Thomas Cook shares crash after Harriet Green is pushed out

Thomas Cook chief executive Harriet Green has announced her surprise departure. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

Harriet Green has been pushed out as chief executive of Thomas Cook in a shock departure that wiped £400m off the value of the tour operator.
Green had garnered investor plaudits, and an award for businesswoman of the year, for turning around a business that was recovering from the brink of bankruptcy when she joined two years ago. But her board was less enamoured. As Green departed with shares worth more than £9m, Thomas Cook’s chairman said the group needed a leader with more knowledge of the leisure industry.
The surprise ousting came after Green told the Daily Telegraph in May: “I’ve always said that I’m going to stay six years”. Five days ago, Green told an Inspiring Women conference: “You can’t do a transformation on this sort of scale in a year or two years. I usually say it’s about six years ... we’re absolutely not done.”
However, Green has left with immediate effect and Peter Fankhauser, the chief operating officer and a company veteran, is taking over.
Spokespeople for Green and for the company stuck doggedly to the party line that the departure had been agreed by both sides. However, one company insider admitted: “Is she going maybe a year earlier than she wanted? Probably ... If your management style is shaking people by the throat, there is only so long that people can put up with that.”

Another company insider confirmed that Green’s exit was earlier than she had originally hoped for: “What was in everyone’s mind was that Peter would take over. The question was when. What has been agreed most recently is when.”
Fankhauser, who has worked at Thomas Cook for 13 years, survived the management cull implemented by Green when she joined from electronic components distributor Premier Farnell.
Thomas Cook’s chairman, Frank Meysman, said the board had been unanimous that it was the right time for Green to hand over to Fankhauser as the company needed a leader with more travel industry experience. He added that she would be paid her six months’ notice and be allowed to keep 8m shares, worth about £9.2m, that were originally due to vest in 2015 and 2016 as part of her performance share plan.
The company was keen to stress that Green had done a “phenomenal” job. She is widely credited with rebuilding the tour operator after its near collapse – taking the company’s stock market value from £148m to just under £2bn before Wednesday’s news. She was paid £2.86m in 2013, including £680,000 salary and a bonus of £1.79m.
Thomas Cook shares plunged 22% to 107p as the group announced Green’s departure and warned that trading had become more difficult and growth would be slower in the current financial year. Business in Germany has weakened as consumer confidence has dropped in Europe’s biggest economy and the UK winter programme has failed to fill increased capacity.
Meysman said: “It’s a different balance of requirements that is needed going forward. Knowledge of the market and implementation of the strategy that Harriet has set out is more important than continuous strategy. She loved this job tremendously but she has always been very realistic that this job will end at some point in time.”
However, the notion that Fankhauser had always been groomed to take over appeared to be undermined by one major Thomas Cook shareholder, which issued a statement saying it had yet to even meet the new boss.
Simon Skinner, European equity analyst at Thomas Cook shareholder Orbis Investments, which has a stake of about 3.5%, said: “Harriet did a great job. As long-term investors, we’re always on the lookout for great managers and we’ll certainly be keeping an eye on where she goes next. In the meantime, we’re looking forward to meeting Peter and seeing him settle into his new leadership role”. The investor said it had been informed of the change in chief executive “in line with the rest of the market”.
Green, known for her minimal sleep, high-intensity workouts in the gym at 5am and a robust management style, was one of the few female chief executives of a leading UK public company. She said in a statement: “I always said that I would move on to another company with fresh challenges once my work was complete. That time is now. I wish all of the team at this re-energised company continued success, as they move to the next phase of the company’s development.”

There Are Four Business Negotiation Skills You Need To Know

I believe that everything has its own rules and skills to follow, of course, including the business negotiation, it owns some skills you must know. Here are four pieces of advice that current business negotiation research offers to reduce your overconfidence:

1. Collect information

When the stakes are high, you must overcome the common tendency to spend too much time looking in the mirror, admiring virtues and fretting over flaws. Negotiators get into trouble when they lack information about the other players in the game. For this reason, seek out as much relevant, high-quality information about the other side as you can, and use that information to your advantage.

2. Consider the opposite

One of the best ways to correct the biases in your judgment is to think of reasons why your initial guesses could be wrong. In particular, consider the possibility that the opposite of your assumption is true. Suppose that you are negotiating with a prospective employer and you suspect that the employer is meeting with many other strong job candidates.

3. Find a devil's advocate

Before and during a negotiation, ask others within your organization to question you about your approach and assumptions. If you're the boss, this technique may be politically awkward; your subordinates won't want to tell you that you're wrong. Yet good negotiators base their decisions on high-quality information, not the information that makes them feel good.

4. Don't be afraid to ask

Many people find negotiation stressful and avoid it whenever possible. The fear of not knowing what to say may lead you to assume that you won't get what you want from the process. Note that this prediction rests on the parallel assumption that your negotiating counterpart is an avid, expert bargainer. In fact, it's just as likely that your counterpart is as nervous as you are. Don't let negotiation opportunities pass you by.

