder how sustainable earnings growth is longer-term with deteriorating sales and given a bleaker economic outlook in '09," wrote Banc of America (BAC) analyst Dana Cohen. (BofA handles banking services for Gap.)

Many other firms are taking similar cost-cutting steps, which often involve large rounds of layoffs. Dell (DELL) was also able to increase profits last quarter despite falling sales. The computer maker said it has cut 11,000 jobs in the past year.

"It's a necessary strategy, but it's a short-term strategy," says Dan Genter, chief executive and chief investment officer at RNC Genter. After a certain point, you're no longer cutting fat from your budget, he says—you're cutting bone.

For some firms, cost-cutting can be a healthy process that repositions them for future growth. Greg Estes, portfolio manager at Intrepid Capital Management, cites Starbucks (SBUX), which is shutting down less profitable coffee shops after "growing too fast" for several years. "If and when a positive environment returns, they'll be in a better position [with] better margins and a better portfolio of stores," says Estes, whose funds own Starbucks stock.

However, Estes says that, with some exceptions, it's generally very difficult to cut costs significantly for more than four quarters. After a while, though you may be widening profit margins, you're shrinking the entire firm.

When Are Cuts Permanent?

The financial sector is the most glaring example of these sorts of permanent cost cuts. Faced with a financial crisis and a tough economy, financial firms are slashing costs, shrinking expenses and perks, and laying off hundreds of thousands of workers—sometime alongside mergers with weaker rivals, sometimes not.

For example, Citigroup (C), the recipient of a federal government bailout Nov. 24, "may end up being a shadow of what it was," Genter says. Citi, like other financial firms, faces the problem of leverage, he says. Because it built its business on borrowed money, its contraction is more striking and more permanent when that leverage goes away.

In corporate board rooms, there is a raging debate on how much and how quickly to cut as the economy slows down. If you believe the recession will be over by mid-2009, you may want to hold onto valuable employees and keep facilities open so you can profit from the recovery.

Talk about a holiday surprise. Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) announced just a week before Black Friday, the biggest sales day of the year, that it would have a new chief executive officer come February. Lee Scott, the company's CEO for the past nine years, is stepping down. He'll be replaced by Michael Duke, , 58, who currently leads the company's international division.

Retailers traditionally don't make such appointments right in the middle of their biggest selling season. But longtime Wal-Mart watchers see the change as more of a victory lap than a forced departure for the 59-year-old Scott, whose tenure had been marred by disappointing results and controversy until this year. "He's dealt with the public relations, the vicious union attacks, he's gotten morale back up—the best thing to do is leave at a moment of strength," says Howard Davidowitz, a retail consultant with his own firm in New York. "When you talk about management transition, this is as good as it gets."

Strategy Shift Lures Back Customers

Even long-term critics, such as the union-funded Wal-Mart Watch campaign, applauded the news, sort of. "Wal-Mart's announcement must be viewed in the context of the recent election," the group said in a statement. "It represents an opportunity for Wal-Mart to change from the low-wage, low-benefit business model to one that will be more appealing to an Obama Administration."

Wal-Mart's reputation took a beating in recent years as critics complained of its skimpy employee pay and health-care benefits as well as big-box stores that decimated smaller hometown rivals. Moreover, the nation's largest retailer seemed to lose its low-price focus, chasing designer apparel much like rivals Target (TGT) and Kohl's (KSS). Investors were disappointed, too, as the company's costly new store launches cannibalized sales at existing locations and Wal-Mart's once soaring stock price was relegated to the bargain bin.

The sorry streak began to change this year, in part due to the slumping economy luring customers back (BusinessWeek, 10/30/08) for cheap prices. Yet that shift was also aided in part by changes the retailer made in the past two years. Wal-Mart has been opening fewer locations and smaller stores when it does. A store remodeling program introduced skylights, wider aisles, and warmer colors to Wal-Mart's characteristically cold and cluttered layout. The company has also been editing its product assortment, focusing mostly on top sellers sold at rock-bottom prices. This holiday shopping season the chain is heavily promoting brand-name toys at $10 each.

Sales and Stock Up

As a result, Wal-Mart has been posting sales results sharply better than rivals in what is shaping up to be one of the worst sales years on record. Wal-Mart's stock is up this year, a rarity in the current dismal market. "This is Wal-Mart time," Scott told Wall Street analysts Oct. 27 during an annual presentation at company headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. "This is the kind of environment that Sam Walton built this company for." Wal-Mart shares rose slightly, to 51, on the news of Duke's appointment.

With the U.S. election just days away, it has never been
more important to consider what the next President must do to keep America competitive. In this time of crisis, Washington has focused on the immediate and the short term. Lost are the more basic questions we really need to worry about: What is the fundamental competitive position of the U.S. in the global economy? And what must we do to remain strong when other nations are making rapid progress?

The stark truth is that the U.S. has no long-term economic strategy—no coherent set of policies to ensure competitiveness over the long haul. Strategy embodies clear priorities, based on understanding the strengths we need to preserve and the weaknesses that threaten our prosperity the most. Strategy addresses what to do, but also what not to do. In dealing with a crisis, experience teaches us that steps to address the immediate problem must support a long-term strategy. Yet it is far from clear that we are taking the steps most important to America's long-term economic prosperity.

