Stock prices tumbled on Wall Street and across much of the rest of the world yesterday. They were driven sharply lower by worries over slowing economic growth in the United States and worsening borrowing conditions that could make everything from huge corporate buyouts to buying a new home more difficult. Major stock market gauges -- including the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index -- were down more than 2 percent.
It was the worst one-day decline on Wall Street since markets plunged worldwide in late February after an investing scare in Shanghai, and it occurred amid the biggest volume of trading on the New York Stock Exchange in five years. Losses were comparable throughout Europe, and larger in many developing countries. ''The preconditions for a shock are in place,'' said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. ''Until very recently investors were very nonchalant about risks.''
Stock markets have been volatile in recent weeks. Continued strong profits for many companies and an economic boom in Asia have helped push oil prices higher. Meanwhile, however, there are various signs of weakness in the American economy and new difficulties in borrowing for many homeowners and companies that are highly leveraged or have poor credit.
The plunge came a day after the private equity firm buying Chrysler from DaimlerChrysler said it would complete the transaction for the automaker despite an inability to borrow the money in credit markets, as had been planned. Banks will hold those loans, as they will for a similar deal involving Alliance Boots, a British pharmacy chain. Shares of DaimlerChrysler fell $4.11, to $88.91.'' There is fear, but not a fear of recession,'' said Bill Gross, chief investment officer of the Pacific Investment Management Company, known as Pimco, a large bond management firm. ''The fear is directed toward the question of who will be willing to lend $200 billion to provide takeout financing for previously announced private equity deals.''
Yesterday, the Dow industrials plunged 311.50 points, or 2.3 percent, to 13,473.57, while the S.& P. 500 dropped 35.43 points, or 2.3 percent, to 1,482.66. The Nasdaq composite index was down 48.83 points, or 1.8 percent, to 2,599.34. The S.& P. is still up 4.5 percent for the year, while the Dow is 8.1 percent higher. But the S.& P. has fallen 4.5 percent since reaching a record last week. In the last hour or so of trading, the major Wall Street indexes recovered about a third of their steepest losses for the day. Losses of more than 2 percent were recorded in Spain, France and Germany, while Britain, Argentina, Mexico and Brazil fell more than 3 percent. Asian markets fell less yesterday, closing before the worst selling began, but opened down sharply on Friday.
The plunge came a day after the private equity firm buying Chrysler from DaimlerChrysler said it would complete the transaction for the automaker despite an inability to borrow the money in credit markets, as had been planned.
主体句式 The plunge came a day after the … firm … said …
结构分析 这是一个复杂句，主句为The plunge came，但在a day after后面的结构比较复杂。首先，buying Chrysler from DaimlerChrysler是用来修饰he private equity firm，因此后面这个长句的基本结构就是the firm said。said后面跟的是一个间接引语，这个长句的主体是it would complete the transaction for the automaker，之后的despite表示一个转折的意思，而as had been planned是用来形容borrow the money in credit markets的。
War games are commonly used by the military to evaluate strategies, explore scenarios and reveal unexpected weaknesses. American ships and aircraft have just begun two weeks of war games in the Gulf, prompting protests from Iran, and last week South Korea carried out an annual computerised war-game exercise.
Might war games deserve a greater role in business? Military analogies abound in the corporate world. Plenty of bosses look to Sun Tzu, an ancient Chinese general, for management tips. And in business, as in war, outcomes depend on what others do, as well as one's own actions. Yet many firms fail to think systematically about how rivals will react to their plans—and traditional planning does a poor job of taking competitors' responses into account, says John McDermott, head of strategy at Xerox, an office-equipment company. Corporate war games, which simulate the interactions of multiple actors in a market, provide a better way to do so.
Such games have two chief characteristics. First, players break into teams and take on the roles of fierce competitors (and sometimes other citizens, such as customers). Second, the games involve several turns, allowing competitors not just to draw up their own strategies but to respond to the choices of others. Their popularity is rising. Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), a consultancy, is running 100 war games a year, up from around 50 three years ago. Open Options, a Canadian strategy consultancy, has been going since 1996 and its revenue doubled last year.
BAH introduces a quantitative element into its games, calculating the effect of each team's strategy on their company's profits and stockmarket value at the end of each turn. Open Options takes a further step. To help Xerox understand the market dynamics of the print and copy industry, it ran a one-day workshop in which teams from Xerox took the roles of the big companies in the market, itself included. Each team identified the things “their” company could do to change its strategy and drew up a list of its desired outcomes; these “preference trees” were shared with the other teams. The results were then pumped into Open Options' proprietary software tools, which played out interactions between the companies and produced a range of possible outcomes.
Mr McDermott says the game's predictive power was astonishing: one forecast, that a company would start to acquire a certain group of assets within the industry, came true within six months. By shedding light on areas where companies have different priorities, the concept of preference trees helps to highlight potential trade-offs, as well as competition. Open Options charges North American clients roughly $100,000 for an engagement.
The secret of successful war-gaming does not simply lie in mathematics, however. Interaction, not algebra, is the best way to win support for a new strategy. Game-players must be senior for the same reason—although having the top boss on a team can stifle feedback. Strategies also have to capture competitors' hard-to-quantify corporate cultures: when designing a game, BAH seeks out employees at its clients who have actually worked at competitors for that reason. But perhaps war games' greatest value lies in the way they encourage managers to think differently about the consequences of their actions. “To know your enemy, you must become your enemy,” as Sun Tzu would say.
Mr McDermott says the game's predictive power was astonishing: one forecast, that a company would start to acquire a certain group of assets within the industry, came true within six months.
主体句式 Mr McDermott says…
结构分析 这个句子乍一看非常长，但是其结构却相当清楚。主要结构为Mr McDermott says the game's predictive power was astonishing，后面冒号的作用是举例进一步说明前面提到的结论。冒号后面句子的主体句式为one forecast came true within six months，而that 引导的这个句子是one forecast的具体内容，是一个同位语从句。
这种演习有两个特点。首先，参与者原先所在的团队会被拆散，彼此成为激烈的竞争对手（有时候扮演普通市民，诸如顾客之类的角色）。其次，演习包括了好几轮，从而使竞争者们不仅能够策划自己的战略，而且也能够对其他人的选择做出反应。这种演习正在不断普及。Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) 是一家咨询公司，该公司在3年前每年举办50场实战演习，而到现在已经增加到了100场。Open Option是一家加拿大战略咨询公司，该公司自1996年开始举办实战演习，到去年为止其收入已实现翻倍。
