July 2nd, 2009 · Faculty News · Posted by Tracy Mueller
UT President William Powers appointed McCombs Management Lecturer Kristie Loescher to the Texas Student Media (TSM) Board of Operating Trustees. It’s Loescher’s second appointment to the board, which she’s been a member of since August 2007.
Loescher’s role is to help TSM maintain fiscally responsible operations. Past efforts include guiding staff in creating a contingency budget for the 2008-09 school year that removed $100,000 in expenses and completing a financial analysis to support the acquisition of a new transmitter for Texas Student Television (TSTV). The financial analysis helped support the use of reserve funds for the transmitter, which will increase the revenue potential for TSTV and other aspects of TSM.
The TSM Board oversees the Daily Texan newspaper; the humor magazine Texas Travesty; the Cactus yearbook; KVRX 91.7 FM; and TSTV. Department of Accounting Chair Urton Anderson previously served on the board.
Hiring is down. Anxiety is up. Tom Gilligan is calm.
When economic conditions plunge, a university’s business school feels the nausea most. UT’s McCombs School has been led by a newcomer to Texas this past year. If a mid-crisis transition like that sounds like it could be rough, realize Dean Gilligan’s used to being at the control panel — and to seeing things from an expansive overhead view. Flying Cold War missions around Russia gave him a pilot’s resolve. Serving as junior economic advisor to the president gave him political realism. Studying and teaching economics gave him a tendency to look, ever optimistically, at the long run. Read more.
Bloomberg, July 1, 2009
Commentary by David Reilly
Markets sank last year. So too did hedge-fund performance. Markets soared in the just-finished quarter. Hedge funds notched up big wins. Now remind me why they are called hedge funds.
Bull-market geniuses may be a better moniker. For all the talk of being able to make money whether stocks rise or fall, hedge funds too often look more like index-hugging mutual funds.
Some academic research shows hedge funds are no better at stock picking than the buy-and-hold crowd. Add in the hefty fees hedge funds often charge, and they are “a worse vehicle than mutual funds,” argues an academic research paper entitled, “How Smart Are the Smart Guys?”
Its conclusion: Not very. Or at least not as smart as many hedge-fund guys think, especially now that markets are again giving them a lift….The paper, by John Griffin, an associate professor of finance at the University of Texas at Austin, and Jin Xu, of hedge fund Zebra Capital Management LLC, raises doubts about “the ability of hedge-fund management to add value” for investors. Read more.
The McCombs School is cohosting a free conference on outsourcing Thursday, July 2. Admission is open to the public and will include a live video broadcast of panelists from the ESCP-EAP Business School in France and the Management Development Institute in India.
Event: Business Process Outsourcing (BPO): State of the Art, Emerging Trends and Cross-Continent Perspectives
When: Thursday, July 2. 8-10 a.m.
Where: UT campus, AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center. 1900 University Avenue, Austin, TX 78705
This event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited, so please RSVP by e-mailing holly.rich@mccombs.utexas.edu
The conference will explore BPO practices and perspectives from the United States, Europe and India. Each location will host a panel of experts including customers, service providers, end users and professors to present the outsourcing vs. insourcing contradictory perspectives and the state of BPOs.
SPEAKERS
In U.S.:
• Professor Britt Freund, Assistant Dean and Director, McCombs School of Business
• Eric Dunn, Sr. Software Development Manager, IBM’s GST/MBPS Assets and Delivery Excellence Tools
In France:
• Jean-Paul Binot, director at Albridge and representative of the European Outsourcing Association
• Rémi Bricard, legal expert in BPO working for Baker & Mckinsie
• Chafik Sabiry, EDS offshore director (HP company)
• Michel Maupain, Delphi automotive financial outsourcing manager
In India:
• Mr Raju Bhatnagar, VP BPO and Government Relation , NASSCOM
• Mr Narayan, VP Process Outsourcing, RAMTeCH Software Solutions Pvt.Ltd.
Are sellers at a disadvantage in corporate acquisitions? New research from McCombs Assistant Professor of Management Melissa Graebner (left) shows sellers in corporate acquisitions are more trusting than buyers, and that buyers’ may use their lack of trust to justify deceptive practices. The New York Times DealBook blog reports on Graebner’s study:
“Sellers tend to eliminate partners they distrust, while buyers did not,” the study’s author, Melissa Graebner of the University of Texas at Austin, said. “So this creates a fundamental asymmetry in which most sellers trust their buyers, but most buyers distrust their sellers.” Read More…
The McCombs undergraduate course Business Communication: Written & Oral (BA 324) was named one of four finalists for The University of Texas System Library Directors’ Award for Excellence in Library Resource Integration May 21, 2009. Chosen from among nominations received across The University of Texas System, the winner and finalists were recognized for integrating library resources into their curricula and helping students develop information literacy skills. Cynthia Cone, Mary Dunn, Cole Holmes, Ellen Morrison, Erin Porter and JJ Riekenberg were nominated by April Kessler, UT Austin business librarian, for use of an online business research tutorial in combination with face-to-face library workshops in their BA 324 classes. Congratulations!
Recently, McCombs Marketing Professor Vijay Mahajan sat down with Nick Binedell, director of the Gordon Institute of Business Science in South Africa, to discuss the business potential in Africa, home to 900 million consumers. “The market opportunities are not any less than what India and China have to offer,” Mahajan said. Mahajan’s most recent book, Africa Rising, extensively details many of these opportunities. Watch the video.
Is our society overly competitive and adversarial? On his Macroeconomics Updates blog, McCombs economist Michael Brandl writes about the dangers of taking on an “Us vs. Them” mentality, whether in sports, business or politics:
We seem to have a growing intolerance of those we consider not to be “us.” And it seems who we define as “us” is getting more narrow and more extreme.
Here is what I mean: in policymaking it used to be that Republicans and Democrats would debate, argue and reach some type of compromise. In business, firms would compete in many markets but would also co-operate with each other in other settings. Read More…
The Executive MBA program’s Class of 1999 held their 10-year reunion on Saturday, June 13 at Perry’s Steakhouse in downtown Austin. Court Huber, the former director of the program, came back to catch up with alumni, and current director, John Burrows, gave an update on the program.
The alumni shared stories about their time in Option II (the original name of the program) and did a few quick video interviews with us about their life after the Executive MBA. (Please excuse the spotty lighting and sound – steakhouses don’t make the best studios!)
Watch video interview on what alumni miss most about the Texas Executive MBA program:
This Tuesday, Professor of Finance Lewis Spellman presents the second lecture of his four-part series on the economy, titled “The Economy and Financial Markets: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.”
Tuesday, June 16
Why Economists Missed the Biggest Economic and Financial Disintegration since the Depression Details and RSVP
Tuesday, June 23
The Bailouts: The Solution or the Next Problem? Details and RSVP
Tuesday, June 30
The Economic and Financial Morass: What is needed for a recovery? Details and RSVP
Dinner is available before hand in Gabriel’s Cafe and there will be a cash bar. Parking is available underground on the north side of the building. Seating is limited, so please RSVP.
About Lew Spellman
Professor Spellman’s primary teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate level is in financial markets and institutions, with an emphasis on interpreting and analyzing current market and policy developments and market trends. More about Spellman.
UT President William Powers appointed McCombs Management Lecturer Kristie Loescher to the Texas Student Media (TSM) Board of Operating Trustees. It’s Loescher’s second appointment to the board, which she’s been a member of since August 2007.
The New York Times, June 24, 2009
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