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THE REGULARS: Summary
A) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: Angels in Action [Une ado créé une oeuvre caritative au profit d'enfants en famille d'accueil.]
B) CNN/Global Office: Busy lives fixed for a fee [Les chefs d'entreprise font appel à des sociétés des prestations pour rendre leur vie plus facile.]
C) Slate/Dear Prudence: Paranoia Will Destroy Ya [Conseils sur la vie sentimentale et la vie tout court. Cette semaine : Une collègue de travail a une phobie qui rend pénible de travailler avec elle. / Mon beau-père déconne à fond.]

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B*) CNN/Global Office Management Masterclass: Inspirational management [Comment devenir un manager inspirationnel ?]
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/BUSINESS/10/22/masterclass.inspiration/
Management Masterclass

By Christine Hayhurst, Chartered Management Institute
Friday, October 22, 2004 Posted: 1459 GMT (2259 HKT)

Q: "My team demands guidance from me -- and rightly so -- but I feel that I'm sometimes too 'technical' with my responses. Should I be, and, how can I be, more inspirational?"

A: A vast amount of research exists to suggest a link between inspirational leadership and the successful performance of many organizations, so you are right to want to move in that direction.

And indeed, a study published this month by the DTI and Chartered Management Institute, called "Inspired Leadership", has shown that most people expect to follow the examples set by their organization's leaders. The single most important factor they want to see in their leaders is inspiration.

But, as you say, making the jump from guide to inspirational leader is not so easy.

First, you need to demonstrate a strong strategic focus. Make sure you concentrate on specific goals rather than adopting a "catch all" approach. After all, if people are looking for guidance they are more likely to respond to leaders who let them know what is important. Give your team a clear sense of direction and it will go a long way to providing a genuine shared vision -- something which everybody can understand and work towards.

And learn from the examples set by the likes of Enron and Parmalat. Everything you do should be based on honesty, openness and the respect of your colleagues and customers. After all, inspiration can come from your attitude to others and it is the relationships you build that can make someone feel motivated.

Too many leaders think people want to hear their views and their experiences. So, take time out to listen to others' ideas, discuss problems and show thanks on a regular basis. It's easy to dismiss ideas if they are not your own because it takes more time to talk to others.

However, remember that your people run your business every day and may have some important knowledge that you could be overlooking. Inspiration doesn't just happen -- you need to win respect first and by taking an interest in others' views you'll be showing that their opinion matters too.

And be prepared to change! If employees don't see you coming up with new, imaginative ideas it's easy to see why they might not bother "thinking outside the box" either. Just look at leaders like Sir Alan Sugar or Richard Branson and you'll see that sometimes it is worth taking calculated risks. You may not get it right every time, but, like these two, you will be seen as someone prepared to try and be a source of inspiration.

It's worrying that a third of people claim to have never worked for an inspirational leader. Don't be a part of that statistic. Bear in mind that there are numerous training programs you could embark on to help develop your leadership skills and ultimately, remember that true inspiration comes from those leaders who can win the trust and respect of their teams.

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3*) Slate: The New de Tocquevilles [Les Français tentent de comprendre les Etat-Unis.]
http://slate.msn.com/id/2108796/

The New de Tocquevilles: The French are just trying to understand.
By Elisabeth Eaves
Posted Thursday, Oct. 28, 2004, at 10:33 AM PT

America is a shark. Full of religious zealots. Who are deeply divided against themselves.

These are just a few descriptions of the United States gleaned from just-released French books devoted to deciphering and explaining the other red, white, and blue. Parisian editors are dining out on a new subgenre that includes tirades, serious academic tomes, election-timed quickies by celebrity journalists, and even a novel, Frenchy, about a Parisian living in Texas when the United States invaded Iraq.

