If you’d like a test to see how your business English vocabulary is, read the article at this link.
Some of the language is quite difficult. The main point of the story is that a very rich man (Kerkorian) is going to sell a large amount of the shares he owns in General Motors. The reason why this is newsworthy is because Kerkorian is a billionaire (has more than 1,000 million dollars) and owns a fairly large amount of GM’s shares (currently 9.9%). This article uses language that is typical of news stories about shareholdings in major American companies. Let’s go over some of the key vocabulary.
stake (n.) - this has the same meaning as share; a percentage of the company. (Remember, stocks and shares are essentially the same, but a share of a company refers to the percentage owned, not the piece of paper we also refer to as a stock.)
His stake in the company rose to 15%.
500 shares were added to her stake in the company.
Solely owned (adjective) - when a person (or company) owns 100% of a company; they own all of the shares.
GM shares closed down.
GM shares closed up.
- these two sentences refer to the price of GM’s shares when the stock market closed. It compares the opening price, the price when the markets open, and the closing price.
speculate - to guess
We can only speculate why he’s selling his shares.
walk away from - to abandon (a plan), to cancel, to forget about
He walked away from a really good job offer because he decided to do volunteer work instead.
They walked away from the new product idea because of technical difficulties.
Great language in this article. There may be other words you don’t quite understand, but the ones I’ve highlighted should clear up the basic meaning of the story. Reading newspapers is extremely difficult, but for those of you who are advanced or upper intermediate learners, it can really add to your vocabulary.
Kris
Well, Vietnam is set to become the 150th member of the WTO and Russia will be joining soon as well. Time I guess to blog a little on the Business English surrounding this important topic.
WTO stands for World Trade Organization. The aim of the WTO is to reduce tariffs and other trade barriers in order to promote trade. It replaced the GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which had roughly the same function. The WTO is located in Geneva, Switzerland.
The world trading system has been slowly developed in trade negotiations between countries that are called ’rounds’. You’ll see a lot in the news about the Doha Round, launched in November 2001, under which international markets are supposed to be opened up to trade even more. Past rounds have focused on industrial goods, but the Doha round has opening up the markets for agricultural products as one of its main issues. As you may have heard, the negotiations have stalled and as of yet, the Doha round has produced more controversy than results. Developed and developing countries are at odds over many issues, but agricultural subsidies are the main issue.
Subsidies are extra payments or lower costs given by governments to producers to assist them. Many countries have subsidies for agricultural goods in order to encourage farmers to grow more. A country has to make enough food to feed its people - and most countries don’t feel as secure about importing food from other countries as they do about importing electrical goods or cars. I know that my country, Canada, gives large subsidies to farmers, and the result is that the farmers produce more and the price of wheat goes down. It’s great for consumers (buyers) like me, but bad for farmers from poor countries whose governments can’t afford to pay them the same subsidies. The issue is obviously more complicated than I’m making out here. I’m only introducing the topic to demonstrate some of the language and invite comments.
There was an interesting article on America’s trade deficit in the news today - here. Apparently, in 2006 the U.S. trade deficit will be 790 billion dollars.
What is a deficit? It means you are short of something or don’t have enough of something. A ‘trade deficit’ simply means a country imports more goods than it exports. The opposite, when a country exports more than it imports, is a ‘trade surplus’. So Americans import a LOT more than they export to other countries.
American news often has stories about the U.S. trade deficit, especially during the periods before elections (as we had recently). These news articles usually focus on why there is a deficit, not necessarily on what the results might be because of a deficit.
Let’s look at some examples of how to use this word:
a huge deficit
a massive deficit
a small deficit
run up a deficit (allow it to grow larger)
cut a deficit
reduce a deficit
tackle a deficit (deal with it, make it smaller and more manageable)
overcome a deficit
the deficit grew
the deficit rose
the deficit widened last month (got larger)
the deficit decreased
the deficit fell
the deficit narrowed
the deficit shrank
As you can see, a lot of times we speak about past or future deficits, so make sure you have the correct verb form.
Good news,
We’re now able to provide the rollover for collocations and phrases. Go to the Review Materials for each new lesson and find the rollover works not only for individual words, but also commonly used collocations or phrases whose meanings are not obvious from the words that make them up.
This new feature is part of our overall philosophy - that language learning is not about learning words, but useable “chunks” or blocks of English. These chunks are more than one word, but they’re not whole sentences. They are natural combinations of different words that form ideas. Learning collocations and phrases helps us discover that we “take a seat” or “have a seat.” If you learn the word ‘take’ by itself, it has too many possible meanings and uses - we need to learn it in context and as part of natural combinations with other words (in this case, take is a verb, and it is used naturally with many nouns and some adverbs). Otherwise, you will end up speaking Chinese-English or Italian-English, etc., mixing up parts of your native language (and it’s grammar - particularly word order and collocations) with English.
We hope you enjoy this new feature. I’m confident it makes Englishpod a better product. Step by step we’re getting better. Any thoughts on how we can improve more?
This week’s word of the day is “FDI”. Well, actually it’s not one word, but three. Today you get a three for one deal!
FDI stands for foreign direct investment. It simply refers to when a company invests money in another country by buying a company there or by creating its own. So for example, if an American company builds a factory in Canada, that is FDI. Foreigners are directly investing in the Canadian economy. Indirect investment normally involves financial institutions buying smaller amounts of shares or bonds in another country.
FDI is one of the major indicators of a country’s economic health and its potential for growth. A great definition (and the only useful one I found) is located here. It was made by The Economist, a first-rate magazine dealing with world economics and politics.
FDI is often spoken of in the news, especially with regard to developing countries. The USA is the largest recipient of FDI each year, followed by China. Some people say that governments and economists over-emphasize FDI numbers. What do you think?
