Presionan al PRD los tiempos de relevo interno

Ante el reconocimiento de que el relevo en el liderazgo nacional del PRD no será posible sino hasta julio o agosto, y el mandato de su dirigencia vence en marzo, corrientes perredistas pidieron a Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Marcelo Ebrard y a los principales liderazgos de ese partido sentarse a diseñar las reglas de sucesión interna.

La expresión perredista Foro Nuevo Sol, que encabeza Vladimir Aguilar García, hizo el planteamiento al ex jefe de gobierno, Marcelo Ebrard y a su corriente Movimiento Progresista con el fin de acordar métodos de la elección, el momento de ésta y las reglas, así como los órganos responsables de conducir el proceso.

Esto, se pretende, sería acordado independientemente del curso legal que siguen las impugnaciones a la reforma estatutaria del PRD pues es un hecho que los nuevos documentos básicos de ese partido no serán validados por el Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE) a tiempo para concretar el relevo del dirigente Jesús Zambrano, cuyo mandato concluye el 21 de marzo.

"Lo que estamos planteando no solamente a Ebrard sino al ingeniero (Cárdenas) es generar un diálogo entre presidente, secretario general, líderes de las corrientes, gobernadores y grupos parlamentarios y discutir el tema del partido porque los tiempos están encima.

"Los tiempos legales nos llevarían hasta julio o agosto y necesitamos discutir qué hacemos ante el vencimiento de la actual dirigencia", explicó.

Insistió en que en la mesa deberá discutirse todas las alternativas, "si extendemos el mandato, si se hace una renovación pactada o se aplican las actuales reglas para renovar dirigencias con la correlación actual de fuerzas (en el Consejo Nacional), eso tenemos que discutirlo entre todos y que no sea una discusión bilateral" sino que tome en cuenta a los liderazgos del PRD.

Aguilar García comentó que el dirigente Zambrano deberá encabezar estos esfuerzos, que consideró "urgentes".

Eloi Vázquez, también integrante del Foro expuso que lo mejor es que todos los liderazgos perredistas participen de un acuerdo sobre las reglas, "no quisiéramos que hubiera un mayoriteo, no le sería útil al partido".

En tanto, líderes de todas las corrientes del PRD, Nueva Izquierda (NI), a la que pertenece Zambrano; Izquierda Democrática Nacional (IDN) en la que milita el secretario general Alejandro Sánchez Camacho; Alternativa Democrática Nacional (ADN), Foro Nuevo Sol, Patria Digna, Movimiento Progresista, se reunieron el lunes para abordar los escenarios de la ruta de la sucesión.

De acuerdo a Sánchez Camacho, una alternativa que explora IDN es "esperar a que se concluyan las reformas secundarias en materia electoral, y así pedir que el Instituto Nacional Electoral (INE) organice la elección de nueva dirigencia del PRD".

Según la reforma aprobada por el Congreso, el INE podrá organizar procesos internos de los partidos, y la reforma al Estatuto del PRD realizada en noviembre también ajustó sus normas para, eventualmente, permitir esa intervención.

"Sería lo más adecuado" planteó el integrante de esa corriente bejaranista, quien dijo que desde noviembre en que el PRD realizó su Congreso no ha habido ningún encuentro con Cárdenas para abordar el tema sucesorio, en el que esa expresión si estaría de acuerdo en que retomara la conducción perredista.

jlr

subir fotos

Artisanal capitalism: The art and craft of business

Useful or beautiful?

WILLIAM MORRIS, the father of the Arts and Crafts movement that briefly flowered in the late 19th century, would have approved of Etsy. The Brooklyn company is home to a thriving online marketplace for around 1m jewellers, candlemakers, bag designers, woodcutters and other artists and craftspeople from around the world. Among current bestsellers are combat boots from Italy ($367), a snow-goose necklace from Raleigh, North Carolina ($29), and a minimalist stainless-steel toilet-roll holder from Portland, Oregon ($36). For $4 you can buy a fridge magnet bearing Morris’s dictum: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”

Morris championed artisanship as an alternative to the mass production of his day, which he believed promoted shoddy design and dehumanised labour. Etsy too is on a mission to “humanise” work and commerce, says Chad Dickerson, its chief executive. As a business, it has just completed its best year since it was founded in 2005. In 2012 sales on Etsy totalled $895m; by October, before the busy holiday shopping season, they had already passed $1 billion for 2013. Although Etsy takes only a small fraction of that, charging 20 cents per item listed and 3.5% of every sale, it is said to be valued at more than $1 billion. There is speculation that it will sell shares to the public in 2014.

This has established Etsy as the leading business of the maker movement, the 21st-century heirs of Arts and Crafts. Morris’s followers were uncomfortable with modern technology, spending decades debating whether machines should play any part in production. Etsy and other maker firms have the same love of design and detail but, in contrast, have prospered by embracing technology wholeheartedly.

