After 144 years, the president of the Tata group will not share his last name with the company: Ratan Tata, after 21 years, is stepping down. He leaves his corporate responsibilities among recognition from shareholders, admiration from the international business community, and the appreciation of the Indian government. 2013 will mark the beginning of the era of Cyrus Misty. Young at 44 years old, he will need to live up to the expectations of his predecessor, considered the most shining example of success of the Indian economy. Ratan Tata, in fact, heads the short list of Indian capitalists that have...

Water treatment describes those processes which make water more acceptable for a specific end use. Depending on the requirements of this end use, water treatment thus means removal of specific contaminants: •    For drinking water, those contaminants that are harmful to human health or that have a negative impact on the taste, smell and color of the water need to be removed •    For industrial water, contaminants that interfere with the subsequent industrial processes are removed •    For waste water, the goal is to remove or reduce those contaminants which harm the environment. Water...

Dr. Kai Pflug, CEO, Management Consulting – Chemicals (Ltd.) Dr. Bernhard Hartmann, Managing Director, A.T. Kearney China    Most Chinese chemical industry participants would agree that the domestic industry is not yet as developed as the chemical industry in the West. The question then is whether Chinese companies can learn from the history of the chemical industry, thus accelerating their own development. Fig. 1 gives a general overview of the different development phases the global (or more specifically, the Western) chemical industry has gone through since its foundation in the 19th...

The framework of the Chinese economic model was industrialization in forced steps. Before building up Socialism, the country needed to defeat its backwardness. Therefore, it needed to build a material base to develop a system capable of producing prosperity, and then reinvest that base into a cycle of self-sustainment. Socialism was considered at the time to be an end, and a means. Chinese intentions would have liberated the repressed energies of capitalism irrationalism and would have built an egalitarian society. In this double objective there was no distinction between the Chinese leadership. In...

After years of constant acceleration, the Indian automobile industry has abruptly hit the brakes. Sales have decreased for the second month in a row; the sharp august decline (-19% with respects to the previous year) has continued into September (-5%). According to the SIAM (Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers), the predicted sales growth for the 2012-2013 fiscal year of 9-11% will be closer to 1-3%. It is a cry of pain and alarm that serves justice to optimistic and perhaps superficial predictions. The reasons are complex, but the new factor is a combination of negative factors facing a market...