I. Алгоритм выполнения аннотирования

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Текст 1

The politics of global disruption, and how they may change

THE 1990s was “the age of abundance”, argued Brink Lindsey in a book of that title. Round the world, incomes were rising; capital markets were processing endless flows of money and investment; technological gains meant that ever more information was available ever more cheaply. And politics in the age of abundance, Mr Lindsey claimed, was all about values. In America this was the period of the “culture wars” over abortion and gun ownership; internationally, there was a huge expansion in concern over human rights.The 2010s, it is sometimes said, will be an age of scarcity. The warning signs of change are said to be the food-price spike of 2007-08, the bid by China and others to grab access to oil, iron ore and farmland and the global recession. The main problems of scarcity are water and food shortages, demographic change and state failure. How will that change politics?In the domestic debates of some rich democracies, things are shifting already. In Europe the talk is of how to distribute the pain of cutting public debts. In America the return of mad-as-hell populism looks like a turn away from the politics of abundance (see article). Now, a report for the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, DC, and the Centre on International Co-operation at New York University* looks at international politics in an age of want.

The sort of problems governments increasingly face, they say, will be much less predictable than those associated with old great-power rivalries. Pressure from demography, climate change and shifts in economic power builds up quietly for a long time—and then triggers abrupt shifts.

They claim that the current global system is ill-designed for such a world. It is not just that the foreign policies of big countries are in flux. Rather, the way states deal with new threats is, in the jargon, “stove-piped”. As a UN panel said in 2004, “finance ministers tend to work only with the international financial institutions, development ministers only with development programmes.”The authors say that what is needed is not merely institutional tinkering but a different frame of mind. Governments, they say, should think more in terms of reducing risk and increasing resilience to shocks than about boosting sovereign power. This is because they think power may not be the best way for states to defend themselves against a new kind of threat: the sort that comes not from other states but networks of states and non-state actors, or from the unintended consequences of global flows of finance, technology and so on. What would all that mean in practice? They cite the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation as the sort of institutions they want more of: bodies that use technical expertise—leaving aside the IPCC’s mistake over the melting of Himalayan glaciers—to induce countries to recognise their mutual interests. Such agencies can promote foresight, and help governments think harder about the consequences of failure (unlike traditional diplomacy, which likes muddling along). They propose an Intergovernmental Panel on Biological Safety along the lines of the IPCC to improve biosecurity; they also suggest boosting the G20 by giving it a secretariat and getting national security chiefs together.

Many of these ideas may go nowhere; national sovereignty is hugely resilient. But to those who call the whole exercise pointless, they cite Milton Friedman, who, when monetarism was being mocked in the 1970s, replied “our basic function [is] to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”

Текст 2

In the shadow of giants

Where privatisation means a bigger market share for state banks

RUSSIA’S second-biggest bank, VTB Bank, had no trouble placing $3.3 billion-worth of shares before a February 17th deadline, despite recent wobbles in emerging markets. The shares, also offered in the form of global depository receipts, represent a mere 10% of the bank’s equity, leaving a solid 75.5% still owned by the state. What does investors’ eagerness to own scraps of state-owned Russian banks say about the industry?

First, that the sector has lots of room to grow—by 20% this year, some analysts predict. The assets of Russia’s entire banking system amount to a mere 75% of GDP; those of some individual banks in Britain and Switzerland account for more than 100% of their home country’s GDP.

Second, the industry will be dominated by state-owned banks for a long time to come. The top five account for 48% of all assets; Sberbank, the biggest, holds 58% of all retail deposits. A sale of another 10% of VTB is mooted for this year or next, along with 7.6% of Sberbank by 2014. But in the meantime Sberbank and VTB are both getting bigger and more competitive.

Sberbank is negotiating to buy Troika Dialog, a local asset manager and investment bank. VTB recently bought TransCreditBank, the country’s 13th-biggest bank, and is likely to snap up Bank of Moscow, the fifth-biggest, unless private banks thwart it. Alfa-Bank, Russia’s biggest private bank, is pressing for a public auction of Bank of Moscow, which is 64%-owned by the City of Moscow and came on the market after the sacking of Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow’s then mayor, in September.

Barclays, a British bank which bought a Russian lender in 2008, has given up the fight. On February 15th it said it would sell its Russian retail operations, writing off £243m ($393m) of goodwill. But this relates more to a general drive by Barclays to get out of less profitable businesses than a reflection on Russia. Many other foreign banks are still committed to the market.