Clotaire Rapaille is a U.S.-based, French-born marketing consultant who specializes in selling across cultures. He has advised Denmark-based Lego that Americans do not read instructions and taught French cheese-makers that Americans prefer their cheese "scientifically dead." Rapaille told me that the last French publishing boomlet had a self-critical tendency: "France is in decline, France is becoming irrelevant. This is what I saw last year." As a former psychoanalyst, he has an explanation for the new phenomenon: "It's transference. The French have transferred their psychology of decline to America, so they feel better," he said. "Now they have a mission: They are going to defend mankind against the United States."

I counted at least 17 French books published this year on the United States or relations with it, most since September. Add to that a handful of books from 2003, plus dozens of U.S. titles in translation—Kitty Kelley, Graydon Carter, and Bill Clinton are all here—and you can find entire bookstore tables devoted to decoding the country that rebaptized frites as frites de la liberté. New titles vie for attention with copies of the genre's prototype, which some would say has yet to be improved upon: Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville. In 1835 he brought news of the New World back to the old, with prescient observations like this one on local government: "The people wield immense influence over their magistrates and often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries."

So, just what is out there now, and what does it say?

The protagonist in Frenchy, who runs a French food store, suffers prolific insults, and a veteran urinates in his garden. Still, one of his nicer neighbors tells him that America "has nothing to do with those guys in Washington." The review in Le Figaro said the novel was "as valuable as the best courses in international relations at the most prestigious universities."

You can't beat The Shark and the Seagull, by former Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, for the author's way with metaphor. It's about the rotten state of trans-Atlantic relations. (I'll let readers guess which country is which in the book's title.) The takeaway, though, isn't clear. The shark refuses to be halted. The seagull listens. They must reconcile their values, which will save the world. Or something like that.

Some of the other new works include France Against the Empire, Empire of Chaos, The Emperor of the White House, Imperial America, The Good Fortune of Not Being American, and Democracy With an Obscene Face. The last, by Jacques Vergès, a lawyer who has volunteered to defend Saddam Hussein, is illustrated with photographs of prisoner abuse inside Abu Ghraib.

Titles notwithstanding, the new books are not all polemics. Anti-Americanism is certainly present in France, but the chattering classes are making a serious attempt to understand both the United States and the Franco-U.S. dynamic. Earnest broadcasters ask the new Americologists questions like, "Do we hate Americans because we try to imitate them?"

Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States and editor of The United States Today: Shock and Change, says there are two major explanatory fads afoot in the attempt to understand U.S. behavior: It's all about the neocons, and it's all about religion.

With few exceptions, French writers "superbly ignored" neoconservatism for years, Parmentier told me—then suddenly noticed it about 18 months ago. "Now because of the Bush administration, many French observers—guys who have no interest in the facts, but who are interested in big ideas—have discovered neoconservatives and see them all over the place. They call Cheney and Rumsfeld neoconservatives, which is totally absurd," Parmentier said.

While dismissive of many of the new books, Parmentier has high praise for one, Messianic America: The Wars of the Neoconservatives, by Le Monde journalists Alain Frachon and Daniel Vernet. It's a full history of the neocons, from their hatchery among the Democratic left in New York to their post-9/11 influence on the presidency. The publisher's blurb explains that neoconservatives think America is the embodiment of good and that it "can assure its own security and remain true to its moral mission only by exporting democracy, by force if necessary." French readers may acquire a more sophisticated understanding of U.S. foreign policy than many an American liberal.

As for the second fad, religion, authors like Guy Sorman treat it as paramount. The author of Made in USA focuses on the fact that a full 80 percent of Americans say they believe in God. Americans are "a mystical people," he says, and he has a theory that all religions in America are converging into one as their modes of worship become more and more alike.

A third theme emerges in many of the books: It's all about Sept. 11. Except, while there is general agreement that the United States must have been traumatized and profoundly changed by the terrorist attacks, no one seems to be sure exactly how. Indeed, Sorman went looking for evidence of a transformation and found that "American society has remained self-centered, too busy to fuse into a single nation capable of taking an interest in faraway cultures. No more books on Islam are sold, no more foreign films seen than before the attacks; students are not moving any faster toward learning foreign languages."

