Forget those awkward executive retreats. Ditch intern happy hour.  The new way corporate America is practicing off-hour camaraderie is through group juice cleansings.

According to an article in The New York Times by Courtney Rubin, juice cleansing is a rigorous form of fasting and detoxification in which participants consume their vital nutrients purely in vegetable or fruit juice form for one to five days at a time.

Co-workers have now begun banding together to partake in corporate group cleanses in attempt to transform the workplace into a healthy, fun, high-morale environment, one super-charged beverage at a time.

Rubin names several organizations that have already experimented with this new form of team bonding, including Merill Lynch, Citigroup, Ralph Lauren, and Shape magazine, all of which have employees who testify to the "happy side effects" such as "increased energy, productivity, focus and clarity."   

Though Rubin says experts are still skeptical of the true benefits of juice cleanses and maintain that one's liver and kidney already serve as our own personal detoxers, these kale and acai berry based beverages continue to grow in popularity and are becoming more and more mainstream. 

So instead of ordering take-out with your colleagues this week, why not bond over a quick liquid lunch? 

NOW SEE: 7 work habits that are making you sick > 

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Today's advice comes from Tyson Cole, co-owner of the Japanese restaurants Uchi and Uchiko, via his interview with The New York Times:

"Many restaurant owners don’t want to come off as corporate; to them, the “C” in the word “corporate” is like the Scarlet Letter. To embrace systems would be like selling out and becoming a chain.”

Cole argues that small businesses can actually benefit from examining the way corporations work. In the food business, corporate chain restaurants know how to organize better than smaller ones, and organization is a huge component to expanding. 

While some startup founders may feel like organizational efforts will take away from creativity, Cole argues that putting in these systems, as bigger companies do, give businesses the freedom to be creative.

“I feel the opposite. There’s a reason chain restaurants thrive: Every one of them started as an individual restaurant. Each had a great chef, a great concept, and a great location, and they developed systems that enabled them to build guest demand, hold on to key people, and make money. Otherwise it would have been impossible to open two locations, much less 200.”

Want your business advice featured in Instant MBA? Submit your tips to tipoftheday@businessinsider.com. Be sure to include your name, your job title, and a photo of yourself in your email.

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Jack Bogle – founder of the Vanguard Group who has long been of the buy-andhold vein of investing – has some terse advice for investors.

On MoneyLife with Chuck Jaffe, Bogle gave this recommendation:

Get out of the casino, own Corporate America and hold it forever. No trading, no nothing. You don’t need to trade; you don’t need to worry about the market. To protect yourself from the bumps the stock market will scare you with – even though it shouldn’t scare you because there have been bumps in the market since the beginning of time – have a bond position to go along with your stock position.

He gives the lion’s share of the blame for the new-age investment model, which focuses on generating short-term returns, to the financial services industry. However, Bogle questions why investors allow themselves to be caught up in the frenzy.   “Why do they do it?” Bogle exclaimed, “They all think they are above average.”

To distinguish between investment and speculation, Bogle explains that “Speculation is, by and large, about buying and holding stocks; the values of stocks…come and go, sometimes for no reason.”

Bogle advised investors to ignore outside events such as the election or the fiscal cliff and invest money in companies that will “earn a return on it in a competitive world. …That’s what investing is all about, owning companies.”

SEE ALSO: Forget Gold - Here's Where Die-Hard Skeptics Are Storing Their Wealth >

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Around a fifth of the S&P 500 have reported their third quarter earnings, which means analysts and investors alike are swamped under an avalanche of numbers. EPS have been pleasantly surprising thus far, with 70% of S&P 500 companies beating expectations.

While these numbers can serve as measures of past results and indicators of future performance, they often fail to highlight underlying economic and market trends.

So we examined conference calls and independent research reports to bring you market insights for the rest of 2012 and 2013 that can’t be shown with just numbers.

The political landscape, concerns about a slowing Chinese economy, and the growth potential of emerging markets are just a few of the issues on executives’ minds.

Costco says big companies can plan for and manage new healthcare requirements

"Each year for the last two or three years and certainly this year and next year under different parts of the new Healthcare requirements, there’s been some additional input numbers into our expense...So we don’t think it’s going to have a big impact to us like it may to others but you know, others may do some things that may be less of an impact to them. I don’t know, but it’s fair to say from our perspective, it’s kind of been built into our numbers and we’ve been able to handle it."

Source: Seeking Alpha

Nike warns that it's getting more expensive to make things in China

“Gross margin declined 80 basis points to 43.5 percent. Gross margin continued to benefit from pricing actions and product cost reduction initiatives, however, this was more than offset by higher input costs, primarily materials and labor.” 

Source: FactSet

American Express notes that China's slowing growth hurts Australia's economy

"...that's probably a reflection of the fact that China is slowing down and Australia's economy has some pretty close linkages to China. So that's the biggest impact that we're seeing that is influencing the slowdown in the growth rate in billings in that region."

Source: Seeking Alpha

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I hear many executives and professionals in large corporations talking about their dream of jumping ship, and starting their own company. What they don’t realize is that the longer they wait, the more big-company habits they are acquiring, which will make their eventual decision harder and entrepreneurial efforts less and less likely to succeed.

Certainly, the longer they wait, the greater the variety of excuses they will find for why now is not the time. Common examples include; need to work on my resume, broaden my experience, enhance my skills, save my income, and maintain a stable family life until my children are gone. Most will then NEVER make the step, and remain unsatisfied through much of their career.

The reasons for waiting have merit, but they need to be balanced against the non-entrepreneurial habits that every professional picks up in a large corporation. These include:

• Managers delegate real work. Executives in an enterprise usually don’t write their own memos, contracts, and certainly don’t schedule their own meetings. It’s easy to grow accustomed to having your staff do the “real work” (my assistant will call your assistant to work out the details). In a startup, that luxury isn’t possible, so the work suffers.

• Executives have perks. By the time many big-company executives are ready to go out on their own as an entrepreneur, they have forgotten what it’s like to fly in coach class, buy their own health insurance, or having to deal with running out of money. The result is a startup with an exorbitant burn rate, and a very unhappy entrepreneur.

• Manage a team rather than work with a team. There is a difference. In a startup you have to be an integral contributor to your small team, taking your share of the workload, and leading by example. That’s a whole different mindset and skill set from your experience and training in an enterprise.

• Highly specialized focus. In a big company, you get used to having an IT team around configure your computer, a personnel specialist for hiring and firing, and a marketing team for strategy. You forget or even disdain any ability to be that jack-of-all-trades a new startup requires.

