You might expect to pay more if you choose a doctor outside your insurer’s network. But what if you don’t know a doctor’s status — or are in no position to ask? The result can be a nasty surprise known as balance billing.

Insured patients are sometimes hit with unforeseen charges after emergencies, when they are taken to the closest hospital regardless of whether the facility accepts their insurance. Consumers also may be billed after visiting in-network hospitals if they received treatment from medical providers who work there but don’t participate in the same health plans. When that happens, insurers often pay part of the doctors’ fees, and the physicians bill patients for the difference. This is the practice known as balance billing, and it can leave consumers battling both the insurer and the medical provider to get the charge reduced.

Tom Pritchard, of Hartwick, N.Y., knew the orthopedic surgeon who operated on his hand last December was in his insurer’s network. So was the outpatient surgery center. But when a bill arrived weeks later, he got a surprise: The anesthesiologist didn’t accept his health plan. After Mr. Pritchard’s plan paid the specialist at its out-of-network rate, the anesthesiology practice asked the 57-year-old retiree to pony up the remaining $580.

So far, Mr. Pritchard says he has refused to pay, because he’s upset no one warned him or gave him a chance to request an in-network doctor. “It never occurred to me to ask” about the anesthesiologist, he says. “Why would I?”

A growing number of state regulators are moving to crack down on balance billing. Mr. Pritchard testified in October at a public hearing held by the New York State Insurance Department, which is drafting proposed regulations that could force more disclosure by medical providers and insurers and shield consumers from unexpected charges. California regulators recently made it illegal for people covered by health-maintenance organizations to be balance-billed for out-of-network emergency services. And late last year Illinois put out a bulletin that protects many consumers from balance bills in certain situations if they make a “good faith” effort to use in-network doctors.

Alamy

Insured patients may get hit with big bills from out-of-network health-care providers, even if the situation was an emergency.

Join a Discussion

Have you ever encountered balance billing? What did you do? Share your thoughts in Journal Community.

Online Resources

If you’re faced with an unexpected bill from a health-care provider seeking the difference between his fee and what your health plan paid, you should start by calling your insurer and the doctor’s office. If you can’t resolve the matter, you may want to turn to a consumer advocate for help.

Families USA offers links to state-based advocacy groups and state-government health advocates.

• The Patient Advocate Foundation is a nonprofit.
• Here are some companies you can hire. patientcare4u.com, healthproponent.com, healthcareadvocates.com, healthchampion.net
• States have different rules governing balance billing, which may protect you. This site has links to state insurance regulators you can call.
• Here is information about some recent regulatory actions in California, Louisiana and New York (scroll down to the Oct. 7 hearing).

“The patient shouldn’t have to bear that burden,” says Michael McRaith, director of the Illinois division of insurance. He says the problem may be growing partly because some doctors are feeling squeezed by insurers’ reimbursement rates, prompting them to drop out of networks and bill patients instead.

It’s not clear how much balance billing occurs in the U.S., but the practice appears to be widespread. A state survey last year by the California Association of Health Plans found that 16% of insured respondents who had visited an emergency room in the previous two years had been balance-billed. Based on that, the group estimated that 1.76 million Californians had faced such charges for emergency room visits in that period, with amounts averaging $300 each.

Physician groups say doctors have the right to refuse to sign up with insurers’ networks, and regulators shouldn’t bar doctors who don’t participate in health plans from billing insured patients. They say that insurers’ payments to out-of-network health providers are often unfairly small. “You can’t turn it around and say it’s the doctor’s fault,” says Nancy Nielsen, president of the American Medical Association.

Insurers Defend Payouts

Insurers counter that they shouldn’t be forced to pay whatever fee out-of-network health-care providers demand. “You have a set of specialists who won’t contract with health plans, and they want to bill whatever they choose,” says Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans.

Insurers also defend how they calculate payments they make to out-of-network doctors and hospitals. The size of the payments, known as reasonable-and-customary fees, is often derived from a database of medical-claims price information. Still, the New York attorney general’s office is investigating the legitimacy of insurers’ methods.

Ronald Eckert, a Las Vegas casino employee, says he can’t afford to pay the approximately $8,200 charge from an out-of-network surgeon who operated on his fractured eye socket after he fell last year. Mr. Eckert says that when he arrived in the emergency room he asked a nurse to call his health plan and check for coverage. But by the time the surgeon came to his room, the 59-year-old says, he was semi-conscious and not in any condition to confirm that the doctor would accept his insurance.

