Nandu Nandkishore :What’s Happening To Nestle Philippines?

Nestle’s Glossy Picture (Nestle Philippines Website)

Nestlé Philippines, Inc. (NPI) today is a robust and stable organization, proud of its role in bringing the best food throughout the stages of the Filipino consumers’ lives. The Company employs about 3,400 men and women all over the country. It is now among the top companies in the entire Nestlé world, and is among the country’s Top 10 Corporations. Its products are No. 1 or strong No. 2 brands in

their various categories.

The Nestlé culture

Apart from its commitment to safety and quality and its respect for diversity, Nestlé is committed to a number of cultural values. These values come partly from its Swiss roots and have been developed during its history. They are also evolving so as to support the permanent reshaping of the Company.

They can be described as follows:

• Commitment to a strong work ethic, integrity, honesty and quality.

• Personal relations based on trust and mutual respect. This implies a sociable attitude towards others, combined with an ability to communicate openly and frankly.

• A personalized and direct way of dealing with each other. This implies a high level of tolerance for other ideas and opinions, as well as a relentless commitment to co-operate proactively with others.

• A more pragmatic than dogmatic approach to business. This implies being realistic and basing decisions on facts.

• Openness and curiosity for dynamic and future trends in technology, changes in consumer habits, new business ideas and opportunities, while maintaining respect for basic human values, attitudes and behavior.

• Pride in contributing to the reputation and the performance of the Company. This calls especially for nurturing a sense of quality and long-term achievement in the daily work beyond fashion and shortsighted gain.
• Loyalty to and identification with the Company.

The Nestle Philippines’ Case Study

The Reality:
Consider this case involving the Company and a distributor, Forefront IT Trading Corp., owned by Filipino investors who are now complaining of unfair and unethical business practices by their foreign partners. In a disgusting display of corporate bullying, the multinational refused to pay Forefront’s more than P12 million in collectibles unless it signed a Release and Quit Claim dropping all other legitimate claims. This when a ranking official of the foreign firm had promised, verbally, the settlement of all just and reasonable claims.
The amount consisted of close to P1 million in withheld expanded value-added tax (EVAT) for 2007 that the multinational should refund to Forefront, plus P11.07 million representing performance incentives, advances made by Forefront for the company’s promotional activities and cost of products taken back by the multinational.
The multinational allegedly took back the products in Forefront’s possession after terminating the distributorship agreement when the latter protested the meddling and unprofessional conduct of the multinational’s sales official assigned to it. The distributor had wanted a replacement.
It turned out that the multinational’s sales official was carrying on an extramarital relationship with a Forefront executive, a married man. She exploited this relationship to secure unusually large orders of her employer’s products and even slow-moving items that Forefront had to dispose of even at cost, even to the extent of forgoing profits. Santa Banana, she even succeeded in passing on to Forefront some poorly paying accounts not included in the original agreement. All these eventually resulted in huge losses to the distributor.
This came to a point where Forefront experienced difficulties in meeting its payroll, the 13th month pay for December 2007, and separation benefits for some 80 employees who had to go as a result of severe financial stress.
When advised of the affair and the resulting conflict of interest situation, the latter simply dismissed the matter as “a purely personal affair between two consenting adults,” and ignored the request that their sales official be replaced. Yet, the multinational’s own Corporate Business Principles and Code of Conduct states, among other things, that the company “requires its management and employees to avoid even the appearance of impropriety in its business relationships on behalf of the company.”

Nandu Nandkishore: Executive Vice President Nestlé S.A., Zone Director for Asia, Oceania, Africa and Middle East

CHARGES AGAINST NESTLE OFFICIALS STILL PENDING

“This Could Be The Tipping Point”
by Emil Jurado
04 January 2012, TO THE POINT, Manila Standard Today

Last month, I wrote about developments on the charges filed at the Regional Trial Court in Quezon City against five top officers of Nestle Philippines Inc. Its senior vice president and head legal officer took exception to some items raised in my column about the case.