• Training courses are required. Before stepping into a new role, you count on the company providing you with in-house or contracted training courses for the basics, like project management or people management. In a startup, these don’t exist, and you have forgotten about how to self-learn, and there are no in-house experts to lean on.

• Count on getting paid for your efforts. Big-company professionals get in the habit of expecting near-term remuneration for today’s work. The average startup founder takes no salary for the first couple of years, with a high risk of never getting any return. After too many years, that’s an unfathomable step down for most people.

So when is the best time to make the leap from a big corporation to a startup? My scan of the literature and talking to investors would indicate a few years of experience in a large organization (zero to 5 years) is a good thing, while 20 or more years before founding your own venture will stack the cards against you.

Unless you are really young at heart, if you haven’t made the leap by the time you are in your early 40s, those habits you have picked up with your experience in a big company will be evident to your team and to investors. Not to mention the fact that if you are accustomed to a big-company culture and lifestyle, you will likely not be happy or satisfied with the startup lifestyle.

So if you really want to be an entrepreneur, there is no time like the present. Old habits die hard, so the longer you wait, the harder it will be to make the jump, and your odds of success go down. Going the other way is a lot easier.

Marty Zwilling

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It's no secret, corporate America is flush with cash.

And for the past year or so, they've been sitting on it instead of hiring, citing above all else The Electionas their reason for doing so. The word used to describe this phenomena is uncertainty.

Take billionaire real estate mogul Sam Zell, for example. He told the gang on Squawk Box last month that this country needed "an all clear sign" to "get back to business" and that uncertainty was the reason he hasn't been investing his oodles of cash.

Well, now the election is over, so it's time to kill uncertainty in corporate America. At least, that's the buzz we're hearing all over the internet right now.

There are two salient arguments in every uncertainty-killing piece we're seeing.

First, corporate America needs to get over uncertainty because we know the next government really well (it's our current government with a slight boost).

Plus, based on the numbers, it looks like Americans like their agenda, regardless of what the opposition may say.

From Macroman blog:

Obama and the Democrats have been handed a pretty strong mandate here, despite Boehner's spin early this (yesterday) morning. The electoral college was definitive, with most of the swing states going Obama's way, and gains were made in both the Senate and the House. Add to that, the fact that Tea Party candidates failed to gain any mandate whatsoever, the apparent split in the Republican party over strategy...

Now for the second point.

Fortune Magazine's Dan Primack points out that corporate America needs to leave its seat on the sidelines because uncertainty is everywhere all the time and it's not going away.

From Fortune's Term Sheet:

There are lots of things I'll be glad not to hear anymore. Campaign ads. 47 percent. You didn't build that. But, most of all, I'll be glad to be rid of "uncertainty."

This single word has become the excuse emblem of corporate America during President Obama's first term, explaining away everything from static headcounts to sluggish acquisition activity. Never mind that companies are sitting on record amounts of cash, or that stock market bulls have been slaughtering the bears for nearly three years (save for yesterday). If CEOs aren't 100% certain about what tomorrow will bring, they apparently cannot bring themselves to even get out of bed in the morning...

Obviously it would be very handy in business if we could predict the future, but that's never going to happen. What we do know is that America needs to get back to work.

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One recurring theme of the fiscal cliff debate is the desire to close certain loopholes in the tax code.

Still, almost nobody in Washington has brought up closing one of the most significant loopholes – the Subpart F corporate tax loophole, which was detailed in a Senate report released in late September. 

According to the report, that loophole is a major reason that the share of federal revenue derived from corporate taxes is a third of what it was in 1952.

Here are the stats: American multi-national corporations have more than $1.7 trillion in undistributed foreign earnings — some of which is deliberately held offshore to defer taxation — and taken as a whole, keep at least 60 percent of their cash overseas.

The corporate tax rate is a flat 35 percent, but companies with controlled foreign companies have a way to bring that rate down. 

The investigation explains that, to exploit the loophole, a company will "sell" their intellectual property rights to a foreign, controlled company in a tax shelter.

That controlled foreign company gains the profits from domestic and international sales without the burden of American taxation, since the income is considered passive.

The multinational will then occasionally repatriate some of the income through permissible short term loans between the controlled foreign company and the American corporation. 

Meanwhile, the main multinational uses the foreign-held corporation as a tax-free bank account. 

The issue is, the intellectual property was mostly developed in the U.S., and these companies are keeping mountains of untaxed cash reserves offshore. For instance, according to the report Microsoft kept half of their retail sales revenues offshore between 2010 and 2011. 

Here are the top companies with offshore cash reserves exceeding $5 billion:

You'll notice a couple things. 

• There are, among these 18 companies alone, upwards of $378.5 billion dollars kept offshore. 
• Most of these companies are tech, pharmaceutical, or medical technologies companies — industries where patents and intellectual property define the business model.
• Some companies like HP, Cisco, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson keep all or almost all of their cash offshore. 

Here's the main point: Both sides have talked about closing loopholes in the tax code. At the same time, both sides have taken vast amounts of money from all of these companies. The companies have been aggressive lobbyists and — especially with technology and pharmaceuticals— very generous campaign donors. 

That's one of the reasons that Subpart F hasn't been an issue in the fiscal cliff talks. While everyone loves to talk about closing loopholes, nobody wants to close the big ones that are used by powerful entities.

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There's been a lot of discussion lately over whether college is a waste of time. Given the popularity of Mark Zuckerberg's story and Peter Thiel's activism, it's no surprise young people are looking to enter the startup world right out of school.

Some try it even earlier, rejecting the more traditional path of starting out with a more established company. 

Many entrepreneurs would encourage that path, they tend to have a certain disdain for larger corporations. When we asked Shafqat Islam, the founder and CEO of New York based content syndication startup NewsCred, what advice he had for such people, he had a slightly different take. 

"I think a lot of people in my shoes would say 'Oh, go join a startup right away, don't waste your time in corporate America,'" Islam said, "That's the typical thing you hear in startup land. I'm a little contrarian in that I worked at Merrill Lynch running big technology projects for 6 years."

Despite the fact that those jobs may not be as exciting or glamorous as the startup world, they give the sort of experience and credibility that make you more likely to succeed.  

"Yeah, sometimes it was a bit of a slog, a bit boring, but I learned so much about how to build a business, how to manage teams, I wouldn't discount that fact," Islam said, "I would say that it's not bad to get a job for a few years, see what it's like before you start your own business. I think there's benefit to that."

Additionally, if your startup succeeds, you'll likely want large companies as clients. Relationships with those businesses and an idea of how they work can only help.

