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Strategies & Market Trends : Sharck Soup -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sharck who wrote (28816)	6/20/2001 9:44:09 PM
From: puborectalis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37746

One of the top economic-forecasting companies in the country, now called DRI-WEFA, sees slow times ahead, with the U.S. economy at sub-par growth for five more quarters. And while none of the quarters is forecast to be negative, "the odds of recession remain high." DRI-WEFA's view of the world is significant since it provides the national and global forecast for state economists. Consumers remain the key. Business investment is very weak and the strong U.S. dollar, combined with global softness, will hold back exports. If consumers pull back at all, the threat of a recession goes up. Institutional investors are much more ready to criticize management in tough economic times. The Russell Reynolds Associates annual survey of institutional investors found 15 percent reported having called for a chief executive's termination within the past year. Most - 94 percent - said a company's financial performance influences investment decisions, with poor strategy and lack of vision as key early-warning signs indicating that a CEO is in trouble. With regard to CEO compensation, overwhelming majorities feel that boards should link CEO compensation more directly to performance and that CEO severance packages are excessive. One big concern among institutional investors - they are the big guys such as mutual funds, pensions and trusts - is the failure of companies to properly groom internal CEO candidates. Another sign of the inventory correction and the tech wreck comes from container traffic. It is dropping off at the two big West Coast ports in Southern California. In May, the number of containers loaded for export fell 10 percent compared with May 2000 at Long Beach and 5 percent at Los Angeles. May was also the seventh month in a row of declines in the number of export containers. On the import front, Long Beach was off 17 percent in May but Los Angeles posted a 7 percent gain. The total number of containers handled during May dropped by 5.8 percent from last year to 767,583.