Can Americans learn anything from foreign anthropologists studying their own? Sorman says the point is moot. He has "no illusion" that he could be influential in the United States—unless he emigrated. "No one is interested in what foreigners have to say, not liberals or conservatives," he said. "The beliefs of Americans are so profound, they are so convinced that they are building a new civilization, with a universal appeal, that the comments from outside are insignificant."

That may be true. But while only hindsight will tell if Sorman and the rest are truly Tocquevillian, I think this passage from Made in USA will hold up for a long time to come:

[In America] it's taken for granted that a community left to its own devices will spontaneously organize, without waiting for higher authorities to do it. This democratic ideal, shaped by the history of the United States, can lead American governments, in their foreign interventions, to expect the same of other societies. Sometimes in vain.

Elisabeth Eaves is the author of Bare.

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5*) The Economist: Mobile 3G telecoms [La réalité de la téléphonie mobile de la 3ème génération correspond-elle aux rêves ?]
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3150731

Mobile 3G telecoms: Vision, meet reality
Sep 2nd 2004

After years of delay, third-generation (3G) mobile-phone networks are finally being switched on. How will the reality compare with the original vision?

THE biggest ever gamble on the introduction of a new technology; an attempt to maintain growth in a maturing industry; or an industrial-policy fiasco? The introduction of “third-generation” (3G) mobile-phone networks around the world is all these things and more. In 2000, at the height of the dotcom boom, mobile operators around the world, but mainly in Europe, paid a total of €109 billion (then $125 billion) for licences to build and operate 3G networks, which offer higher performance and more capacity than existing second-generation (2G) networks. In part, the mobile operators were victims of their own hype. A report that year from the International Telecommunication Union, the industry's standards body, gives a sense of the high hopes for 3G:

The device will function as a phone, a computer, a television, a pager, a videoconferencing centre, a newspaper, a diary and even a credit card...it will support not only voice communications but also real-time video and full-scale multimedia. It will automatically search the internet for relevant news and information on pre-selected subjects, book your next holiday for you online and download a bedtime story for your child, complete with moving pictures. It will even be able to pay for goods when you shop via wireless electronic funds transfer. In short, the new mobile handset will become the single, indispensable “life tool”, carried everywhere by everyone, just like a wallet or purse is today.

Dotcom mania aside, the industry had concluded that 3G networks would make possible new services to provide growth as its core business, voice telephony, matured. As the proportion of people with mobile phones has increased—it now exceeds 85% in much of the rich world—the average revenue per user (ARPU), a key industry metric, has levelled off. This is because the most valuable subscribers were the first to buy mobile phones; later adopters make fewer calls and spend much less. With subscriber numbers reaching saturation, at least in the rich world, the industry began casting around for new sources of growth, and fancy services such as video and internet access seemed the most promising prospects. Hence the appeal of 3G.

Even so, forking out €109 billion for 3G licences—plus roughly the same again between 2001 and 2007 to build the actual networks, according to predictions from iSuppli, a market-research firm—was an enormous gamble, arguably the biggest in business history. But in many cases operators had no choice. Several European countries held auctions for their 3G licences in which operators bid huge sums: in Britain and Germany, for example, operators ended up paying around €8 billion for each 3G licence. Why? Because with their 2G networks filling up, and with no additional 2G capacity on offer from regulators, operators felt compelled to buy 3G licences to ensure scope for future growth. Andrew Cole of A.T. Kearney, a consultancy, remembers when a client who was taking part in the auction received the order to “win the licence no matter what”. The €109 billion was, in effect, a tax on the right to continue to do business. Few firms were brave enough to refuse to pay up.

So the 3G adventure got off to a bad start in Europe by nearly bankrupting the industry. Since 2000 most operators have written down the value of their 3G licences. Some even handed the licences back to the governments from which they bought them, rather than commit themselves to building expensive new 3G networks within strict time limits. (Reselling the licences was forbidden.) The whole episode is now something the industry would rather forget. “The spectrum auction is a nightmare the operators don't want to remember,” says Mr Cole. “I haven't heard it mentioned in a long time.”

