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Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is encouraging Saskatchewan to join his province and British Columbia in forging what he calls the “New West.”

Stelmach told a fundraising dinner at Calgary’s Telus Convention Centre Thursday night the initiative is a priority for his re-elected government because it would help reduce trade barriers between the provinces. Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach greets the crowd at a Calgary fundraising dinner with his wife, Marie.
(Mike Moynihan/CBC)

Alberta and B.C. already have an agreement which ends some trade and investment restrictions between the two regions.

“We found an ally in B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, and we will work to build another in Premier Brad Wall and the new government of Saskatchewan,” said Stelmach in his 15-minute speech.

Wall has indicated he’s concerned about the impact of such an agreement on his province’s Crown corporations.

“In time, we’ll build a relationship with the province of Saskatchewan and Brad Wall but I really know that it will help farmers, manufacturers, business,” said Stelmach.

“I really don’t want to boast about it but I think we are the Canadian dream. We see so many young people moving to the province of Alberta,” the premier said of Alberta being the economic driver of the “New West.”

“We’re attracting them because of our tax rates. We’re attracting them because of opportunity, opportunity to raise a family, invest here, grow your business.”

More than 1,600 people paid $450 a plate at the biggest-ever premier’s dinner. Stelmach led his Conservatives to an overwhelming victory on March 3. Post a commentPeople have commented on this story Recommend this story People have recommended this story Story Tools: | | Text Size: | | Story comments (0) Sort: Most recent | First to last | Most recommended

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PARIS: The British monetary authorities plan to inject liquidity into the countrys banks as they seek to restore health to financial institutions battered by the credit crisis.

Under the plan, scheduled to be announced Monday, the Bank of England will exchange government bonds for mortgage-backed securities, Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the Exchequer, said Sunday on BBC television.

“We recognize that this is an unprecedented shock to the system,” Darling said of the problems affecting the credit markets. “We havent seen this in generations. Its happening in America, Europe, the Far East. It is affecting countries all over the world. Were determined to do everything we can to get normality here.”

Darling said the central bank would “effectively lend the banks money to unfreeze the situation weve got at the moment.” Financial markets have ground to a halt, he said, because banks do not know the exposure that other banks might have to the U.S. subprime mortgage market and to other risky assets.

“What were doing is were trying to unbung that situation,” Darling said.

He did not say how much money would be involved or how the mortgage securities would be valued. British press reports said that the central bank would make available government bonds worth 50 billion to 100 billion, or $100 billion to $200 billion. A Bank of England spokesman declined to comment.

Because the government bonds are almost risk-free, they are easy to trade, and banks will presumably be more willing to lend to one another. The central bank will hold the illiquid mortgage assets as collateral.

Darling denied that the government was taking on any risk. “Its not giving the banks money, its lending the money to the banks,” he said. “If that does not happen, I think there is every chance the situation will get worse.”

Willem Buiter, a former Bank of England policy maker, told Bloomberg News that a significant amount of money would be needed to get the system working. “If they do 5 billion its not going to do much,” he said. “If they do 55 billion it would help deal with the overhang of illiquid mortgage-backed securities that mortgage lenders have on their balance sheets that prevents them from engaging in any new lending.”

Despite three interest rate cuts that have taken the Bank of Englands benchmark rate to 5 percent, the three-month London interbank sterling rate, a reference rate for loans between banks, was at nearly 5.9 percent Friday, indicating that banks remain nervous about their peers.

With Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Labour Party facing difficult local elections in May, he and Darling are under pressure to help restore calm to financial markets.

The British plan follows a similar initiative announced last month by the U.S. Federal Reserve, which said that it would swap up to $200 billion of U.S. government bonds for mortgage-backed securities. Brown met Friday in Washington with the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, and other officials.

Darlings announcement came amid press reports that Royal Bank of Scotland, the second-largest British lender after HSBC, was preparing to announce a loss of 5 billion to 7 billion, and would seek to raise as much as 10 billion to 12 billion to restore its capital.

Fiona MacRae, a Royal Bank of Scotland spokeswoman, said that the bank had noted “recent speculation about a possible rights issue,” and that it would be updating investors on its trading performance and capital situation this week. She declined to comment further.