“I didn’t pick him. I was on a morphine drip when all of this was decided,” says Mr. Eckert, who is working with the Nevada governor’s office for consumer health assistance to negotiate a reduced bill.

There are ways to fight back against balance billing. When you are planning a procedure in advance, ask detailed questions about the potential role of out-of-network doctors in your care. Anesthesiologists, radiologists and pathologists are often the most likely to not accept many health plans, but they’re not the only ones. If possible, you can request an in-network provider, or you can seek to work out terms in advance with the doctor and insurer.

After medical treatment, you should expect to have to pay out-of-pocket any co-payment or co-insurance fee, and any deductible that your plan requires. If you get a bill that goes beyond these, start by calling your insurer and the doctor’s office for more information, as well as your employer if your health benefits are from your workplace.

Find out if you are being balance billed by a health-care provider who is in your network and for a service covered by your plan. If so, you probably don’t have to pay. States generally prohibit such charges, which also typically violate your insurer’s contract with the doctor.

If the doctor is not in your insurer’s network, there still might be steps you can take. Some states have regulations that may protect you from balance billing in certain situations, most commonly emergencies. Check with your state’s insurance regulator.

Your insurer also may be able to help; companies’ responses to unexpected out-of-network balance bills often depend on the member’s particular benefits package and whether the care was for an emergency or not. In any case, insurers say consumers should call them before writing any checks to the doctors. “You should not pay that bill and figure you’re going to get it back in the end,” says Wendy Sherry, vice president for product development at Cigna Corp.

Filing an Appeal

She says Cigna typically tries to “protect members … when it wasn’t a voluntary use of an out-of-network provider.” Aetna Inc.

says it will “attempt to work through the situation on the member’s behalf.” UnitedHealth Group Inc.

says that if a member is billed inappropriately, it will generally negotiate with the hospital or doctor “to take the member out of the middle.”

If your insurer and the doctor can’t reach a compromise and you’re still getting billed, you can file an appeal with your insurer to try to force the health plan to pay more. You can also try to negotiate with the health-care provider.

Leanne Suter and her husband, Mark Watters, a pilot, were socked with big bills for the emergency treatment Mr. Watters got after a helicopter crash last year off the coast of Florida. With injuries including broken ribs and back and punctured lungs, Mr. Watters says he was in no shape to ask questions after the accident, when an air ambulance ferried him to a trauma center. Ms. Suter, a local television reporter in Los Angeles, later checked that the hospital accepted their insurance. It did, so she assumed its doctors would as well.

But both the air service and the trauma surgeon who later operated on Mr. Watters weren’t in the couple’s insurance network. Ms. Suter hired a firm called Healthcare Advocates Inc. and appealed the initial charges. She got the health plan to increase the amount it paid for the treatment, though this still fell well short of the bill totals. Then she convinced the air service to reduce its approximately $5,600 remaining charge to $2,200, saying she couldn’t afford any more. But so far, she says, the trauma surgeon’s office hasn’t backed down, and wants more than $16,000. “Where am I going to come up with the money?” she says.

• Email: anna.mathews@wsj.com.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D1

DJ-AIG Commodity Indexes

Soybean futures have slid 6.6% from a nearly four-year high at the end of April. And they have further to fall heading into the summer.

Soybeans rallied, starting in mid-December — and July futures climbed 33.1% to their April high of $15.055 a bushel — as forecasters repeatedly cut their estimates for the harvests in drought-stricken Brazil and Argentina, the world’s second- and third-largest soybean producers, behind the U.S.

At the same time, China, the world’s largest soybean importer, keeps buying U.S. soybeans, despite high prices. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced new sales to China or to “unknown” buyers — which traders assume means China — throughout the last month. The USDA reinforced both themes in a monthly supply-and-demand report released Thursday, cutting forecasts of soybean output in Brazil and Argentina and raising its estimate of Chinese imports.

Those reports might give futures a bump in the near term, but pitfalls lie on the path to another new high. The oilseed will likely continue to grind down in the next two to three months.

“History has proven that $15 beans on the board is unsustainable,” says Joe Vaclavik, an analyst with brokerage Straits Financial in Chicago. “When it happens, it doesn’t last very long.”

Soybean futures closed last week down 4.9% at $14.06 a bushel for the Chicago Board of Trade July contract.

