Vocabulary: Comparing and structure

1 House/building, land, investments, money, equipment, vehicle(s).

2 Save personal capital, acquire personal capital (redundancy money/inheritance/lottery win), new mortgage, venture capital (money invested in a business for development or expansion by a third party as a commercial undertaking)，bank loan, take on a partner.

3 $12,500.

4 Advantages: Sleeping partners have no obligations in the running of the company but are entitled to a share of the profits and their liability in respect of the company is limited to the amount of their investment. Disadvantages: They forego the use of their capital and they have no say in the running, hence profitability, of the company.

5 A sleeping partner provides capital for a partnership; a shareholder provides capital for a limited company.

6 No, because the risk is limited to loss of original investment (limited liability).

7 Secure the consent of fellow shareholders.

8 Limited liability; very large amounts of capital can be raised; shares are freely transferable; death of shareholders does not affect the firm; the business is a legal entity.

B

annual general meeting (AGM); personal assets; board of directors; public limited company; private limited company; unlimited liability; business debts; stock exchange; sleeping partner; sole trader; business partner; company directors; board meeting; personal liability

C

There are no ‘correct’ answers here, but you would expect the following to be listed under good:

professional, democratic, caring, disciplined, welcoming, market-driven.

You would expect the following to be listed under bad: cold, impersonal, paternal, slow-to-respond, bureaucratic.

The pairs that are left (centralised/decentralised and flat/hierarchical) are more likely to spark debate (but may not!) as they are more specific to individual companies and more sensitive to opinion than the other adjectives in the list.

Reading: New ways of working

B

Singing at meetings; dressing in strange clothes at meetings; having no individual offices; keeping small animals and birds at head office.

C

Liisa Joronen Age: Position: Physical appearance: Personality: Leadership ideas/style: Public image: SOL cleaning company Location: Number of staff: Number of branches Logo: Working conditions/ practices:

50 owner of SOL slim, brunette charismatic people motivation and strict auditing of targets revolutionary or crazy Finland 3,500 25 a sun with a curved line turning it into a smile staff sit anywhere - there are no individual offices or desks, but there is a communal area similar to a social club; no staff hierarchy -staff work as a team; Japanese- style motivation sessions

E

1 c) 2 c) 3 a) 4 c) 5 b) 6 a)

Language review: Noun combinations

1 b) 2 d) 3 c) 4 a)

A

’s possessive

Finland's SOL, SOL's owner, people's shyness, company's name, people's creativeness, Helsinki's metro

one noun used as adjective

cleaning company, vacuum cleaner, management guru, ski run, management styles, people motivation, engineering motivation, business leaders, sales meetings, sun logo, office hours, billiard table, kitchen corners, field teams, headquarters worker, tango classes, motivation sessions, television programme

phrases with of

brunette of 50, auditing of targets, joy of working, independence of mind

compounds nouns forming one word

laptops, workplace, sunflower, playground, headquarters, weekends

B

1 90-mile keep-fit cross-country ski run

2 a) a £100,000 (one hundred thousand pound) salary

b) a $5-million (five million dollar) research project

c) a £2-million (two million pound) take-over bid

d) a 45-minute (forty-five minute) meeting

C

2 a) 3 a) 4 b)

Listening: A new office complex

Part 1

B 8.1

1 To make sure the building was built on time and within budget, and to make sure the move was smooth and successful.

2 An open-plan design aimed at encouraging staff interaction; reduced paperwork through extended use of electronic communication and record-keeping; flexible working practices.

C 8.2

1 hot-desking; home working; a building layout which features dedicated `spaces' for specific tasks and needs rather than for specific individuals

2 open-learning education; electronic shopping; excellent meals

3 The move was thought through very carefully and planned very thoroughly; the people involved were trained very well and kept fully informed about everything that was happening.

Skills: Introductions, socialising and leave-taking

A-C

A 1 b) 2 d) 3 e) 4 a) 5 f) 6 c)

B 1 provide, sell, produce, supply, distribute

2 branches, partners, contacts, agents, factories

C 1 c) 2 d) 3 a) 4 b)

UNIT 9 Money

Skills: Dealing with figures

B 9.1

EuroDisney Yule Catto Prince invests Monet market FT sales record New car registrations

four point six billion francs; twenty-two thousand; twenty fifteen or two thousand and fifteen two hundred and Forty million pound(s); thirty-two pence (or p); ten percent; two hundred and seventy-four pence (or p); eight pence (or p); two hundred and twenty-five pence (or p) four hundred million dollars; five percent; three hundred million dollars; one percent; one hundred and fifty million dollars; five percent eighteen seventy; three point eight million pounds twelve point four percent ten point four percent; nine hundred and ninety-one thousand eight hundred; eight hundred and ninety-eight thousand four hundred

Language review: Trends

1 decline, decrease, fall, drop

2 double

3 fluctuate

4 gain, improve, increase, rise

5 halve

6 level off

7 peak

8 plummet

9 recover

10 rocket

11 triple

VERB decline decrease double drop fall fluctuate gain halve improve increase level off peak plummet recover rise rocket triple

NOUN a decline a decrease a doubling (possible, but infrequently used) a drop a fall a fluctuation a gain a halving (possible, but infrequently used) an improvement an increase a levelling off a peak a plummet (possible, but hardly ever used) a recovery a rise a rocket (but this is never used to describe trends) a tripling (possible, but infrequently used)

C

1 from…to

2 by

3 of

4 at

5 of/at

6 of/at

E – F 9.2

1 always drop/have always dropped

2 rose

3 plummeted

4 had recovered/recovered

5 have gone up/have been going up

6 will probably reach/are probably going to reach

7 rose

8 have increased

9 are still going up

10 will decrease/are going to decrease

11 level off

12 will improve

Listening: Making loans

C 9.3

The individual The business Intuition

Are they prepared? Do they know what they want? Do they understand what is required? Can they explain with clarity the purpose for which the money is required? Are they confident? Can it provide the means of repaying the money that it has borrowed? Does the business plan demonstrate this? Does the business plan include details of business structure as well as financial information (logical thought processes often produce good financial structures)? If it doesn't sound right, it probably isn't.

Part 2

D 9.4

1 First example: successful businessman who sold his business and then

bought it back when it was unsuccessful; now more successful and profitable than before.

Second example: entirely new product badly presented; with considerable assistance in restructuring the proposal a successful business structure was created; the firm is now a well-known UK company.

2 Financing a business which screen-printed logos on umbrellas.

E

1 clear

2 logically

3 confidence

4 intuitively

Reading: Financial disasters

D-E

Where did it happen? When did it happen? Who was involved? What happened? Why did it happen? What were the consequences?

South Sea Bubble London 1720 Investors South Sea Company collapsed market collapsed economic depression in the country

Tulipomana Holland 1637 people from all classes the tulip market collapsed panic among investors severe economic recession m Holland

Wall Street Crash New York 1929 investors, financial institutions US stock market crash stocks overvalued, loss of confidence severe and lasting world economic crisis

F

The South Sea Bubble:

1 a huge profit

2 founded

3 boom

4 to take over

5 rise dramatically

6 Eventually

7 levelled off

Tulipomania:

1 speculative explosion

2 real estate

3 poured

4 followed suit

5 collapsed

6 security

7 bankrupt

The Wall Street Crash:

1 industrialist

2 rocketed

3 a break

4 took off

5 peak

6 overvalued

7 getting out of the market

UNIT 10 Ethics