Global banks have had losses and write-downs totaling $200 billion since the collapse last summer of the market in securities based on subprime U.S. mortgages. The International Monetary Fund has estimated that the total cost of the credit crisis could reach $1 trillion.

The Nasdaq and S&P 500 joined the Dow into negative territory late Wednesday, as crude oil spiked higher.

At 2:43 EDT, the NYSE composite was up 0.2%, helped by gains in oil-related issues.

In late trading, crude surged $3.84, or 4%, to $104.82 a barrel.

The Dow slipped 0.4%. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq and S&P 500 fell 0.2% each.

Volume was again mixed, with the NYSE’s lower and Nasdaq’s higher.

On the downside, Intermec () dropped 1.88, or 8%, to 21.02 in heavy trading. Stanford Research started coverage of the data collections systems maker with a sell rating. The stock also sliced its 50-day moving average.

Salesforce.com () gained 1.83 to 63.05. Earlier, the provider of customer relationship management products and service cleared a 63.57 buy point of a cup-with-handle pattern. In the past two quarters, profit surged 400% and 500%, respectively. Another triple-digit gain is expected in the current period. But the stock has a return on equity of 5%, or well below the average 17% seen in past winners.

Southwestern Energy () climbed 2.33 to a new high of 36.10. The Texas-based oil and natural gas producer emerged from its third pullback to its 10-week line since its Oct. 26 breakout.

Baidu.com () tacked on 10 points to 283.25 and regained its 50-day moving average. But it pulled back from session highs of 292.

1:15 p.m. Update: Indexes Mixed In Midday Trading

By VINCENT MAO

The major stock indexes traded in split fashion midday Wednesday.

At 12:40 p.m. EDT, the Nasdaq and NYSE composite were up 0.4% each. The S&P 500 rose 0.2%. The Dow slipped 0.1%.

Volume was tracking lower on the NYSE and just barely higher on the Nasdaq.

Solera Holdings () jumped 1.30, or 5%, to a new high of 26.63. The software maker cleared a 26.60 buy point of a cup-shaped base. It has already traded 150% of its average daily volume.

Forest Oil () gapped up and gained 1.64 to a multiyear of 54.13. The oil and gas producer followed through after clearing a 52.32 buy point from a 13-week consolidation Tuesday.

May crude slipped 28 cents to $100.70 a barrel, following a mixed inventories report.

II-VI () added 0.67 to trade at a new high of 38.97. The company makes infrared products for the aerospace, medical, military and security markets. It reports earnings April 22. Profit is slated to rise 21% to 40 cents a share.

On the downside, FTI Consulting () slumped 4.79, or 8%, to 64.18 in heavy trading. That knocked the stock’s Accumulation/Distribution Rating down to a C from an A just four sessions ago. The firm’s profit growth has slowed for the past two quarters. Analysts see the trend continuing in the current period.

11:15 a.m. Update: Stocks Move Steadily Higher In Soft Volume

By ALAN R. ELLIOTT

Indexes whistled past comments by Fed Chief Ben Bernanke about a shrinking economy in the first half of the year. Financials, residential builders and technology stocks posted solid advances.

The NYSE composite logged a 0.4% gain, and the Nasdaq added 0.6%, at 10:50 a.m. EDT. Citigroup (), Goldman Sachs (), Wachovia () and Apple () posted modest gains in strong volume, lifting the S&P 500 0.3%. Merck (), Caterpillar (), Coca-Cola () and United Technologies () pulled down in strong volume, holding the Dow to a 0.2% advance.

Asian markets gained ground, borrowing confidence from Monday’s leap by U.S. stocks. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index jumped 3.2% to a one-month high. Financials led there, too. Fears of a slowing economy and a glut of liquidity in mainland markets reeled the Shanghai composite back to a 0.6% gain after a 4.1% intraday surge. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 sped to a 4.2% gain, its best showing since Feb. 14, as the dollar continued to firm vs. the yen.

London’s FTSE 100 edged up 0.6%. The CAC 40 in Paris clocked a 0.9% gain.