THERE ARE NEW FACTORS that are likely to start driving down soybean prices in the coming weeks. First, the soy harvest in South America is approaching completion, leaving limited room for analysts to make further cuts in output forecasts. And continued high prices will eventually take a bite out of Chinese demand. Chinese buyers will likely seek alternatives, such as using extra corn and wheat in animal feed, says Andy Shissler, a broker in Downers Grove, Ill., for Roach Ag Marketing. China could also import more frozen pork, instead of buying pricey soybeans for use as feed on its own pig farms, he said.

Also, more supplies may be on the way. Nothing motivates farmers like high prices–and many in the U.S. who were lured by strong corn prices early this year may take a second look at soybeans. Analysts expect more farmers than usual to “double-crop” their wheat fields, planting soybeans immediately after harvesting wheat in the spring. That will boost U.S. acreage, which analysts previously worried would be insufficient to meet demand.

Furthermore, a fast start so far to the U.S. soy planting season could lead to an early harvest, bringing new supplies to market ahead of schedule.

High soybean prices also produce another risk. Many speculative buyers have piled into the market. Managed funds, including hedge funds, held 238,303 long positions and only 7,975 short positions in soybean futures and options as of May 8, according to the most recent government data.

If long-positioned funds sniff problems and begin to pull out, any decline would be accentuated.

The risks just outweigh the rewards for the high-flying oilseed right now. 

OWEN FLETCHER, who is based in Chicago, covers commodities and other topics for Dow Jones Newswires.

E-mail:
editors@barrons.com

By LESLIE KWOH

Unless Goldman Sachs

executive Greg Smith is shopping a book proposal, the scathing opinion piece he wrote announcing his resignation in Wednesday’s New York Times is a lesson in how not to quit, career experts say.

The piece, titled “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs,” accused the banking behemoth of fostering a toxic culture where profits come before client interests. In the piece, Mr. Smith criticized senior management and aspiring leaders for hewing primarily to the goal of making money.

The right way to quit is to “just resign and move on, and keep it quiet,” says Laura Hill, president of Careers in Motion LLC, a career-coaching firm in New York City.

Mr. Smith may have sought sympathy or catharsis, but airing grievances about superiors in a letter, whether private or public, is unlikely to amount to much, she adds. “It’s not going to change the organization,” she says.

Still, Mr. Smith’s piece dominated chatter among Wall Street workers on Wednesday and set off a social-media firestorm. Online commenters’ views ran the gamut of emotion, from disgust to wistful admiration for Mr. Smith. On one point, however, nearly all agreed: Mr. Smith is unlikely to find work in finance.

Ms. Hill concurs: “What he did generally renders you unemployable in your industry” and makes him unlikely to be seen as trustworthy by many other firms.

Mr. Smith didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment Wednesday.

However harmful Mr. Smith’s letter may be for his future prospects, crisis-management experts say the episode should spur Goldman to think deeply about how and why one employee’s discontent could fester and spill over so publicly.

Employees generally become disgruntled when they feel like they aren’t being heard by management, says Davia Temin, chief executive of Temin and Company, a New York crisis- and reputation-management firm. Frustrations can grow when employees escalate concerns to higher and higher levels and still feel ignored.

While Ms. Temin says she doesn’t have firsthand knowledge of the situation within Goldman, she notes that it’s possible that writing an op-ed may have been a last resort for Mr. Smith. “If he felt like he was being heard, it probably would not have gotten to this point,” she says.

In a statement, Goldman rebutted Mr. Smith’s account of the company’s culture. “We disagree with the views expressed, which we don’t think reflect the way we run our business,” a spokeswoman wrote. “In our view, we will only be successful if our clients are successful. This fundamental truth lies at the heart of how we conduct ourselves.”

Ms. Hill of Careers in Motion notes that while it may be difficult to lead cultural change at a company as large as Goldman, disgruntled employees should handle their frustrations by first “setting an example” for their colleagues. If they’re still dissatisfied with the response, then it may be time to leave the company—gracefully. That includes refraining from bashing an employer in later job interviews.

Someone in Mr. Smith’s position, for example, might describe their previous employer in more diplomatic terms, she says: “Over time, I felt their commitment to customers was not as strong.”

By VICTORIA MCGRANE And JESSICA HOLZER

WASHINGTON—James Dimon may have some explaining to do on Capitol Hill.

On Tuesday, Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska, a Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said he wants the J.P. Morgan Chase

& Co. chief executive to expound on the bank’s $2 billion-plus trading loss.

