André Lévy-Lang is "the first chairman able to give Paribas a coherent strategy," the magazine Euromoney said in a cover article on the man who five years ago became chairman of Compagnie Financière de Paribas. "Some observers call him the most important chairman Paribas has had for 25 years," said the publication, citing Lévy-Lang's Business School PhD ('66) as part of his pedigree for the job he now holds. "Results depend on actions. If we get the right results, we will have built an organization that can last in terms of earning capability and stability," Lévy-Lang told the magazine.

More than 20 years after he cofounded Tandem Computers, James Treybig, MBA '68, announced in October that he is stepping down as chief executive officer. Treybig will become a fulltime chairman of Tandem's board. In the 1970s, Treybig devised the basic architecture used by the first Tandem machines -- computers used by banks and telecommunications companies that needed to run data-processing operations around the clock. Today most of the world's bank cash machines process transactions using Tandem computers. In another top-level change, John Lillie, MBA '64, resigned in October after five years as chief executive of American President Lines, citing management differences with the board of directors.

Samuel S. Stewart Jr., PhD '70, manages the $25 million Wasatch Microcap Fund, picked by Business Week as one of the nation's top-performing mutual funds. In October, the fund was up 15.9 percent since it started on June 19.

A change in Texas state law could slow the trend of large awards in personal injury cases in the state and slow the meteoric rise of one of the nation's most profitable personal-injury law practices, the Wall Street Journal reports. John Cracken and his partner, Stanford MBA '87 John Harkey, have made their mark by concentrating on only a few important cases each year. Their strategy could be affected by recently adopted changes in Texas law capping punitive damages and limiting the liability of defendants found to bear less than half the fault,
the paper reported.

Pam Parker, MBA '89, and Beth Cross, MBA '88, have turned their cure for aching feet into a product that some observers have dubbed "the Nike of Western and English riding boots." Parker, who has been riding horses since she was six, recalls that traditional boots were so uncomfortable to walk in that competitors would wait until they were on horseback to exchange their sneakers for boots. In 1991, Cross and Parker launched Ariat International, a San Carlos, Calif.- based firm that now sells 80 models of boots from pull-on cowboy boots to English riding footwear. When they started designing their state-of-the-art boots, "riding footwear didn't incorporate any of the technology that athletic shoes did," Cross told the San Jose Mercury News. "There's no difference between a good equestrian and a Michael Jordan. Equestrians are good athletes, too," she said.

Rod Beckstrom had to take out a student loan as a member of the MBA Class of 1987; now he heads a firm with a $20 million annual gross. The company, C-ATS Software, was profiled by the International Herald Tribune. The paper explained to its European readers that Silicon Valley's investment community has learned to support software companies that may fail in the short term but continue toward their long-term goal. C-ATS, which produces programs used to calculate risks and hedge against currency and interest rate losses, was taken public last March by Hambrecht & Quist with 1.3 million shares at $12 each. Beckstrom said that raising $1.25 million for his 3-year-old firm in 1988 was "a very terrifying move for a 27-year-old."

Paul Taubman, MBA '86, was one of the rising new stars singled out by Fortune magazine in an article picking the movers and shakers in Wall Street's current round of mergers and acquisitions. Morgan Stanley's M&A telecommunications and media group, managed by Taubman, advised AT&T in its $3.3 billion purchase of LIN Broadcasting. The current generation of M&A dealmakers is "a breed apart from the 1980s swashbucklers," said Fortune. Today's breed is smart, quick, and attuned to the technological changes that are driving many of today's hottest deals.

When Phil Knight, MBA '62, signed basketball legend Michael Jordan to help market Nike shoes in the mid-1980s, he set off an advertising frenzy. Tracing the Nike vs. Reebok battle for the hearts (and feet) of the sneaker-wearing public, Fortune notes that Nike gained a big edge recently by signing an amazing array of international soccer stars, including 10 members of the Brazilian World Cup team, and airing a TV spot for Australian football. But, the magazine wonders, can Nike keep its advertising edge in a world where sports stars sell everything from milk to Cadillacs?

Technology and lifestyle changes have set off a bonanza of business opportunities in small towns and rural areas of the United States. Business Week reports that people like Tom Keltner, MBA '74, are finding success by giving rural America what it wants. In Keltner's case, it's a chain of Promus Hotel Corp. franchises in places like Johnson City, Tenn., and Cape Girardeau, Mo. Keltner is senior vice president for development of the firm, which also includes Hampton Inns.

Stanford Business School Magazine
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