Media Coverage

Prior to joining Roland Berger, Bill Downey was Senior Vice President and Head of the Global Energy Practice at a leading US consultancy. Downey has more than 30 years of experience in the chemicals industry and has become an expert in the lubricants, waxes and petroleum specialties value chains. He has gained deep industry knowledge in selected petroleum industry segments, including commercial fuel segments such as marine and aviation. His functional experience includes B2B industrial sales and distribution channels, M&A strategy and technology as well as pricing, pricing management and sales force development. Downey studied chemistry at Rutgers College in New Brunswick and holds an MBA from Rutgers Business School in Newark.

As each new story of a high-profile company grappling with bribery and corruption scandals, workplace misconduct and potential FCPA exposure breaks, it’s becoming more and more evident that the business world is becoming less and less ethical. In this environment, a conference on ethical leadership is well-placed, especially when it has a focus on ethics in higher education.

At the 2012 Ethical Leadership Conference at Rutgers Business School last week, some of the brightest speakers on ethics presented their thoughts on how to connect with tomorrow’s workforce today, to instill in them a culture of ethics.

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In an informal survey conducted by the Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers Business School, we found many universities employ a compliance officer, but rarely, a chief ethics officer. Staff and students are taught to comply with rules and laws regarding sexual harassment, conflict of interest and plagiarism. But most universities don’t have training programs to help them recognize and evaluate ethical dilemmas.

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Jill Zarin, former Real Housewives of New York Citystar, gives marketing advice to MBA students at Rutgers Business School (@RutgersBSchool, 4/19).

When it comes to association CEO salaries, the old aphorism holds true - the rich do get richer, and at a more rapid clip than the not-quite-as-rich, according to the latest CEO Update Inside Compensation analysis.

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All of Julie Culley’s running will come down to one day, June 28, when she finds out if she has made the top three in the final tryout round for the U.S. Olympic team in the 5,000-meter race. Culley, a Rutgers Business School alumna, is now one second away from the Olympic qualifying standard of 15 minutes and 20 seconds to complete the 5,000-meter race. She will train and race hard over the next few months to hit that standard.

 The Options Industry Council (OIC) announced today that the next event in its university outreach program, The Road to Wall Street: Analyze Your Options, will be at Rutgers Business School in Newark, NJ on Friday, April 13.

Professor Robert Schindler, a marketing professor at Rutgers Business School, conducted a study of a women’s clothing retailer. He found that the 1 cent difference between prices ending in .99 and .00 had “a considerable effect on sales," with items whose prices ended with .99 far outselling those ending with .00.

The Rutgers Center for Management Development (CMD) today announced that it has updated the format of the program to utilize the best Apple iPad 2 collaboration apps into the curriculum of the Strategic Marketing Management course in its Mini-MBA Program. All the modules and applications for the week-long course, which begins March 26, 2012, on the New Brunswick, New Jersey, campus will be pre-loaded onto an Apple iPad 2, which is included in the course fee.

Dr. Jen joins ROTH from Maxim Group where he was a senior equity research analyst focusing on the biotechnology sector since 2007. Prior to Maxim Group, he held associate analyst positions with Rodman & Renshaw and Thomas Weisel Partners. His investment views have been cited in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters and Dow Jones Newswires. Prior to joining Wall Street, Yale spent several years with KPMG Corporate Finance Life Sciences Group and Genesis Group Associates focusing on mergers and acquisitions and pipeline optimization for pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients. Dr. Jen holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Cornell Medical School and an MBA from Rutgers University.

The Rutgers Institute for Ethical Leadership will host its Third Annual Ethical Leadership Conference on May 3 & 4, 2012.  Each year the Institute for Ethical Leadership hosts a conference to address ethical issues within the corporate, nonprofit, and government sectors.  This year senior leadership from colleges and universities around the country will come together to discuss what it takes to build an organizational culture imbued in ethics and how leaders from across sectors can learn from each other to enhance and renew organizations that benefit civil society.  Ralph Izzo, PhD, Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of PSEG and Chairman of the Rutgers University Board of Governors, will deliver the keynote address on Friday, May 4th.

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As for what kind of debt to give as compensation, it can take any number of forms. First, defined-benefit pensions and deferred compensation are already frequently used in practice. These instruments have equal priority with other unsecured creditors in bankruptcy, giving the CEO a strong incentive to look after their interests. And they seem to work: The research of Raghu Sundaram and David Yermack of New York University finds that CEOs with large defined-benefit pensions manage their companies more conservatively. Similarly, a paper by Divya Anantharaman and Vivian Fang of Rutgers University and Guojin Gong of Pennsylvania State University finds that debt compensation leads to fewer loan covenants and a lower cost of debt.

Even if most existing science doesn’t find lipstick poses a danger, public discussion of the issue could hurt sales for L’Oreal, said S. Chan Choi, a professor of Supply Chain Management & Marketing Sciences at the Rutgers Business School.

