Financial Times, 10/18/07, Simon Collins, Chief Executive, KPMG Corporate Finance. Stagnation in M&A Arena Will Not Last Much Longer. “In mid-July, KPMG’s Global M&A Predictor analyzed 1,000 leading companies and concluded that, although liquidity remained high, we had reached the top of the M & A cycle . . . It now seems a distant memory, but only three months ago lenders were falling over themselves to advance ever higher debt multiples with fewer and lesser covenants. The line between debt and equity had blurred . . . One thing is for certain:  the equity component of transactions will again become more important. The return on equity will be driven more by fundamental value creation and less by financial engineering.”

Wall Street Journal, 10/02/07, Timothy Aeppel, Global Scramble for Goods Gives Corporate Buyers a Lift. “Once lowly bureaucrats, purchasing managers are shifting onto the front lines. Purchasing offices were once corporate backwaters, filled with people who didn’t dream of advancing to the top rungs of their organizations . . . Top buyers today need different skills and often have higher aspirations . . . The bottom line: Companies with effective purchasing managers stand a better chance of keeping costs low and avoiding supply bottlenecks.”

Harvard Business Review, September, 2007, Slone, Mentzer, and Dittman. Are You the Weakest Link in Your Company’s Supply Chain? This article provides an excellent self-assessment for evaluating your level of supply chain leadership. The authors assert, “executed well by experienced supply chain professionals, SCM can deliver significant, tangible benefits in the form of reduced working-capital investment, faster inventory turns, lower fixed costs, and greater return on assets.”

ASG believes that companies need real opportunities to grow the top line through strategic focus and the bottom line through operational excellence, including lean manufacturing and supply chain management.