Jinn of Quality and Risk

Holland's Royal Ahold (AHO) runs supermarkets and food service operations in 27 countries. The company can boast of an annualized sales growth of 30% over the last several years. The company is profitable, with an 8% return on capital. But its market cap crashed from $26 to $3 billion.

Ahold shares plunged over 65% yesterday after the retail giant unveiled "significant accounting irregularities," forced out its chief executive and chief financial officer, and warned of much lower earnings ahead. With interests in 9,000 discount and grocery stores worldwide, and trailing-12-month sales of $78 billion, it's the world's third-largest retailer, second-largest food seller, and the number one supermarket operator in the U.S.

The U.S. market has been the undoing of many ambitious European retail chains. One Dutch grocer is challenging that record. Competing against the domestic giants--Safeway, Albertsons, Kroger and Wal-Mart in some markets--Royal Ahold has amassed a No. 1 market share along America's eastern seaboard. ... Not bad for a 113-year-old European supermarket chain. [Forbes Global, The Anti-Wal-Mart, 2000-Sep]

I knew I was looking for that Forbes Global article but it took a long time to find it. My advice to Forbes: improve your search engine! deliver relevant results, please! 

Making Enterprise Risk Management Pay Off: How Leading Companies Implement Risk Management shows how top companies are transforming risk management into an integrated, continuous, broadly focused discipline that identifies and assesses risks more effectively, responds more precisely, and discovers not just "downsides" but breakthrough opportunities as well. Includes five case studies: Chase Manhattan, Microsoft, DuPont, Unocal, and United Grain Growers. 

The Seattle Times: Gates and Ballmer are watching for young executives with the potential to take their jobs someday. Some have been recruited for a special training program in which candidates rotate through different areas of the company. Gates may be synonymous with the company, but he doesn't think it will be too hard to find a replacement when he retires in about 10 years. He said his role has been overstated by the media, which focus on a few people to explain the nature of the company.