"The main issue here is if you are very loyal to L’Oreal products you can forgive it, but if you are not very loyal and if you are an occasional user of L’Oreal products, then you cannot forgive it," Choi said. "Even if this is safe as the FDA says, they will have to show the consumers they are doing something to remedy whatever this is."

Nancy Brinker, founder and chief executive of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, took home $417,000 in salary in 2010, according to financial documents posted on the charity’s Website, and paid 50 top executives more than $100,000 each.

What the Dallas-based foundation spent on staff and administrative expenses included $20 million for advertising and promotion, $14 million for “office expenses’’ and more than $14 million for consulting and professional services. Another $7 million was spent on contract labor and $3 million for travel. Komen officials did not return calls and emails seeking comment on Monday.

Brinker, who also serves on Komen’s board of directors, traveled first class on airlines with the explicit permission of the board she chairs.

The expenses are disclosed in financial reports on the charity’s website. Komen operations have been under intense scrutiny since last week when a plan to stop giving grants to Planned Parenthood triggered blistering criticism of Komen’s leadership.

James Abruzzo, a management and global business instructor at Rutgers Business School, said the picture that emerges from the Komen documents does raise concerns, however.

The fact that Komen is making severance payments to four top executives is a cause for concern about the way the organization is run, Abruzzo said.

As for Brinker’s salary and first-class travel, while it may be deserved, it probably sends the wrong message to potential donors, he added.

“When you’re trying to raise money from other people, it sends a bad signal," he said.

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More to the point, will Dodd-Frank prevent another crisis? “The answer is no,” said Ben Sopranzetti, associate professor of finance and economics at Rutgers Business School in Newark and New Brunswick. “However, is this a step in the right direction? Yeah.”

When a company spends nearly $4 million on 30 seconds of Super Bowl air time, it’s no wonder that the spot gets ads and a marketing campaign of its own. "The relatively low cost of generating a buzz on social media makes it incredibly appealing," said Rutgers marketing professor Jerome Williams.

By now everyone has heard the story of the capsized Costa Concordia cruise ship and its captain, Francesco Schettino, who has come under fire for abandoning the ship as it was sinking.  Although the saying is, "the captain should go down with the ship," many people are not exactly sure of the ethical consequences of the situation.

While many people will have different responses to this particular episode, the sinking of the Costa Concordia has raised the interesting question of what is a business leader or owner's ethical responsibility to his or her customers and employees when facing a life-threatening or dangerous situation?

According to Ann Buchholtz, professor of leadership and ethics and research director at the Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers Business School, leaders must ensure safety to employees and consumers, regardless of the situation.   

"Safety from harm is one of the basic rights of consumers," Buchholtz told BusinessNewsDaily. "In fact, we are approaching the 50th anniversary of the 'Consumer Bill of Rights' that President Kennedy introduced in a speech to Congress (on March 15). The first, and arguably the most basic right, is the right to safety – 'to be protected against the marketing of goods which are hazardous to health or life.' Of course, the use of any product or service entails some degree of risk, but what happened to the Costa Concordia passengers is beyond the pale."

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Trying to compare nonprofit salaries and figuring out a way to gauge fair pay for such work is a complicated and subjective task, said James Abruzzo, a nonprofit compensation specialist for DHR International.

“It’s not apples to apples all the time,” said Abruzzo, who helps nonprofits set compensation levels.

For instance, those in the health care sector of the nonprofit world, such as hospital directors, are typically paid on the higher end of the scale, Abruzzo said. That’s the case in Lawrence, as Gene Meyer, Lawrence Memorial Hospital president, is second only to KU Athletic Director Sheahon Zenger in salary. Meyer is paid about $440,000.

Typically, the higher the budget and fundraising needs, the higher the salary, Abruzzo said.

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John Longo believes that Apple remains a splendid stock, that residential real estate will end the year close to flat, that high-yielding investments will remain in favor. Dr. Longo is a clinical associate professor of finance and economics at Rutgers Business School, a principal in a $100 million hedge fund, and chief investment officer and chairman of the Investment Committee for The MDE Group, a registered investment adviser with $1.4 billion under management. The MDE Group was ranked the fourth best independent investment adviser in the U.S. by Barron’s in 2007 and 2008.

Bringing over 20 years of experience, Rich Nisivoccia, as Vice President, Eastern Region Sales, leads the sales team responsible for the largest modular data center in existence, IO New Jersey. Mr. Nisivoccia has extensive experience leading sales teams at some of the largest players within the IT industry including Cisco and IBM. Mr. Nisivoccia graduated from local educational institutions and received his B.S. from NJIT and MBA from Rutgers.

"We expected growth to continue, but it didn't," said Mahmud Hassan, professor of finance and economics at Rutgers Business School, who has been tracking the health care industry for decades. "It hasn't grown as much as people thought it would."

"Everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so they're doing it, too," said Don McCabe, a professor in the management and global business department of the Rutgers Business School who has spent the past 20 years studying academic dishonesty.

Women are more socialized to obey rules, researchers … have concluded. … But the cheating gender gap may not last long, according to Don McCabe, a professor at Rutgers Business School who has studied academic integrity for more than 20 years.