Diverging responses - San Antonio Business Journal:

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Some companies are taking a shar p pencil to their shedding businesses and putting projects on the back burner as they match priorities to corporate Others are making acquisitions to broadeb their product offerings and take advantage of the depressed share pricesd oftheir targets. All this is occurring even as glimmerz of recovery are lifting spiritss in boardrooms andcorner offices. Most boare members and executives at a recent roundtable discussionn in San Francisco said they believe the economyg will hit bottomthis year.
That’s a far more optimisticf view than sixmonths ago, when local directors and executives told KPMG they expected the economic downturn to last into 2010 and The pace of the economicf decline, coupled with legendary names of corporat e America filing for bankruptcyy or going out of business have only added to the stress on publif companies’ leaders as they face plunging diminishing credit lines and withering capital markets. “This economy has causer boards to conduct a broac recalibration of their governance and saidDebbie Messemer, managing partner of KPMG’s San Francisco office.
“Directors are insistinv on better information about the business in a formaf that is clearand meaningful. “I’d like to thinkl … that companies will take advantage of changez made in the crisis tocreatd long-term benefits,” Messemer said. “Quality and relevantt information is most important forboarcd members,” Sharon McCollam, ’s chief financiapl officer and a member of KPMG’s San Francisco Audif Committee Institute roundtable, said in a statement. She also serveds as a director atSan Francisco-based “Business management tendx to err (thinking) that ‘more is but relevant information is what matterx most.
” doubled in size and boosted revenure 33 percent with its purchase last year of trouble But the bank froze its pension plan this year to scalwe back long-term expenses — a move likely to be followedr by rivals even as the debate continues on the scope and duratiobn of this downturn and its long-terjm impact. “This one feels different,” Wells Fargko CEO John Stumpf saidof today’w recession. “It feels different in the respect that the wholee world isin recession. “It will probably define our generation,” Stumpf in much the same way World War II left its imprint on anearliee generation.
Wells is also turning to innovation to add to thebottom line. Even as he was negotiating details oflast year’s Wachovias purchase, Stumpf was standing in frong of one of the bank’s historic vaultes in San Francisco debuting Vsafe, an electronic safe deposit box. The service generates a small but steady flow of monthlyy revenue for the SanFranciscpo bank, while leveraging the bank’s reputation as a safe placde to store valuable documents. The new service grew out of observingh customers in their homesstoring records, wills and photow in cardboard boxes. Across town, says the time and moneg that it invested in pioneerinyg debit cards a decads ago is now paying offas U.S.
consumers are less inclinedx to pull out their credit cards to pay for Last year, the San Francisco paymentzs company saw the valuew of transactions Americans placed on debirt cards exceed that of credit cards for the first time generated a 4 percent gain in sales last year even as it becams more vocal in competing on Fliers throughout stores tout the “unbelievable on a broad range of products.
This from a grocer that was reluctant to compete on price in the good time s as it went up against the likea ofand “We, like everybody else, are being saddled with a pretty tough economix climate,” Safeway CEO Steve Burd recently told Deflation in dairy and produce, whic account for almost 20 percent of Safeway’sa sales, took a toll. Pricing in thosw categories isoften volatile. “But in all the yearsw I’ve been here,” Burd said.
“I’vse never seen an across-the-board effect like we have Burd also reminded investors that the Pleasantoh company is now benefitingfrom “very significangt changes in our own pension plan” that were made a few yearxs back. Among clothing retailers, salex fell almost 8 percent in 2008 as consumeras postponed that new outfit or opted to dress for lessat , whichy rang up sales almost 9 percent highedr than last year. “Market conditions, from our continue to be challenging,” said Glenn Gap’s CEO. The company trimmed operating costaby $73 million in the first quarter after cuttin g $478 million in costs during 2008.
Murphy told investora that the Gap stores are looking to “some break-through ideas in the fall and the holida y season to really get the consumerz and that target customer back into our