Rather than reducing operation and laying off employees, several entrepreneurs based their business plan to optimize costs and expenses to pass the wrong time and be better able to follow.

Like a mantra, from the onset of the global financial crisis, no longer heard the same phrase: crises are opportunities.

Consultants, CEOs, presidents of associations, academics, all kinds of gurus and an endless list, to which many branded as hopeless optimistic, confident that they repeat more than one can understand his words, even in the midst of the worst circumstances, such as possible bankruptcy of his company.

And yes, this sentence is not always with the wind, as they say. Somehow they have demonstrated several companies that suffered the closure of trade with Venezuela and went out to seek new markets such as Central America, and now their balance sheets and show the black.

So have dozens of companies according to Entrepreneur Survey 2010, conducted by consulting firm Ernst & Young and the Endeavor Foundation, among employers that are part of his Business Development Center to learn about their motivations for change and business opportunities in times of crisis and financial instability.

Among the results obtained in the framework of the study show that only 3 percent of respondents reduced the operation. This means that although they had had difficult circumstances, managed to handle the situation to stay ahead of the recovery. Continue Reading

When three of the five largest banks in the world does not exist anymore and the days are left seem to have nothing is because something good is happening in the world of finance. The reason for this disaster is that banks and insurance companies have as part of the assets “of paper that has lost value because they have been exposed to the U.S. mortgage market and others affected by giant speculative bubble that is now deflating.”

This rather negative view, “so far affects the real economy in any way connected with honest dimensions of catastrophic financial crisis” can not rule out that there is a significant and widespread recession.

The history of two of the major banks in global financial no longer exists. Investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. To avoid the same fate, Merrill Lynch was taken that day by the Bank of America. Three of the five largest investment banks in the world has ended. The remaining two, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley seem to have their days as an independent entity.

The collapse of insurance giant AIG’s results in losses estimated at 180 billion dollars that the Federal Reserve has made 85 000 in exchange for all assets and 80% of its shares.

What is more relevant in the case of Chile, retired life insurance division operates throughout the world, including many of the annuity that hire members of the AFP and U.S. subsidiaries. Tens of thousands of retirees with annuities have crossed all their retirement funds and are at serious risk of losing his pension.

In the case of traditional bank deposits when depositors withdraw their crisis on a large scale. The “run” this time was unprecedented but mainly affects the “shadow banking system” that banks created outside their balance sheets to escape the rules and where managed-called financial derivatives. Control assets of $ 10 billion, as much as the banks themselves. Continue Reading