Lindsay () jumped 4.83 to 110.24 in powerful volume. The maker of irrigation equipment broke above an 81.44 pullback buy point after announcing a Q2 earnings leap March 19. It is now 35% above that buy point, plowing into new highs in strong volume.

China-based search engine Baidu.com () swelled 16.25 to 289.50. Shares are turning up after a three-month slide, and back above their 10-week moving average for the first time since January.

Inpatient services provider Psychiatric Solutions () slipped 1.78 to 32. Shares rebounded to the midpoint of the morning’s trading range after a huge-volume fall. That kept them just above their 10-week moving average, but the stock remains well below its 40-week line.

10:15 a.m. Update: Stocks Retreat In Early Trading

By VINCENT MAO

Stocks pulled back early Wednesday following the prior session’s monster gains.

At 9:56 a.m. EDT, the Dow and NYSE composite gave up 0.4% and 0.2%, respectively. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 each fell 0.3%.

Volume was tracking lower on both exchanges.

In prepared testimony to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said “it now appears likely that gross domestic product will not grow much, if at all, over the first half of 2008 and could even contract slightly.” This pointed to a recession, but Bernanke didn’t use the “R” word. He sounded more optimistic about the second half of 2008.

Monsanto () gapped down and lost 2.66 to 110.29 after its outlook disappointed. Before the open, the agricultural operations firm reported fiscal Q2 earnings, excluding items, of $1.79 a share. That was up 81% from a year ago and 4 cents above views. The company cited strong demand in its seed, traits and herbicides units. But Monsanto guided full-year income in a range of $3.15 to $3.25 a share vs. views of $3.20.

State Street () fell 2.01 to 82.83 on a downgrade. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods cut the investment management and services firm to market perform from outperform, on belief State Street will face a difficult environment in the second-half of the year. State Street has been building a double-bottom base with a buy point at 85.86. But it has added a handle, giving a slightly lower entry point at 85.31.

On the upside, Research In Motion () added 0.67 to 118.15 ahead of its earnings report, slated for after the close. The BlackBerry smart phone maker is expected to earn 70 cents a share on sales of $1.86 billion.

VimpelCom () jumped 1.83, or 6%, to 32.89 in fast trade. The Russian telecom firm is trying to bounce back after a 37% decline from its December high. It regained its 50-day moving average Tuesday in heavy trading.

9:15 a.m. Update: ADP Report Lifts Stock Futures

By VINCENT MAO

Stock futures pointed to a slightly higher Wednesday, following a better-than-expected ADP employment report.

Nasdaq futures rose 3 points vs. fair value, S&P 500 futures gained 2 points and Dow futures tacked on 3 points.

Fed Chief Ben Bernanke will be speaking at 9:30 a.m. EDT on the status of the economy.

In economic news, the ADP employment survey said the economy gained 8,000 private sector jobs in March vs. expectations for a loss of 45,000. February figures were revised to minus 18,000 from minus 23,000.

The Labor Department’s report will be out Friday. Economists expect a loss of 50,000 jobs, both public and private.

Data on February orders will be out at 10 a.m. EDT. A decline of 0.8% is expected, but this is a minor report.

At 10:30 a.m. EDT, the weekly energy inventory report will be out. May crude oil rose 17 cents to $101.15 a barrel.

AstraZeneca () slipped 1% in the pre-open after a mix of analysts changes. HSBC cut the drug maker to neutral from overweight on valuation, but Citigroup lifted shares to buy from hold.

Best Buy () jumped 7% in pre-market trading after it topped profit estimates. The electronics retailer reported fiscal Q4 earnings of $1.71 a share, up 10% from a year ago and 6 cents ahead of views. Sales edged 4% to $13.42 billion. Best Buy guided full-year fiscal 2009 profit in a range of $3.25 to $3.40 a share vs. analysts’ estimates of $3.31 a share. Rival Circuit City () climbed 4% in the pre-market.

Caterpillar () said late Tuesday in a regulatory filing that it’s raising prices by up to 5%. The construction and mining equipment maker cited “general economic conditions and industry factors.” The Dow component edged higher in the pre-market.

