Thursday, February 4, 2010

“'Next man up' philosophy paying off (The Indianapolis Star)” plus 2 more

“'Next man up' philosophy paying off (The Indianapolis Star)” plus 2 more

'Next man up' philosophy paying off (The Indianapolis Star)

Posted: 04 Feb 2010 01:06 AM PST

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Marv Levy knew he had something -- someone -- special.

Colts president Bill Polian (left, shown with team owner Jim Irsay in August 2009) tries to build a roster of "53 (players) who can contribute positively." - Sam Riche / Star file photo

It was the mid-1970s and Levy, selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on the strength of directing the Buffalo Bills to four consecutive Super Bowls, was coach of the Canadian Football League's Montreal Alouettes. As one season approached, he hired a director of player personnel, who in turn requested an intern or two to help with scouting reports.

Interactive: See what went into building the Colts and Saints

"One of the people he hired was someone I never knew in my life," Levy said.

That guy was selling advertising for American Farmer magazine to make ends meet.

His name was Bill Polian, and his scouting reports floored Levy.

"His notes were impeccable, incredibly detailed," Levy said. "I asked the (director), 'Who is this guy writing these reports? Man, they are something.' "

Nearly four decades later, Polian is still at it.

His latest creation, the 16-2 Indianapolis Colts, faces the New Orleans Saints on Sunday in Super Bowl XLIV. It is the Colts' second trip to the league championship game in four years, and the fifth of Polian's career. He was Levy's general manager for Buffalo's Super Bowl appearances after the 1990, '91 and '92 seasons.

Levy and Polian remain tight. Polian presented Levy at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2001.

While acknowledging his bias toward Polian, Levy offered a ringing endorsement.

"I read where someone said he's the best general manager in football (today). That's not accurate," Levy said. "He's the best general manager ever in football."

It's a 53-player roster

The Colts are on the doorstep of another Super Bowl title in large part because of quarterback Peyton Manning, who earned a record fourth Most Valuable Player award, and six other players who were selected to the Pro Bowl.

They are a team of glimmering star power.

The secret to their success, though, goes much deeper. The Colts earned an eighth straight playoff berth and have won at least 12 games in a record seven consecutive seasons because of the depth of the personnel department's capacity to build the roster.

Polian declined to be interviewed for this story. But in previous discussions, he emphasized the objective every season "is always to get 53 who can contribute positively. I'm not sure that you ever get there, but you do spend a lot of time trying to get there."

It starts during the organized team activities (OTAs) when rosters swell to 80. It's making certain you're not top-heavy in one area and perilously thin at another. It's tailoring the personnel to fit the offensive and defensive schemes. On defense, size is nice, but athleticism and fly-to-the-football speed are prerequisites.

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EPMA Journal promotes new philosophy in patient treatment (News-Medical-Net)

Posted: 03 Feb 2010 09:51 PM PST

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The EPMA Journal focuses on new philosophies in patient treatment

Springer and the European Association for Predictive, Preventive and Personalised Medicine have founded, as the Association's official publication, the EPMA Journal. Creating a reliable scientific platform for the optimal combination of conventional medicine with new advances in biomedicine and laboratory medicine, the EPMA Journal will highlight worldwide progress in the emerging discipline of predictive, preventive and personalised medicine.

The EPMA Journal promotes a new philosophy in patient treatment - the change from curative medicine to predictive and preventive medicine. Published quarterly, it will provide an overview of three essential components which form the basis of medicine of the future: advanced predictive diagnostic technologies, targeted preventive measures, and personalised approaches to treatment. The journal will address these issues in the form of editorial overviews, review articles and annotated papers.

Editor-in-chief Dr. Olga Golubnitschaja of the Friedrich Wilhelms University of Bonn, Germany, said, "People across all walks of life are increasingly demanding to be better informed of changes in their health as they progress through life. One of the central issues to be discussed in the journal is the screening for predisposition of healthy individuals to potential pathologies later in life. We intend the EPMA Journal to stimulate discussion on many issues related to the future practice of predictive and personalized medicine."

Melania Ruiz, Publishing Editor, Cancer Research at Springer, said, "The EPMA Journal will explore new philosophies in medicine and track novel trends in healthcare and biomedical education. Springer is delighted to collaborate with the European Association for Predictive, Preventive and Personalised Medicine on this unique new journal."

The EPMA Journal will be available in print and on Springer's online platform www.springerlink.com starting in March 2010. All articles will be published online via Online First- before they appear in print, thereby enabling research results to be disseminated quickly to the scientific community. In addition, all authors, via the Springer Open Choice- program, have the option of publishing their articles using the open access publishing model.

Source: Springer

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Executive Team At Logan Capital Reveals Winners In Their Portfolio And Share Their Investment Philosophy (Wall Street Transcript via Yahoo! Finance)

Posted: 03 Feb 2010 08:34 AM PST

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67 WALL STREET, New York - February 3, 2010 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published its TWST Investing Strategies Report offering a timely review of the sector to serious investors and industry executives. This 41 page feature contains expert industry commentary through in-depth interviews with public company CEOs, Equity Analysts and Money Managers. The full issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.

