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I was born in 1938 in Germany, but I was very fortunate. My father was the managing director of a Swiss machinery company, and during the war I spent time in Switzerland.

After the war I became active in efforts to bring French and German youth together. In 1969, after two Ph.D.s and a year at Harvard’s Kennedy School, I started writing a book about American management.

I said that in order to achieve long-term growth and prosperity, management must serve all stakeholders. The idea of the first Davos symposium was to create a platform that would allow stakeholders to exchange concerns and knowledge.

How I got started

Bet big. [In order to fund Davos] in 1970 I took a 50,000 Swiss franc ($11,434) loan from a German industrialist. The condition was either to pay him back or join his company, so I was nervous.

We sent out invitations with response cards. Every morning the mail came, and I didn’t want to spend time opening it so I put it under a very strong desk lamp where I could immediately see the response. Some 440 people came from 31 countries to the first meeting in 1971, including John Kenneth Galbraith.

The success of the conference let me repay the debt and gave me a surplus, which I used to create the European Management Forum (now the WEF) as a not-for-profit foundation.

Expand your vision but control the brand. In the beginning [Davos] was a two-week course focused on Europe and management. In the 1970s the oil crisis triggered a more global approach. There are now 2,500 participants.

Some years ago we invited Hollywood celebrities who were involved in the issues we were addressing, believing that they might contribute. The media focused on them. This provided the wrong impression. We have not invited them since; we are afraid the brand would be hijacked.

Secrets of my success

Break the rules. I wanted to spend only one year studying business, so I went to Harvard’s Kennedy School and cross-registered for courses in the business school.

One day I was invited by dean George Baker to have tea; he wanted to meet the person who circumvented the rules. We developed a close relationship, and I invited him to be the chairman of the first Davos meeting. This helped guarantee its success

Maintain exclusivity. We have a strict philosophy: If someone retires, he is no longer invited. We want to make sure everyone who comes is really an active decision-maker.

Keep it simple. You can manage today’s complex world best by keeping your life as simple as possible. I do sports every day and have been happily married for nearly 40 years. People feel I’m the biggest networker, but I don’t go unnecessarily to parties. If I have to, I go for five to 10 minutes to show respect.

Klaus Schwab’s guide to Davos

Schedule your days, but leave time for chance meetings. They’re the most interesting. Don’t miss the opening session, for overall context. And if you go to only one party, go to the one on the last night co-hosted by the Forum and a government. This is the one party I always attend; this year it’s with South Africa, in its international kickoff to the 2010 World Cup. 

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Investors scored big Sunday when the New York Jets lost to the Indianapolis Colts — at least according to the Super Bowl stock indicator.

Here’s how it works. If a team that had its roots in the National Football League wins, the Dow Jones industrial average should go up. If a team from the upstart American Football League wins, stocks should go down.

The AFL merged with the NFL soon after Super Bowl III, when the AFL Jets upset the then-NFL Baltimore Colts.

In the 43 years the Super Bowl has been played, the indicator has been correct 81% of the time. That includes last year’s game, when the win by the Pittsburgh Steelers correctly predicted the rebound in stocks before many investing professionals were willing to go out on that limb.

The two NFC teams playing this Sunday — the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints — both have NFL roots. So the stock market had to dodge only a Jets win.

Of course basing investment decisions on the outcome of a game makes as much sense as playing football without a helmet. But according to a study by George Kester, a business professor at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va., an investment strategy driven by Super Bowl results has done quite well.

If you’d moved into Treasury bonds following wins by former AFL teams, and back into stocks following victories by teams from the old NFL, you would have performed more than twice as well as buying-and-holding an S&P 500 index fund over the same period payday loans guaranteed no fax.

Kester said while he doesn’t believe the indicator is a wise way to make investment decisions, the better return on the Super Bowl-driven fund was "a result that would be the envy of many portfolio managers."

Of course, the Super Bowl indicator has been wrong eight times, often spectacularly so.

The New York Giants’ upset win in 2008 over the New England Patriots was supposed to bring about a bull run for stocks. Instead the Dow crashed 33.8% that year as the credit markets and banking sector imploded.

Similarly, the back-to-back wins by the Denver Broncos, formerly of the AFL, in 1998 and 1999 did little to slow the rising bubble in tech stocks. The market didn’t cool off until 2000 — after the St. Louis Rams, a team with its origin in the NFL, won the Super Bowl.