Ready, steady, flop!

The pioneering launch of 3G services at the end of 2001 in Japan and South Korea, the world's two most advanced mobile markets, did little to lighten the mood. In both countries, operators were using 3G technologies different from the W-CDMA standard (which is also known as UMTS) being adopted in Europe. An unproven technology, W-CDMA was plagued by teething troubles: base-stations and handsets from different vendors would not work together reliably, and early handsets were bulky and temperamental. Operators postponed the launch of 3G services from 2002 to 2003 and then to 2004, though a handful chose to launch sometimes shaky 3G services earlier.

Yet now, at last, the 3G bandwagon is starting to roll. According to figures from Deutsche Bank, there were 16 commercial 3G networks worldwide at the beginning of the year, and there will be around 60 by the end of the year (see chart 1). Matti Alahuhta, head of strategy at Nokia, the world's largest handset-maker, says the second half of 2004 will be seen as “the starting point for the global acceleration of 3G”. Nokia and other handset-makers have high hopes for the Christmas market. The early, brick-like W-CDMA handsets have given way to much smaller, sleeker models. In Japan and Korea, sales of 3G handsets are booming. Even in America, that wireless laggard, 3G services have been launched in several cities, and the country's largest operators have committed themselves to building 3G networks.

Having swung too far towards pessimism, the industry is now becoming cautiously optimistic about 3G, says Tony Thornley, the president of Qualcomm, the firm that pioneered the technology that underpins all of the various technological flavours of 3G. Qualcomm has announced that it is having trouble meeting demand for W-CDMA radio chips. “As we get very near to seeing these things become a reality, we become more optimistic about what 3G can deliver,” says Peter Bamford of Vodafone, the world's largest mobile operator. So now that it is finally happening, how does the reality of 3G stack up against the original vision?

Less data, more voice

That depends upon whom you ask. Mr Bamford, for example, denies that there has been any downgrading of the original vision. But he is at the most optimistic end of the spectrum, a view reflected in Vodafone's reluctance to write down the value of its 3G licences. Most observers agree that there has been a shift in expectations about how 3G networks will be used, away from video and other data services and towards traditional voice calling.

“Three years ago, everyone was talking about video-telephony,” says Mike Thelander of Signals Research Group, a consultancy. But while video-telephony sounds cool, the evidence from early 3G launches in Japan, South Korea, Britain and Italy is that hardly anybody uses it. Market research suggests that women are particularly reluctant to adopt it, says Mr Cole. Nokia's first mainstream 3G handset, the 7600, does not even support video calling, but nobody seems to mind.

Nor have the high hopes for data services been fulfilled—so far, at least. The idea was to encourage consumers to adopt data services on 2G phones, paving the way for fancier services on 3G phones. But while text-messaging is hugely popular, with over a billion messages sent daily worldwide, other forms of wireless data such as photo messaging, news updates, and music and game downloads have proved much less popular with consumers in most countries—Japan and South Korea are notable exceptions.

Such services “are still embryonic, but are going to be very important,” insists Mr Cole. Today's advanced handsets, he notes, are disrupting many industries simultaneously, including photography, music and gaming. The handset is slowly coming to be seen as “the Swiss Army knife of life services”. But the changes will take years to play out, even though they are happening at breakneck speed. Mr Bamford likens the transformation in mobile phones over the past five years to the evolution of television over the past 40 years, from crude black-and-white to hundreds of digital channels in colour. “To expect customers to snap into this in five minutes is just unrealistic,” he says.

Enthusiasm for data is growing, just not very fast: data services now account for 16.3% of Vodafone's worldwide revenues, for example, up from 15% a year ago. So hopes of a breakthrough in mobile-data usage still persist. At the moment, most optimism surrounds the prospects for music downloads to mobile phones (the most advanced models of which can now double as portable music players). Downloading ringtones is already popular, so downloading entire tracks—something that is only really practical using a 3G network—is the next logical step. Motorola, the world's second-largest handset-maker, has just done a deal with Apple, whose iTunes Music Store dominates the market for legal music downloads. And Nokia has just done a similar deal with LoudEye, another online music store. But it is still too early to tell whether this will turn into a mass market and, if it does, whether it will prove profitable for operators.