NOW READ: The Brilliant Pivot That Turned NewsCred Into One Of Silicon Alley's Hottest Startups

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Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is not the right leader for the world's largest software company but holds his grip on it by systematically forcing out any rising manager who challenges his authority, claims a former senior executive who has written a book about his time at the company.

"For Microsoft to really get back in the game seriously, you need a big change in management," said Joachim Kempin, who worked at Microsoft between 1983 and 2002, overseeing the sales of Windows software to computer makers for part of that time. "As much as I respect Steve Ballmer, he may be part of that in the end."

As a senior vice president in charge of a crucial part of the company's business with direct access to co-founder Bill Gates, Kempin is the most senior former Microsoft executive to write a book critical of the company, which is famous for the loyalty of its ex-employees.

His criticism echoes that of investor David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, who called for Ballmer to step down in 2011.

Kempin left Microsoft under a cloud in 2002 as some of the aggressive contracts he crafted with PC makers were seen as fodder for the U.S. government's antitrust prosecution of the company, which started in 1998 and was largely resolved by 2002.

His book, titled 'Resolve and Fortitude: Microsoft's "secret power broker" breaks his silence', is scheduled to be published on Tuesday. He talked with Reuters by phone on Monday.

DEFEND THE THRONE

Kempin charges Ballmer with purposefully ousting any executives with potential to wrest him from the CEO seat, which he has occupied since 2000.

He said he saw the process first with Richard Belluzzo, a former Hewlett-Packard executive credited with launching the Xbox game console who rose to chief operating officer at Microsoft but left after only 14 months in the post, in the same year Kempin left.

"He (Belluzzo) had no room to breathe on the top. When you work that directly with Ballmer and Ballmer believes 'maybe this guy could someday take over from me', my God, you will have less air to breathe, that's what it comes down to."

Microsoft representatives declined comment. Attempts to reach Belluzzo were not successful.

Several leading executives, touted by outsiders at one time or another as potential successors to Ballmer, have left the company in the last few years, most recently Windows unit chief Steven Sinofsky, who departed in November.

Before Sinofsky, Windows and online head Kevin Johnson went to run Juniper Networks Inc, Office chief Stephen Elop went to lead phone maker Nokia Oyj, while Ray Ozzie, the software guru Gates designated as Microsoft's big-picture thinker, left to start his own project.

"Ozzie is a great software guy, he knew what he was doing. But when you see Steve (Ballmer) and him on stage where he (Ozzie) opposed Steve, it was Steve's way or the highway," said Kempin.

Kempin said he spoke to Ballmer around two years ago and expressed his concerns about his management style and direction of the company, but has seen no changes since. He said he sent Ballmer and Gates copies of his new book but has yet to get a reply.

"Steve is a very good business guy, but make him a chief operating officer, not a CEO, and your business is going to go gangbusters," said Kempin. "I respect that guy (Ballmer), but there are some limitations in what he can and can't do and maybe he hasn't realized them himself."

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

In his book, Kempin writes about how Microsoft foresaw the major moves in technology in the last decade, but bungled its entry into tablets, phones and social media, ceding leadership in the technology world to Apple Inc and others.

"They missed all the opportunities they were talking about when I was still in the company. Tablets, phones...we had a tablet going, we had tablet software when Windows XP came out, it was never followed up properly," said Kempin.

He also claims the decline of PCs is partly due to Microsoft's mismanagement of hardware makers, an area that Kempin oversaw at Microsoft.

"Just think about the insult of Microsoft coming out with a tablet themselves, trying to mimic Apple, and now they are going to come out with a notebook on top of it," said Kempin, referring to Microsoft's Surface RT tablet and soon-to-be-released Surface running Windows Pro.

Several PC makers went public with their unease about Microsoft's decision to make its own computers last year.

Kempin reserves his most pointed criticism for Ballmer.

"Is he a great CEO? I don't think so. Microsoft's board is a lame duck board, has been forever. They hire people to help them administer the company, but not to lead the company. That's the problem," said Kempin.

"They need somebody maybe 35-40 years old, a younger person who understands the Facebook Inc generation and this mobile community. They don't need this guy on stage with this fierce, aggressive look, announcing the next version of Windows and thinking he can score with that."

(Reporting By Bill Rigby; Editing by Matt Driskill)

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Bersin by Deloitte, a human resources firm, has an interesting report out on the future of learning in organizations.

The language in which it’s written is turgid, to put it kindly (“Our new High-Impact Learning Organization Framework® shows organizations have moved from ‘talent-driven learning’ to a focus on ‘continuous capability development’ . . . “), but there are some good insights to be had. Here, translated from corporate-speak, are its main findings and predictions:

1. Companies that revisit employee performance goals each quarter are more than 30 percent more productive than those that set goals annually.

2. Traditional training models—everyone trundles off to a day-long seminar that proceeds to bore them out of their minds—are being replaced by learning that takes place on mobile devices, incorporates social media, and is continuous (not a one-shot deal but happening all the time).

3. The developers of corporate learning programs are paying more attention to exactly what each learner requires, identifying their needs in the same way that marketers have figured out how to pinpoint what consumers want.

4. The fast-changing business climate is creating greater demand for learning and development programs, which grew 12 percent last year—the highest growth rate in more than eight years.

5. Given the demand for skilled workers, many companies are focusing more on developing the talent they already have in-house. The report describes one successful technology company that lets employees change jobs within the firm after only a year in their current position, a policy that it believes tremendously improves its employee retention.

6. Human resources departments are beginning to use “big data” to inform their decisions about employees, crunching large amounts of information to guide them in hiring and promoting.  Some companies have even developed  scientific models to predict the engagement of their employees. (Read more here.)

Do you see any of these trends playing out in your organization? Where do you see organizational learning heading?

SEE ALSO: Feeling Like You Don't Belong In Your Career Is A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

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Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the loudest voice to enter into the drama between Bill Ackman and his short, Herbalife is legendary investor Carl Icahn.

Icahn has been working Wall Street since the 1960s, but it wasn't until the 1980s that he gained his reputation as a ruthless activist investor, taking a controlling interest in companies like TimeWarner, TWA, and Blockbuster.

Now he's a billionaire. And he hates Bill Ackman.

Their feud came to a head this week, when he and Ackman took 20 minutes out of their Friday afternoon to discuss their disagreement publicly on CNBC.

So who is the man taking the other side of what is arguably the short of the year?

Like most truly successful Americans, Icahn came from humble origins.

Icahn was born in 1936. His father was a synagogue cantor (though apparently an atheist); his mother a school teacher. He attended Far Rockaway High School in Queens.

Source: Icahn report

He worked his way into Princeton, where he majored in Philosophy.

