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With the world watching on as Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad continues to carry out horrific crimes against his own people, the West has finally responded with coordinated calls for him to stand down. The US have also imposed severe sanctions on Syria, including the freezing of their US assets and banning US citizens from operating or investing in Syria. A UN delegation has also been sent in the last couple of days to assess humanitarian needs in the country. However, these actions still fall some way short of the military intervention seen over the past 5 months in Libya by UN forces and there are also doubts over how long it will take for such sanctions to have an impact on the country and its President.

Is there any other way to ensure a regime change? The military option which the coalition jumped on so quickly for Libya, is not practical. Syria has a strong army and a powerful friend in Iran. It is one of those troublesome countries like Burma, North Korea, Zimbabwe and Iran itself, where it’s very easy for the West to convince itself that it has a justification for intervention, but military and political considerations get in the way.

So, what about negotiating a deal for regime change? Ironically this might have been possible in Libya, but the coalition didn’t really give itself a chance before opting for the military route. Gaddafi may be mad as well as bad, but he was happy enough to do a deal with Tony Blair to renounce terrorism when it suited him. It may be that a dignified exit which met his needs could have been negotiated. This would have […]

The Google bid for Motorola is indeed puzzling in some respects.

Why would Google want to compromise the independence of its Android system in this way? Now it’s in handset competition with the likes of Samsung and who have previously made big commitments to Android. Why would it want to be in the handset business at all given that it is low margin and very tough?

The only answer can lie in the 17,000 patents Motorola possesses. These are big negotiating currency in the competition between major hardware companies. Apple recently had to pay millions of dollars to Nokia and ongoing licence royalties in order to settle outstanding patent disputes. HTC is anticipating a similar outcome having acquired S3 – a company which has just won a similar preliminary ITC judgement against Apple in relation to patent infringement. Ericsson and Sony recently paid an eye watering US$4.5 billion for some 6,000 Nortel patents on the same basis.

Perhaps Google sees Motorola’s patents in purely negotiating terms, as a spoiler for competition and an important insurance policy for itself. After all, having “rules and regulations” on your side is an important piece of bargaining power in any negotiation…

I was interested to see that La Liga went on strike last weekend over the creation of a salary fund to protect the wages of Spanish players against non-payment by Spanish League clubs. In spite of the success of Spanish Football, most clubs other than Barcelona and Real Madrid experience severe financial difficulties routinely. As many as 22 of the 42 professional clubs have passed through administration over the last few years and €52million is owed in unpaid wages to players.

The problem is not difficult to spot – Real Madrid and Barcelona take 3 times as much of the TV monies paid to La Liga than any other club. So, they use their bargaining power to max out on revenues from the game, leaving other clubs to fight for the scraps. This is a “users” approach to deal-making, where no attention is paid to the needs of any other parties.

This may seem great for the top 2 clubs, but actually, like most “user” negotiating behaviour, it is short sighted. How great would it be for Barcelona and Real Madrid if the other clubs were so impoverished that they couldn’t offer effective competition? It would not be good at all. The League would be very boring, and actually Real Madrid and Barcelona players would not get sufficiently tested to make them tough enough or sophisticated enough for the Champions League.

You only have to look at what has happened in Scotland to see the force of this. Celtic and Rangers dominate and other clubs rarely get a look in. Which club other than Celtic or Rangers last won the League recently? The result is that actually Celtic and Rangers, along with their poorer cousins, are […]

A new rights deal has been struck between the English Premier/Football League and Media Organisations meaning reporters are now free to use Twitter and live blogs throughout matches. This replaces the old outdated system whereby the media were only allowed to upload text and picture updates during certain fixed ‘windows’. This deal reminds me of the same dilemma record companies have faced over the years since digitisation shook up the music business. How is it best to keep control of your rights when the whole thrust of digital distribution makes it harder to keep control?