Greater emphasis is being placed instead on 3G's ability to deliver cheap voice calls—for as well as being able to support faster data downloads than 2G networks, 3G networks provide vast amounts of voice capacity (typically three times as much as a 2G network) at a lower price (typically a quarter of the cost per minute). As a result, says Bob House, an analyst at Adventis, “operators' sights are now much more firmly trained on displacing voice from fixed networks.”

By offering large bundles, or “buckets” of minutes as part of their monthly tariffs, operators hope to encourage subscribers to use their mobile phones instead of fixed-line phones, and even to “cut the cord” and get rid of their fixed-line phones altogether—something that is already happening, particularly among young people, in some parts of the world. In America, for example, where large bundles are commonplace, subscribers talk on their phones for 700 minutes per month on average, compared with 100 minutes per month in Europe, where call charges are much higher, notes Mark Heath of Analysys, a consultancy. Since 3G networks offer voice capacity at a quarter of the cost of 2G networks, it ought to be possible for operators to offer larger bundles at a lower price per minute and still make money.

But operators must price their bundles carefully, and distinguish between peak-time and off-peak minutes, to avoid getting caught out. Offering generous bundle deals may, for example, cannibalise revenues from their most valuable customers, who will quickly switch to a better deal. Operators also want to avoid having to spend money adding expensive base-stations to the busiest parts of their networks to handle peak load. And, of course, they want to avoid a price war. Although everyone agrees that the advent of 3G will cause the price of voice calls to fall and margins to decline, operators are in no hurry to cut their prices before they have to.

But there are signs that Hutchison 3G, a new operator that has launched 3G services in several European countries under the “3” brand, is already leading the European market down this path, notes Mr Thelander: in some cases, 3 offers voice calls for a fifth of the price of its rivals. Further pressure on pricing, argues João Baptista of Mercer Management Consulting, will come as fixed-line operators combat the flight of voice traffic to mobile with ultra-low-cost telephony services based on “voice over internet protocol” (VOIP) technology. With price cuts, he says, “someone starts, and then you can't stop it.”

It would be a great irony if, after years of hype about data services, the “killer application” for 3G turned out to be boring old voice calls. In truth, however, nobody talks about killer apps any more. This reflects the realisation that 3G allows operators to offer lots of new services—music downloads, cheap voice calls, wireless broadband access to laptops—but that the appeal of these services will vary widely from one group of customers to another.

“Unlike traditional voice service, the adoption of 3G services is very much customer-segment specific,” says Su-Yen Wong of Mercer. The lesson from Japan and South Korea, she says, is that “certain customer segments are interested in video, but others are not—some go for games, others for traffic updates.” The challenge for 3G operators, she says, is to understand the appeal of different services to different types of customer.

The challenge of segmentation

That will require careful market segmentation. “3G gives you more scope, and segmentation broadly becomes more important,” says Mr Bamford. The example of KTF, a South Korean operator, is instructive. It offers a service called Bigi Kiri to 13-18-year-olds (with unlimited text messaging between subscribers). Na, its brand for 18-25-year-old students, includes free cinema tickets and internet access at 68 universities; and Drama, another brand, caters to women. Other operators in South Korea and Japan do similar things.

The question for operators, says Mr Cole, is whether they can successfully appeal to all segments. At the moment, most operators have bland, generic brands that are intended to appeal to as broad a cross-section of the public as possible. But now they must decide whether to create sub-brands, or partner with other firms who are better able to appeal to specific demographic groups. There are already signs of this happening in many parts of the world as companies set themselves up as “mobile virtual network operators” (MVNOs).