He graduated in 1957.

Source: Icahn report

After brief stints at med school and the army, Icahn joined legendary mutual fund manager Dreyfus & Co.

Dreyfus merged with Mellon in 1994.

Source: Icahn report

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According to Center on Budget and Policy Priority data cited by Louise Story, in 2011 the states enacted $156 billion of austerity measures, between budget cuts and tax hikes. Despite their budgetary woes, however, this did not stop them from throwing billions of dollars a year into the worst kind of corporate subsidy, relocation incentives that move existing facilities from one state to another without creating any new jobs. A new report from Good Jobs First documents their widespread use, which is far more common than most people would imagine.

One great aspect of this report is that it goes beyond the two examples of interstate border wars we hear the most about, New York-New Jersey-Connecticut and Kansas-Missouri. We learn about Texas and Georgia vs. the world, North Carolina-South Carolina (especially in the Charlotte metro area), Tennessee-Mississippi (particularly with Memphis as target), and Rhode Island-Massachusetts. In addition, we learn more about the flip side of job piracy, retention subsidies, of which Sears' two in Illinois are the most egregious.

For example, Continental Tire moved its North American headquarters and 320 jobs from Charlotte to Lancaster County, South Carolina, in 2009. Georgia gave Ohio-based NCR Corp. (formerly National Cash Register) $109 million to relocate that same year. In 2010, Hamilton Beach received at least $2 million to move from Memphis to Olive Branch, Mississippi, while in 2009 McKesson received $4 million from Mississippi in addition to local incentives to move from Memphis to neighboring DeSoto County. Rhode Island, in a widely publicized move, gave Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling's video game company 38 Studios a $75 million loan to move from Massachusetts in 2009, only to see the  firm go bankrupt in 2012. There are many more examples in the report, but you get the idea.

The existence of relocation subsidies makes it possible for companies to demand incentives to stay in a particular state, i.e., retention subsidies. Two of the three largest ones went to Sears in Illinois, $168 million in 1989 and another $275 million in 2012 when the 1989 deal expired. The second largest was $250 million to Prudential Insurance from New Jersey in 2011. But many more states have had to shell out retention subsidies on a regular basis.

The report notes that at least 40 states know how to write no-raiding language into their subsidy programs, because they already have such language banning intra-state relocations from receiving subsidies under various programs. However, as far as I know, far fewer states prevent their cities from giving relocation subsidies to in-state firms, though the report shows that Maine's Employment Tax Increment Financing rules do provide that.

What is necessary, the report argues and I wholeheartedly agree, is that states need to tweak their program language to stop rewarding interstate job relocation as well. They need to stop efforts to directly poach existing firms, something Texas is heavily engaged in. The report says there is a "possible" federal role here, to withhold some Department of Commerce monies from states that engaged in job piracy. I, on the other hand, think that federal action is the only way it will happen. As I've written before, voluntary state efforts in the 1980s and 1990s to end job piracy have been utter failures, and the states clearly need an outside enforcement mechanism, which can only be provided by the federal government.

With such extensive documentation of how widespread relocation and retention subsidies are, hopefully more people can be mobilized to get the federal action we need.

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If you watch director Mark Wexler’s How to Live Forever,you’ll see thata chain-smoking, beer-drinking centenarian makes a great character in a documentary film. But this biological oddity hardly qualifies as a role model for people who want to live long and healthy lives.

Indeed, some studies have found that a surprising number of centenarians smoke, drink and live dangerously. Yet, most scientists and laymen alike would agree that they can best extend the years of their lives (and, yes, the life in their years) by not smoking and not drinking.

In my view, the same logic applies to the integration of environmental, social, governance (ESG) and forensic accounting research into the analysis of issuer risk.

Check out 13 big companies with bad ESG scores >

For the most part, this expansion of traditional approaches to investment analysis is continuing steadily. But we still see some evidence of lingering resistance to this inevitability.

Here, I’d like to address some of the misconceptions that fuel this resistance. No doubt, these misconceptions are weakening and receding from the forefront. Still, I’ll offer a few observations here to help speed their passage to the dustbin.

1. Corporate character matters. There’s value in values. Ignoring values can destroy value.

I dedicated the past 10 years of my career to the development of two areas of research – ESG and forensic accounting – that, in my view, have already moved the financial community toward a healthier, humbler and more holistic understanding of issuer risk. Investors, insurers and other market participants are employing “extra-financial” research in part because they see that it can help them improve performance, whether it’s the performance of an equity portfolio, a D&O insurance policy or a fixed-income strategy.

Over the past year, we published broad-ranging research findings that corroborate this claim (see summary here). Bob Monks’ upcoming book will bring fresh ideas to this growing body of research. Still, we occasionally hear dismissive arguments that challenge the relevance of non-traditional research.

True, the critics say, ESG risk metrics may capture aspects of corporate behavior that deviate from purist notions of justice, equity and fiduciary duty. But how materially do these departures from ideals really affect performance and profit? After all, some of the ESG anathemas — e.g., dual-class shares, combined CEO/Chair positions, rewards for failure, ignored shareholder votes — are so common.  Should we really get worked up about these bugbears?

At earlier stages in the evolution of ESG research, this question might have resonated more broadly. Back then, ESG still focused on values more than value. It treated the two goals as mutually antithetical. GMI has long distinguished itself by focusing on the value of values. From this vantage point, here’s what we’ve found that should change the mind of any reasonable skeptic:

• Between 2005 and 2012, a portfolio of companies with top-decile Accounting and Governance Risk (AGR®) ratings would have outperformed the lowest-decile portfolio by 123% in North America, 74 % in Western Europe, 94% in Asia Pacific (ex. Japan) and 128% in Japan.

• In GMI Ratings’ Litigation Risk Model, the majority of companies facing Federal class-action lawsuits are consistently ranked in the lowest 20% of the risk ratings distribution a year before these lawsuits were filed.

• In a heuristic study of 36 of the largest CDS defaults ever, companies in the bottom AGR decile were 11 times more likely to default than companies in the top AGR decile using a 6-12 month look-back period.

• In a 2012 study of North American companies with market caps of more than $20 billion, we found that 5-year total shareholder returns were nearly 28% higher at companies with separate Chair/CEO roles.

• Companies with bottom-decile AGR ratings experienced major price drops (70%+) 3.6 times more frequently compared to companies with top-decile AGR ratings.

• Based on forensic accounting measures, we recently alerted investors to the elevated risk of major share drops in companies such as HP, Caterpillar, and Chesapeake.

