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What is the French and German plan to create bi-national champions really about? 5 страница






The Economist

 

Note

sumptuary laws - законы, регулирующие потребление предметов роскоши

 

Vocabulary

 

brand п имя фирмы-производителя, марка, брэнд
brand awareness узнаваемость марки фирмы: знание покупателей о существовании данной марки фирмы
brand image имидж брэнда: представление о товаре в сознании потребителей
brand loyalty brand franchise предпочтение товаров определенной марки, приверженность потребителей
brand recognition признание имени фирмы: реакция покупателей на продукцию со знакомой маркой
brand value стоимость марки фирмы, стоимость брэнда
brand owner собственник марки фирмы
global brand глобальный брэнд; марка фирмы, товары которой распространяются по всему миру

 

glut п v избыток, перенасыщение (рынка), затоваривание; перенасыщать, затоваривать
saturate v насыщать
to saturate a market насыщать рынок (товарами)
saturation n насыщение
market saturation насыщение рынка
appeal n 1) привлекательность, притягательность; 2) апелляция, обжалование
consumer appeal привлекательность для потребителя
advertising appeal рекламная концепция, привлекательность рекламы
sweatshop n предприятие с крайне тяжелыми условиями труда и низкой зарплатой

 

Translation Commentary

При переводе слов given и barring могут возникать трудности. Так, слово given может быть существительным, прилагательным, предлогом. Слово barring встречается реже и употребляется в качестве предлога и в качестве формы глагола bar. Следует запомнить следующие значения этих слов.

 

given а данный, установленный, определенный, заданный
many people pay off the money owed within a given time многие выплачивают сумму задолженности в течение определенного времени
given predic given smth; given that учитывая; принимая во внимание; если учесть, что
given that conflict is inevitable, we must learn how to manage it учитывая, что конфликт неизбежен, мы должны научиться с ним справляться

 

barring prep кроме; за исключением; исключая; если не
barring accidents за исключением несчастных случаев
barring a miracle, everything will be lost если не произойдет чуда, все потеряно
bar v запрещать, препятствовать

 

Exercise 1. Give the Russian equivalents of the following.

to lift standards; supply chain; public relations; to hold smb to account; to be accountable to consumers; established brands; a brand consultancy; a high-profile product launch; a logo; to lose customer loyalty; to build a brand; a global brand owner, to revamp one's business; to run sweatshops; fickle consumers; insidious advertising; ubiquitous brands; weightless (asset-free) companies; a nimble player; human rights abuses; oversupply; the flip side; to promote the value of the brands; to curtail consumers' choice; to command a premium; sweated labour

 

Exercise 2. Give the English for the following.

быть пешкой в руках гигантских корпораций; не желать оставаться маленьким винтиком в машине; выдумать историю; вездесущая реклама; фирменный товар; капризы моды; доверять интернет-компании свою личную информацию; огромный стимул; приверженность потребителя марке; уязвимость; вызывать «бегство» покупателей от торговой марки; наносить ущерб окружающей среде

 

Exercise 3. Translate the following sentences paying attention to the underlined words.

1. Indonesia has a dire record of trademark violations, including piracy as bizarre as Sony underwear, Intel jeans and Rolex cigarettes.

2.Window-shopping and a huge magazine industry have made Japanese women some of the savviest and fussiest shoppers in the world (with a weakness for international luxury brands). They are also fickle; these days fashion cycles rarely last six weeks. Jupiter, another big American home-shopping channel, has neatly tailored its strategy to meet such demands.

3.The quality of service, traditionally the pride of department stores, is falling as they scramble to cut costs by reducing staff.

4.The chances of restoring the shine to these iconic brands depend on a real upturn in the industry.

5.After more than a decade of straddling a strategic drive, Eastman Kodak Co. is poised to jump full speed into digital imaging and to de-emphasize traditional film and photographic products, acknowledging that its business line's glory days are past. In what it characterizes as a historic shift, Kodak is expected to announce today that it will boost investment in non-photographic areas and make new forays into digital territory dominated by big competitors.