Immucor () rallied 7% in the pre-open on strong earnings. Late Tuesday, the maker of blood-testing equipment reported fiscal Q3 profit of 27 cents a share, up 29% from the prior year and a nickel above views. Sales rose 17% to $67 million.

(01-15) 01:19 PST DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) —

A day after urging Arab leaders to turn toward democracy ? saying it is the only method of rule that can produce lasting peace and stability ? President Bush met with a group here dedicated to good government.

The twist? The group hailed from the high-profile Dubai School of Government, an institution that mostly avoids any push for elections, focusing instead on economic growth and efficiency in a region notorious for red tape and corruption.

It’s a model long favored by Asian countries such as Singapore, frustrated, like many Arabs, with Western prescriptions for reform. And it illustrates the substantial gap between Bush’s vision of democratic society and the state of thought in at least one prominent corner of the Middle East.

The Dubai school, established in 2004, calls itself the first Mideast institution dedicated to providing Arabs with the skills necessary for effective governance ? an alternative to simply importing talent or policy recommendations from the West.

“You can run an efficient public service without democracy,” said Rami Khouri, a non-resident fellow at the school and a well-known commentator on Arab affairs. “The real issue is building stable, productive, decent societies that respond to their people’s needs.”

Tarik Yousef, the school’s dean, said the institution plans to explore the issue of democracy in the Middle East at some point, but must be careful about addressing controversial topics.

“We have U.S. partners, which already makes some people (in Dubai) suspicious,” said Yousef, referring to the school’s partnership with Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “If we start with what looks a U.S. foreign-policy agenda, it could cause us problems.”

At lunch with Bush on Monday, the talk among school representatives and Dubai’s leader, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, touched on democracy, but mostly focused on the importance of top-notch education and training for future government leaders, the dean said.

Sheik Mohammed founded the school to address the increasingly complex challenge of governing Dubai ? a city with such explosive growth that the world’s tallest building now towers over a skyline that was mostly desert a decade ago.

Dubai is a member of the United Arab Emirates federation, and at both the national and state level, an elite class of royal rulers makes virtually all decisions about the country’s politics and economics, which are implemented by an increasingly streamlined bureaucracy.

The school has reached out to other Mideast countries to educate them on Dubai’s experience ? a sign of its growing intellectual and economic influence across the region.

Indeed, many supporters now call Dubai the model and hope for a more progressive Middle East, and young Arabs flock here to find jobs and opportunities often lagging in countries with more stagnant economies and rampant corruption, such as Egypt.

But the school’s focus on improving the Mideast’s caliber of government is a daunting task, given Arab governments’ history of handing out public-sector jobs to solve unemployment, rather than to ensure the delivery of efficient services.

“The focus now is on getting more talented people” into government, said Nabil al-Yousuf, the school’s executive president.

The school, currently funded by the Dubai government but hoping to achieve financial independence within seven years, focuses on four things: increasing public sector use of technology, gender and public policy, public administration reform and opportunities for the region’s bulging young population.

Almost 550 people from the UAE and elsewhere in the Arab world have attended the school’s executive education programs, and the institution plans to begin offering masters degree programs in the fall of 2008.

As Dubai has grown, the city has had to contend with issues like traffic ballooning out of control and unrest among foreign workers, unhappy with working conditions and salaries. Yasar Jarrar, the school’s executive dean, said it has already started helping the government cope with such problems.

Yousef, an economist who left a tenured position at Georgetown University to become the dean, insisted the school’s financial dependence on the government won’t hamper its activities, as long as its policy analysis is seen as objective.

“If we become an advocacy organization, we will run into red lines very quickly,” he said.

But the school has so far stayed away from the most controversial subjects in Dubai, such as the rights of foreign workers ? an issue that international human rights groups have scrutinized intensely.

Khouri said he expects the school to tackle more sensitive issues once it becomes more established, while still respecting the local political culture.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see in two or three years a serious study of the rights of foreign workers in Dubai,” he said, noting that in Dubai that is “very sensitive.”