In its letter to the editor of this newspaper published last December 22, NPI claimed that the complaints of predatory pricing filed against the company by two of its former distributors have been dismissed via a resolution of the QC Prosecutor’s Office dated December 5, 2011.

However, that claim, according to noted lawyer Lorna Patajo Kapunan, is “blatantly inaccurate and misleading.” She says that the Resolution is still the subject of a pending petition for review filed in behalf of the distributors by Kapunan Garcia and Castillo Law Offices before the Department of Justice.

Kapunan points out that the Motion to Withdraw filed in the Regional Trial Court by the Office of the City Prosecutor of Quezon City is still pending, and the outcome of the motion has not been resolved nor granted by the presiding judge. In short, the criminal case filed against the Nestle executives still stands.

But I must have been affected by the holiday daze when I typed out that Nestle was adjudged Employer of the Year during the Philippine Advertising Congress held early last month. “Employer” should have been “Advertiser” and there’s no question about that. Nestle did unload a huge advertising outlay to drum up its 100 years existence in the Philippines. Its prestigious presence here now stands in the balance depending on the outcome of these cases which have a direct bearing on current moves to finally introduce the long overdue Anti-Trust Law.

The Untold Nestle Story

  It is foolish to rely on accumulated brand strength when functional missteps threaten to damage one’s corporate reputation. Nestle is a very good example.

• NESTLE

  

  NESTLE, the world’s largest food company with great consumer brands of excellent quality known the world over. But some of its top executives in Vevey, Switzerland and their their feudal warlords elsewhere in the world have a pompous, self-important gait, confusing the success of their great brands with their own career achievements. This corporate arrogance leads to disregard of Nestle’s basic corporate responsibility in many countries.

1) Nestlé S.A. (French pronunciation: [nɛsˈle]) is the largest nutrition and foods company in the world, founded and headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland. Nestlé originated in a 1905 merger of the Anglo-Swiss Milk Company, which was established in 1866 by brothers George Page and Charles Page, and the Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé Company, which was founded in 1866 by Henri Nestlé. The company grew significantly during the First World War and following the Second World War, eventually expanding its offerings beyond its early condensed milk and infant formula products. Today, the company operates in 86 countries around the world and employs nearly 283,000 individuals.From Wikipedia

2) Nestle it is the market leader worldwide in coffee and mineral water, the largest manufacturer of pet food, and is fast increasing its share of the ice cream market.Globally, Nestlé is now hot on the heels of Unilever as the number one ice cream seller, a position that it seeks in every market and category in which it operates around the world.From Corporate Watch

3)Nestle is one of the most controversial companies in the world. The Swiss conglomerate has also had its share of controversies and ethical dilemmas throughout its nearly 150-year history.

4)Infant Milk Formula Controversy.The biggest and most sustained controversy that Nestle is dealing with started in the 1970s, with the company’s effort to sell baby formula in Third World countries. The ethical issue arose around the way that Nestle was promoting the formula as an alternative to breast feeding. Critics state that the formula is not an equal substitute for breast feeding, let alone a preferable option.

5) Nestle Milk Powder Tainted With Melamine.A similar issue over Nestle arose in 2008 in China, after authorities in Hong Kong claimed that they had found melamine in a Chinese baby milk product. While a tainted milk outbreak eventually affected more than 300,000 Chinese  children, Nestle’s products were found to only have minute traces of the chemical. The company’s products were delisted in the country. A new factory was built in order for Nestle to have a tighter control over to chemical composition of its product. 

