Director Development - Strategy

I am in the process of developing some on-line strategy development workshops for Board Directors. I would welcome your views on the approach I am taking and perhaps even your help.

To deliver the content in a vibrant and interesting way much of it will be video and I am thinking of:

• videoing the "talking bit" from various boardrooms around the Country
• showing some footage of real strategic facilitation days
• interviewing Chairmen, CEOs, Executive and Non-Executive Directors

If you are a Board Director: -

1. Is this something you would find helpful?
2. Does the approach generally seem right?
3. Would you allow filming in your board room
4. Would you allow filming of a strategy facilitation day (if the day was free!)?
5. Would your board be prepared to be interviewed?

If you are not a Board Director, do you know any that you could pass these questions on to?

Bank of England MUST raise interest rates!

Now if you borrow money you may not think this is good news, but it probably is! The whole financial system struggles with rates so low. If like me you don't borrow money, it is of course excellent news.

FT Exclusive comment:

The UK’s high inflation rate is not simply the result of “one-off” factors but reflects an overly-loose monetary policy stance that has resulted in rapid growth in nominal spending. An early rise in interest rates is necessary to prevent the overshoot being built into inflationary expectations, which would make an eventual return to target more painful to achieve.

Doves argue that inflation would be close to the target but for indirect tax increases over the past year. This is wrong. January’s figures show that consumer price inflation, excluding indirect taxes, was 2.4 per cent in January. This, moreover, is an underestimate of where inflation would be if tax rates had stayed constant, since it assumes that increases are passed on in full to consumers. A more realistic estimate of tax-adjusted inflation is 2.75 per cent.
http://link.ft.com/r/8P1R88/D40Y1A/11EP1/WL9OWI/18J6I1/E4/h?a1=2011&a2=2&a3=15

"Russian Dolls", "Alphabet Soup" and...Shadow Banking!?!

Great article in the FT 03/02/11. New to me, is the term "shadow banking", a practice apparently not new! A seemingly unregulated billion dollar business. The FT article picks up on this shadow banking, refering to "collateralised debt obligations" and "structured investment vehicles". Shadow banking previously refered to as "Russion doll financing" or "alphabet soup". I don't think anybody outside of the system would comprehend the complexities of what is going on, but it is worth (apparently) an eye watering $15,000bn, yes that's $15,000,000,000,000!!! It would seem that the regulators (like the rest of us - but then they shouldn't be...should they?) had assumed that banks are the only really important parts of the financial system. Some of these funds are said to have bigger loan books than Wall St banks.

For me at least this is raising the lid on another fascinating can of worms...is there no end...probably not!

What are the governance issues..........................