How they control cost: 17-July-08
Sourav Mitra -
Thursday, July 17, 2008 8:13 PM
Host Hotels & Resorts Inc., the owner of about 130 properties in the U.S. and Europe:
1. It may accelerate share buybacks because of the drop in its stock price
2. It is reducing restaurant hours
3. It is reducing staff
4. It is scaling back discretionary spending
5. It does not expect to buy any U.S. hotels this year
6. It is trying to sell about $150 million of property this year
[Click here for full story at Bloomberg.com]
Share buybacks + reducing low customer hours + lower discretionary expenses + avoiding investment in slow economy + disposal of unprofitable properties = cost savings
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Ebay, the world's largest Internet auctioneer, losing market share to rivals such as Amazon.com, seeks to improve its fixed-price online retail business, grow PayPal and bolster customer safety and trust:
1. It boosted its fraud detections and removed suspect items from its sites earlier
2. It bought Israeli software company Fraud Sciences Ltd. for $169 million to improve PayPal security.
[Click here for full story at Bloomberg.com]
3. Its PayPal unit's fraud detection methods will flag problem transactions before needing to dole out reimbursements, preventing losses from refunds
[Click here for full story at Businessweek.com]
Lower fraud = lower costs