Other lawmakers said they didn’t necessarily need Mr. Dimon in person but sought more details to clear up what happened at the largest U.S. bank by assets.

“We need to get the facts out,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), also a member of the banking committee, echoing calls for a hearing on the bank’s trading loss. On Monday, the panel’s Democratic chairman, Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota, announced hearings on financial regulation at which the J.P. Morgan trading loss is “expected to be discussed,” but not a specific inquiry into the soured bets.

Five days after disclosure of the trading loss, some government officials struggled to determine whether the trading loss would have violated the “Volcker rule” provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law. The Volcker rule prohibits banks from trading with their own funds.

The trading loss puts Democrats in an awkward spot because many pushed for Wall Street rules, some of which still aren’t in place four years after the financial crisis. It puts Republicans in a tough place because they have pushed for less regulation. Some Republicans pointed out that the loss wasn’t too large to be absorbed by J.P. Morgan and that banks often face losses, no matter how they are regulated.

At a fiscal conference Tuesday in Washington, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the J.P. Morgan loss made “a very powerful case” for the tougher financial rules the Obama administration put into law.

Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R., Texas), chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said lawmakers need a “a clear picture of what happened at J.P. Morgan so that we can determine whether the actions that caused this loss pose risks to our financial markets and our economy as a whole.”

House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R., Ala.) said Tuesday his panel would hold a hearing on the trading loss. It was unclear if Mr. Dimon would be called to testify.

Republican lawmakers on Tuesday tabled a set of bills that would curtail the Dodd-Frank law’s rules on derivatives so they could “ensure there are no unintended consequences of the legislation,” said Frank Lucas (R., Okla.), chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture. Mr. Lucas said the legislation wouldn’t have made a difference in regard to J.P. Morgan’s trading loss.

“As always, Washington has a tendency to overreact,” he said.

—Victoria McGrane,

Jessica Holzer, Jamila Trindle

and Kristina Peterson

contributed to this article.

Write to Victoria McGrane at victoria.mcgrane@wsj.com and Jessica Holzer at jessica.holzer@dowjones.com

A version of this article appeared May 16, 2012, on page C2 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Lawmakers Seek an Accounting.

If money and credit are the lifeblood of the economy, then finance is its cardiovascular system. When that system fails, as it did following the collapse of Lehman Brothers last September, the results can be catastrophic.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal assembled roughly 100 of the brightest minds in finance to discuss not just how to restart the global financial system, but how to reconstruct it, so both the spectacular excesses and catastrophic failures of the past decade can be avoided.

The group included financiers such as George Soros and Blackstone Group co-founder Stephen Schwarzman, prominent academics such as Nobel Prize winners Myron Scholes and Robert Engle, and former government leaders including ex-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker. Using a deliberative process devised by The Journal, the group debated dozens of principles on which a new financial system might be constructed, and in the end adopted 20 of them, which are published in this report.

Participants were encouraged to keep their focus on the Future of Finance, but the current crisis was impossible to avoid. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner spoke to the group on the same day that he unveiled his plan for a new Public-Private Investment Program to buy toxic assets from the banks. There was considerable skepticism among members of the group about whether that plan would work, but also an eagerness to suggest ways of improving its odds of success.

The group also was urged to consider the problem in all its global ramifications. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who addressed the group on its opening night, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who addressed many of the participants in New York after the close, both emphasized the importance of coming up with new institutions that can manage a world with multiple, interrelated financial centers.

 

The Future of Finance Conference Opens

2:04

WSJ’s Heidi Moore and Annelena Lobb report from The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Finance Initiative, where U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is the keynote speaker. More than a hundred CEOs, investors and academics will meet to discuss the credit crisis.

• 
  
  The Rhetoric Against Wall Street
  
  
• 
  
  Perspectives from Future of Finance
  
  

The participants were challenged to set aside, as much as possible, their self-interest, and consider changes that were good for the financial system and society overall. But inevitably, self-interest reared its head. When the results of the deliberations were presented to Lawrence Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, and to Prime Minister Brown, they were offered in that spirit: While they reflect the enormous knowledge and expertise of the participants, they also, to some degree, reflect their financial stakes as well.

One underlying theme of the discussions was that, in the end, Wall Street and Main Street are in this together. The people on Main Street can’t survive without a functioning finance system. And those on Wall Street can’t hope to prosper until they’ve repaired the social rift that has been graphically demonstrated by, among other things, the outburst of public anger over the bonuses paid to executives of AIG.