Rather than build its own network, an MVNO teams up with an existing operator, and resells access to the operator's mobile network under its own brand. By far the best example is Virgin Mobile, an MVNO that resells airtime on T-Mobile's network in Britain, and Sprint's in America, to teenagers. The appeal for operators is that MVNOs enable them to reach out more effectively to customers. There has recently been a flurry of activity, with established brands including Tesco, 7-Eleven and MTV setting up as MVNOs.

Much of this activity has been prompted by the growing awareness that MVNOs are likely to have an important role in generating enough voice and data traffic to fill up those expensive new 3G networks. Since 3G phones can deliver graphics, music and video, large media firms, such as Disney, are actively investigating becoming MVNOs. Indeed, media giants might be more effective at driving uptake of data services than mobile operators, which are struggling to transform themselves from boring, technology-driven utilities into sexy consumer brands.

That in turn, suggests Mr Baptista, poses a long-term question for 3G operators: are they primarily network operators, or providers of services to consumers? No doubt some operators, with strong brands, will be able to hold their own against the likes of Disney. But second-tier operators might choose to focus on running a wholesale business, selling network capacity to others.

The calculations being made about the prospects for 3G are further complicated by the fact that the technology is still evolving, making new services possible. As things stand, the W-CDMA technology being adopted in much of the world has a maximum data-transfer rate of 384 kilobits per second. The rival 3G technology, called CDMA2000-1xEV-DO, which is already deployed in South Korea, Japan and parts of America, can deliver higher speeds of up to 2.4 megabits per second. In markets (such as Japan and America) where the two technologies compete side by side, W-CDMA operators are anxiously waiting for an upgraded version of the technology, called HSDPA, which will be faster still and will make its debut in Japan next year.

Faster, better, sooner?

Never mind what all those letters stand for: the point is that as its speed and efficiency improves, 3G technology may, in some markets, start to compete with fixed broadband connections. Other, more obscure flavours of 3G technology, such as TDD-CDMA (again, never mind) and CDMA450 can also be used in this way. In New Zealand, Woosh Wireless is offering wireless broadband service using TDD-CDMA, while backers of CDMA450 point to its unusually long range, which makes it ideal for providing broadband in rural areas, as well as telephony. This opens up yet another new market for 3G operators.

3G is evolving in other ways, too. In 2003, SK, South Korea's leading mobile operator, launched a video-on-demand service over its 3G network. Subscribers paid a monthly fee of 20,000 won ($17) for access, and could then have movies beamed to their phones (while commuting, for example) for 1,000 won each. The service proved so popular that the 3G network could not cope, and SK had to raise its prices dramatically, causing demand to collapse. But evidently video does appeal to 3G subscribers, provided it is cheap enough. So SK has now developed a hybrid satellite-cellular system. New handsets, to be launched this month, will have built-in satellite-TV receivers, offering 11 video and 25 audio channels. Meanwhile, both of the main 3G standards are being updated to allow for more efficient video broadcasts to handsets. Again, this could open new markets for 3G operators.

All of this makes it very difficult to answer the question of whether 3G will succeed, for 3G is a range of technologies that makes possible all kinds of new services. In Europe, 3G's main impact may simply be cheaper voice calls; in America, 3G may have most appeal to road warriors who want broadband access wherever they are; in the developing world, 3G could help to extend telephony and internet access into rural areas; and in South Korea and Japan, 3G might even—shock, horror—live up to the original lofty vision for the technology. The switching on of 3G networks around the world is not the end of the saga; the story continues to unfold.

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A) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: Angels in Action [Une ado créé une oeuvre caritative au profit d'enfants en familles d'accueil.]
Angels in Action
Rachel Laskow

One day, Makenzie Snyder met two boys who used trash bags to carry their belongings from one foster home to another. "I was so shocked. Trash bags are for trash, not to carry stuff in," the 13-year-old said.

So, Makenzie started Children to Children, an organization that has distributed more than 34,000 duffel bags to foster-care kids. Makenzie and her friends have weekend bag-packing parties where they put stuffed animals in duffel bags—and of course take breaks for pizza and soda.