 

Exercise 4. Translate the following examples focusing on the words given and barring.

1.The odds of a smash hit are low, given the general industry downturn and fierce global competition.

2.Given the attraction of the deal (to acquire Bestfoods), few believe that Unilever will simply put its tanks into reverse.

3.Given the importance of Telmex as an employer, investor and taxpayer, regulators are unlikely to come down hard on the company.

4.Competitors have known about Dell's business model for over a decade but seem unable to compensate. The coming crunch between Dell and Hewlett-Packard has all the kinetic characteristics of an irresistible force hitting an all too movable object. Given its market leadership, consistent profitability, high return on capital and adamantine balance sheet, it is not surprising Dell has been hitting 52-week highs.

5.It might seem an odd time to enter this market (of mobile computer devices), given the uncertainty and technical difficulties surrounding the switch to " third-generation" (3G) mobile networks.

6.Simon Waxley, fund manager at Elliott, which holds about 10% of the preferred shares of Wella, the German haircare group, said that, barring last-minute hitches, the fund would today announce the lawsuit.

7.It's not every day that a store advertises that, no, it's not lowering prices. But that's what French hypermarket group E. Leclerc did in a billboard-and-radio campaign a few weeks ago. " The French lost 1% of the purchasing power in last year, yet the law forbids us to lower prices, " the ads said. Stirring Leclerc's wrath is an eight-year-old law barring retailers from wringing deep discounts or rebates from suppliers of brand-name goods. That, in turn, puts a floor under the prices customers pay. Leclerc and other big chains are lobbying to repeal the law, which is intended to protect small shops.

 

Exercise 5. Translate the following text at sight.

The Spin Doctors Get Serious The financial public-relations industry is coming of age

HOW many PR people does it take to change a lightbulb? " Don't know. I'll have to get back to you on that one." An old joke, perhaps, but apposite surprisingly until recently. The typical London public-relations person of the 1980s did little more than hand out press releases and take journalists to lunch — and was more familiar with the Savoy's wine list than with his client companies' strategies.

That has all changed. Lunch, this correspondent is happy to report, still definitely plays its part. But today's spin doctors are sharp-minded professionals, often indistinguishable from investment bankers and lawyers — and increasingly demanding to be paid like them. In America, financial PR (communicating companies' strategies to shareholders, analysts and the financial press) is still done largely in-house. But it is the top British agencies which are showing that financial PR is becoming an industry in its own right. This change is being recognised by the markets. Over the past two years, big marketing and advertising groups have spent large sums of money buying financial PR firms.

What has made PR companies such hot property? The answer is twofold, their relationships and their power. Chris Matthews, head of Hogarth, a mid-sized British agency, claims, with the usual hype, that " financial PR is a Trojan horse to sell other things. We have the ear of the CEO." That used to be the case with advertising agencies too, he says, but these days " they go through the tradesmen's entrance. " Financial PR's close relationship with the boss reflects the growing importance of spin and image-management to modem companies. To keep the share price up, it is no longer enough merely to have a strategy. The strategy also needs to be articulated smartly — as any manager at ВТ, Ford or Marconi will tell you.

Senior executives also need PR people to deal with the increasing number of interest groups that scrutinise companies' behaviour. Shareholders are becoming more demanding and environmental groups more hostile. The rise of online media and the increasing attention that broadcasters pay to financial news mean that companies are having to respond, ideally with carefully crafted and consistent messages, more or less in real time. The consequences of displeasing these various groups can be huge — as shown by the failure of the agrochemical industry to make the case for genetically modified food, or the drag makers' botched attempts to protect their patent rights in poor countries.

How can a humble PR man deal with all this? One answer is to become more professional. " In the future, PR will definitely be staffed by better trained and educated operators, " says Angus Maitland of Maitland Consultancy. Roland Rudd, Finsbury's founder and boss, put his entire team through corporate-finance training to increase their financial literacy, while at Tulchan, account executives are supported by in-house analysts who research clients and their competitors. If not yet exactly sexy, financial PR is becoming at least a respectable option for graduates. It is even starting to attract big names from the political spin-trade. James Rubin, the American State Department spokesman under Madeleine Albright, recently joined Brunswick, bringing the firm valuable publicity.

