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A Refresher on Return on Assets and Return on Equity

Harvard Business Review

I talked with Joe Knight, author of the HBR TOOLS: Return on Investment and co-founder and owner of www.business-literacy.com , to learn more about these ratios and how managers can use them. Technology companies have very few assets so they’ll often have high ROAs. What is Return on Equity (ROE)?

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How Companies Can Use Investors to Their Advantage

Harvard Business Review

Nikon, the legendary Japanese camera maker, provides a textbook study in how smart managers can work with strategic investors to transform a struggling business. It also called for streamlining headquarters and cutting executive management’s compensation. Heini Wehrle/BIA/Minden Pictures/Getty Images.

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Idle Funds are the Devil's Playground

Harvard Business Review

Regarding the latter, we point to some well-documented and broadly perceived shifts in the geography, demography, and technology of global economic activity. And at the time, as industrial technology appeared, it afforded many good opportunities to invest in such assets at high expected returns.

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End the Religion of ROE

Harvard Business Review

corporation than "what's the ROE on that?" ROE justifies the means. To an extent not widely recognized, it was an equation in the first place that gave ROE the power to dominate not just investment decisions, but an entire business culture. There is no more powerful question in a U.S. Social media spending? Wellness checkups?

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