So only the most superstitious of investors should really have been cheering against Gang Green. The Super Bowl indicator is fun to talk about, but not something to be taken too seriously. 

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A federal judge has appointed a receiver, Atec Inc., to run the Golf Discount store chain, Mid-Rivers Golf Links and other properties associated with entrepreneur and former golf pro Ned Story.

Centrue Bank claims the companies defaulted on $20 million in loans, which came due early this month.

In asking for a receiver, the bank said the borrowers lack the money to keep the business operating until golfing picks up with warmer weather. The bank said it is "legitimately fearful that its collateral has been, is and will continue to be consumed, used or dissipated," according to documents filed with the U.S. district court in St. Louis. Judge Terry Adelman is hearing the case.

In court papers, the bank said it would fund the receiver, which should allow the businesses to continue operating. Golf Discount stores were open for business this week.

The default is another blow to Centrue. The bank lost $22 million in the first nine months of this year and 8 percent of its loans were behind in payments as of September, more than twice the level at similar banks.

The Federal Reserve last month banned the bank from paying dividends to shareholders and told it to clean up bad loans and improve its lending practices cash advance. The bank has $1.3 billion in assets.

Golf Discount, based in St. Peters, has 18 stores in seven states, including stores in Mehlville, Chesterfield, Ballwin and St. Peters. The bank said its loans are also secured by property at Old Hickory Golf Club and Mid-Rivers Golf Links, both in St. Peters, and golf properties near Kansas City and in Kansas, Arizona and Tennessee.

Story and officials of the golfing companies did not return phone calls.

It’s been a rough go for golf clubs in general, says Scott Hovis, executive director of the Missouri Golf Association. An association survey showed that golf club memberships fell 10 to 15 percent in 2008 in the state. Figures for last year are not yet available, but Hovis feels the business has "flattened," with little growth or shrinkage.

"Golf courses throughout America are struggling," he said, as the economy forces customers to cut back on luxuries. Still, club failures in Missouri have been few, said Hovis.

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Donations via text message raised $7 million for the American Red Cross’s Haiti relief efforts as of 11 p.m. Thursday.

Soon after a 7.0-magnitude quake struck near capital city Port-au-Prince late Tuesday, the Red Cross mobilized fundraising efforts via social networking site Twitter. Just before midnight, @RedCross tweeted: "You can text "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts in #haiti."

And so far a staggering 700,000 customers have done just that, across all wireless networks including AT&T (T, Fortune 500), Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500), Sprint (S, Fortune 500) and T-Mobile.

"These are donors who are typically the hardest to reach: young people," said Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson. "They’re reacting to something that affects them and realizing their few dollars can make a difference. Texting has opened up a whole new world for philanthropy."

Mobile giving isn’t new, but it’s been in the spotlight since the Haiti earthquake hit. In fact, the $5 million that’s been raised so far by the Red Cross far exceeds the nearly $4 million that was donated to all charities by mobile texts in all of 2009, Nelson said.

Organizations including the ASPCA, Feed the Children and World Land Trust all have 5-digit numbers to which subscribers can text donations at any time.

Nelson said Verizon Wireless (VZ, Fortune 500) has a long-standing policy that it does not charge subscribers for texts to make charitable donations, and added that 100% of the donated funds are passed on to the Red Cross. T-Mobile also said its subscribers can text Haiti donations for free.

News reports earlier Thursday said AT&T (T, Fortune 500) was charging subscribers for their texts. But a spokesman said Thursday afternoon that the company had updated its systems in the morning to make texts sent to Haiti relief efforts free of charge, and that the change would cover those who donated yesterday.

On Thursday afternoon Sprint said it will continue to treat donation texts "like any other text message for now," but by that evening the company did an about face and said it would issue a waiver on text message fees for specific Haiti mobile giving donations. 

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The Cleveland Indians’ annual press tour will take the team to Columbus this month for an event set to benefit the cancer research fund started by the late Stefanie Spielman.

The Indians’ tour runs from Jan. 26-28 and consists of three buses visiting sites in Ohio and Pennsylvania with players, Manager Manny Acta, coaching staff and broadcasters.

The team’s Lou Doby bus is arriving at the Gameworks at Easton Town Center Jan. 26 for a press conference at 4:30 p.m. with the main event set for 6 p.m. Tickets are $5 and available only at the door, the team said. For details on scheduled appearances along with other stops and dates, click here http://cleveland small personal loans.indians.mlb.com/cle/fan_forum/presstour.jsp.