Etsy has borrowed from (the much larger) eBay the connection of small-scale sellers to millions of far-flung buyers, as well as reputation-building systems in which the two sides rate each other. It has added a social element that eBay has never mastered. It teaches Etsians, as sellers are known, about business, and facilitates online bulletin boards and offline meetings, especially in places, such as Brooklyn, San Francisco, London and Berlin, with high concentrations of Etsians.

More than a hobby

Other promising businesses serving makers include crowdfunding sites, such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter, and design sites, such as Quirky. Today’s artisans are also taking advantage of advances in 3D printing and computer-assisted design. In 2013 about 100,000 designs per month were uploaded to Shapeways, a 3D producer with a marketplace on which 13,500 designers have opened shops.

The maker movement can no longer be dismissed as just a bunch of tech-loving amateurs. In November Etsy published a study based on a survey of 5,500 of its American sellers, of whom 88% were women. Although 97% worked from home, 74% said they considered their Etsy shops to be businesses, not hobbies. Although most said they used Etsy to top up earnings from other work, 18% said that it was their full-time job. Mr Dickerson sees this as the start of a trend, particularly among women and under-30s, towards work with flexible hours, based on a personal interest and done at home.

Maybe. But the rise of Etsy may say more about consumers than about sellers. “People are getting tired of the same old big-box retail products,” says Mr Dickerson, adding that young adults in particular are attracted by the life stories of the sellers whose products they buy. Presumably with Amazon in mind, he says this “could not be more different than mass-produced items delivered to you by drone.”

Big retailers are prepared to test this claim. In 2013 Etsy convinced several of them, including Nordstrom, a posh department-store chain, to experiment by putting its products on their shelves. Etsians also give in-store demonstrations. Others are trying to do the same thing without Etsy. EBay recently started selling artisanal products selected by Martha Stewart, a lifestyle guru, branded American Made. Some analysts detect parallels with the early stages of the rise of organic and local foods, from farmers’ markets via specialist retailers such as Whole Foods Market to the shelves of Tesco and Walmart.

Whereas the Arts and Crafts movement was split over the role of machines, the maker movement is divided over outsourced supply chains. In November Etsy introduced new rules allowing sellers to have their products manufactured by other firms. Mr Dickerson says this was essential to allow its most successful sellers to expand their business and keep them from leaving the site (perhaps for eBay). As long as the seller “authors” the product and is open about who makes it, self-policing by Etsians will ensure that only small artisanal manufacturers are employed, not sweatshops in Shenzhen, he insists. It is “very important that Etsy stay true to the idea that you are buying from a person not a company, even if that person is getting help,” adds Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, an early investor in the firm.

Etsians are unconvinced, judging by claims on discussion boards that the firm is selling out true artisans, under pressure from investors hoping to profit from an initial public offering. Some have quit the site in protest. These fears first surfaced in July 2011, when the board replaced Rob Kalin, Etsy’s 30-year-old co-founder and chief executive, with the more conventionally businesslike Mr Dickerson.

Some Etsians take comfort in the fact that Etsy is a B Corp, a new corporate form designed to protect a firm with an explicit social mission from undue demands from shareholders. If it goes public, Etsy will provide an important test of whether such notions can withstand the short-term pressures of the stockmarket—assuming investors can be persuaded to buy these newfangled shares in the first place. Mr Wilson is convinced that they will, though the shares may fetch a lower price.

Morris’s movement ultimately failed because it tried to reject capitalism and return to an artisanal golden age that had never existed. Having embraced new technology and business models, Etsy and the rest of the maker movement may stand a better chance of supporting artisans.

Gazprom and European gas markets: Paying the piper

THE combustibility of natural gas makes it a potent weapon. When Gazprom, a giant gas company controlled by the Russian state, cut off supplies to Ukraine in early 2009, in a dispute over unpaid bills, Europeans farther west suffered too. Gazprom provides about a quarter of their gas, to heat homes, fire industrial furnaces and fuel power stations, much of it via a pipeline through Ukraine. European utilities and regulators have since tried to reduce the Russian company’s market power. Although they may seem to be winning the battle, Gazprom could yet outmanoeuvre its customers.

The main battleground is the method of setting the price of gas. Gazprom is keen that its European customers continue to buy expensive gas on long contracts, sometimes lasting decades, with prices linked to the cost of oil. Gazprom makes a nice profit on such customers, since oil is pricey but it produces its gas cheaply from vast fields developed in the Soviet era. However, a high and rising proportion of European gas is now traded on spot markets at lower prices, set by supply and demand.