A Good Business Plan Is The Most Important

A business plan outlines your strategy for the next couple of years. It may be used to help support an application for business finance or business grants, or it could be just for your own use as a roadmap for the growth of your business. It explains your objectives and the actions required to get your small business from where it is now, to where you want it to be.

The process of writing your plan will help you focus, crystallise your ideas and identify priorities, saving both time and effort. Your business plan will give you a clear sense of direction and a benchmark enabling you to measure progress.

Keep your plan as short as possible as overly detailed business plans can be too cumbersome to use. Focus on the information the reader needs to know. Leave the finer detail for operational or marketing plans or attach information such as technical details of a product in an appendix.

Involve your employees in the planning process to gain both their insights and their buy-in to the plan. This will help you build a successful, committed team. Planning together will also identify priorities that provide useful benchmarks to measure performance.

Keep your business plan realistic. For example, unrealistic sales forecasts could lead to increased overheads followed by a damaging cash flow crisis and drastic cost cutting. It could also damage your credibility, because lenders and other interested parties will quickly see through optimistic plans that ignore weaknesses or threats.

Even if your plan is intended for internal use only, write and present it as if it's aimed at an outsider. Put a cover on the plan and include a contents page, with page and section numbering.

Start with an executive summary of the key points and purpose of the plan. Use charts if relevant, and include business or product literature as an appendix. Get the plan proofread for clarity, spelling and grammar mistakes, and then show the plan to friends and business advisers for comments on how to improve it.

Start with a brief history of the business. When did it start trading and what progress has it made to date? Who owned the business originally? What is the current ownership structure?

Describe your product or service without using technical jargon. If necessary, you can offer the technical detail for people who want to know more in an appendix to the plan.

In general, what makes your product or service different? What benefits does it offer? What are its disadvantages? How do you plan to develop the business?

Learning the Basics of Business Negotiation

Business owners wear many different hats in the course of running their companies. During a typical day at the office, you may need to deal with buying commodities and selling products, interviewing potential new employees and reviewing contracts. One of the main skills that you will want to develop as a business owner that applies to many areas of your business is business negotiation skills. Understanding the basics of business negotiation will help your business to succeed. Although business negotiations are often relegated to professional lawyers and arbiters, in many ordinary business circumstances it is more cost effective to receive training through appropriate negotiation courses, and negotiate terms suitable for your company yourself.

Learning effective business negotiation begins with an assessment of where your company's strengths and weaknesses lie in terms of negotiation skills and outcomes. The best types of business negotiation training will take this type of information into account and create a specialized training seminar that is compatible with your company's business needs. A superior business negotiation skills trainer will also need to determine what level of expertise you wish to achieve from your training, and will suit the training to those requirements.
Effective business negotiation training should offer a hands-on approach for the learners. This is available when a negotiation skills trainer has you work through scenarios you are likely to face in real-world negotiation situations, and gives you the tools and strategies you need to successfully negotiate an agreeable deal. These types of low-stress learning situations are especially helpful in learning sales negotiation skills, so that while you are getting up to speed on sales negotiation you are not hurting your company's bottom line.
As you can see, business negotiation is a process, and negotiation skills can be learned to improve the relationships you have with your clients and create an environment where your business deal will succeed. While you are working at acquiring new business skills, you will want to have contact with your trainer, who can answer questions, provide guidance and assist you in achieving a new level of negotiation acumen.
If there are several employees in your company who work in the area of negotiations, you may wish to have a negotiations consultant provide a group training session. This is valuable because employees can not only learn through personal experience, but can learn through the experiences of others, providing them with a multi-faceted educational environment, and a greater understanding of the skills being learned. For those who require specializing negotiations training, one-on-one coaching is often the most effective ways to rapidly learn new skills and achieve success in business negotiations. Business negotiation can be learned and skills improved with the guidance of expert negotiations consultants.

Starting Your Own Business Needs Teamwork At First

Starting your own business sounds great, but it usually works better in theory than in practice. Most new entrepreneurs exaggerate the potential drawbacks of forming a partnership because they are afraid of sharing management and ideas with someone who might not agree with them. That fear of losing control of your business can hold you back from creating a successful enterprise. If you feel strongly about doing it all by yourself, there are also top business collaboration benefits can convince you to give teamwork a try.

Additional capital Starting and growing a business can take a tremendous amount of capital. Taking out loans can backfire if your business gets off to a slow start or fails in the long run. One or two partners can invest additional funds into the development of your business without putting your financial stability at risk the way loans would.

Access to valuable experience and advice Teaming up with an experienced professional is a great way to instantly improve your skills and avoid common mistakes.

Exchange of invaluable ideas Brainstorming with other people is the best way to figure out what your business needs to succeed. By bouncing around ideas, you and your partner can come up with brilliant strategies that can take your business to new heights. You can even use digital tools like collaboration apps to communicate new observations and ideas in between your face-to-face meetings.

Well-rounded approach to business development and management There are many different aspects to running a business including management, marketing, accounting, research and operations. You might be great at managing daily operations or networking, but maybe you are not so good at market research. Having a partner who excels in areas that you struggle with can help you build a stronger business.

