Zoe Cruz, once one of the most powerful and highly paid women on Wall Street before her sudden ouster from investment bank Morgan Stanley in 2007, was jarred out of her comfort zone after 25 years with the firm. The experience helped her grow as a person, she told the Women in Management banquet audience.
Having substantial cash on hand enabled Danaher Corp. to fund the acquisitions of 18 companies in 2009, "In 14 of them, we had little or no competition," Daniel Comas, MBA '91, vice president and chief financial officer of the firm, told a Stanford Graduate School of Business audience.
Two Stanford experts on the finance industry distinguished between ethical and legal issues during a public analysis of the Securities and Exchange Commission's lawsuit against Goldman Sachs' allegedly fraudulent Abacus deal. Both came down in favor of stiffer regulation of derivative markets.
Even when the news is bad, helping employees understand reality leads to success, American Express CEO and Chairman Kenneth Chenault told a business school audience.
After being advised she was "too nice," Laura Sanchez ultimately learned that success meant ignoring the advice and letting her own personality show. Sanchez is the 2010 recipient of the Porras Award presented by the Hispanic Business Students Association at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Richard Rainwater's MBA classmates and friends of more than 40 years gathered to toast the man one called "the legendary financier of our generation" as the Stanford Business School Alumni Association named Rainwater the 2010 recipient of its Arbuckle Award.
In the next 40 years, a global power shift will see today's leading economic countries drop from having 80% of the world's income to 35%, says John Wolfensohn, former World Bank president. By 2030, two-thirds of people in the world's middle class will be Chinese.
The best entrepreneurs have a thirst for knowledge and may be willing to attempt the impossible, venture capitalist John Doerr told a student audience.
Although Nobel Laureate William F. Sharpe didn't give listeners any new advice about how to weather the current financial crisis and fill the holes in their portfolios, he did explain during a speech on the Stanford University campus how futile it is to read sure-thing investing books or watch the latest financial guru to find easy answers.