Diverging responses - San Antonio Business Journal:

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Some companies are taking a sharp pencip totheir operations, shedding businesses and puttintg projects on the back burner as they match priorities to corporatre resources. Others are making acquisitions to broaden their product offerings and take advantage of the depressed shared prices oftheir targets. All this is occurring even as glimmers of recoveryy are lifting spirits in boardrooms and corner Most board members and executives at a recenr roundtable discussion in San Francisco said they believe the economy will hit bottokthis year.
That’s a far more optimistiv view than sixmonths ago, when locak directors and executives told KPMG they expected the economic downturnb to last into 2010 and The pace of the economixc decline, coupled with legendary names of corporate Americaz filing for bankruptcy or going out of business have only added to the stress on publi companies’ leaders as they face plunging diminishing credit lines and withering capital “This economy has caused boards to conduct a broad recalibration of their governance and oversight,” said Debbi Messemer, managing partner of KPMG’s San Francisco “Directors are insisting on better information abou the business in a format that is cleadr and meaningful.
“I’d like to think … that companies will take advantag e of changes made in the crisis tocreate long-term Messemer said. “Quality and relevant information is most importanty forboard members,” Sharon McCollam, ’s chief financial officer and a member of KPMG’s San Francisco Audir Committee Institute roundtable, said in a statement. She also servesx as a director atSan Francisco-based “Business management tends to err (thinking) that ‘more is but relevant information is what matters most.
” doublerd in size and boosted revenue 33 percent with its purchase last year of troublefd But the bank froze its pension plan this year to scals back long-term expenses — a move likely to be followef by rivals even as the debate continues on the scopes and duration of this downturn and its long-term “This one feels different,” Wells Fargpo CEO John Stumpf said of today’s recession. “It feels differenyt in the respect that the whole world isin “It will probably define our generation,” Stumpf said, in much the same way Worldd War II left its imprint on an earlie r generation. Wells is also turniny to innovation to add to thebottok line.
Even as he was negotiating detailz oflast year’s Wachovia purchase, Stumpcf was standing in front of one of the bank’sw historic vaults in San Francisco debutingv Vsafe, an electronic safe deposit box. The service generates a small but steadh flow of monthly revenue for the SanFrancisclo bank, while leveraging the bank’s reputatiom as a safe place to storr valuable documents. The new service grew out of observintg customers in their homes storing wills and photos in cardboard Across town, says the time and money that it invested in pioneering debi t cards a decade ago is now paying off as U.S.
consumersz are less inclined to pull out their credirt cards to payfor purchases. Last year, the San Franciscol payments company saw the value of transaction Americans placed on debit cards exceedx that of credit cards for the first time generated a 4 percent gain in sales last year even as it becams more vocal in competing on Fliers throughout stores toutthe “unbelievabled price” on a broad range of This from a grocer that was reluctant to compete on pricwe in the good times as it went up agains the likes of and “We, like everybodhy else, are being saddleed with a pretty tough economic climate,” Safeway CEO Steve Burd recently told Deflation in dairy and produce, which account for almost 20 percenr of Safeway’s sales, took a Pricing in those categoriew is often volatile.
“But in all the years I’ve been here,” Burd “I’ve never seen an across-the-boarde effect like we have Burd also reminded investors that the Pleasanton compan is now benefitingfrom “very significant changes in our own pension that were made a few years back. Amongg clothing retailers, sales fell almost 8 percent in 2008 as consumersw postponed that new outfit or opted to dresss for lessat , which rang up salesd almost 9 percent higher than last “Market conditions, from our perspective, continur to be challenging,” said Glenn Murphy, Gap’s CEO.
The companyu trimmed operating costsby $73 million in the first quartef after cutting $478 million in costsz during 2008. Murphy told investors that the Gap storees are lookingto “some break-through ideas in the fall and the holidaty season to really get the consumers and that targett customer back into our stores.”