Less stress and more support Sharing responsibilities and tasks with a partner is the best way to reduce the stress associated with building a new business. Collaboration apps can help you stay in touch with each other and on top of your business, so you can always feel like everything is under control.

Negotiating Your Rent To Make A Fair Rental Rate

Whether you're looking for a new place to rent or it's time to renew your lease, now might be a great time to consider negotiating your rent.

"There should always be some wiggle room, and it's worth a shot now more than ever," says Joe Ewaskiw, a spokesman for the consumer Web site ApartmentRatings.com.

How to Rent: Build Your Case

No matter how convincing you may be, the ultimate arbiter of rent is market demand. Does the property owner have many vacancies? Does he or she have other prospective renters waiting to lease the unit? Knowing what your landlord needs is the first step towards leveraging a deal. Before meeting with the landlord, gather evidence of your reliability – past rent history, proof of income, a good credit report -- whatever demonstrates stability.

Have You Successfully Negotiated With A Landlord?

We're curious to hear from those of you who have successfully negotiated with your landlord. How did you do it? What tips and tricks did you learn? Whether you were able to keep your same rent or negotiate an even lower rate, let's hear what you have to say.

Vote in our poll and leave your tips in the comments.

What's A Fair Rental Rate?

One phrase common to nearly every lease negotiation is "market rate." The landlord or property manager will cite the market rate for a particular rental property as cause for an increase in rent.

This market rate may be culled together from the prices of nearby properties or it may simply be a rate that the landlord needs to charge to make a profit. It may also be related to the cost difference in renting v. buying a house in a particular area.

Make your assets work for you

Having good credit makes your position particularly strong in the current economic climate, where many potential renters have much weaker scores, says Turman.

In Turman's case, he and his wife had owned two previous homes before opting to rent. They had good credit and income. "We put ourselves in the driver's seat and let the (manager)/landlord come to us," Turman says. "We... let them know the desirable qualities we possessed and the concessions they would have to make in order for it to work (price, utilities, etc.)"

As a result, he says, "we have by far the lowest rent of comparables in the neighborhood and love our home."

Write down your terms once you and the seller have agreed on a price. The next phase after a price has been agreed on is the negotiation between you and the seller of the rent-to-own agreement details. Include how long you want the rental period to last, such as three or five years, the highest total monthly payment amount you are financially able to pay and what level of repairs you and the seller are each responsible for. Buyers usually make the repairs in a rent-to-own agreement, but some sellers will assume responsibility for major repairs during the rental period.

Meet with the seller to negotiate the final details. Bring your real estate agent if you are using an agent. Mention any specific issues you have with the rent-to-own agreement terms and consider comprises with the seller in order to complete the deal. Contact an attorney to review the proposed rent-to-own agreement before you sign.

Become A Successful Negotiator To Get What You Want

One way or another we’re always negotiating—whether it’s with our boss for a raise, with our partner for rotation on cleanup duty, or with our kids about their curfew. The key is to get what you want, while keeping those around you happy.

Be willing to negotiate in the first place
　　

Some people are too shy to talk about money. Others think it's rude or demeaning. And in many cases they're right. However, when it comes to doing a deal - and we all have to sometimes - being unwilling to engage in "money-talk" can be a very expensive business.
　　
There are a lot of experienced negotiators out there. If you're buying a house or a car, or taking a new job, you can be sure you'll have to deal with such a person. If they can see you're timid about the whole business, many will take advantage of that fact.
　　
You also shouldn't be shy about turning something that may not immediately appear to be a negotiation into one. If I'm buying a few expensive things from the same store, I'll often ask them to throw something in for free or reduce the price. Just because there's no sign saying you can do that, doesn't mean you can't. Often, simply by asking for something extra I'll get a better deal.
　　
Don't get emotionally involved
　　
One big mistake many amateur negotiators make is to become too emotionally attached to winning. They shout, threaten and demand to get their way. This is all counter-productive.
　　
Most deals are only possible if both people feel they're getting something out of it. If the person across the table feels attacked, or doesn't like you, they probably won't back down. Many people hate bullies, and will be more willing to walk away from a transaction if it involves one.
　　
Here are the keys to becoming a successful negotiator.
　　
The Opening: This is not a begging session, nor is it demeaning to ask for what you want. It's an honorable exchange. However, don't come in making unreasonable demands. Keep in mind that this is a give and take, and keep it respectful. Signal your intention to get what you want, but be prepared to offer something in return.
　　
Know that it is not personal: This is the undoing of any meaningful strategy in a negotiation. Being emotional has no place. Fix your mind on the goal, not on how you feel - betrayed, overlooked, left out, under-compensated, unacknowledged. Anger and resentment foreclose any deal, and if you let these emotions take control, you can actually end up with less in the end.
　　
Do your homework: Educate yourself beforehand. All too often, we come to the table unprepared, not recognizing that negotiating is a two-way street with both sides getting something of value. We have to convince the other side with a powerful argument, and that takes preparation. You have to research what it will cost the other side and how you can make it worthwhile. Benefitting both sides, not only saves face, but also provides an on-going working relationship that is anything but all or nothing.