As several speakers pointed out, the world today faces not only a financial and economic crisis, but also a political and social crisis. To be successful, solutions must address all aspects.

— Alan Murray

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page R1

By JOSH BARBANEL

The national luxury-home builder Toll Brothers

is moving to alter two small, pre-Civil War houses that survive amid the tall co-ops of Park Avenue, despite lobbying efforts by neighbors to save them.

A group of neighbors, concerned that they could ultimately lose their views along with a piece of history, are asking the Landmarks Preservation Commission to schedule an emergency meeting to take up the issue.

“If prompt action is not taken by the Commission, these treasures will be lost,” a group of neighbors wrote in a letter to the commission on Monday.

Toll Brothers has filed an application to remove cornices and replace existing windows on two façades that Park Avenue preservationists want to save. A box labeled “partial demolition” is checked on its filing.

Battles over Manhattan views and light and preservation are among the oldest stories in New York real estate. But it may be a new chapter for Toll Brothers, which by purchasing sites assembled by others has typically avoided neighborhood controversy in the borough.

In March, Toll Brothers paid a total of $29.5 million for the two adjacent houses situated between East 89th and 90th streets. The three- and four-story houses that date to 1856 have been altered over the years, but are considered to be among the oldest surviving buildings on Upper Park Avenue.

A few weeks after completing the purchases, Toll Brothers installed a sidewalk shed and scaffolding, usually a first step in the demolition process. The company has asked the retail tenants to move out, but at least one is resisting.

Last Friday, Toll Brothers submitted its application even as opponents plotted to find ways to stop the project, hiring lawyers and gathering signatures. The application was approved on Monday, but a permit necessary for actual demolition work to begin on the site has not been issued.

“You just don’t demolish history and stuff it into textbooks,” said Alice Scovell Coleman, a children’s book author whose ninth-floor windows are directly on the edge of the Toll Brothers site’s property line.

Todd Dumaresq, a marketing manager for Toll Brothers City Living, the company unit overseeing the project, declined to provide any details of its building plans or to comment on opposition in the neighborhood.

Kira Sterling, chief marketing officer for Toll Brothers, said in an email that the company didn’t have a comment at this time.

The issue is a pressing one for owners in the two brick co-op buildings on either side of the houses purchased by Toll Brothers. One of the co-ops, at 1112 Park Ave., is on an L-shaped property, with a wing on Park Avenue and a wing that extends along the property line behind the two houses.

In all, neighbors say that the views and light caught by as many as 175 windows could be affected in the two buildings if Toll Brothers chooses to build a new condo of 15 stories or more on the site of the houses.

From her 14th-floor living-room windows, Lucinda Ballard can see brick-and-stone buildings, wooden water towers, flowering cherry trees and open sky. But her living room and dining room windows were built on the lot lines and her views could be threatened.

“We get incredible light in the morning,” she said, standing at her window. A former filmmaker, she usually spends her days as a volunteer tour guide at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but now she is busy organizing meetings and gathering signatures.

Burt Wallack, the president of Wallack Management, who manages 1100 Park Ave., on the other side of the Toll Brothers site, said his co-op board “is extremely active” on the issue, but he declined to provide details.

Charlie Akwa, the owner of the Silver Peacock, a home décor center in one of the Toll Brothers buildings, said she has hired a lawyer and is “fighting to stay.”

When the two houses were built before the Civil War, Park Avenue was known as Fourth Avenue and a railroad spewed steam and sparks ran down the center of the street.

During the 1910s and 1920s, after the railroad was sunk below grade and covered over, owners of the two houses were among a small number of holdouts who didn’t sell out to developers.

Now the neighbors group wants the Landmarks Preservation Commission to preserve a glimpse of the avenue before it became synonymous with luxury and affluence, one of New York’s most famous streets.

At first, the neighbors stepped up efforts to extend the existing Carnegie Hill Historic District to include all buildings on Park Avenue between 86th and 96th streets. The proposal was submitted several years ago.

Now they are pressing for a separate landmarking designation for the two buildings, one of which for many years had been the studio and home of Judith Rothschild, an artist who died in 1993. Until a few years ago, it was owned by a foundation she set up.

So far the commission staff has reacted coolly to proposals to expand the historic district. “We are not in the business of protecting views,” said Elizabeth de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the commission. “It is our job to protect the historic character and integrity of a neighborhood.”