Sharing in the spoils. Having secured a seat at the top table, PR firms are now seeking financial recognition too. Their top partners have always made a decent living, but now they are starting to close the gap with top lawyers and bankers. But the real money comes from crisis work, public listings and mergers, where agencies are, like investment banks, demanding success fees." Retainers are the enemy of value, " says Mr Parker. " We want to be paid for results." And with staff as the only big cost, profits can be juicy: Tulchan's Andrew Grant says that any PR company that cannot make a 20% margin is doing something wrong.

PR agencies are following the bankers in another way: they are expanding internationally. As pension reform, deregulation and globalisation create an equity culture on the mainland, French, German and Italian companies are becoming subject to the dictums of shareholder value. Although in-house PR is growing in Britain, it seems unlikely to dislodge the hold that the biggest agencies have on their customers. In many industries, British and American managers claim a special relationship. But financial PR is one area where they will continue to do things differently.

The Economist

Kxercise 6. Translate the following into English. Text 1

Мыльная война

В начале февраля исполнительный директор «Проктер энд Гэмбл» (Procter & Gamble) Алан Лэфли (Alan Lafley) заявил, что его компания готова возобновить борьбу за мировое лидерство с англо-голландской «Юнилевер» (Unilever). Первая «мыльная война» между мировыми лидерами по производству продуктов питания и бытовой химии завершилась победой «Юнилевер», сумевшей в прошлом финансовом году значительно опередить своего конкурента по обороту.

Несколько лет назад «Юнилевер» решила сосредоточить свои усилия на продвижении почти двух тысяч новых брэндов и завоевании перспективного американского рынка. Она купила крупную американскую компанию «Бестфудс» (Bestfoods), которой принадлежали известные брэнды «Кнорр» (Knorr) и «Хельманс» (Hellmann's), а также крупнейшего в мире производителя пищевых добавок для снижения веса «Слим Фаст Фудс» (Slim Fast Foods). Подобная тактика, учитывая «цветущее» на тот момент состояние американской экономики, дала «Юнилевер» огромное преимущество перед P& G.

«Проктер энд Гэмбл» в 2000 году, наоборот, допустила несколько серьезных маркетинговых ошибок. Группа решила сосредоточиться на «великих сделках». Она намеревалась купить американские фармацевтические компании «Уорнер-Ламберт» (Warner-Lambert) и «Америкэн Хоум Продактс» (American Home Products). Однако сделки не состоялись, а имидж компании был настолько испорчен, что акции обвалились сразу на 50%. На финансовой отчетности компании негативно сказалось и падение курса евро. Около 25% продаж P& G приходится на Европу, поэтому удешевление единой европейской валюты сделало неконкурентоспособными многие американские товары.

Дальнейших потерь P& G удалось избежать благодаря Алану Лэфли, сменившему прежнего генерального директора Дерка Джагера (Durk Jager). Лэфли предложил новый план реструктуризации группы, согласно которому группа собиралась вложить 10 миллиардов в развитие новых брэндов и сократить на 13% число служащих, работающих в подразделениях по выпуску продуктов питания, гигиенических и бытовых товаров. Решено было избавиться от филиалов, деятельность которых шла вразрез с долгосрочными планами группы, и некоторых торговых марок. В настоящее время компания P& G вновь готова бросить вызов «Юнилевер» и начать конкурировать с ней по всем направлениям.

 

Text 2

Компании «Юнилевер» придется не только сконцентрировать свои усилия на группе торговых марок, оставшихся после проведения рационализации системы брэндов. Она также должна оказывать им лучшую поддержку путем перестройки всех операций сверху донизу. В ходе крупномасштабной реструктуризации будет уволен каждый десятый из 230 ООО сотрудников компании. Недостаточно успешно работающие предприятия, например, европейские компании, выпускающие хлебо-булочные изделия, будут проданы, если они не приведут свои дела в порядок.

