A year after an unruly crowd trampled a worker to death at a Wal-Mart store, America’s retailers are preparing for another Black Friday, the
blockbuster shopping day after Thanksgiving. Along with offering $300 laptops and $99 navigation devices, stores are planning new safety measures to make sure the festive day does not take another deadly turn. Last year, frenzied shoppers at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, NY, trampled Jdimytai Damour, a temporary store employee who died soon afterward. To prevent any repeat, Wal-Mart has sharply changed how it intends to manage the crowds. That new plan, developed by experts who have wrangled throngs at events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics, will affect how customers approach and enter the stores, shop, check out and exit. Each store will have its own customised plan. The hope is for an orderly Black Friday, a seemingly incongruous notion. The most significant change at Wal-Mart is that the majority of its discount stores (as opposed to its Supercenters) will open Thanksgiving morning at 6 am and stay open through Friday evening. Last year, those stores closed on Thanksgiving evening and reopened early Friday morning. By keeping the stores open for 24 hours, Wal-Mart is hoping for a steady flow of shoppers instead of mammoth crowds swelling outside its stores in the wee hours of Friday. In another new twist this year, shoppers at Wal-Mart will not have to sprint toward a pile of flat-screen televisions and scuffle with one another to get one. Rather, customers will be able to enter the store at any time and line up at merchandise displays for the must-have items on their lists. When the products go on sale Friday at 5 am, employees will supervise the lines, giving shoppers the merchandise in the order in which they joined the line—until the goods are out of stock. (Only a small percentage of stores will not be open 24 hours; most Wal-Mart Supercenters are already open 24 hours.) Another problem in the past was the bottleneck at store entrances. Like many big-box retailers, Wal-Mart does not have multiple entrances and exits to spread around customer traffic. So this year it will put workers in front of its stores to direct customers and keep them moving. “We are committed to looking for ways to make our stores even safer for our customers and associates this holiday season,” said David Tovar, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, adding that the retailer was “confident our customers can look forward to a safe and enjoyable shopping experience at Wal-Mart.” Aggressive shoppers are common the day after Thanksgiving. So crowd-control plans, which vary by retailer, are critical. And they are especially important now, given the economy. Newly frugal consumers want more for less, and stores plan to drum up sales with stunning deals. Swiss regulators scaled back plans to curtail banker bonuses, saying their proposals would apply only to the country’s 12 largest banks and
insurers following complaints the rules would harm smaller companies. Bonuses for senior employees at seven banks, including UBS and Credit Suisse Group, and five insurers should be deferred for three years and may be reduced if losses occur after they are awarded, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority said in a statement on Wednesday. The agency in June had proposed rules targeting hundreds of companies in the country. Regulators around the globe have sought to rein in compensation levels after banker bonuses were blamed for increasing risks that led to the financial crisis. The UK Financial Services Authority set rules for about 26 British banks in August, including provisions on deferred bonuses. “You normally have compensation schemes that go across the board,” said Eric Stupp, a lawyer at Baer & Karrer in Zurich. “You don’t have one for the Swiss bank and one for the securities dealer in the UK and one in New York. These rules may make perfect sense on a stand-alone basis, but the interaction of various rules can create a lot of headaches.” Compensation should be based on the institution’s economic performance, taking into account the costs of related risks, Bern-based Finma said on its Web site. The rules don’t cap pay or bonuses for the 200,000 workers in the Swiss financial industry. Finma limited the scope of its rules after they were criticised by the Swiss banking association for being too broad and too deep. The Swiss regulator said the changes to the final proposal were minor. “Despite many critical reactions,” the rules remain “essentially in line with the consultation draft” issued in June, Finma said in the statement. “However, a few material changes have been made.” The Swiss regulator’s framework will be mandatory only for the 12 companies that are required to hold more than 2 billion Swiss francs ($1.99 billion) in equity capital. The Swiss banking association said that the final version of the rules reflects the group’s major complaints. “Fewer banks have to follow these new rules,” said Thomas Sutter, spokesman for the banking association. “One of our most important criticisms was that the rules differentiate between small and large banks.” Pledges by the leaders of the Group of 20 nations to implement compensation standards that would end excessive risk- taking when they met in Pittsburgh in September haven’t led to uniform proposals. Unlike the Financial Stability Board’s compensation principles, Finma doesn’t specify what proportion of an employee’s reward should be deferred or linked to shares. French finance minister Christine Lagarde has said she’s concerned about the way the US Federal Reserve is addressing the issue of compensation. The three biggest US banks that repaid government money are set to increase bonuses by 60% this year.