When gas was first sold internationally in volume, in the 1960s, there was no market to set its price. Since it was used as a substitute for oil in heating and power generation, it seemed sensible to link its price to that of crude. Long contracts also made sense. Building pipelines from, say, Siberia to Europe was costly. Producers wanted to be sure of recouping their investments. Buyers were glad to secure supplies.

The cracks began to show when Europe’s gas markets were shaken by both recession and the boom in American shale gas. From around 2008 Qatari liquefied natural gas, once destined for America but now surplus to requirements there, was redirected to Europe, adding to the continent’s tiny spot market. Meanwhile, crude prices rose steadily from early 2009, taking oil-indexed gas with them, and demand for gas waned. All this opened a big gap between the spot price and the oil-indexed price asked by Gazprom, Norway’s Statoil and other big, state-run suppliers.

Utilities and gas wholesalers, tied to long contracts, were undercut by unencumbered smaller rivals buying in the spot market. The pain was intense. Gazprom’s customers were losing billions and heading for ruin. A few begged for mercy: in 2010 both Gazprom and Statoil are said to have introduced some spot-pricing into their contracts. Some buyers invoked a contractual right to arbitration. In 2012 Germany’s E.ON and Poland’s state power company reached a settlement with Gazprom. Arbitrators sided with RWE, another German utility, insisting that Gazprom rejig its formula to take spot prices into account and awarding RWE a refund. In November Italy’s Edison said it too would seek arbitration.

The European Commission has also weighed in. In September 2012 the commission began an antitrust investigation, to examine whether Gazprom was hindering the free flow of gas across the European Union, blocking rival suppliers in central and eastern member states and imposing unfair prices through oil indexation. Gazprom rejects the accusations. However, the investigation has worried the company, because Europe provides 40% of its revenue. Recently it has been rumoured that Gazprom is close to agreeing a settlement.

The proportion of Europe’s gas bought in the spot market rose from 15% in 2008 to 44% in 2012. By now it is more than half; in north-west Europe it is around 70%. Statoil, seeing how the European market is going, has embraced the shift, selling around half its gas at prices indexed to the spot market. This has further undermined Gazprom’s position. Its contracted-gas prices were only 5-6% above spot prices in the first half of 2013, against 70% in 2009 (see chart). Thierry Bros of Société Générale, a bank, explains that this is due to concessions and rebates, as well as rising spot prices in the past couple of years.

Gazprom has been adjusting to the new terrain. Although its bosses insist that oil indexation will remain, it already sells some gas on spot markets and has expanded its trading operations from a handful of people in the suburbs of London to 900 around the world.

However, it is far too soon for Europe to declare victory. It is buying more from Gazprom, not less. In 2013 the company expected to export 160 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas to Europe, the most since 2008. It has the potential to send another 90bcm. By ensuring that it will remain Europe’s marginal supplier, Gazprom can influence spot prices, according to Howard Rogers of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

It has the pipes as well as the gas. The struggle between Russia and the EU for political influence in Ukraine partly reflects the country’s importance to both sides as a conduit for Russian gas. But Gazprom appears to have started work on an alternative route: South Stream, a $38 billion pipeline with a capacity of 63bcm in the “Southern Corridor”, bypassing Ukraine via the Black Sea. Nord Stream, under the Baltic Sea, already gives Gazprom plenty of capacity beyond what its current long-term contracts require, says Peter Hughes, an industry analyst. The company also has plans to add more storage in Europe, allowing it to release gas swiftly onto the market.

Gazprom will still deliver plenty of gas on long-term contracts. Though these will be based on the spot gas price rather than the oil price, its position as Europe’s marginal supplier will give it influence over spot prices—and hence on what its customers pay. Gazprom may have a say on European gas prices for years yet.

The EU’s policymakers, obsessed with renewables but still presiding over the burning of lots of coal, have not given gas the attention it deserves. Their efforts to liberalise gas markets look good on paper but implementation has been too slow. Interest in encouraging alternative gas supplies has waned. Support for Nabucco, another pipeline, which would deliver gas from Central Asia to Europe, fell away. In December investment was finalised for a much smaller pipeline, proposed by a rival consortium, to bring gas from Azerbaijan. Its lack of capacity is unlikely to encourage the development of supplies from Iraq, the Kurdish region and Turkmenistan.

European policy seems to be to encourage the transition to spot prices and wait for competition to Gazprom to come along. High prices will eventually encourage more supplies, but this will take time. More mature markets for trading gas and derivatives would also help to reduce buyers’ risks. Meanwhile, Gazprom will still have plenty of opportunity to cash in.