Makenzie's hard work not only helps thousands of foster kids, it also earned her the grand prize in the Angel Soft Angels in Action program. "She serves as a role model in the community," said Kate Laing, senior associate brand manager of Angel Soft Angels in Action.

The program started in 2000 and aims to encourage kids to volunteer. Kids submitted 100-word essays about their projects, and then a grand-prize winner and 10 finalists were chosen. As this year's grand-prize winner, Makenzie received $25,000. She plans to use the money to buy duffel bags and help pay for her high school and college education. "I almost fainted [when I found out I won]. It's like winning the lottery," Makenzie said.

All 11 winners were honored at an awards ceremony with Malcom in the Middle's Jane Kaczmarek. Finalists' projects included raising money to build a handicapped-accessible playground. According to Laing, research shows that kids who volunteer are more likely to volunteer as adults. Makenzie certainly doesn't plan on stopping any time soon. Her goal is to help 530,000 foster kids throughout the United States. "Kids can do amazing things. The hardest part is getting started," Laing said.

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B) CNN/Global Office: Busy lives fixed for a fee [Les chefs d'entreprise font appel à des sociétés des prestations pour rendre leur vie plus facile.]
Busy lives fixed for a fee

By Nick Easen for CNN
Friday, June 18, 2004 Posted: 0114 GMT (0914 HKT)

(CNN) -- Services that were once the domain of the hotel concierge are now on tap to smoothe the busy lives of traveling executives. Cash-rich, time-poor professionals are signing up with firms that provide lifestyle managers to help with tasks from arranging air tickets to picking up the dry-cleaning.

"The typical client is not a celebrity or a sports personality," Steven MacGeachy, co-founder of Los Angeles-based Mint Lifestyle told CNN. "It is a service that can buy a house, sell a house, staff a house, buy cars, sell cars; arrange all manner of travel related services and take care of restaurant reservations."

Also called personal outsourcing or concierge consultancies, the concept originated in the United States and migrated across the Atlantic about eight years ago. Ten UK, Europe's largest provider, charges between $90 and $275 per month, while corporate rates work out less. And with 20,000 members, the company's size gives it significant clout in the marketplace. "(This) gives us huge buying power. We buy hundreds of cars so we know how to get the best prices and deals at the best times," says Alex Cheatle, CEO of Ten UK. "We can afford to have experts on everything from organizing skiing holidays to builders who organize stuff at home."

The process also involves a high degree of trust. Some clients divulge personal data including passport and credit card numbers, as well as alarm codes; while others hand over car and house keys.

The growing band of companies also answer many strange requests from people. "I needed to have a bed made for my dog and I wanted the bed to match the cabinets in the kitchen so they found me a carpenter who could make it," says Donald MacKenzie, a director of a foreign exchange firm who uses Ten UK. A lack of status at hotels is also attracting concierge staff to work for lifestyle management firms. They are prized for their ability to pamper clients and for their list of contacts that allow them to provide hotel guests with unique services. "The pressure from the corporate sector will enhance the status of concierges and create competition for their skills," Louis Kamber of the International Hotels Guide told Catering And Hotel Keeper magazine. "These are very interesting times to be a concierge."

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THIS WEEK'S TEXTS

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1) The Economist: Non-financial reporting [Explosion des rapport annuels sociaux et environnementaux.]
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3364578
Non-financial reporting: Wood for the trees
Nov 4th 2004

Are company reports on their social and environmental impact any use?

CO-OPERATIVE Financial Services (CFS) is a medium-size banking and insurance business with its roots firmly in the north of England and the 19th century. But in one respect at least it is a 21st century world leader. In a ranking of firms' non-financial reports, CFS came out top, ahead of second-placed Novo Nordisk, a Danish drug company, and BP, the British oil giant. The ranking, published this week, has been prepared by the United Nations Environment Programme and SustainAbility, a consultancy, “in partnership with Standard & Poor's” (S&P), the first time a credit-rating agency has been involved.

