Ceo Journal

Kevin Carmichael: While he does have a policy idea that would actually make a difference, Jason Kenney isn't running for PM just yet Finally someone campaigning to become prime minister has proposed to do something that might actually change the trajectory of the economy. Alas, that someone is Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, who only secured his current job five months ago, and won’t be pursuing the position that every pundit says he really wants until 2024 at the earliest. Whatever his aspirations, Kenney is the only national political figure who has used the federal election campaign to show an interest in doing something about crippling productivity rates. His pledge on the weekend to drop some inter-provincial trade barriers in order to create momentum for talks on making Canada a proper single market could be a game changer. It also comes with a note of seriousness that so many previous commitments lacked. Here’s the prize: The International Monetary Fund said earlier t...

Darren Huston was trying to watch a hockey game, half-listening to a headhunter talk about a company he had never heard of before. But as the headhunter went on, the then-45-year-old executive in charge of Microsoft’s global consumer and online businesses tuned out the arena noise and began listening to what he thought was an impossible story. “I said, ’There’s nothing that big in Europe on the Internet,‴⁣ he recalled, laughing. The 2011 call was from Booking.com, the Amsterdam-based unit of Priceline Group that dominates the European online travel market. By last year, Darren Huston became president and CEO of Priceline Group itself, which has come from dot-com laughingstock to the fifth most-valuable U.S. Internet company—if one still really considers it a U.S. company, because 90 percent of its profits come from overseas, most of them from Booking.com. Read full story @ https://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/31/why-pricelines-booker-in-chief-is-spending-big.html

One of the Priceline Group’s issues is its name. As much as officials of the parent company appreciate the legacy of its namesake Priceline.com and its longtime TV point man William Shatner, they cringe whenever journalists and pundits associate the Group, which also includes Booking.com, Agoda, Kayak, OpenTable and several other brands, with the Negotiator. Stars of the current Priceline.com advertising campaign, William Shatner and Kaley Cuoco. REUTERS/Priceline.com As Priceline Group CEO Darren Huston told me in November: “What an asset [Priceline.com and Shatner], but on the other hand it’s a little bit of baggage for us because we’re the Priceline Group. Every time I do an interview, they show a picture of William Shatner. We’re just so much more than that. I hope people start to learn that. I love our legacy namesake business, but look, we’ve got OpenTable, Booking.com, Kayak. We’re now listed as one of the best companies to work for in the Internet segment in Fortune. That’s q...

China has been unkind to the U.S. Internet giants Google, Facebook and Amazon.com. But as a growing China spurs demand for foreign travel, Darren Huston a smaller player—Priceline Group—is trying to change the narrative. Rather than going head to head with homegrown Chinese sites, Priceline has invested more than $1 billion (via convertible debt and equity) in local travel site Ctrip, spent advertising money with search services like Baidu and Qunar to capture consumer clicks, and opened 11 offices in the country. That’s helped brighten Priceline’s outlook, pushing its stock up 13 percent in the past month and within about 6 percent of its all-time high from early 2014. (The stock has slid this week, including a 1.2 percent on Tuesday, after China surprisingly devalued its currency, raising concerns about future growth.) “Travel is such a huge business in China right now,” said Glenn Fogel, head of worldwide strategy at Norwalk, Connecticut-based Priceline. “As countries deve...