Jack vanHartesvelt creates and builds hotels for a pension fund investment firm. But it is not just about the near-term financial return. He has found that taking the long-term view changes everything from management to negotiations to purpose.
This issue features a Conversation with Jack vanHartesvelt, senior managing director for Alvarez & Marsal Capital Real Estate, a real estate private equity and asset management firm. His investment deals in building and operating hotels involve hundreds of millions of dollars, and it would be easy for him to focus on squeezing the last dollar out of each deal. But he takes a long-term view demonstrated in many facets of his work, including how he deals with the housekeeping staff of the hotel and how he negotiates a win-win contract to build or operate a hotel. There are insights here for any business person. In Technology Watch, I review what I have learned about books and e-readers. Check out the updates to News Notables and InReview, as well.
Next issue features a Conversation with Steve Tourek, senior vice president and chief counsel for Marvin Windows, a company that found a way through the economic storm without laying off people.
SEC whistle-blower program is starting to pay off Los Angeles Times, August 23, 2012 They’ve called from pay phones. They’ve had secret meetings at hotels and even at a church. For the past year, whistle-blowers deep inside corporate America have been dishing dirt on their employers under a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission program that …
The Age of Paradox by Charles Handy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1994. xiiii, 305 pp. Charles Handy is a former oil company executive, a philosopher, a broadcaster, and an author of many books and articles. He lives in London. The thesis of the book is that paradoxes are inevitable. Often we try to …
The Lost Bank: The Story of Washington Mutual-The Biggest Bank Failure in American History by Kirsten Grind. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012. [electronic edition, quotes referenced by percent of progress through the book rather than by page number] Kirsten Grind is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Much of the work for this book …