Italian business: Brave old world

PAYING €1,000 ($1,374) for a down-filled jacket is a fashion statement of some magnitude. Paying 24 times 2012 earnings for the company that makes it is an even bigger one. Moncler’s shares were richly priced even by the standards of luxury-goods firms when they made their debut on the Italian Stock Exchange at €10.20 on December 16th. They closed on December 30th at €15.80, valuing the company at over €3.9 billion and making its boss and main shareholder, Remo Ruffini, a paper billionaire. It was Europe’s most successful initial public offering of 2013.

For a country that is supposed to be on the brink of economic collapse Italy has surprisingly busy capital markets. As chart 1 shows, more companies are issuing shares and bonds. Private-equity and venture-capital outfits are soliciting money again with an eye to Italian buy-outs. Analysts at banks, including Credit Suisse and HSBC, are urging investors to have a good look at Italian companies.

The big family-owned manufacturers which once dominated Italy and thrived abroad—Fiat, Indesit, Benetton—have been in retreat. On January 1st Fiat said it would buy the 41.5% of Chrysler it does not already own, averting the need for a Chrysler share issue. Given the dire state of Europe’s car market, Fiat’s prospects would be even bleaker without its control of Chrysler. But a number of firms, many of them in luxury goods and almost all focused on exports, are advancing, and turning to the markets for finance.

Moncler’s investors are betting that the firm will enjoy the same success as other fancy Italian brands: the share prices of Salvatore Ferragamo, an upmarket shoemaker, and Brunello Cucinelli, a fashion house, have trebled since the companies went public in 2011 and 2012 respectively. Turnover at Moncler has risen from €45m in 2003, when Mr Ruffini took over the company, to an expected €569m in 2013, and the share of sales outside Italy has grown from 10% to 75%. The initial public offering will let the company’s private-equity backers pay back their investors and attract new ones.

Small firms are trotting to the stock exchange’s junior market. Italia Independent, a maker of spectacles, struggled to find bank finance, despite having several years of profits and an Agnelli heir as co-founder and chairman (Lapo Elkann, whose brother, John, is a director of The Economist’s parent company). Going public provided money to expand internationally and gave the firm a bit more credibility abroad, says Andrea Tessitore, its chief executive. Around 65% of sales have come from within Italy; Mr Tessitore expects that next year less than half will be domestic.

Rudolph Gentile of Safe Bag, which wraps and electronically tags luggage at airports around the world, was similarly outraged when bankers would not lend him the money to exploit a lucrative new contract in Miami. He floated 10% of the company’s shares in September and is thinking of increasing the percentage.

In a country that has long relied heavily on bank finance, turning to the markets is logical, if overdue. Since the crisis, banks everywhere have lent less to small and medium-sized firms. In Italy, 90% of companies fall into that category, and banks’ balance-sheets are in particularly bad shape. The government, the stock exchange (owned by the London Stock Exchange Group) and several banks are doing what they can to encourage other sorts of financing, lightening taxes when unquoted companies issue debt securities and nurturing a market in “mini-bonds” for smaller firms.

For most firms, many of them family-owned, bonds are a more comfortable route to the capital markets than selling shares and thus diluting control. But the landscape is changing. “Entrepreneurs are now younger,” says Luca Peyrano, an official at the stock exchange. “Old-style family businesses dealt with local banks and thought in terms of doing business within their region. Now entrepreneurs think more globally from the start. Their age and vision leads to their interest in accessing capital markets and their ability to do so.”

Investors are most attracted by companies with a good chunk of sales and even production outside Italy. After more than two years of recession, Italy’s economy is expected to have shrunk by 1.8% in 2013, returning to wan growth this year. Domestic consumption has plunged and most companies that depend on it are struggling.

Exports, however, are growing, especially to countries outside the EU. As chart 2 shows, foreign industrial orders are piling up while domestic ones are dwindling. Italy’s continuing ability to win orders abroad is in spite of the many drags on Italian firms’ competitiveness, from the thick tax wedge between what they pay for labour and what workers receive to borrowing costs estimated at 250 basis points higher on one- to five-year loans than those German rivals face.

Hence the drive by many companies to expand not just exports but activities abroad. The Marcegaglia Group, a large maker of specialty steel, has invested over €1.2 billion in China, Poland, Brazil, Russia and Romania to escape overcapacity closer to home and to be nearer to growing markets. In the past such investments were financed by cashflow and bank loans, says Emma Marcegaglia, its co-chief executive; now bonds look increasingly attractive.

Does it matter whether those Italian firms that survive the recession turn to the markets for finance? Yes, says Mr Tessitore of Italia Independent: “Going public means being clear about where you are heading, being transparent.” In other words, it requires a different approach to management. For those scratching their heads over why Italy, so good at designing products, has been so bad at designing durably world-beating companies, the long reliance on loans from friendly bankers can be only part of the answer—but it is a part that is now being put to the test.