She said that while nearby sections of Park Avenue may be eligible for historic designation, the staff wouldn’t recommend it now “because of other priorities.”

This has provoked anger and frustration on Park Avenue, said Ronald D. Spencer, who lives next door to the old houses and is the chairman of the Fund for Park Avenue, which maintains the Park Avenue malls. “We put up 150,000 tulips up and down Park Avenue and raised over $1 million a year for the city,” he said. “The commission could at least do us a favor by doing their job.”

Toll Brothers has a strong track record in Manhattan. It sold 21 of 22 apartments at the Touraine, a new condo on East 65th Street, since they went on the market last fall. It said it expects to sell out at an average of $5 million per apartment.

Write to Josh Barbanel at josh.barbanel@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared May 15, 2012, on page A22 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Fearing the Worst on Park Avenue.

By DIANA RANSOM

Many small businesses got lean over the last few months. They scrapped fruitless projects, renegotiated costly contracts, introduced more efficient policies and laid off workers. But after the latest employment report revealed that job losses moderated in July, some owners may be thinking about hiring.

“Thanks to layoffs, there are some real talented people out there,” says Ken Esch, a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers’ private company services practice in Chicago. “A lot of small-to-medium-sized businesses see this as an opportunity to trade up and make additional investments to help the business move forward.”

And although many business owners are deferring their hiring plans — aiming to squeeze more productivity out of their existing staffs — aggressive companies attempting to position themselves for future success are bolstering their work forces now, Esch says.

The decision to add staff should be weighed seriously because overall economic activity is expected to continue to decline, albeit modestly, for next several months, says Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, an economic forecasting and advisory firm in St. Louis.

Here’s how to calculate whether or not you can afford to add workers:

Estimate future sales

Before thinking about hiring more workers, estimate your company’s future sales. Sit down with customers and ask them how much they plan to buy from your company, says Chris Carey, a small-business pricing consultant in New York. The longer the time period you can project, the better, he says. “Most companies know month by month how much they’ll need for the next 12 months.” If you’re counting on reeling in new customers or you have several promising projects on deck, estimate how much those activities will return.

Pinpoint jobs to add

Identify which jobs to fill based on your company’s needs, says Gregg Landers, the director of growth management at the accounting firm CBIZ MHM in San Diego. This can be relatively easy. For example, if your firm recently experienced a surge in product orders, you may consider adding manufacturing personnel. However, if you’re trying to drive demand, brining on more salespeople may be the way to go, Landers says.

Project added revenues

Estimate how much those workers will contribute to the company, Carey says. If they’re helping build products or performing services, estimate how many products they can build or services they can perform in a given period. For an easier way to gauge their contribution, think in terms of units per hour, Carey says. If one worker can build five units per hour and you can sell a single unit for $40, that worker will add about $52,000 of revenue a year.

Add up expenses

Add up the costs associated with those new workers. Factor in their salaries, recruiting and training costs, as well as the cost of providing benefits, Esch says. In addition, estimate how much added employees impact your company’s variable and direct costs, Carey says. If you need to purchase more manufacturing materials or computer equipment to accommodate added workers, factor in those costs as well, he says.

Figure your profits

Based on your firm’s projected cash flow, determine whether your profit margins can support hiring more employees, Landers says. Let’s say it costs $40,000 a year to employ that worker who can build five $40 units an hour. Because your company estimates that it’s able to generate $52,000 in sales as a result of that person’s work, you can dust off your help-wanted sign confidently.

On the other hand, if you’re looking to add sales staff, the equation is a bit foggier, Esch says. In this case, estimate at what point your investment in these workers likely will return a profit. “Many businesses these days are going to want an immediate, one- to two-year payback on this investment,” he says. So, if it costs you roughly $65,000 to add a salesperson, you should plan to be able to recoup your investment in a year or two, Esch says.

Get temp help

If your company’s projected profit margins don’t leave you enough wiggle room to hire more full-time workers, you’ll have to find another way to meet demand, Landers says. He recommends looking into temporary workers or outsourcing certain tasks. This way, “you can avoid laying someone off if the work ends up disappearing in the next few months,” he says. “But if you keep those temporary employees around for two to three months, working more than three days a week, you should seriously consider hiring full time.” (For our story on outsourcing business tasks cheaply, click here.)

Write to Diana Ransom at dransom@smartmoney.com

By LEE LAWRENCE

Gainesville, Fla.