Text3

Кто-то пошутил, что скоро производство товаров прекратится, а на фабриках будут производить одни только бренды и слоганы. Правды в этой шутке в последнее время все больше и больше. Что бы мы ни покупали, вместе (а иногда и вместо) с продуктом мы приобретаем какой-нибудь имидж, статус и, в конце концов, стиль жизни. Свои ценности через бренд стараются донести до потребителя все - от ювелирных домов до мясо-молочных комбинатов. В числе прочих в гонку под названием «стиль жизни от» включились ведущие производители электроники, причем практически одновременно.

Эксперт

Text 4

Быть знаменитым некрасиво...

Название поискового портала «Гугл» (Google) попало на страницы толкового словаря «Мериам-Вебстер» (Merriam-Webster). Образованный от него глагол теперь обозначает в английском языке поиск в Интернете. В компании вспыхнула паника - превращение торговой марки в родовое обозначение для всех поисковых порталов отменяет имущественные права ее владельца.

Каждая компания стремится сделать свою торговую марку как можно более узнаваемой и популярной. Чем большему числу потребителей известен бренд, тем выше его стоимость и тем дороже оцениваются активы компании правообладателя. Кажется, что команды маркетологов ставят конечной целью затмить все конкурирующие марки, вытеснить их из сознания потребителей, а свою - сделать общеизвестной. Иногда у них получается слишком хорошо: бренд оказывается на вершине популярности, и там его ждет смерть. Торговая марка становиться наименованием целой товарной группы и больше не подлежит защите патентным законодательством.

Покупатели начинают называть все копировальные машины «ксероксами», подгузники - «памперсами», а гидромассажные ванны - «джакузи», при этом силы и средства, вложенные в продвижение соответствующих торговых марок, развеиваются по ветру. Бренды «растворяются в языке», а компаниям-правообладателям приходится бороться со стихийным словообразованием. Именно так произошло сейчас с «Гугл». Через этот портал производится более 60% всех поисковых операций в Интернете, и его пользователи давно употребляют слово googling. Это устраивает всех, кроме владельца портала.

Компания

 

Exercise 7. Translate the text into Russian in writing.

The Care and Feeding of Jaguar

Big missteps have tarnished the marque, which now clouds Ford's outlook

Jaguar is Bill Ford's recurring nightmare. For 15 years, Ford Motor Co. has owned the British luxury marque, and each time it seems to turn the corner, Jaguar starts bleeding red ink again. On Sept. 17, Ford unveiled yet another rescue plan, announcing that it will shutter an aging factory in Coventry to reduce excess capacity and cut costs.

Each setback pushed CEO Ford's ambitious goals for the company's European brands further out of reach. If Ford can't turn Jag around, meeting Bill Ford's vow to rake in $7bn in pre-tax profits by mid-decade will be tough. So why has Ford failed to turn its top-shelf brand into a consistent moneymaker?

Ford bungled Jag's marketing by adopting a mass-market approach for the luxury-niche brand — and then changed the strategy as frequently as though it were engine oil. Jag needs consistent positioning as enduring as BMW's three-decade old " Ultimate Driving Machine".

Jag also uses the same pitch worldwide - never mind that its distinct " Britishness" plays differently in Peoria than it does in Picadilly. Worse, the current slogan, " Born to Perform, " extols horsepower not looks, even though style is the main reason owners cite for buying a Jag. Ford ought to dash the current strategy and hire a small, talented agency that will nurture the brand's leaping cat icon, helping it segue in the the US from Avengers-style panache to the generation personified by Brit actor Jude Law.

Better products and an appealing marketing strategy should help Jaguar cut back on the cheap sales gimmicks that have tarnished its image.

Ultimately, Ford needs to get real. Even Mark Fields, head of PAG and Ford Europe, says that 4*a quick turnaround is unlikely." If demand still doesn't match Jag's reduced output by next year, more painful factory cuts may be needed. Jaguar is a venerable brand that survived decades of antique factories and quality so bad it was the butt of jokes. It would be a shame if the British cat ended up as road kill.