Topics covered: All-cap Growth Strategy; Sustainable Growth Companies; Dominant Competitive Positions; Sustainable Competitive Advantages; High-quality Companies at Reasonable Prices; Small and Mid-cap Companies; Small Clear Market Leaders; Value Investing

Companies include: Accenture (ACN); Amazon (AMZN); AmerisourceBergen (ABC); Amgen (AMGN); Baidu (BIDU); C.H. Robinson (CHRW); CPI Corp (CPY); Citrix (CTXS); Cognizant Technology (CTSH); Darden Restaurants (DRI); Donaldson (DCI); EOG Resources (EOG); Express Scripts (ESRX); Franklin Resources (BEN); Freeport-McMoran (FCX); Google (GOOG); Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR); HDFC Bank (HDB); Kennedy-Wilson (KWIC); MasterCard (MA); McDonald's  (MCD); McGrath RentCorp (MGRC); Medco Health (MHS); Medtronic (MDT); Merck (MRK); Meredith (MDP); Microsoft (MSFT); Mosaic (MOS); Neenah Paper (NP); Nordstrom (JWN); Pfizer (PFE); Polo Ralph Lauren (RL); Priceline (PCLN); Quixote (QUIX); Research In Motion (RIMM); Ross Stores (ROST); Standard Parking (STAN); Stericycle (SCRL); Urban Outfitters (URBN); Valmont Industries (VMI); Xilinx (XLNX); eBay (EBAY).

In the following brief excerpt from the 41 page report, Stephen S. Lee, Al Besse And Dana H. Stewardson discuss the outlook for the Investment sector and for investors.

Stephen S. Leeis a founder, portfolio manager and a member of the growth equity investment team for the firm. A graduate of Lehigh University with a BS degree in accounting, Stephen holds NASD Series 7, 24, 63 and 65 licenses. Before founding Logan Capital with his partners in 1993, Stephen was previously employed at Mercer Capital Management and Merrill Lynch. His involvement in the community includes serving on several Investment Committees and Foundation Boards, including the Investment Committee of The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. He is also a trustee of The Gladwyne Montessori School.

Al Besse is a founder and portfolio manager for the firm, and serves as Logan Capital's President. As a member of the growth equity investment team he is responsible for the firm's technical analysis effort. Prior to joining Logan Capital, Al was a Vice President at First Fidelity Bank serving as co-manager of the Charitable Equity Fund. During his decade at the bank, he played a key role in the formation and development of First Fidelity's $2 billion Institutional Funds Management Group. In 1991 he was named as the bank's Institutional Investment Professional of the Year. Al is a graduate of Haverford College (BA) and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (MBA).

Dana H. Stewardson is a founder, portfolio manager and a member of the growth equity investment team for the firm. He has been in the investment business for twenty five years and has served his clients as a portfolio manager for several investment firms including Mercer Capital Management, Edward C. Rorer & Co. and Kidder, Peabody & Co. He serves on the boards of The Harriton Association, Bryn Mawr, The Wyck Association, Philadelphia, and as Chair of the Parents Council of The University of Pennsylvania. Dana is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University (BA) and is a member of The Financial Analysts of Philadelphia.

TWST: What are some of the opportunities that you have found during the last few months that you've been able to add to your portfolio and that you feel are representative of your investment approach?

Mr. Lee: Some of the more recent adds certainly did very well in the discretionaries and we've actually been taking some profits and trimming those positions fairly well. Some of the newer adds we're recently putting in are companies that will benefit as corporate spending begins to get back to normal, notably Cognizant Technology (CTSH), information technology outsourcing, as well as consulting. One of our overall themes is that we think there's a lot's been going on in terms of restructuring businesses, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for less good reasons.

At the end of the day, we now have companies that need to really go through, figure out how they're going to operate on the going forward business and they're certainly going to be consistent, increasing pressure on managing costs and expenses which we think creates an ideal environment for IT outsourcing as well as the consulting in terms of making businesses run more efficiently. In addition, if you go out and look at what's really been going on in technology, there's a lot of talk now about "cloud computing." We had these positions a bit on the early side, companies like Citrix (CTXS), and Amazon, which benefits from renting out computers to its supplying outsourced computing-based service.

We think there are a lot of opportunities for businesses to really take advantage of technology and actually boost productivity and boost earnings. We're looking to add in that perspective. Those have been some of the newer adds that we've put in the portfolio. In addition, we think that as healthcare legislation comes to its conclusion, the uncertainty will move away, so, we recently added AmerisourceBergen (ABC), which is a distributor of healthcare products. But again, healthcare sector has companies like Medco Health (MHS) and Express Scripts (ESRX). We really believe that a lot of the return on the healthcare sector is going to be in stocks that can reduce the cost of delivering healthcare. Anything that happens on the legislative front will probably increase the number of participants in the healthcare system, so we own companies that will help reduce the cost. In terms of some of the best performers that we have, it was an interesting year in that some of the names that actually outperformed quite well were names that were somewhat tough companies to hold earlier in the year.

In terms of materials, we have Freeport-McMoran (FCX) and certainly copper is economically sensitive. For a while, at the beginning of last year a lot of commodities were really pricing in a dramatic slump in the economy and not really forecasting any sort of a recovery. We thought that period was a nice opportunity to maintain those positions. In addition, we have Priceline (PCLN) and two things happened there. They had expanded their hotel network overseas into Europe, but the hotels weren't really using it, they weren't getting any advantage out of it.

Well, the nice thing is when you have a slowdown in the economy, there are a lot of excess hotel rooms. Priceline had spent several years laying the groundwork so that when a lot of inventory became available, they got the benefit. Plus, we firmly believe that consumers will continue to bargain hunt and purchase things online. Priceline's network took years to build up so there really isn't any other entrant coming in that can replicate what they have. So, we thought that both sides of the equation are doing very well. That stock was up almost 200% since last year.

The Wall Street Transcript is a unique service for investors and industry researchers - providing fresh commentary and insight through verbatim interviews with CEOs and research analysts. This 41 page special issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online .

The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse the views of any interviewees nor does it make stock recommendations.

For Information on subscribing to The Wall Street Transcript, please call 800/246-7673

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