America's political system, especially as it has evolved in recent times, almost guarantees an absence of strategic thinking at the federal level. Government leaders react to current events piecemeal, rather than developing a strategy that unfolds over years. Congress and the Executive Branch are organized around discrete policy areas, not around the overall goal of improving competitiveness. Neither candidate has put forward anything close to a strategy; rather, each has presented a set of disconnected policy proposals with political appeal. Both parties contribute to the problem by approaching the economy with long-held ideologies and policy positions, many of which no longer fit with today's reality.

Now is the moment when the U.S. needs to break this cycle. The American economy has performed remarkably well, but our continued competitiveness has become fragile. Over the last two decades the U.S. has accounted for an incredible one-third of world economic growth. As the financial crisis hit, the rest of the American economy remained quite competitive, with many companies performing strongly in international markets. U.S. productivity growth has continued to be faster than in most other advanced economies, and exports have been the growth driver in the overall economy.

THE AGE OF ANXIETY

Yet our success has come with deep insecurities for many Americans, even before the crisis. The emergence of China and India as global players has sparked deep fears for U.S. jobs and wages, despite unemployment rates that have been low by historical standards. While the U.S. economy has been a stronger net job creator than most advanced countries, the high level of job churn (restructuring destroys about 30 million jobs per year) makes many Americans fear for their future, their pensions, and their health care. While the standard of living has risen over the last several decades for all income groups, especially when properly adjusted for family size, and while the U.S. remains the land where lower-income citizens have the best chance of moving up the economic ladder, inequality has risen. This has caused many Americans to question globalization.

To reconcile these conflicting perspectives, it's necessary to assess where America really stands. The U.S. has prospered because it has enjoyed a set of unique competitive strengths. First, the U.S. has an unparalleled environment for entrepreneurship and starting new companies.

Second, U.S. entrepreneurship has been fed by a science, technology, and innovation machine that remains by far the best in the world. While other countries increase their spending on research and development, the U.S. remains uniquely good at coaxing innovation out of its research and translating those innovations into commercial products. In 2007, American inventors registered about 80,000 patents in the U.S. patent system, where virtually all important technologies developed in any nation are patented. That's more than the rest of the world combined.

As of Oct. 7 retirement plans had lost as much as $2 trillion over 15 months, or some 20% of their value, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That has many workers wondering how they'll be able to retire and whether everything they thought they knew about investing has been turned on its head. Diversification across sectors and countries, for example, was supposed to protect investments, but few areas of the market have been spared. And what future returns can be expected from stocks and bonds? Have all of our rules of thumb gone out the window? We asked Jack Bogle, founder of fund giant Vanguard Group and a pioneer in the investment indexing business; and Zvi Bodie, a finance professor at Boston University School of Management, co-author of the leading finance textbook Investments and an expert on retirement security, to discuss issues facing savers and investors today. Christopher Farrell launched a discussion between the market veterans by asking if diversification remains a bedrock strategy. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

Jack Bogle: I am a believer in diversification. You buy index funds for stocks, and your bond portion should equal your age. This is how I invest, so I know how little it's hurt me to have a substantial position in U.S. bonds. I'm in half Treasuries, half corporates.

The most common diversification talked about is international. What's wrong is that as soon as people start really talking about it and believing in it, international stocks are overpriced. About 80% of money going into equity funds last year was going into international. If that isn't a warning sign! Here we are: The U.S. is one of the better-performing world markets. From the market peak in 2007, the S&P 500 is off 42.5%, international [measured by the MSCI EAFE Index of developed countries] is down 49.4%, and emerging markets [measured by the MSCI Emerging Markets Index] by 55.8%.

In recent years, international investing has had a higher correlation with the U.S. market than was traditional. If you invest internationally, you have to invest in foreign companies not as diversifiers but wealth producers. If you like international, get in gradually, maybe with 20% of your portfolio, half in developing markets and half in emerging markets. Europe looks a lot like us, so it's at least possible you might get a better return out of emerging markets. I don't invest internationally myself.

Zvi Bodie: I want to add something that strengthens your case. In markets like China, retail investors can invest only in the tiny fraction of equity investments traded on a stock exchange. So compared with the equity investments there that aren't traded on the exchange, those investments are way overpriced. A much better way to invest is to buy U.S. companies doing direct foreign investment in China.

I distinguish between diversification and hedging or insuring. When I use the term diversification, I use it in the sense that you have a bunch of risky assets, and instead of putting your money in one of them, you spread it across them by paying attention to whether those assets move in lockstep. Because if two risky assets are perfectly correlated, you're kidding yourself if you think you're diversifying.

And then there is insuring or hedging. That's when you've got a safe asset and to my mind that is Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, or TIPS. One way to protect yourself is to combine a diversified portfolio of risky assets with the safe asset. We teach students that you only need two mutual funds—the risky assets and the safe asset—to generate the entire set of risk-and-reward trade-offs.

Bogle: Amen.

Bodie: And that could be provided at minimal cost. But then a lot of smart people working on Wall Street would be deprived of their high income. So they put all sorts of bells and whistles on these things, none of which has to do with improving the welfare of clients.

Bogle: If people would look at not just a percentage point in costs, but what 1% to 2% in lower returns costs you over a lifetime.