Best Schools for Entrepreneurship
(List in alphabetical order, not ranked)
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Source: Admissions consultant survey, BusinessWeek research

Imagination and Process
By Sonal Rupani

Bill Gates dropped out of college. So did Michael Dell. More recently, Facebook whiz kid Mark Zuckerberg waved goodbye to Harvard and headed out to sunny California to devote his attention to his immensely successful online venture. Does the evidence for the “can entrepreneurship be taught” debate lean a little bit toward the negative? Not so fast—there’s a lot more to an entrepreneurial education than meets the eye.

The first thing to consider is the distinction between “being taught” entrepreneurship and “learning” entrepreneurship. There is undoubtedly a certain amount of internal drive and forward-thinking perspective that won’t necessarily come from being in the classroom, but you can definitely learn the tools that will make your startup as efficient and viable as possible.

DUAL COMPONENTS. Professor Noubar Afeyan, who teaches the New Enterprises course at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, says there are two components to entrepreneurship. There’s a creative side of imagining an unmet need and being inspired about how to fill that need, and a process-driven side, which involves methodical techniques of analysis, channel development, and dealing with marketing demands. “I’m not here to teach people creativity,” he says. “It’s like teaching someone how to paint—you can’t teach people where to get their inspiration, but there is also technique in it. That’s why people will sit there and paint a fruit bowl, because you can separate the technique from the inspiration.”

In entrepreneurship classes, students learn skills that will take them from initial conception and design of a business plan, to financing a startup and managing a growing company, through to creating partnerships and strategies. Classes often invite practicing CEOs to come in and talk about their experiences, providing a learning opportunity that most students agree can be both practical and inspiring. Similar to classes in other departments, schools have focused on “learning by doing” by challenging their students to develop their own business plans and have their presentations critiqued either by fellow classmates or actual venture capitalists.

While Afeyan admits that an education in entrepreneurship is not absolutely necessary for people who want to start their own companies, he recognizes that it would have been helpful to him to have had that framework to work with when he was fresh out of college in 1988 and looking for people to finance his business idea. “The stock market had just crashed in ‘87, I was 24, had a Ph.D. from MIT, but not much else,” he recalls. “I developed a whole new range of measurement systems that would be used to accelerate discovery and development of new biotech drugs.”

MEETING A LEGEND. Interestingly enough, even though Afeyan didn’t study entrepreneurship, his inspiration stemmed from a meeting with Hewlett-Packard () co-founder Dave Packard when he was a student at MIT. “Hewlett-Packard had started to make new measurement tools for engineers and that kind of stuck in my mind,” Afeyan says. “When 30 to 40 years later a new kind of engineer was being born, biotech engineers, it made me think of how they might need new measurement devices.”

Afeyan’s ability to identify an unmet need, identify prototype products, find customers, and eventually raise some money led him to mind-blowing success. When the company PerSeptive Biosystems went public in 1992, it had annual sales of $800,000. By the time the company merged with Applera () in 1998, that figure had reached over $100 million.

However, entrepreneurship is certainly not for everybody, and it involves a huge amount of responsibility that often goes unnoted in the dramatic success stories that inspire would-be fortune seekers. The very same field that can be intensely satisfying with success can be devastating with failure. This explains why entrepreneurship students are grateful for the opportunity to take a couple of practice shots with a safety net before plunging in head-first. As with anything, practice makes perfect, and no one knows that better than an entrepreneur.

sonal_rupani@businessweek.com is an intern for BusinessWeek in New York

Major in Entrepreneurship?

He’s just a few months out of college, and Eddie DeSalle has already established the business plan, pricing, software development, and human resources structure of his startup company, Net Irrigate. But maybe that’s because he got more than half of this work out of the way before he even graduated from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University.

The very idea for developing irrigation data technology originated from the experience of a classmate from Kansas who had grown up on a 10,000-acre farm. According to DeSalle, agriculture accounts for 60% of water usage and has been under the strict scrutiny of the federal government. DeSalle and his classmate identified a very real demand for efficient water-tracking technology that could save farm owners the hassle of driving around to every irrigation system once a month to log water usage.

HATCHING THE PLAN. When it came time to pitch their business concept, not just to classmates, but to actual venture capitalists in their venture screening class, the positive feedback encouraged DeSalle to take the project further. He took a business planning class where he actually wrote out the plan for the company before taking a pricing class to master the difficult art of determining the price for a new product which has no standard for comparison.