In relation to music people want to share it, copy it, make mash ups, and download stuff for free. The only thing that can’t be shared in exactly its original form is a live event like a concert. It’s the same with football. There is limited access to the live matches but everything else around the game is up for grabs and people expect to be able to share it – highlights, video clips and live feeds from matches included. It must be very tempting for the Premier League to react as the Music Industry did and try to control all of this usage based on the value its clubs create. But in fact, as the experience of the Music Industry has shown, this is a mistake. Paradoxically, by trying to exert control you alienate consumers and diminish the value of what you are trying to protect. If you relax control then the interest and engagement you stimulate can be turned into value.

So the Premier League has done the right thing by allowing live twitter feeds. Like many fans I follow these as well. They keep […]

The vacillation over the Euro is a classic case of “avoidance” negotiating behaviour. This kind of negotiating behaviour is not to be recommended, as it creates uncertainty and lack of confidence in whoever you are dealing with.

The Debt crisis within a number of the Eurozone is placing impossible strains on the Euro. The financial markets do not believe the various “austerity” programmes which have been created to accompany individual country bail-outs such as in Greece and Ireland. Nor do they believe that countries like Spain and Italy can avoid a default in the absence of bail-outs which the Eurozone cannot afford.

The only answer to the continued market anxiety is to engage with the problem, but the Eurozone seems to lack the political will to do so. Germany does not wish to underwrite Euro indebtedness with a blank cheque (e.g. by backing a Euro bond). Germany and France would like to utilise the current crisis to impose strict fiscal controls on the Eurozone in future so that member states don’t live beyond their means. But there seems little political will from the other states to accept this kind of political harmonisation. Even the will to engage with ratings agencies like Standard and Poor seems to be lacking – finding ways through dialogue to counter their gloomy predictions, which often spook market anxieties, would surely be a step forward.

Instead France and Germany have put the onus on the European Central Bank to sort out the problem, through interventions involving the buying of European government bonds. Nobody is convinced by this sticking-plaster solution.

When you “avoid” engaging in a necessary negotiation you frustrate the other side, they lose confidence in dealing with you, and they fantasise about all […]

The best news about the hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas over captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shilat is that they are seemingly being negotiated with Egypt mediating between the parties.

Mediation is a very effective technique where there are highly emotional conflicts to work through. Often where there is a large degree of emotional history or the current dispute is highly charged it’s difficult for the parties to feel dispassionate enough to negotiate rationally. The emotionalism just gets in the way. Leaving aside the emotional results of 3,000 years of conflict, for Israel the return of its soldiers is always a big emotional issue, whilst for Hamas the return of what it regards as political prisoners is equally charged.

So, using Egypt as a go-between is a good idea. The best mediators are seen to be neutral, are trusted by both sides, keep matters confidential, and are prepared to challenge the entrenched positions of both sides. In the UK Mediation has an 80% success rate in resolving litigious disputes. Maybe it is the best way to resolve this kind of tense, political issue, too.

Amazon’s recent drive into the video streaming market may well succeed, but it could also carry some risk for its brand.

In its negotiations for our attention as consumers, Amazon has developed a great sense of “authority”. This is an acknowledged source of bargaining power, as we are all more likely to trust entities which exude authority, and that authority is reinforced by the social conformity which leads more and more of us to trust it. All great brands have this pedigree of authority – from Apple to Harrods. It is wrapped up in a combination of reliability and expertise. This creates a conundrum for such brands though – how to extend such authority into other areas of business where that authority does not yet exist.

Brands are often keen to diversify – but can they carry their authority into new areas? If not then new ventures may fail and this may in turn affect the core brand itself – with harmful effects for the “deal” by which they obtained consumers’ attention in the first place. Virgin is a good example – it has been successful in turning its mixture of refreshing exuberance into an airline brand – less successful when it comes to Cola and cosmetics and trains – and maybe those uneven attempts at diversity have weakened our perceptions of what Virgin stands for, so that we are less likely to sit up and pay attention when Virgin negotiates for our attention as consumers.

