Latest news clips 2012.10.25

1.      In London, Nimble Start-Ups Offer Alternatives to Stodgy Banks

The New York Time      OCTOBER 22, 2012

LONDON - When Hiroki Takeuchi joined McKinsey & Company in 2008, he had a front-row seat to the upheaval in finance.

After the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Mr. Takeuchi, a 26-year-old Oxford graduate, worked with some of the world's biggest banks trying to figure out how to adjust to new regulations and a changed market. Then he quit.

For Mr. Takeuchi, memories of friends building successful start-ups at college outweighed the lucrative rewards offered by the blue-chip consulting firm. He joined forces with two McKinsey consultants, feverishly writing code out of his parents' house on a minimal budget to create his own technology start-up.

The result was GoCardless, a London-based company that allows small businesses to set up monthly payments to suppliers at a fraction of the cost that banks charge. The business has secured $1.5 million in seed capital from a number of well-known investors, including the American early-stage venture capital firm Y Combinator.

"The whole idea of bank payments is broken," said Mr. Takeuchi at the start-up's office in a dilapidated building on the outskirts of London's financial district. "There's an opportunity here, and we're looking to grab it."

London's fast-growing start-up scene is trying to disrupt the financial status quo. As consumers' trust in banks deteriorates because of a series of recent scandals, young companies are pressing their newcomer advantage. Firms are offering services like low-cost foreign currency exchange and new ways for small business to borrow cash.

Start-Ups:創業
Business Start-Ups 

2.      Stir-Frying With the Seasons

The New York Times   OCTOBER 19, 2012

One of the easiest ways to enjoy seasonal fare is a simple stir-fry, writes Martha Rose Shulman in this week's Recipes for Health. She says:

Right now I'm phasing out summer's tomatoes and corn, green beans and zucchini and picking up Chinese broccoli, mushrooms, cabbage and carrots at the farmers' market. I'm still finding an array of peppers and beautiful Asian eggplants to brighten my wok. Stir-fries can be adapted to any number of ingredients that may be lingering in your refrigerator, or in your freezer, like the frozen peas that liven up a fish and mushroom stir-fry that is one of this week's recipes.

I like to make a meal of a stir-fry, so I try to include a protein - chicken, fish, shellfish or, for vegetarian stir-fries, tofu or eggs. With meat or without it, the vegetables are the focus of these dishes. Twelve to 14 ounces of chicken breast (two of the organic free-range boneless skinless breasts that I use) is plenty to flavor and add substance to a stir-fry that will feed three people. I learned the velveting technique that these recipes call for from Grace Young; you marinate the cut-up chicken breast in egg white and cornstarch seasoned with a little rice wine or sherry and salt, and blanch it before stir-frying. This is a step worth taking and results in very succulent, tender chicken. I use the same water I've blanched vegetables in to blanch the chicken.

As always, remember when you look at a long list of ingredients required for a stir-fry that all of the time here goes into assembling the ingredients. It takes maybe 20 minutes. The stir-frying itself takes only about 5 minutes. Prepare whatever grains or noodles you're going to serve the stir-fry with in advance, and be ready to eat when you're ready to cook.

3.      Housecleaning, Then Dinner? Silicon Valley Perks Come Home

The New York Times       October 19, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO — Phil Libin, chief executive of Evernote, turned to his wife last year and asked if she had suggestions for how the software company might improve the lives of its employees and their families. His wife, who also works at Evernote, didn’t miss a beat: housecleaning.

Today, Evernote’s 250 employees — every full-time worker, from receptionist to top executive — have their homes cleaned twice a month, free.

It is the latest innovation from Silicon Valley: the employee perk is moving from the office to the home. Facebook gives new parents $4,000 in spending money. Stanford School of Medicine is piloting a project to provide doctors with housecleaning and in-home dinner delivery. Genentech offers take-home dinners and helps employees find last-minute baby sitters when a child is too sick to go to school.

These kinds of benefits are a departure from the upscale cafeteria meals, massages and other services intended to keep employees happy and productive while at work. And the goal is not just to reduce stress for employees, but for their families, too. If the companies succeed, the thinking goes, they will minimize distractions and sources of tension that can inhibit focus and creativity.

Now that technology has allowed work to bleed into home life, it seems that companies are trying to address the impact of home life on work.

There is, of course, the possibility that relieving people of chores at home will simply free them up to work more. But David Lewin, a compensation expert and management professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he viewed the perks as part of a growing effort by American business to reward people with time and peace of mind instead of more traditional financial tools, like stock options and bonuses.

“They’re trying to get at people’s larger lives and sanity,” Mr. Lewin said. “You might call it the bang for the nonbuck.”

At Deloitte, the consulting firm, employees can get a backup care worker if an aging parent or grandparent needs help. The company subsidizes personal trainers and nutritionists, and offers round-the-clock counseling service for help with issues like marital strife and infertility. Deloitte executives, and other experts, said they believe that such benefits were likely to spread.