6) The Nestle Facebook Mess.Thanks to Facebook and other social media channels, the Nestle Company has an enormous public relations mess on their hands.The gist of the situation is that environmental protection group Greenpeace, who are known for their unorthodox and sometimes heavy-handed ways of bringing attention, created a parody video (but it’s somewhat gory, not funny) on YouTube of Nestle’s KitKat candy bar product. The video suggests that the production of a key ingredient, palm oil, helps further the destruction of rainforests, which in turn threatens endangered species such as the Orangutan. Greenpeace says that the Paradise Forests in Sumatra in particular are suffering a record-breaking deforestation rate.From Allfacebook.com

7) Most Boycotted Company .What do Nike, Coca Cola, McDonald’s and Nestlé have in common? Apart from being among the world’s most well-known brands, they happen to be the most boycotted brands on the planet.
That finding came from global GMIPoll, an online opinion poll that surveyed 15,500 consumers in 17 countries.Guardian

 

8) Least Responsible Company.Nestlé won a global internet poll for the world’s ‘least responsible company’ coinciding with the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2005. Nestlé received 29% of the votes. This was more than twice that of joint second Monsanto and Dow Chemicals (of Bhopal infamy), each on 14% .

9) Its Ethical Reputation .The Swiss research firm Covalence recently released its annual ranking of the overall ethical performance of multinational corporations. Of course, while the index had its winners –in food and beverages: the first-, second-, third-place and fourth-place  companies were Unilever, Pepsico, Danone and Kraft, respectively — we were more interested in the companies with the lowest ethical ratings. Among those companies with the most awful records are some of the usual suspects like…Nestle: No.16.

10)Nestle ‘s Problems in the Philippines.

a)Infant Milk labels are deceptive.In the Philippines, Nestlé’s labelling is even worse than competitors’ – its products carry deceptive and non-permitted health claims and mislead parents about how to make up formula safely.

b) Trade/distributor bullying and cover-up of  the Nestle sex scandal in the Philippines.

c) Union busting.

 

EQ POLL :Can You Trust NESTLE?

It’s completely trustworthy.							13.35%
It cannot be trusted.							28.26%
The Nestle CEO,Paul Bulcke, is a decent person.							5.59%
It puts profits ahead of values.							32.92%
Nestle has a set of principles that everyone in the organization follows.							7.14%
Nestle is not true to its “shared value” commitment all the time.							12.73%

EQ POLL: What’s your image of Nestle?

The world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company.							10.19%
Manufacturer of quality baby food, coffee, dairy products, breakfast cereals, confectionery, bottled water, ice cream, pet foods, more…							8.28%
Milk powders produced in China by Nestlé contained traces of melamine.							16.88%
Nestle attracts global criticism for its infant-formula marketing policies, especially those conducted in developing countries.							11.78%
Nestlé is conscious of its social responsibility, which is inherent in its long-term orientation.							5.73%
Nestle is a trade and distributor bully in the Philippines.							32.17%
Members of Nestlé Management at all levels are professional.							5.73%
Nestle has been criticized for outsourcing and price-fixing.							9.24%

The Nestle Case Study:Philippine Setting

Consider this case involving the Company and a distributor, Forefront IT Trading Corp., owned by Filipino investors who are now complaining of unfair and unethical business practices by their foreign partners. In a disgusting display of corporate bullying, the multinational refused to pay Forefront’s more than P12 million in collectibles unless it signed a Release and Quit Claim dropping all other legitimate claims. This when a ranking official of the foreign firm had promised, verbally, the settlement of all just and reasonable claims.
The amount consisted of close to P1 million in withheld expanded value-added tax (EVAT) for 2007 that the multinational should refund to Forefront, plus P11.07 million representing performance incentives, advances made by Forefront for the company’s promotional activities and cost of products taken back by the multinational.
The multinational allegedly took back the products in Forefront’s possession after terminating the distributorship agreement when the latter protested the meddling and unprofessional conduct of the multinational’s sales official assigned to it. The distributor had wanted a replacement.
It turned out that the multinational’s sales official was carrying on an extramarital relationship with a Forefront executive, a married man. She exploited this relationship to secure unusually large orders of her employer’s products and even slow-moving items that Forefront had to dispose of even at cost, even to the extent of forgoing profits. Santa Banana, she even succeeded in passing on to Forefront some poorly paying accounts not included in the original agreement. All these eventually resulted in huge losses to the distributor.
This came to a point where Forefront experienced difficulties in meeting its payroll, the 13th month pay for December 2007, and separation benefits for some 80 employees who had to go as a result of severe financial stress.
When advised of the affair and the resulting conflict of interest situation, the latter simply dismissed the matter as “a purely personal affair between two consenting adults,” and ignored the request that their sales official be replaced. Yet, the multinational’s own Corporate Business Principles and Code of Conduct states, among other things, that the company “requires its management and employees to avoid even the appearance of impropriety in its business relationships on behalf of the company.”

“All business depends upon men fulfilling their responsibilities.” Mahatma Gandhi

Hey Ramon Ang,Answer These Questions About San Miguel Please

What Is The San Miguel Strategy?

“People keep on shouting the transparency issue because our competitors and copycats keep pushing us to divulge what we will buy and what we will do,” he says. “It’s driven by envy.”  Ramon S.Ang

Under their reign, Cojuangco and Ang have been on an international “Buying And Selling ” spree for San Miguel.

Can You Guess Why?

 Who is Roberto Ongpin Fronting For In SMC?

MANILA, Philippines—A group led by San Miguel Corp. president Ramon Ang and former Trade Minister Roberto V. Ongpin has completed the consolidation of the single biggest voting bloc in SMC into Top Frontier Investments Holdings Inc., which now owns 47.5 percent of the diversifying conglomerate.

San Miguel announced that Top Frontier acquired on Wednesday the remaining stake in SMC held by Q-Tech Alliance Holdings, completing the former’s buyout of a 20-percent block of shares.

Q-Tech sold its remaining 301.6 million shares in SMC to New Frontier at P70 a share for a total block price of about P21.1 billion. The shares were crossed at the Philippine Stock Exchange Wednesday.

Top Frontier is 49-percent owned by SMC itself as represented by Ang while 51 percent is controlled by an investor group that includes Ongpin, his nephew Eric Recto (who is also president of Petron Corp.) and businessmen Iñigo Zobel and Joselito Campos.From Inquirer.net

Who’s Who Of Philippine Business

 John  Gokongwei Jr.

John  Gokongwei Jr. :Riches-to-rags-to-riches. Lived on the street at age 13 after his affluent father died and the family lost everything. Peddled thread, soap and candles during World War II. Now has holdings in telecom, branded foods, publishing, petrochemicals and now Cebu Pacific .

Personality:Ruthless.

Strength:Always builds his business from the ground up.No costly acquisitions.

Weakness:Can Lance Gokongwei make the Cebu Pacific “budget carrier” concept a successful long-term proposition?

 Henry Sy

Henry Sy: SM is the Philippine’s most dominant player in retail with 125 stores nationwide. Of these, 37 are SM Department Stores; 27 are SM Supermarkets, 31 are SaveMore branches; and 20 are SM Hypermarkets.BDO is now the largest bank in terms of assets.

Personality: Daring.

Strength: Has “got it all”-largest malls, biggest banks, largest chain of supermarkets and department stores and now large real estate ventures.

Weakness: Will his 4 sons acknowledge the leadership of Tessy Sy-Coson, his daughter and acknowledged leader of the group, in a post-Henry scenario?

 Lucio Tan

Lucio Tan:Well known Marcos business crony. Made his fortune from a variety of sources including beer, cigarettes, banks and airlines. Owns the country’s flag carrier Philippines Airlines. His listed rum maker, Tanduay, has roots tracing back to 1854.

Personality: Controversial.

Strength: He has virtual monopoly of the lucrative tobacco business with the recent joint venture with Philip Morris.

Weakness:No known  or announced heir apparent to run his business empire when he is gone.

 Jaime Zobel

Jaime Zobel :His two sons run Ayala Corp., the oldest and largest conglomerate in the Philippines, founded in 1834. The group’s interests include real estate development, banking and financial services, telecommunications, water infrastructure development and management, electronics, information technology, automotive and international operations.

Personality: Decent.

Strength: Has successfully passed on the leadership of the Ayala Group to Jaime Augusto and Fernando.

Weakness: Can the group’s basically conservative business approach prevent the business inroads from the three Tsinoy Taipans?

EQ POLL: In your opinion,what inspires corporate respect?

Strong management							4.2%
Ethical business practices							35.29%
Sound business strategy							5.04%
Product innovation							4.2%
Revenue and profit growth							0.84%
Prompt action on consumer complaints							21.01%
Nice ads about products							0%
Valuable products and services							17.65%
No corporate scandals							11.76%

EQ POLL:Which Companies Have The BEST Reputations In The Philippines?

Jollibee							7.74%
Ayala							11.78%
SM							11.45%
San Miguel							6.06%
Meralco							0.67%
Globe							2.36%
Smart							3.03%
Universal Robina							2.36%
Cebu Pacific							3.7%
BPI							5.39%
BDO							5.39%
PLDT							0.67%
Nestle Philippines							9.43%
Procter & Gamble Philippines							3.03%
Unilever Philippines							3.03%
ABS-CBN							7.07%
GMA 7							2.69%
Metro Pacific							2.02%
Coca Cola Philippines							3.7%
Maynilad Water							2.02%
Manila Water							1.01%
Unilab							2.02%
Metrobank							0.67%
Pilipinas Shell							0.34%
Johnson & Johnson							2.36%

What Can R.Gupta,R. Rajaratnam & Nandu Nandkishore Learn From Mahatma Gandhi?

 

Business gurus in India are talking about a new role model: Mahatma Gandhi.

The Father of the Indian Nation is now being held up as the master strategist, an exemplary leader, and someone whose ideas and tactics corporate India can emulate.
From Boston Consulting Group’s CEO Arun Maira to management guru C K Prahalad and economist Professor Arindam Chaudhuri, key business thinkers are preaching how corporate India needs to revisit Gandhi’s values and ideas and apply these lessons to their business leadership styles. From RediffIndiaAbroad

A few weeks before he was assassinated, Mahatma Gandhi had a conversation with his grandson Arun. He handed Arun a talisman upon which were engraved “Seven Blunders,” out of which, said Gandhi, grows the violence that plagues the world. The blunders were:
Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principles.

Rajat Gupta, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director

Rajat Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director once accused of feeding inside information to Galleon Group LLC’s Raj Rajaratnam, will face federal charges, a person familiar with the matter said, making him the highest-ranking executive to be named in the probe.

Gupta, 62, will surrender to FBI agents in New York today, the person said. After a four-year securities-fraud investigation of insider trading at hedge funds, Gupta will be charged in a case prosecuted by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, according to the person, who declined to be identified because the matter isn’t public.From Bloomberg

Galleon Group co-founder Raj Rajaratnam

Galleon Group LLC co-founder Raj Rajaratnam filed a notice of appeal of his convictions for running an insider-trading ring, as well as formally notifying the court that he will challenge his prison sentence.

Rajaratnam, 54, was sentenced to 11 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell in Manhattan on Oct. 13, the longest term ever for insider trading. Rajaratnam filed the notice of appeal the same day. It was entered into public court records today.

Holwell has recommended sending Rajaratnam to the federal medical center in Butner, North Carolina, because of his health problems, which include diabetes. He’s scheduled to surrender on Nov. 28.

Rajaratnam is the central figure in what U.S. investigators called the largest hedge fund insider-trading case in U.S. history. The federal probe, which included tapping Rajaratnam’s phone, led to convictions of more than two dozen people. A federal jury in Manhattan convicted Rajaratnam on May 11 of all 14 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy against him.From Bloomberg

Nestle’s Nandu Nandkishore
Executive Vice President Nestlé S.A., Zone Director for Asia, Oceania, Africa and Middle East

Nandu Nankishore (Former Nestle Philippines CEO) Disrespected Our Beloved Tita Cory!
“Hey, Nandu, don’t you treat us like slumdogs. We don’t have one in our country. IN your native India, you have thousands of slumdogs. Nandu, if you think you can boss us around like what you do with Indian slumdogs, you better think twice. You have no right disrespecting our former leader, you better behave and ship your idols back to your native land. Otherwise, you’re courting not just a boycott of Nestle products–you are earning the ire of millions of Filipinos. ” From The Philippine Revolution

” When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants,despots and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it–always. ” Mahatma Gandhi

Nestle’s Nandu Nandkishore: ” You seem invincible,but in the end you will fall.”

Nestle, the world’s largest foods company, has named Nandu Nandkishore as its Executive Vice-President for Asia, Oceania, Africa and Middle East

We do not believe that it is morally acceptable for Nestle to promote senior executives even if they cheat during their overseas assignments, deceive and cover-up serious misdeeds and treat shareholders and the public as gullible fools.

Some companies are not content with just being monopolies.

They have to be bullies and hypocrites.

Take the case of a multinational that espouses “trust, integrity and honesty.”

Alas, their behavior is the exact opposite.

A curious case involves one distributor who discovered a sexual affair between their top officer and the sales manager in charge of their account.

Instead of addressing the blatant conflict of interest, guess what the multinational did when this was brought to the officers’ attention?

They illegally terminated the distributor’s contract, and threatened him so he would remain silent.

It’s enough to make you spit in your coffee and throw it at their faces. Ramon Tulfo (Philippine Daily Inquirer)

My friends at the Philippine branch of a multinational coffee-dairy maker must fix the stink about their sales manager and a distributor. The story is going around town. The food giant’s female sales boss not only is having an affair with their distributor’s married general manager, but also has caused the latter to abscond with company funds. The distributor’s owners are scandalized that the multinational has chosen to treat the affair as one of consenting adults, instead of a conflict of interest. That’s bad, since the multinational’s vaunted primary corporate policies are honesty, integrity and fairness. Jarius Bondoc (Philippine Star)

 ” When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants,despots and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it–always. ” Mahatma Gandhi

Paul Bulcke, What’s Happening To Nestle?

View of Nestle‘s logo on a road sign near the world’s biggest food company headquarters on August 10, 2011 in Vevey.

Paul Bulcke, What’s Happening To Nestle?

 Nestle posted a 13.7 percent fall in first half net profit to 4.7 billion Swiss francs ($6.5 billion, €4.5 billion), hurt by the strong Swiss franc against most major currencies. Sales also fell 12.9 percent to 41 billion francs for the six months ending June, as the foreign exchange rate had a negative impact of 13.8 percent.

A crow flies above a sign of the world’s biggest food company Nestle at their headquarters on August 10, 2011 in Vevey. Nestle posted a 13.7 percent fall in first half net profit to 4.7 billion Swiss francs ($6.5 billion, €4.5 billion), hurt by the strong Swiss franc against most major currencies. Sales also fell 12.9 percent to 41 billion francs for the six months ending June, as the foreign exchange rate had a negative impact of 13.8 percent.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Nestle

In a world where both business and information are globalized, big business practices deemed unacceptable – wherever they take place – are liable to unleash  furious consumer reactions.

1. Aggressive marketing of baby milks and foods and undermining of breastfeeding,  in breach of international standards.
2. Nestle is being slammed for sourcing milk from a Mugabe-owned farm in Zimbabwe.The multinational firm has been buying 10 to 15 per cent of the milk processed at its Zimbabwe factory from a farm that was allegedly acquired from white owners under threat of violence and given to the dictator’s wife, Grace Mugabe.
3. Trade union busting and failing to act on related court decisions in the Philippines.
4. Failure to act on child labour and slavery in its cocoa supply chain.
5. Exploitation of farmers, particularly in the dairy and coffee sectors.
6. Environmental degradation, particularly of water resources.
7. Cover-up of sex scandal and trade/distributor bullying in Nestle Philippines