Business Week

 

Exercise 8. Translate the text into Russian in writing.

Harry Potter and the Marketing Mystery

For most academicians, fads are an anomaly, a profanity, a pustular pain in the proverbial posterior. Whether it be Teletubbies, or Rubik's Cubes, fads, crazes, and gimmicks are an affront to the modem marketing paradigm, the absolute antithesis of analysis, planning, implementation, and control. They seem to erupt spontaneously (in an inexplicable, unpredictable fashion), they are the domain of all sorts of disreputable hucksters, drummers, and quick-buck makers (veritable throwbacks in an era of calm professionalism), and they quickly disappear over the marketing horizon (until the next kiddie craze comes hurtling down the preteen pike). At best, fads are an example of word-of-mouth marketing or a component part of the innovation diffusion process. At worst, fads are a mutant form of the product life cycle, commercial instantiations of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. At all times, however, fads are something to be avoided; to be belittled; to be broken, bucking bronco fashion, and transshipped into the more respectable conceptual categories of " trends, " " tendencies" and " traits."

The irony, of course, is that marketing itself is incorrigibly faddish, as is management studies generally. True, there is no shortage of scholarly commentators who roundly denounce management by buzzword, readily condemn fad surfing in the boardroom, and repeatedly excoriate the craze-blazing antics of self-appointed marketing gurus. So voluminous, indeed, is the antifad literature that faddissness is the latest management fad, according to Harvard Business Review (Wetlaufer 2001).

Management metafads and scholarly denial notwithstanding, an academician would need to be pretty obdurate not to have noticed Harry Potter. The brainchild of the British author J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter is perhaps the most astonishing kiddie craze of recent years. To date, approximately 70 million copies of the first four books in a seven-book series have been sold. The texts have been translated into 30 languages and published in multitudinous formats (e.g. illustrated, Braille, audiocassette. adult cover, large print, box sets) and are chart-toppers in 120 countries.

Journal of Marketing

UNIT 8

 

• Text 1

WHEN BATTLES COMMENCE

Hostile bids are back again. Who should rejoice?

This week, in both America and Europe, corporate bosses locked horns as the biggest hostile bids in years twisted and turned their way towards a denouement. Even in gentlemanly corporate Japan, where hostile bids are a rarity, at least two big companies are fighting off the unwanted attentions of outsiders. The boom in mergers and acquisitions in the late 1990s was notable for agreed deals between CEOs who made them sweet as possible for themselves. Is the boom that many forecast for this year going to be equally notable for long contested corporate tussles? And, if so, who is going to benefit the most this time?

So accustomed are investors to the idea that companies overpay for acquisitions that news of a takeover bid almost invariably sends the target company's share price soaring.

 

Poisonous tactics

How successful the next wave of hostile bids is will depend largely on a shifting legal and regulatory framework which, despite some surviving obstacles, seems to be making them easier than in the 1990s. In America, corporate law is the province of state governments. There was a time when, as in Europe, American firms could hope to rely on friendly local governments to help them out of a tight spot. As hostile bids flourished during the 1980s, states such as New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania rushed to pass management-friendly anti-takeover laws.

Such laws have become highly controversial, and they may now be beyond the hopes of all but the most generous patrons. About 40% of the 5, 500-odd publicly owned companies tracked by

Institutional Shareholder Services, a research organisation, employ a poison pill. Typically, this is a device that allows shareholders in firms threatened by a hostile bid to buy new shares in their company at a big discount. That makes it more costly to take over the firm by tendering for its newly enlarged pool of equity.

At the same time, 60 % of American firms have a staggered board, under which different groups of directors are elected in different years. This device hinders attempts to take over companies because it can take years for shareholders to materially change the composition of the board. In a recent paper, Lucian Bebchuk of Harvard Law School argues that staggered boards cost shareholders about 4-6% of their firms' market value by allowing entrenched managers and directors to spurn attractive offers.