“Essentially what you have to do is find similar things out there and put them in a matrix and find out which attributes are similar and try to price those individual attributes,” he explains. “Then you think about what is different about my product and what additional value my product will add and then quantify that value.”

With only about $86,000 spent in developing the software technology, DeSalle is aiming for his venture to become profitable by the end of next summer. “If the conservation efforts of state, federal, and local governments go at the rate they’ve been going, this is going to turn into a high-growth company very quickly,” he says. “Out of the 12,000 wells that are registered for irrigation, about only 30% have a metering device, and out of that only 5% have a telemetry device.”

VALUABLE EXPOSURE. DeSalle is resolute in his advocacy of entrepreneurship education. “Did I need to take these classes to start a business? Absolutely not,” he acknowledges, “But did these classes allow me to make better decisions and spend less money in getting the business started? Absolutely.”

For dedicated entrepreneurs an effective business school program can help students get their foot in the door by encouraging them to actually develop new business plans while they network with practicing entrepreneurs and like-minded peers. For many, simply the exposure to real entrepreneurs gives them the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others and be inspired by their successes. Speakers provide affirmation that entrepreneurs are real people, and, with extreme dedication, launching a successful venture is in fact within the realm of possibility.

But a concentration in entrepreneurship is not solely for the risk-inclined who are constantly cooking up ideas for new businesses. The education is also prime for those looking to enter midsize or big companies that are constantly creating new divisions or that want to have business development deals with smaller startups. Another option is for those who want to be venture capitalists and would prefer to get involved in the financial risk of funding these companies.

VC SIDE OF THINGS. Nathan Dintenfass, a 2006 graduate of the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, found that his entrepreneurship and venture capital education prepared him well to understand the structure and rationale of venture investments. “I have done work with venture capital firms where my knowledge of deal structures and due diligence processes was invaluable,” he says, “and I have advised numerous entrepreneurs.”

A number of programs now also try to provide the much-needed financial resources for students who have a promising venture proposal. The most acclaimed of these is MIT’s 100K competition, which is open to all schools and majors, and awards the winner with $30,000 and runner-ups with $10,000 to finance start-ups. The competition that started in 1990 as a 10K competition has resulted in 60 successful ventures with a reported aggregate value of $10.5 billion.

But the final and perhaps most significant reason for considering a career in entrepreneurship is the personal satisfaction that often comes with owning your own company. In addition to the satisfaction of watching their companies grow, DeSalle says entrepreneurs have the unique opportunity to fulfill a consumer demand. “That’s the greatest feeling because at the end of the day you can say ‘I deliver value.’”

—Rupani

How to Choose a School for Entrepreneurship

B-school offerings in entrepreneurship are proliferating. Keep in mind the following factors when deciding which program is best for you:

Does the program have institutional support? A great entrepreneurship program should have the backing of the university, from the president down. That ensures funding—important for still-developing programs—and facilitates interactions among the B-school and other parts of the university, such as the engineering school or the medical school.

Who teaches the classes? You’ll want to be taught by faculty members who have experience both doing and teaching entrepreneurship. Academics with no street experience won’t be able to impart important real-world lessons. Also, remember that grizzled business vets may tell great stories, but that anecdotal evidence only goes so far. You should also look for depth and breadth in coursework.

Does the school have a dedicated entrepreneurship center? If so, chances are you’ll have more resources and staff members to assist you in both course selection and career development. These centers often fill the void left by traditional career-services offices, which may or may not be able to help place MBAs who want to be entrepreneurs.

Does the B-school have a business plan competition? Critics of such contests say the only thing they teach is how to win business plan competitions. That’s probably too harsh. Writing a plan is a valuable exercise for budding entrepreneurs. Plus, participating in—and especially winning—a competition gets you exposure to venture capitalists, who often serve as judges.

What hands-on experience will you get? The best B-schools offer some combination of the following: opportunities to intern at local startup companies, ways to connect students with entrepreneur mentors, small business incubators, access to capital from alumni or from the venture-capital community.

Where Do You Go With an Entrepreneurship Concentration?
?Day in the Life? features from MBAs who started their own businesses, plus career and recruiter interviews

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