2. Risk modeling is not prediction. The former is an earnest attempt to make thoughtful decisions in the context of complex uncertainty. The latter is a centerpiece in Wall Street’s media-fueled culture of “propheteering”.

We see mounting evidence about the relevance of ESG/AGR research to the decisions of all market participants exposed to issuer risk. But this research also invites questions about “false positives,” companies that perform well despite their poor ESG or accounting ratings.

The simple answer to this question is to acknowledge the obvious: no one knows the future. No statistical risk model works perfectly — not in finance, or medicine, or economics or any area of life ever scrutinized through the prism of statistics.

We can only observe regularities and the rhythms of emerging and dissolving patterns. We can humbly model risk. We can never predict the future.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), smoking increases the risk of lung cancer by 23 times in men and by 13 times in women. The CDC also tells us that excessive alcohol use is responsible for an average of about 30 years of potential life lost (YPLL). Yet, you can find a handful of chain-smoking, binge-drinking risk-takers who manage to live in good health for more than a century. The bottom line here is that colorful exceptions do not alter the dominant regularity: smoking still kills.

Similarly, poorly governed companies whose accounting practices distort the economic value of the enterprise expose investors to material and avoidable risks.

3. In Conclusion: When paradigms shift, shift with them.

Obsolete ideas don’t always die peacefully. Long after they’ve outlived their usefulness, they still cling to life and resist the rise of superior ideas. Modern finance can be prey to obsolete ideas sustained by nothing but the force of cultural and institutional inertia. This will change because it is now in the best economic interest of every individual market participant to broaden his or her idea of risk and value.

In the history of progressive ideas that succeed in the struggle for survival, we find a common pattern. The idea starts out on the subversive fringe. It attracts followers and believers. It builds political power and soon achieves mainstream respectability. In the final stage, the idea gets woven into the cultural fabric.

It starts to sound obvious, and it helps change institutional and individual behaviors and habits of mind. Arguably, ESG/AGR has not yet entered this final stage characterized by broad mainstream consensus. In my view, this consensus is inevitable because the evidence is overwhelming, and so is the need for change.

The post Centenarian Chain Smokers: Lessons about the Predictive and Explanatory Value of ESG Research appeared first on GMI Ratings.

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It's no secret that corporate law can wreck your spirit.

Jobs at big firms pay more than $165,000 a year to start, but the hours are notoriously long and the work can be mind-numbing.

One former lawyer says it was utterly demoralizing too.

At the end of our source's brief stint at a major firm, she felt she had no choice but to leave BigLaw completely.

This former lawyer joined the firm after graduating from an Ivy League law school. At first, partners distributed work evenly among her "class" of associates, or young lawyers who have yet to make partner.

But then a pecking order was quickly established.

"I think law firms are very goal-oriented," our source told us. "You are going to become a partner, or you are disposable. If you are disposable, then you have a crappy life."

The "disposable" associates, like our source, often received assignments at 4:30 or 5 p.m. that partners wanted "overnight." Our source routinely worked 13-hour days.

"Probably three or five months in, it was very hard to maintain other things in my life," she says.

Her work life was made more miserable by the unfriendly atmosphere in the office. The firm once held a "diversity training" where lawyers were told they should greet one another to make people feel less alienated, but partners and senior associates balked at the notion of saying hello to underlings.

"There was major kickback from the senior associates and partners," our source says. "They were like, 'No, we don't want to say hello. My prerogative is to be an accomplished lawyer.'"

The entire experience, our source says, "was just not very humanizing."

Life at the firm got worse after after she got a bad annual review. The writing was on the wall. Our source believes her firm never intended for her to become partner.

"I think the abuses started piling up after that," our source told us.

For a while, she put one foot in front of the other and went to work.

"But at a certain point my body just turned on me," she says, "and I was just not going to physically go into the office anymore."

Her departure was not unusual. "They take in large junior classes each year, and at the end of two years most people are gone for different reasons," she says. "People just disappear."

SEE ALSO: 'Going To Law School Was The Biggest Mistake Of My Life'

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When nearly 300 U.S. corporations and other groups signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the gesture may have been corporate America's most emphatic statement ever in support of a gay-rights issue.

The brief, filed February 27 for consideration in this week's Supreme Court hearing on the matter, claims that the lack of federal rights for gays and lesbians -- ones that already exist for heterosexual couples -- places administrative and financial burdens on corporations. The brief lists page after page of legal and business arguments.

But the bottom-line rationale is that denying federal rights to same-sex couples is bad for American business. The filing says that the current 1996 law, by defining marriage as solely between a man and a woman, infringes upon the rights of companies to conduct business as they see fit by asking these companies to renounce their principles, "or worse yet, betray them."

That the filing gathered so many signatories suggests a rapid and dramatic change in corporate culture, experts say -- an unprecedented level of support for Gay America by Business America. "I think this is one of the most dramatic and fastest cultural changes in a long time, or maybe ever," says Mario Moussa, a management consultant who teaches in Wharton's executive education program. "Fifty years ago, the gay rights movement started, and within a relatively short time there has been a dramatic change. Companies are smart to get on board with it."

"It is an eye-popping level of support," adds Beth I.Z. Boland, a corporate attorney with the Boston law firm Bingham McCutchen, counsel for the filing. "It was absolutely astonishing how the business community came together on this issue [as evidenced by] the number of businesses that wanted to sign on." While friend-of-the-court briefs in favor of keeping DOMA were filed by various religious groups, as well as the National Organization for Marriage, no such briefs were filed by employers, Boland adds.

The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing arguments today in the case, United States v. Windsor, and yesterday heard a challenge to California's Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage. A decision is expected on both cases at the end of June.

Pros and Cons

If there was once peril for companies throwing their weight behind a progressive gay issue, now the calculation has flipped, says Moussa. "I think the risk is not acting quickly enough."

Signing on in support of gay marriage are some of America's largest corporations -- and smallest. Apple, Bain & Co., Bank of New York Mellon, BlackRock, CBS, Facebook, Goldman Sachs Group, Jet Blue, Johnson & Johnson, Starbucks, Twitter, Viacom and Walt Disney are signatories. But so are a four-employee sheet-metal firm in Seattle and a balloon company in Brooklyn. Though the friend-of-the-court brief (also referred to as amicus curiae) records 278 signatories, it actually represents a much larger swath of business than that number would indicate, since 16 trade groups and chambers of commerce -- as well as the U.S. Conference of Mayors -- are among them.

John S. Woerth, a spokesman for the Vanguard Group, said that although the 14,000-employee company was not a signatory to the brief, Vanguard is behind it in substance and spirit -- and in fact advocated for it as a board member of the American Benefits Council, which did sign it.