Views of profitability depend on when you bought the asset and the assumptions made at the time, says Pavel Gurin, the chief executive of ZAO Raiffeisenbank, which is owned by Austria’s RZB Group. Along with UniCredit of Italy and Rosbank, 75%-owned by France’s Société Générale, it leads the handful of foreign-owned banks in Russia with critical mass (critical enough that the central bank offered them extra liquidity during the financial crisis).

Raiffeisenbank had a fantastic year in Russia before the crisis, with a pre-tax return on equity of 52%. That return dropped to 18% in 2009 but analysts reckon things got better in 2010 and will continue to improve this year. The greatest promise lies in corporate and investment banking rather than in retail lending, where prices are set by Sberbank. But even there, money can be made. Société Générale announced on February 16th that its Russian consumer business had returned to profit for the first time since the crisis.

The state-owned giants may even benefit outsiders by enhancing stability. There are still over 1,000 smaller banks in Russia. Many should be closed or consolidated, some have murky ownership. But the 100 biggest banks are becoming more transparent and better run, say locals. Progress is slow but it is still progress.

Текст 3

7 Dumb Business Plan Mistakes

Tim Berry is the president of Palo Alto Software Inc., based in Eugene, Ore., which produces the industry’s leading business planning software, Business Plan Pro, as well as other popular planning applications for businesses. He is also the author of The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan, published by Entrepreneur Press.

Each spring, I review 50 or so business plans for various business planning contests. These plans are developed for startup companies that are seeking thousands, and sometimes millions of dollars in angel investment or venture capital. By the time I see them, they’ve been weeded out from the less worthy submissions and selected as finalists or semi-finalists.And, each year, I’m reminded that even the “best” business plans can have serious flaws. Some project profits far beyond reality. Others bury key details far down in the document.Reading these business plans inspired me to create a list of the top mistakes that I identified. I’ve outlined them below with some tips for how to avoid making them.

1. Projecting outrageous profits. More than half of the business plans I read this year projected profits way beyond the normal 10 percent to 15 percent that most other businesses see. High profitability projections indicate that the business owner is underestimating costs and expenses. They also suggest that the owner is choosing profits over growth. The best startups generally invest whatever money is left over from costs and expenses into marketing for higher growth.

To avoid doing this, find some standard financial reports for an industry like yours and figure out what real companies generate in profits. Then go back and rethink your estimates. Is your gross margin higher than average? Can you justify that? Are your marketing expenses lower than average?

2. Incomplete financial projections. Every business plan should include a realistic cash flow projection and a breakdown of starting costs. It’s good to use charts to do this but also make the details available somewhere in the document, even in an appendix. Show how much investment you need and what you’ll do with the money. Just projecting sales and profits isn’t enough.If you plan on selling your products to businesses, you’ll need to show that you understand the cash flow implications of waiting to get paid. If you want to build products or websites, show that you understand the cash flow implications of building things or buying things before you sell them.

3. Top-down forecasting. I hope to never see another business plan promising to get a small percentage of a large market. Yes, 1 percent of $43 billion is $4.3 million but, no, you’re not going to sell that much.Instead, go granular. Start with specific assumptions and work upward to the sales forecast. Build your sales forecast up from the unit economics and on detailed assumptions that you can illustrate.

4. Inflating the market. No one is going to believe you when you say, for example, that your musician tutorial website is going to appeal to 50 million people. When talking about total market value, you need to be realistic, skeptical and make assumptions to bring those huge market numbers down.Consider the market projection based on words — a story — instead of using numbers. Talk about what market you will disrupt and let the readers use their imaginations about how big it is.

5. Too “big picture.” Business plans often deal only in global strategies, showing only the big picture. A business plan needs to illustrate the economics of a single unit — from production, to channels, to end user. Show what you get, what it costs you and what the buyer pays. Also show how you’re going to scale up, how you’re going to build a direct sales force, how you’re going to build web traffic and how long your sales cycle will take.

6. Unrealistic about selling channels. Not understanding how retail channels work is a big mistake. Don’t assume that retailers will want to buy your product directly from you. Most often, they want to go through a distributor. If you plan on selling through channels and to take home more than 50 percent of what the end consumer pays, then you don’t know your channels.Know your margins, including administrative costs and co-promotion dollars for distributors and retail stores that carry products like yours. Once you’ve got that down, you’ll need to remember to allocate enough working capital to support your business while you wait for distributors to pay your invoices.

7. Buried treasure. Communicate your key points quickly. Some key points that investors look for include market, sales projections, your management team, scalability and defensibility.Also remember to communicate your points clearly and in plain language. Prove your technology by quoting experts and showing your degrees and qualifications. Then show sales, channels, markets, strategy and your team.

Задание 3. Прочитайте и переведите текст письменно.