 

No yen for a fight

Japan has few defences against hostile takeovers largely because it doesn't need them. Companies that have break-up values in excess of their market capitalisation (and there are many in Japan) are increasingly becoming the targets of hostile bids.

Last December, Steel Partners, an American investment fund, launched a hostile bid for Sotoh, a textile-dyer. In its defence, Sotoh turned to NIF Ventures, an arm of Daiwa Securities, the country's second-largest stockbroker. NIF charged in as a white knight and backed a rival management buy-out.

After a rare one-and-a-half month-long bidding war, on February 16th Sotoh withdrew its support for the deal. Instead, it announced that it would raise its dividend 15-fold for the current year, a strategy that appears to have been successful. The next day its share price surged to almost 20% more than Steel Partner's offer.

Japanese shareholders are becoming more demanding partly because of the unwinding of cross-shareholdings between Japan's banks and their corporate chums. This has put many of the freed-up shares in the hands of foreigners or local activists. Yet despite these glimmers, the pace of change is still glacial. Traditional stakeholders, such as labour unions and banks, remain very powerful and often override the interests of independent shareholders.

 

Who thrives in the end?

One big unanswered question is whether the latest mergers will perform any better than those during other waves of mergers. In one of the studies three American-based economists paint a picture of financial carnage in the period of 1998-2001. After examining the acquisitions of some 4, 136 American companies during that time, they found that the announcements of the bids reduced the combined value of the merging firms by a whopping $158 billion.

A series of studies of American firms stretching back to the 1950s had found that merger announcements led to an increase in the combined value of the acquirer and its target of around 5%, with most of the increase going to the selling shareholders.

Strikingly, many of the big-loss deals were paid for in part with the buyers' own equity. They may thus, say the three economists, have been buying in order to exchange over-valued equity for real assets. That suggests, at least for the shareholders of some acquirers, that value was not being destroyed in the long term.

Within this overall story, there are important sub-plots. First, the value created by takeovers has been almost twice as large when there has been more than one bidder. Secondly, the value creation has been bigger for mergers within the same industry than for diversifying acquisitions. So, as CEOs set out on their hunt for takeover targets, they should not stray too far from home. And if they are the only hunter for any particular target, they should perhaps ask themselves why.

The Economist

 

Note

denouemant [deinu.'ma] - (from French) the end of a book or a play, in which everything is explained or settled; the end result of the situation

 

Vocabulary

 

bid n 1) предложение (цены); 2) попытка приобрести компанию; 3) попытка (чего-то добиться)
hostile bid враждебная попытка поглощения
friendly takeover дружественное поглощение
takeover bid попытка поглощения
in a bid to do smth пытаясь добиться чего-либо
target company Syn. takeover target, prey компания-объект возможного поглощения
poison pill защитная мера компании при угрозе поглощения; «отравленная пилюля»
stagger v осуществлять ротацию; заменять поочередно (членов совета директоров компании)
equity n собственный капитал
defence n 1) защита; правовое средство защиты; 2) возражения по иску; 3) обстоятельства, освобождающие от ответственности
white knight дружественная компания, спасающая компанию-жертву от враждебного поглощения; «белый рыцарь»

 

cross-shareholdings взаимное участие
unwinding п совершение обратной сделки; закрытие позиции
bidding war «война» за обладание компанией- потенциальным объектом поглощения
Vocabulary Commentary При описании методов, используемых компаниями в борьбе против враждебных поглощений, используются также следующие выражения.
corporate raider Syn. predator корпоративный налетчик
unsolicited bid непрошенная попытка погло­щения
greenmail(ing) Syn. good-bye kiss, bon voyage bonus 1) «зеленый шантаж»; приобретение значительного количества акций какой-либо компании с целью вынудить ее выкупить свои акции по более высокой цене; 2) «прощальный бонус»; выкуп компанией своих акций с премией у фирмы, угрожающей ей поглощением; уплата отступного враждебному претенденту; 3) деньги, уплаченные для выкупа акций у лица, пытающегося завладеть компанией
grey knight «серый рыцарь»; компания -конкурент «белого рыцаря», еще один претендент на дружественное поглощение

 






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