With the opening of the 26,000-square-foot David A. Cofrin Asian Art Wing, the University of Florida’s Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art is adding a conservation laboratory for Asian art and devoting almost 7,000 square feet—about one-sixth of its total exhibition space—to works from China, Japan, Korea and South and Southeast Asia. Designed by Kha Le-Huu & Partners of Orlando, the wing retains the Harn’s characteristic openness, including floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto a new rock-and-water garden. But the new galleries feel different. Here, mahogany floors, ceilings and columns impart a warmth well-suited to the works on display.

These include selections that came to the Harn at its founding in 1990—most notably Korean paintings and ceramics from Gen. James Van Fleet (who commanded the U.S. Eighth Army and United Nations forces from 1951 to 1953) and a variety of Indian paintings and sculpture collected by Roy C. Craven (whose 1975 “Concise History of Indian Art” still features regularly on many Asian-art syllabi).

Asia was thus a primary focus from the start, a commitment the Harn has now deepened at a cost of $20 million. Original funders and consistent contributors to the museum, David A. and Mary Ann Harn Cofrin gave $10 million that the state of Florida was to match under its Major Gift Challenge Grant Program. When budgetary constraints forced Florida legislators to suspend the program, the university forged ahead anyway, taking out loans it hopes the state will eventually reimburse. “The goal is to make students citizens of the world,” museum director Rebecca Nagy explains, “and the arts are central to that mission.” Given Asia’s prominence, she adds, “the better students understand it, the better prepared they will be.”

With nearly 2,000 Asian works in its permanent collection, the museum can now display some 680—almost four times as many as before. For its inaugural installation, curator Jason Steuber stops mid-20th century (more recent works are included in the contemporary-art wing). Most visitors, he discovered, associate Asia with ceramics, which is one of the Harn’s strengths. So, starting in a gallery of the main building renovated to match the new wing, he surrounds us with bowls, ewers, vases, dishes and the occasional figurines, tiles and plaques, arranged by country and displayed in tall mahogany units.

A wall text alerts us to the role trade routes played in disseminating materials and designs. Thus primed, we notice, for example, that blue pigments achieved with cobalt pop up in Syria, China, Vietnam and Japan; that the green and orange glaze of 15th- and 16th-century Chinese Ming figurines echoes that of a 12th- to 13th-century platter from Afghanistan; that ancient Chinese forms recur at different points in China’s history when ruling dynasties looked to the past.

From here we move seamlessly into the new wing, where there is enough space for us to absorb, undistracted, the Buddha figures and undulating pagoda rooflines carved on a sandstone pillar from 11th- to 12th-century China; the dynamic gestures and multiple symbols in a 10th-century relief of the Hindu goddess Durga as she simultaneously spears a buffalo and strangles the demon emerging from its mouth; or the elaborate headdress on a late sixth-century Bodhisattva’s head from China.

“The Harn Museum has deepened its commitment to Asian works at a cost of $20 million.”

What makes the installation work so beautifully is that it alternates from this kind of sparse configuration to dense clusterings. Surrounding the airy central space, intimate alcoves showcase masks and Tibetan Buddhist objects while display cases variously teem with carved Chinese jades or a smorgasbord of Indian reliefs, statuary and ritual objects from the third to the 20th centuries. This open-storage format proves highly effective. With more objects on view, we see connections and shifts in technique and design, and movable shelves create cubbyholes perfect for small bronzes and reliefs.

Overall, wall texts frame rather than explain displays, occasional didactic materials help decipher a sculpture’s gestures or symbols, and information on the labels is kept to a minimum. This has the advantage of keeping our attention on the objects, but at times the information is frustratingly sparse. Finding the right balance is tricky, and success will depend on how plans proceed to develop the means to allow visitors to access supplemental information through tablets or other media.

Sometimes, though, the balance is just right. Text in the north gallery invites us to explore how artists negotiated the tensions between tradition and modernity. Discrete groupings then focus on women painters in 17th- to 19th-century China, prints made in postwar occupied Japan, and works by Jamini Roy, an artist in newly independent India who is prominently represented in the Harn collection. In the Korean gallery, a 17th-century Bodhisattva showcases not just its own compelling beauty, but the science that reveals some of its story. Across from the seated figure, displayed with scriptures that were once housed in the sculpture’s abdomen, CAT scans and X-rays show that the artist carved the body from a single piece of wood, using a protruding branch for the right arm. A practical choice—but also a spiritually resonant one, since the statue thereby preserves the flow of the tree’s energy. The scans also show that the artist hid more scriptures in the statue’s head.