"Vanguard believes that support of the amicus brief is consistent with our mission to hire and develop a diverse workforce that reflects our community and society at large," he says. "In particular, Vanguard supports the amicus brief because it effectively explains the burdens DOMA places on employers like Vanguard, who are committed to ... providing comparable benefits for all members of a dedicated and diverse workforce."

For the Boston Foundation, a group dedicated to community development philanthropy, signing on to the brief is an act in support of social justice. But as an employer, it also sees a federal right to the benefits of marriage for same-sex couples as a practical matter. "We have as a mission to make our region a more vibrant place to live, work and raise a family," says Keith Mahoney, the community foundation's director of public affairs. In addition, "It's very hard to provide a benefit to one employee and not another."

Nine states plus Washington, D.C. (and some Native American tribes) currently allow same-sex marriage.

Many are eager to see DOMA undisturbed, however. In a 2011 defense of DOMA published inThe Wall Street Journal, attorneys David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Lee A. Casey, who served in the Justice Department during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, argued that society would be divided for decades to come if the state-by-state political process of approving same-sex marriage were shut down.

"Marriage is unlike any other governmental benefit," they wrote. "License to marry carries with it far more than mere permission, as in obtaining a license to drive or practice a profession." They go on to note that the reason gay rights supporters "are so determined to achieve equal status for same sex unions, and the reason that so many others vigorously oppose that recognition, is that marriage is an affirmative statement of societal approval."

Complexities of a Two-tier System

The burdens employers and employees confront by placing same-sex marriages in a separate class are numerous and complex, say many observers. In duplicating benefits granted to married different-sex couples, such as the extension of health insurance to spouses or partners, employers have inadvertently created other problems. For example, in the case of a gay employee whose partner (married or not) receives health insurance, the benefit is counted as extra income, and that income is taxed. The employer must then track these employees differently, reporting the income to the IRS and issuing an extra W-2 form at the end of the year. The extra taxation means that the employee is effectively making less money than a heterosexual married colleague earning the same salary.

Many employers have compensated for the inequity by increasing salaries to cover the difference -- a gesture that levels the playing field, but which obviously creates additional financial costs for the employer. "On average, the W-2 form of the employee married to a same-sex spouse will show $1,069 more in federal taxes paid than that of her colleague married to a different-sex spouse," states the friend-of-the-court brief, citing a study by UCLA's Williams Institute.

Other inequities include the fact that same-sex partners cannot reduce taxable income by contributing to a flexible-savings account; the inability to extend COBRA benefits; a lack of protected leave in times of illness and family crisis; and tax disadvantages when a same-sex partner is designated as beneficiary of pension, annuity and life insurance plans.

Corporations recruiting talent from abroad are precluded from "offering a foreign national's same-sex spouse the shared visa status that a different-sex spouse would receive," the brief says. "For obvious reasons, this is a considerable impediment to attracting foreign nationals. Many may decline to come to a country that will not recognize a marriage that is lawful at home ...."

The Defense of Marriage Act also adds expenses by forcing corporations to keep two systems for payroll and benefits. "These dual regimes have spawned an industry of costly compliance specialists," according to the brief. "The burden on the small employer is especially onerous."

In addition, the dissonance between DOMA and state laws creates a risk of litigation, forcing employers to choose where state law supercedes federal law, and vice versa. Conflicts typically end up in an organization's human resources department, where "every benefits administrator must become a constitutional scholar, or give uncertain advice," the brief says. Indeed, experts say married different-sex couples are entitled to about 1,000 benefits not enjoyed by same-sex married couples.

Boycotts on Both Sides

It is not unusual for the business community to weigh in, legally, on issues of equality.

Notably, in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases, decided in 2003 as Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, the business community favored keeping race-based affirmative action legal, says Michael C. Dorf, professor at Cornell University Law School. "That brief -- along with a brief from retired military officers -- was generally credited with influencing the [Supreme] Court," he said. "The business community has also filed briefs to the same effect in the current affirmative action case, Fisher v. Univ. of Texas."

One leading gay-rights scholar says it's perfectly natural that corporate America should be agitating for change on behalf of sexual minorities. "Corporate America has largely led the way, well ahead of public agencies and often public opinion, on LGBT supportive policies," says Gary J. Gates, a scholar at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. "Anti-discrimination policies and recognition of same-sex couples is much more pervasive in the Fortune 500 than in U.S. federal policy and the laws of most states. So it should not be surprising that these companies have taken stances supportive of marriage equality. Many have had LGBT supportive policies for a decade or more."

Such support has come with dangers in the past, with some corporations becoming boycott targets after announcing a progressive stance on a gay and lesbian issue. Conversely, several large corporations and their CEOS who have given money to anti-gay politicians or causes -- Chick-fil-A and Urban Outfitters among them -- have drawn a critical response from gay groups.

But the thinking at corporations and public opinion have been leapfrogging with each other during the past decade. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll indicates unprecedented support. Results published March 18 show 58% of Americans now in favor of same-sex marriage, with 36% saying it should be illegal. A decade ago, 37% approved of gay marriage and 55% opposed it.

Statistics like these suggest that the risk for corporations isn't what it once was. "The incident at the recent Starbucks shareholders meeting suggests that public stances are not without controversy," said Gates, referring to widely publicized comments from one anti-gay marriage activist to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. "However, there's little evidence that boycotts targeting companies like Starbucks and Disney have garnered sufficient support to make the companies reassess their supportive positions in favor of LGBT equality."

As for the current brief, Marc Solomon, national campaign director of Freedom to Marry, the established U.S. advocacy group for same-sex marriage, asks: "What are [DOMA supporters] going to do, boycott 280 companies?"

Toward Diversity

One interesting question is why the issue of gay marriage has taken up so much psychic energy when one recent survey puts the number of Americans who identify as gay or lesbian at about 3.5%. That gay rights organizations are as well-organized and funded as they are is one reason. Some observers cite the AIDS crisis as a formative template for organizing succeeding battles.

But another factor, according to Wharton's Moussa, is that the consciousness-raising surrounding same-sex marriage is part of a larger trend. "There is no question that corporate America is more focused on diversity in general," he says. "I was recently at American Express, [which] has a chief diversity officer. I think it's a time of greater diversity, which means more acceptance of other minorities."

Beyond the practical business factors of competition for talent and streamlining costs and administration, much of the energy feeding change is being generated by the small, interpersonal interactions of gay and lesbian employees coming out on the job and elsewhere. "You meet parents on the soccer field who have the same concerns you do, and it really humanizes the issue. It presents the issue as a fact of life rather than an activist issue," says the Boston Foundation's Mahoney.