For Amazon, video-streaming is an interesting extension of its core brand. It is peerless in the world of e-commerce books, and has extended that brand to book downloads and latterly music downloads. Is video streaming proximate enough to what […]

Deadline pressure can influence both buyers and sellers, so the real “winners” on transfer deadline day are those who go into the negotiations feeling in the strongest state of mind.

1. Give yourself the option to walk away from a deal

If you are feeling as though you can walk away from deals (either as a buyer or a seller) then that will stand you in good stead, and the approaching deadline will not affect you too much. If you are feeling anxious or desperate then the looming deadline will only make things worse, as your available options narrow. Moreover, your anxiety will communicate itself to the other side and encourage them to take a more assertive position against you.

2. Don’t put pressure on yourself by leaving a deal to the last possible minute

Arsene Wenger can’t have enjoyed deadline day at all, with the whole world knowing that he needed players in the wake of the departure of Fabregas and Nasri, and that awful result at Man Utd. Although he picked up some players, none of them are world beaters, and he would not even have got Arteta had the player himself not agitated for a transfer. Wenger would have been much better off selling Fabregas and Nasri earlier in the summer when he would have had far more options by way of replacement and far less time-pressure to find replacements. That would have put him and Arsenal in a much stronger negotiating state.

3. If someone wants to leave a deal, it’s probably best to let them

Was Moyes right to let Arteta go? Probably. There is no point keeping players who are miserable. Arsenal did not get a great season out of Fabregas […]

The recent Court Judgement in the EMI/MP3 Tunes case makes sobering reading for all those involved in the debate and the negotiations over the legitimacy of music locker services.

MP3 Tunes was broadly found to be operating under the “safe harbour” rules of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, so it was not liable for infringement in relation to its music locker service. However, one of the conditions of safe harbour protection is that you must respond to take down notices and terminate the accounts of repeat infringers, and MP3 Tunes was found to have failed this test.

Cue PR from both sides claiming victory. The issue is important because of the issue of much bigger cloud-based locker services recently launched by Apple, Google and Amazon.

Legal judgements create a potential source of bargaining power in negotiations, because they are a source of the power conveyed by “rules and regulations”. However, they are expensive to obtain and often, as in this case, somewhat inconclusive or distinguishable on their facts. What’s worse, they create a very “hostile” negotiating climate. Such is the antipathy on all sides that Amazon and Google both launched their locker services without the consent of the record labels.

It is understandable that participants in a negotiation of this kind seek the power of legal precedent to back up their position and gain a hold over each other. However, maybe the medium-term answer is to re-set the negotiating climate. Even a “cool” climate – very objective and process driven – might yield better negotiating results ultimately, than reliance on the power-based tactics of litigation…

The latest stats from You Tube concerning views of Vevo and the separate Warner channel are striking. 38% of You Tube’s July visitors watched a Vevo video, and 19.8% of them watched a video on the Warners channel.

But does “scale” alone create enough bargaining power to make a difference in the negotiations that record labels have to undertake in this area?

Scale is certainly an acknowledged source of bargaining power in any deal. You can imagine it having some weight in negotiations between You Tube and Record labels over a share of ad revenue from video streams. But this is only one kind of negotiation that record labels have to undertake, as in the digital age a share of ad revenues is unlikely to make “the” difference for labels financially, whatever percentage they negotiate.

Labels also have to negotiate for the attention of consumers (and try to turn that attention into cash). Here sheer scale is not enough, as there are enough streams available elsewhere (and for free) to enable scale on Vevo to be negated by lack of scarcity elsewhere. So, other forms of bargaining power need to be brought into play.

Can record labels leverage their “expertise” for example, to create authoritative offerings which consumers value and might pay for? On the same basis can they use the unique “information” at their disposal about their artists and their products to create attention and value? Information is a source of power…Can they re-create scarcity through the creation of multiple bundles which are exclusive by reference to time or channel? Can they use their “network” power (the power to connect users with desirable networks, such as their network of artists) to create value?

Scale is a […]