The charity set to benefit from proceeds is the Stefanie Spielman Fund at the James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute. Spielman, wife of former National Football League and Ohio State University star Chris Spielman, died in November at the age of 42 following a years-long battle with breast cancer.

The regular season for the Indians, the parent club of the AAA Columbus Clippers, begins April 5 against the Chicago White Sox at Wrigley Field.

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More details of a bitter dispute between the publisher of Canada’s largest metropolitan newspaper chain and its lenders, mainly Canada’s big banks, have emerged in court documents.

The documents filed in Ontario Superior Court of Justice provide an unusual glimpse into the infighting that went on before CanWest Limited Partnership filed for bankruptcy protection last Friday, owing $1.5 billion.

In a frank exchange of letters, Leonard Asper, chief executive officer of CanWest Global Communications Corp. and CanWest Media Inc., accuses the newspaper group’s secured lenders of putting their interests ahead of other creditors.

Asper also pleads for more time, noting improving economic conditions can only benefit everyone involved.

Asper, whose late father Israel (Izzy) Asper founded CanWest Global, says in a Jan. 4 letter to the lenders that he "profoundly disagrees" with their decision to push the newspaper chain into an "early filing." He says the move could result in "undue and unnecessary harm" to some of the company’s long-time suppliers.

Asper said the court filing could end up costing CanWest LP (the entity that holds the company’s major newspapers) as much as $45 million in fees.

Those fees will go to the same "advisory groups that are driving the process," Asper says in the letter addressed to the Bank of Nova Scotia, which is acting as the agent for the secured creditors.

While Asper acknowledged that the newspaper chain ran into trouble last May and is in default on certain principal payments, he said the company has since "stabilized."

He asked for six months to come up with a plan "that is fair to all parties," citing employees, suppliers and other unsecured lenders.

"For the first time in 14 months, revenue for the most recent month was ahead of the same month last year," Asper noted.

In a sharply worded response, the Bank of Nova Scotia’s executive vice-president Jane Rowe questions Asper’s authority as chief executive at CanWest Media, owner of the Global TV network, to act on behalf of CanWest Limited Partnership, which owns the newspapers.

Rowe also points out that CanWest LP is behind on at least $100 million in payments on various loans since last May and that the secured lenders, which have the right to recall their loans at any time, have been more than patient.

"LP is insolvent," says the Jan. 6 letter signed by Rowe. "It is plain and obvious that it can not support its massive debt, and that a transaction will have to occur that fundamentally alters the balance sheet of the newspaper business."

The argument between the two parties became moot once CanWest LP filed for bankruptcy court protection two days later, a spokesperson for the company said. However, the exchange provides a glimpse into the factors that went into that decision.

CanWest Limited Partnership, which owns a string of 10 major dailies, plus the National Post, owes its lenders $1.5 billion, according to Dominion Bond Rating Services.

As part of the court filing, the newspaper company, whose papers include the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal’s The Gazette and the Calgary Herald, was put up for sale.

At current valuations it could fetch between $1 billion and $1.5 billion, DBRS analyst Chris Diceman estimates. But it has only one offer in hand, from the secured lenders, for $950 million, the amount those lenders are owed.

Other media and financial companies are expected to take a closer look at CanWest LP.

That could leave the unsecured lenders, such as the holders of CanWest’s 9 3/4 per cent bonds, out in the cold, Diceman said Monday.

"If you get to $1.5 billion, all the creditors get 100 cents on the dollar. But if it’s only worth a billion the banks have the secured debt, the banks get paid first. Anything that’s left over, assuming it’s being sold for cash, they would get very little," Diceman said. "I think that’s what he’s trying to say in his letter."

Diceman noted the secured lenders, a group made up of 184 different entities, was able to get agreement on the bankruptcy court filing from only 48 per cent of its members.

However, Diceman also noted the secured lenders have the right to demand repayment and may be under pressure to reinvest that money where it will generate a better return.

"This is a time where the banks are looking at their capital structures, and the value of their loans, given what’s happening in the financial world," he said, referring to the recent credit crunch. "They’ve got to make sure they can get their capital out."

Other industry insiders say a court-supervised sale process mitigates the risk the secured lenders may be sued by the bondholders.