"Attitudes and practices are changing rapidly in corporations," adds Steve Salbu, dean of the Georgia Institute of Technology's Scheller College of Business and a former visiting professor at Wharton. "Gay-friendly policies and cultures are thriving in most Fortune 500 companies. Successful companies compete for top LGBT talent, as well as for LGBT customers, based in part on their reputation around LGBT policies.

"But the trend toward LGBT-friendly policies also reflects broader, rapidly changing attitudes," adds Salbu, the only openly gay dean at a top business school. "As we've observed recently in Ohio Sen. Rob Portman's altered stance on gay marriage, knowledge that some among one's family and friends are gay can play a role in changing beliefs, as well as in changing policies and practices." Portman recently came out in favor of gay marriage after announcing that one of his children is gay.

Progress, but Not Always Protection

But even today, many gays and lesbians work in environments where they do not feel comfortable outing themselves. "It's one thing to have policies in place and that certainly has an impact, but you can't legislate water-cooler conversation. We found that 50% of LGBT Americans are closeted on the job," says Deena Fidas, deputy director of the Human Rights Campaign's Workplace Project. "Culture and policy are not one and the same."

The American workplace is not completely safe for LGBT employees, notes Gates. "Most large corporations now have LGBT supportive policies and procedures, but 'legal' equality does not always translate into 'social' equality. Further, the bulk of jobs in the U.S. are in small- and medium-sized companies that are much more mixed in terms of LGBT-supportive policies and workplace climates. The majority of states still do not provide protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in private employment. For many people who may experience discrimination as a result of their sexual orientation or gender identity, regardless of employer policies, options for seeking legal remedies to address the discrimination are quite limited."

Even so, Fidas says, the number of businesses endorsing same-sex marriage is a "huge and unprecedented" development. "Eight or nine years ago, it was still a rarity for business to weigh in on marriage." Indeed, the Human Rights Campaign's 2013 Corporate Equality Index found that for the first time in its 11-year history, the majority of Fortune 500 companies now afford both sexual orientation and gender identity protection to employees.

It may be about fairness, but according to Wharton's Moussa, it's also about being practical: "Corporate America is all about getting along, working on teams, collaborating. If you start drawing lines in the sand, pretty soon you're going to be working by yourself."

SEE ALSO:  How To Use A Lottery To Create Healthier Employees

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The funding shortfall bedeviling the 100 largest U.S. corporate pension funds rose for a second straight year in 2012, as a strong stock market and hefty plan contributions failed to offset damage done by persistently low interest rates, according to an analysis by Towers Watson released on Monday.

The gap between what these corporations, all publicly traded, will owe retired workers and how much they have put aside jumped 17 percent, from $252.7 billion at year-end 2011 to $295.2 billion at year-end 2012. By comparison, these companies had a pension surplus of $86 billion in 2007.

Companies are required to calculate the present value of the future pension liabilities by using a so-called discount rate, based on corporate bond yields. As those rates fall, the liabilities rise.

An unprecedented level of lump sum buyouts and annuity purchases partially offset the increases in both assets and liabilities - due to lower interest rates. Without the buyouts and annuity purchases, obligations would have increased by 12 percent.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, corporate pension plan assets have increased, owing to the double-digit gains in stock markets and large contributions. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index climbed more than 13 percent in 2012.

"However, four consecutive years of declining interest rates pushed liabilities 40 percent higher, leaving companies with larger deficits than before," said Alan Glickstein, a senior consultant at Towers Watson.

According to the Towers analysis, employers contributed $45.1 billion to their pension plans in 2012. That is a 16 percent increase from 2011 and the largest contribution employers have made in the past five years. The analysis noted that the companies contributed more than twice the amount of benefits accrued last year to keep funding levels up.

Over the last few years many corporations have been gradually adjusting their portfolios to reduce investment risk relative to liabilities, shifting from public equities to fixed-income and alternative investments.

Since 2009, average allocations to equities have fallen 10 percentage points, while allocations to fixed-income investments have risen by eight percentage points. However, the shift away from equities slowed in 2012, according to the report.

"Of the 95 companies that reported target asset allocation strategies for 2012 and 2013, only three reduced their target equity allocations by 10 percent or more, versus 16 for 2011," Towers Watson's report said.

"Obviously, there is a long way to go until the end of the year, but funding ratios are moving in the right direction," said Dave Suchsland, a senior consultant at Towers Watson.

"If interest rates don't continue their rise and equity returns weaken, plan sponsors may need to pour more cash into their plans to improve funded status for the full year."

(Reporting by Manuela Badawy; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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Like many working on Wall Street, Sidney Goodfriend has an impressive resume.

After graduating from Johns Hopkins and getting an MBA from Columbia, he started trading stocks and began a long and lucrative career starting at Merrill Lynch and ending at Credit Suisse.

What happened after his 24-year investment banking tenure is perhaps even more impressive.

In 2008, he dipped into his own money to start an organization dedicated to helping military members ease their transition from the service: American Corporate Partners (ACP).

"Since 9/11, I found myself very appreciative of the freedoms and opportunities my family and I enjoyed," Goodfriend told Business Insider. "I wanted to do something different and I wanted to see if there was a way that I could make a contribution."

ACP partnered with six companies to create a unique mentoring program — pairing corporate executives with military members trying to figure out their next move.

His contribution paid off. Goodfried took ACP from just a handful of partner companies at founding to now more than 40, including two universities and two hospitals. "They all provide mentors, and all the corporations provide funding," Goodfriend said.

Unlike traditional jobs programs, ACP offers guidance from experienced professionals to job seekers in their chosen field. These mentors volunteer to be paired with a veteran protégé for one year — speaking with or meeting regularly to find out goals, and outline steps the veteran needs to take to get there.

"Most people want to help, but they don't know how, outside of writing a check," Goodfriend said. 

Some of the several thousand veterans that have gone through the program have seen impressive volunteer mentors, including NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Home Depot CEO Frank Blake, Barclays CEO Bob Diamond, and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. 

"Many of our mentors tell us they get just as much out of the program that the veterans do," he said.

But what are the veterans getting out of the program? From the lengthy "success stories" page on the ACP website, it looks like quite a bit.

"I believe the mentorship program and the professional workshops have been directly responsible for me having seven interviews in the last few weeks," writes William, a U.S. Army veteran, "and accepting a position with a corporation that has great opportunities in both management and train transportation services."

For Goodfriend, who receives no compensation from ACP, he sees the organization as serving two goals — helping as many veterans as possible who are coming home to a civilian career, and encouraging others to stand up and help those who served.  