blockbuster shopping day after Thanksgiving. Along with offering $300 laptops and $99 navigation devices, stores are planning new safety measures to make sure the festive day does not take another deadly turn. Last year, frenzied shoppers at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, NY, trampled Jdimytai Damour, a temporary store employee who died soon afterward. To prevent any repeat, Wal-Mart has sharply changed how it intends to manage the crowds. That new plan, developed by experts who have wrangled throngs at events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics, will affect how customers approach and enter the stores, shop, check out and exit. Each store will have its own customised plan. The hope is for an orderly Black Friday, a seemingly incongruous notion. The most significant change at Wal-Mart is that the majority of its discount stores (as opposed to its Supercenters) will open Thanksgiving morning at 6 am and stay open through Friday evening. Last year, those stores closed on Thanksgiving evening and reopened early Friday morning. By keeping the stores open for 24 hours, Wal-Mart is hoping for a steady flow of shoppers instead of mammoth crowds swelling outside its stores in the wee hours of Friday. In another new twist this year, shoppers at Wal-Mart will not have to sprint toward a pile of flat-screen televisions and scuffle with one another to get one. Rather, customers will be able to enter the store at any time and line up at merchandise displays for the must-have items on their lists. When the products go on sale Friday at 5 am, employees will supervise the lines, giving shoppers the merchandise in the order in which they joined the line—until the goods are out of stock. (Only a small percentage of stores will not be open 24 hours; most Wal-Mart Supercenters are already open 24 hours.) Another problem in the past was the bottleneck at store entrances. Like many big-box retailers, Wal-Mart does not have multiple entrances and exits to spread around customer traffic. So this year it will put workers in front of its stores to direct customers and keep them moving. “We are committed to looking for ways to make our stores even safer for our customers and associates this holiday season,” said David Tovar, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, adding that the retailer was “confident our customers can look forward to a safe and enjoyable shopping experience at Wal-Mart.” Aggressive shoppers are common the day after Thanksgiving. So crowd-control plans, which vary by retailer, are critical. And they are especially important now, given the economy. Newly frugal consumers want more for less, and stores plan to drum up sales with stunning deals. Swiss regulators scaled back plans to curtail banker bonuses, saying their proposals would apply only to the country’s 12 largest banks and
insurers following complaints the rules would harm smaller companies. Bonuses for senior employees at seven banks, including UBS and Credit Suisse Group, and five insurers should be deferred for three years and may be reduced if losses occur after they are awarded, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority said in a statement on Wednesday. The agency in June had proposed rules targeting hundreds of companies in the country. Regulators around the globe have sought to rein in compensation levels after banker bonuses were blamed for increasing risks that led to the financial crisis. The UK Financial Services Authority set rules for about 26 British banks in August, including provisions on deferred bonuses. “You normally have compensation schemes that go across the board,” said Eric Stupp, a lawyer at Baer & Karrer in Zurich. “You don’t have one for the Swiss bank and one for the securities dealer in the UK and one in New York. These rules may make perfect sense on a stand-alone basis, but the interaction of various rules can create a lot of headaches.” Compensation should be based on the institution’s economic performance, taking into account the costs of related risks, Bern-based Finma said on its Web site. The rules don’t cap pay or bonuses for the 200,000 workers in the Swiss financial industry. Finma limited the scope of its rules after they were criticised by the Swiss banking association for being too broad and too deep. The Swiss regulator said the changes to the final proposal were minor. “Despite many critical reactions,” the rules remain “essentially in line with the consultation draft” issued in June, Finma said in the statement. “However, a few material changes have been made.” The Swiss regulator’s framework will be mandatory only for the 12 companies that are required to hold more than 2 billion Swiss francs ($1.99 billion) in equity capital. The Swiss banking association said that the final version of the rules reflects the group’s major complaints. “Fewer banks have to follow these new rules,” said Thomas Sutter, spokesman for the banking association. “One of our most important criticisms was that the rules differentiate between small and large banks.” Pledges by the leaders of the Group of 20 nations to implement compensation standards that would end excessive risk- taking when they met in Pittsburgh in September haven’t led to uniform proposals. Unlike the Financial Stability Board’s compensation principles, Finma doesn’t specify what proportion of an employee’s reward should be deferred or linked to shares. French finance minister Christine Lagarde has said she’s concerned about the way the US Federal Reserve is addressing the issue of compensation. The three biggest US banks that repaid government money are set to increase bonuses by 60% this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment