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HOW TO USE LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANIES & LIMITED PARTNERSHIPS

GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR LEGAL STRUCTURE

A painstakingly meticulous introduction to a labyrinthine sector of business law.

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A concise but comprehensive overview of legal strategies to manage a business and protect one’s assets.

There are several legal entities that one may use to conduct a business, including corporations, general partnerships, limited partnerships, and limited liability companies. Attorney Sutton (Loopholes of Real Estate, 2013, etc.) takes each legal structure in turn and explains its essential advantages and disadvantages. Each is designed in different ways to control the management of one’s business, shield oneself from legal and financial liability, and capitalize on opportunities to lower one’s tax burden. This introductory volume is notably thorough, including a separate chapter on intellectual property—essential for “any halfway sophisticated purchaser of a business”—and extended discussions of bankruptcy, estate planning, and divorce. Sutton also provides a lengthy treatment of fundraising and the pertinent laws that govern securities. During a discussion of due diligence, the author even furnishes a template for keeping the minutes of a meeting. A spirit of relentless preparation in a dangerous, unpredictable world infuses the entire book: “As every reader knows, there are predators in our society poised to attack for the slightest real or imagined infraction,” Sutton notes. The subject matter is often vertiginously complex and full of hypertechnical legalese, but the author lucidly explains it all. He approaches the material like a teacher, using simple hypothetical scenarios to illustrate nuanced points; he also includes lists of frequently asked questions and their answers. No amateur could possibly master all the relevant details here, so the book is best understood as a primer that will allow readers to competently hire a legal expert. This isn’t breezy reading, and its comprehension demands focused study. However, it’s hard to imagine a more rational exposition, and it should prove useful to those who need to understand the difference between sound and unsound guidance.

A painstakingly meticulous introduction to a labyrinthine sector of business law.

Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-944194-14-7

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Success DNA, INC.

Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017

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THE CULTURE MAP

BREAKING THROUGH THE INVISIBLE BOUNDARIES OF GLOBAL BUSINESS

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.

“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

Pub Date: May 27, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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