"The people receiving, the folks who served — they don't view it as a charity," Goodfriend said. "They see this only as seeking advice and guidance from a person they respect."

Disclosure: The author went through the ACP mentoring program in 2011.

SEE ALSO: These Two Companies Are Leading Obama's Challenge To Hire 100,000 Veterans >

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There are three types of "geniuses" in the world — and we just can't figure out how to employ them.

That's according to Dave Logan, who wrote about why geniuses don't have jobs for CBS Moneywatch.

We often spurn geniuses in the corporate setting because, apart from their raw brainpower, geniuses can be unprofessional, stubborn, and generally difficult to be around.

Logan breaks it down the three types:

The first type -- let's call them "gregarious geniuses" -- have an opinion about everything and don't suffer fools (and there are lots of fools in management, so they are often the power structure in companies). And in some area, they have clarity that lets them see through steel. I know gregarious geniuses that can spot a company's strategic flaw so quickly that you wonder if they've been hacking the executives' emails. And their presentation of the problem implies that everyone involved in setting the initial strategy is an idiot and we should bring back the rack as the only legitimate method of punishment for such epic stupidity.

...

The second category is the "isolated genius." They are at the opposite end of the extroversion continuum, choosing to say so little, making people wonder if they can actually talk. They are usually attracted to technical problems. They don't like teams, and they would rather do work than report on status. When they talk, they do so like an encyclopedia conveys information. Emails get no response or one-word answers.

...

The third type is the "unpredictable genius." A less kind word would be "unstable." On their good days, they seem like ideal executives -- able to take lots of views into account, plot the best course forward, and exude so much energy, the lights are brighter when they're in the room. On their bad days, they are moody, unresponsive, slow, and pessimistic.

But we all need geniuses on our team. After all, even a sociopath can bring in major revenue.

Logan says we need to have a better idea of how to manage geniuses by 1) having conversations about the ground rules and never giving geniuses a free pass and 2) setting clear development goals.

Here's Why A Diagnosed Sociopath Says Her Disorder Made Her A 'Great Lawyer'

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Let’s face it—today’s business world is fickle. Just think of your smart phone as an example: the minute you fall in love with it, it’s altered completely or off the market.

That’s how fast things change.

So it can go with your career. Through no fault of your own, you can find yourself on the job hunt again.

You cannot control what happens to you in this world of change. The only thing you can control is you—your thoughts and how you react to change. All confidence—including the workplace kind—comes from self control.

So, when there’s a sudden shift in your career (and your job faces the same fate as your smartphone), you need to take control. And, you need to know the corporate breakup rules.

Corporate Breakup Rule #1: Deal, Don’t Dwell

Getting laid off is a big change. Often, a painful and unwanted change. When we are faced with a major change, the natural tendency is to dwell on the past, worry about the future, doubt ourselves and get stuck.

All these emotions are natural reactions, so don’t beat yourself up over them. But when you dwell too much on the negative, it becomes problem generating.

When we dwell, we go over the same ground again and again: “Why did this happen to me?,” “What did I do wrong?,”  “Will I ever be able to find another job?”

When you deal instead of dwell, you focus in the present moment and take control over how you think and act. You become a problem solver. You think empowering thoughts, ask better questions and take action. It can sound like this: “OK—I might not be comfortable with job hunting, but I’m not going to let that stop me. First I’m going to educate myself about the companies I like. Then I’m going to decide: How can I move forward?” and “Who can help me?”

You need to be able to acknowledge your fears and doubts, then turn them into planning and action.  Remember—you choose your thoughts and actions. You choose what’s next.

When faced with change, always ask yourself: “What’s the next positive step I can take to move myself forward?”

Then, do it.

Corporate Breakup Rule #2: Don’t Get Caught Like a Deer in the Headlights

Life is about change. Corporate life is about more change.

The more grounded you are in your ability to navigate it all, the more confident you will be.

So, here’s corporate breakup rule #2: Don’t get caught like a deer in the headlights when change hits.

Be comfortable with change. Expect it. Prepare for it. Keep your network alive and well.

Most people get complacent once they have a job. They stop networking. They think “Why bother?”

Don’t be one of them. Even if it’s just a quick phone call or cup of coffee, keep those relationship lines open and active at all times.

Remember:

• There is no such thing as job security anymore. Change is now rapid and constant.
• In this world of change, who doesn’t need more friends for support?
• More companies are hiring based on recommendations. (it’s like one big facebook out there!)
• Business development is about relationship building–so start building.
• Ask yourself, “If the unexpected happens, do I really want to look like a deer caught in the headlights?”

So—Prepare for change. Stay connected. And be reciprocal. Networking is always a 2-way street.

Now, finally, and most importantly…..

Corporate Breakup Rule #3: Never Forget Your Value

When we face downsizing, feelings of rejection run high.

We often internalize the dismissal from a company to the point that we reject our own value. We think that all our professional powers are linked to, and have been left at, our former job.

We leave feeling empty and helpless.

Don’t do this to yourself. Your value is yours and yours alone— it is a part of you, not your company, and travels with you wherever you go.

Your value is not in the time that you spent at a company, nor in the title you had. It’s in the unique talents that you bring to the table and in the results that you produce.

So, no matter what direction you choose next in your career, never, ever forget your value.

Believing in yourself and your abilities first and foremost gives you the confidence you need for navigating change.  This is the most important rule you’ll ever need to achieve career success.

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Yesterday, President Obama talked up corporate tax reform, and one issue that The White House, as well as large corporations, would like to see addressed is cash held overseas.

Large US multinationals have tons of cash parked overseas because to repatriate it would involve a big tax hit on that cash, so they leave it out there, hoping, perhaps that the law will change, or that there will be a one-day repatriation holiday.

The White House didn't endorse a repatriation holiday, but instead put forth the idea of a one-time levy on foreign-held cash, after which companies could do what they please with that money. Ezra Klein has a good explainer here.

There's pretty low odds of this stuff going anywhere, but just talking about foreign cash gets investors interested in who has the cash overseas that could potentially be liberated in a deal.

Goldman Sachs put out a report on the matter, saying:

President Obama proposed a series of economic measures today including changes to corporate taxation. Repatriation was not specifically mentioned, but market participants interpreted the “onetime revenues” associated with the transition to a new business tax system as a sign of possible support for low-tax repatriation of foreign profits.

Via that report, here are the top 10 companies with boatloads of cash parked abroad.

Click the image to enlarge

According to Goldman, the top 50 companies have a total of $1.3 trillion overseas.

SEE ALSO: Obama did not propose a corporate tax cut, but the media is saying he did

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