In their non-financial reports, firms volunteer an overview of their “environmental and social impact” during the previous year. Since the last such ranking, in 2002, many more firms have chosen to produce non-financial reports. At the same time, it is claimed, their quality has increased—as, less happily for the environment, has their length. British American Tobacco's (BAT) runs to some 200 pages.

What was, ten years ago, a quirky, voluntary fringe practice is now becoming mainstream—in Europe, at least. Only two American firms are in the top 20 (HP and Ford), but several of Europe's biggest businesses are there (BP, BT, Royal Dutch/Shell, Unilever). The British government is proposing that big quoted firms be required to publish some form of such accounts annually. It had intended to introduce the requirement next year, but last month was persuaded that businesses need more time to take on board the implications.

The practice started largely in response to pressure from non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which claimed, often contentiously, that many firms lacked social and environmental responsibility.

Yet even as NGOs are becoming more cynical about what firms are producing, some investors now think it is (or could be) a valuable source of information, such as about business risks in a swathe of areas not included on standard financial balance sheets. “We are not social activists; we're independent risk assessors,” says George Dallas of S&P. The information in non-financial reports “contributes to building up a company's risk profile.” And although it has still not been convincingly demonstrated that good environmental and social practices create value for shareholders, it is clear, says Mr Dallas, that bad ones can destroy it. Exxon's cavalier attitude to the oil spillage from the Exxon Valdez drove customers away from its pumps.

Window dressing

The style and content of non-financial reports vary greatly. Some firms spend much time and effort giving out information of uncertain value. Among its targets for this year, for example, CFS aims to maintain its CO2 emissions from energy use at less than 0.7kg per customer account—a curiously meaningless statistical correlation.

Others undermine their publication's credibility by saying one thing and doing another. BAT, for example, says, “We believe that relevant and meaningful information about our products should continue to be available.” Yet the firm makes it very difficult to gain access to the 6m-7m pages of documents about its marketing that litigation by the state of Minnesota forced it to put on the public record.

Currently these can be viewed—by appointment only—at a depository in Guildford, a town some 30 miles south of London. At the end of October, a five-year effort to get around this obstruction, led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the University of California and the Mayo Clinic, ended with the launch of an independent website (www.bat.library.ucsf.edu) where about 1m pages of documents can be viewed.

The only tool standardising non-financial reports is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), a broadly supported checklist of dozens of questions to which almost all of the best reporting firms pay lip service. Rob Lake, head of socially responsible investment engagement and corporate governance at Henderson Global Investors, says “the GRI framework is a good one”. But firms can (and do) choose carefully which of its questions they answer.

One which particularly interests investors such as Mr Lake is the GRI's request for a geographical breakdown of taxes paid. (Whether most shareholders really want this made public, given the hostile publicity that low bills might attract, is debatable.) Yet only Anglo-American attempts to provide such a breakdown. BAT, which goes through the GRI list methodically, bluntly states its tax data “are not reported by country”, and leaves it at that. Yet it is happy to report how many cubic metres of water it uses for every million cigarettes it makes (7.84, if you're interested).

The only audit performed on these reports is an “assurance statement”. Many of these are written by the army of consulting firms that has arisen in response to this new business opportunity. CFS uses four different such firms to “provide audit and commentary” on its 2003 report.

The big accounting firms are now developing this side of their business. BP's assurance statement is prepared by Ernst & Young, the auditor of its financial accounts. Despite the suspicion that Ernst & Young might not wish to antagonise such a big audit client, its report is in places critical. “We consider that BP could have covered the following subject areas in more depth,” it says, listing among other things the adequacy of its pension provision for employees, and legal challenges over its $3 billion pipeline from Baku on the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.

The art of non-financial reporting is evolving and “evolution is always messy”, says John Elkington, the chairman of SustainAbility. Firms have been free to disclose only what they wished. But if investors follow S&P in recognising “the importance of non-financial disclosure in the overall assessment of a company's risk profile”, that may not be good enough.

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