In his letter, Asper estimates both the newspaper chain and CanWest’s broadcast assets, chiefly Global TV, could suffer combined revenue losses of $40 million due to the perception in advertisers’ minds that the two entities will no longer be doing business together.

The company that holds Global TV, CanWest Media Inc., entered bankruptcy protection last October.

The secured lenders reject Asper’s claim the business will be damaged by the process, with Rowe calling the assertion "unsupported."

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Miami developer Asi Cymbal is buying property in Miami’s Design District with immediate plans for more restaurants and retail.

Cymbal is managing partner of the Michelle Bernstein restaurant Sra. Martinez and head of his own construction company.

At a steep discount, Cymbal scooped up the former site of a planned town home project – a little more than one acre (49,500 square feet) at the corner of Northeast First Avenue and 41st Street.

Cymbal paid $2 million for the $10.5 million mortgage with Compass Bank on the property on Dec. 30.

The prior owner was Jeremy Green of Nexus Development Group, who once had a slate of residential proposals for the area.

Cymbal, president of Miami-based Cymbal Development, said in an interview the project would involve retail and restaurants, but he declined to be more specific. He also said he might develop retail at some point in the future.

Cymbal owns the 25,000 square foot Midtown Center at North Miami Avenue and 34th Street. He did new construction at Midtown Center and rehabbed an existing warehouse, which is now home to Bardot bar and EQ3 furniture.

Cymbal also has plans to build a 100,000-square-foot structure at 112-130 NE 41st Street. About half of the building will serve as parking, with retail on the bottom and another use on the top of the building.

One of Cymbal’s partners on the future development projects is Amir Ben-Zion, who is a partner in Miss Yip Chinese Café and the Townhouse Hotel, both on Miami Beach.

Cymbal and Ben-Zion are familiar names in local real estate development circles fast payday loans. In March 2005, the pair were part of a partnership that paid $14 million for the flat-iron parcel one block west of Brickell Avenue.

The site was slated for a mixed-use office building, but the project never got off the ground. In July 2007, it was on the market for $32.5 million.

The pair sold their interest in the project and are no longer associated with it, Cymbal said.

In July of the same year, the pair were part of a partnership that paid $18 million for about an acre of land on Biscayne Boulevard near the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, where it considered building condominiums. The project never started and the pair also sold their interest in that project, Cymbal said.

At the time, the area around the arts center was inspiring real estate dreams, with Terra Group planning a massive mixed-use development next door.

Cymbal was a vice president and general counsel for the Manhattan projects of Leviev Boymelgreen. He had no connection to the Boymelgreen’s Miami projects, most of which stalled.

As for the Design District, Cymbal said there is great demand for mixed-use projects in the growing Design District, which has become a focal point of activity for the annual Art Basel art event.

“Our intent is to bring the Design District to the next level,” Cymbal said.

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Irish house prices may fall for a fourth year in 2010 as the deepest recession in the country’s modern history persists, a survey of economists shows.

Home prices will shrink 9 percent, according to the median of six estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Prices have already fallen 27 percent from their peak in early 2007, based on a monthly index by Dublin-based Irish Life & Permanent Plc.

Ireland’s economy shrank about 7.5 percent last year, almost twice the euro-region average, as a real-estate slump spread into the rest of the economy. That pushed up unemployment and forced the government to bail-out lenders led by Allied Irish Banks Plc and Bank of Ireland Plc. Gross domestic product may shrink 0.8 percent in 2010, marking a third annual contraction, the survey showed.

“The economy is contracting, there’s still housing oversupply there,” said Dermot O’Leary, chief economist at Goodbody Stockbrokers in Dublin. “It’s hard to say we’ve reached a floor.”

Ireland’s recovery will lag behind the revival of many of its euro-area neighbors as companies from Aer Lingus Group Plc to Danske Bank A/S cut jobs, restraining consumer demand. The jobless rate may increase to 13 percent this year from 11.8 percent in 2009, the survey showed.

“It’s going to be a tough one,” Mark Bourke, chief executive officer of Dublin-based IFG Group Plc, said in Dublin yesterday. “There’s very little to indicate there will be a major recovery.”

Budget Gap

In addition to the economic slump, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan is facing a widening budget deficit and is cutting the wages of government workers and welfare payments business card. The actions won’t be enough to reduce the gap this year, according to the survey. Economists see the deficit averaging 11.6 percent of GDP in 2010, little changed from 2009’s 11.7 percent.

Ireland’s fiscal problems are partly related to the government’s reliance on property-related tax revenue during the boom that has since dried up. The European Commission has given Ireland until 2014 to reduce the budget gap to a limit of 3 percent of output.

“I’m confident. We as a country are far better in adversity,” Smurfit Kappa Group Plc Chief Executive Officer Gary McGann said at a Dec. 15 press briefing in Dublin. “We screw it up in the good times.”

There may be some pick-up in economic growth the second half of this year, in tandem with a continuing recovery in overseas demand, economists said, echoing forecasts from the government. The global economy is gathering strength after central banks around the world trimmed borrowing costs close to zero and injected billions of dollars in stimulus measures.

Confidence in the world economy held near a record high in December and the MSCI World Index has surged 71 percent since reaching a 2009 low on March 9. Ireland’s benchmark ISEQ index has gained 60 percent in the same period.

“Export growth is likely to return in a significant way in 2010,” said Rossa White, chief economist at Dublin-based stockbroker Davy. “Second, consumer spending will bottom early in the year and expand slightly as the year progresses.”

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Biotech stocks took a turn for the worse in 2009 as the major players dealt with regulatory, manufacturing and political issues as well as a deep recession, but their fortunes could turn in the new year if they get added patent protection.

They were the exception in what was otherwise a bullish year for health care stocks, which benefited as investors sought defensive plays in a turbulent market.

Biotech stocks were the laggards of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Health Care index, on track to post a nearly 8 percent loss for the year, while the rest of the health care sector has logged gains of up to 66 percent, according to FactSet.

The decline in bellwethers such as Amgen and Genzyme was a key factor in weighing down the overall sector. On a broader scale, concerns included a backlog of drug approvals at the Food and Drug Administration, a decline in buyout activity, and fears over health care reform.

While the S&P 500 index is on track to gain about 25 percent in 2009, its large biotech components are down about 7.8 percent. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index, with a broader array of biotech companies, rose 17 percent, but that pales in comparison with the broader Nasdaq composite, which is set to gain about 45 percent.

Pharmaceutical companies, which saw a flurry of buyout and merger activity, are among the strongest performers with a 25 percent boost, a reversal from a lackluster 2008. But the lines between pharmaceutical and biotech companies are diminishing through a range of buyout and development deals. Traditional pharmaceuticals are made by synthesizing chemicals, while biotech-based drugs are made using living cells.

Meanwhile, hospital operators and insurers are on track to rally 62 percent, despite the recession, on hopes that health care reform in Washington could result in more insured patients and revenue in the future.

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German consumer prices posted their highest annual gain in eight months in December after energy costs increased.

The inflation rate, calculated using a harmonized European Union method, rose to 0.8 percent from 0.3 percent in November, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said today. That’s the highest level since April. Economists predicted prices would increase an annual 0.7 percent, according to the median of 19 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. From the previous month, prices rose 0.9 percent.

Crude oil prices have almost doubled in the past year, undermining confidence just as the economy recovers from the worst recession in more than six decades. While German economic growth accelerated in the third quarter, rising unemployment may prompt consumers to keep a rein on spending. The Bundesbank said this month that inflation will remain benign and predicted that unemployment will increase to 10.1 percent in 2011 from 8.1 percent today.

“Energy prices are still driving the inflation rate,” said Laurent Bilke, a former European Central Bank economist now at Nomura International Plc in London. “Underlying inflation, however, is still weak and is likely to remain so well into 2010.”

Germany’s economy emerged from the recession in the second quarter and growth accelerated to 0.7 percent in the third. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is spending 85 billion euros ($123 billion) to stimulate activity and the ECB has cut its benchmark rate to a record-low 1 percent as inflation risks remain contained.

‘Safely Below’

“Our interest-rate decisions are to be seen in connection with our price-stability goal, and in this context I do not see major threats for price stability in the near future,” ECB Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said in an interview with Bloomberg News on Dec. 14. “Inflation rates will be on the positive side but it will be safely below the inflation target of the ECB.”

In the 16-nation euro area, consumer prices rose an annual 0.5 percent in November after declining 0.1 percent in the previous month. The ECB aims to keep inflation just below 2 percent. Data for December will be published on Jan. 5.

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