We will probably never see these—just as the general public will never see the conservation laboratory and other hidden working areas of the new Asia wing. It will, however, benefit from the research, conservation and continuing acquisition programs taking place behind the scenes.

Ms. Lawrence is a writer based in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The David A. Cofrin Asian Art Wing

Harn Museum of Art

www.harn.ufl.edu/asianartwing

A version of this article appeared April 5, 2012, on page D4 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Asian Expansion in Florida.

By TODDI GUTNER

Q:
I am 55 and was laid off from a 28-year corporate communications career a little over a year ago. Since then I’ve answered ads for more than 400 open positions in my field, attended networking meetings, job fairs, and in general, done what I can to find a new position. I’m even willing to relocate. I’ve only been invited for face-to-face interviews six times. Most openings I see seek employees with only three to five years of experience, occasionally seven to 10 years, and few with 10-plus years. With my experience, employers do the math and figure I’m too old or expensive. What do you suggest I do?

A: As you well know, you’re not alone. The market is flooded with senior professionals just like yourself. But there are ways you can stand out and increase your odds of success.

First, you need to develop a strategic plan for your job search. It doesn’t sound like you’ve got one at this point. Indiscriminately sending out resumes, like the 400 ads you answered, means you’re likely going after a lot of low-level positions.

Start by identifying employers that value your particular background and skills, advises Sheryl Spanier, an executive career management consultant at Spanier & Co. in New York City. “You need to be clear about what you have to offer and who might be interested,” she says.

Think broadly. “Instead of seeking to replace your lost position, consider seeking work that can be project related, outside your industry or an adaptation of your expertise to an allied field,” says Ms. Spanier.

Next, search for networking connections who can recommend your candidacy before you send your resume to the firms you’re targeting, says Doug Matthews, president and chief operating officer of Right Management, an outplacement firm based in Philadelphia. If you suspect that your age may be hurting your chances, trim the length of your resume, suggests Alane Baranello, managing director of Eileen Finn & Associates Inc., an executive recruiter in New York. “Make sure it only highlights the last 15 years of experience,” she says. “There is no need to advertise 28 years of experience, as employers don’t require it.”

But don’t make too many drastic changes. While you may be desperate for a job, you don’t want to put yourself in a position where you’ll be miserable. It may be helpful to trim your resume for a short-term assignment, but keep it longer for the job that you really want.

Another strategy is to recast your resume to illustrate how you’ve developed and mentored people over your tenure. “Many companies may see your talents as an opportunity to create a transition position to help develop less-experienced people,” says John Heins, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Spherion Corp., a staffing firm based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Consider marketing yourself as someone skilled in nurturing young talent if this is the case.

As for the perception that you’re too expensive, you may need to re-examine what you’re worth. Right now, companies across several industries are resorting to salary reductions instead of layoffs, says Spanier. Talk to people in your field and find out what the going salary is for someone at your experience level. It could be up to 20% below what you were making two years ago.

Meanwhile, do an assessment of what happened in those six interviews. Many professionals don’t know how to effectively interview for a new position and that hurts their chances far more than age, compensation or experience, says Mr. Matthews. For example, a common mistake is for laid-off workers is to give the impression that they’ve been victimized by their former employers. Others err by asking about compensation and benefits too early in the interview process. To find out what you might be doing wrong, ask a friend at your experience level or above to conduct mock interviews with you, says Mr. Matthews. And be sure to request honest feedback.

Write to Ms. Gutner at cjeditor@dowjones.com. If you have a question for the careers columnists, be sure to put Career Q&A in your subject line.

By ANNA PRIOR

As companies continue to lay off workers, here’s another reason for people to worry about joining the ranks of the unemployed: They may find a smaller severance package than they expect.

The unemployment rate fell to 9.4% last month, but 247,000 jobs were still lost in that period. And the more people laid off by companies, the larger the chunk of change being paid out in the form of severance pay, continued health benefits, retraining and other services. So companies are beginning to put such payments under the microscope.

Smaller severance packages will add to the financial strain of laid-off workers. And state unemployment benefits only get you so far. People who have been jobless for an extended period — a max of as many as 79 weeks in some states — will soon face the end of their state benefits.

“There is less money on the table and people are essentially doing the least that they have to do in terms of taking care of exiting employees,” says Wendi Lazar, an employment lawyer and partner at Outten & Golden in New York. “We used to see benefits where companies would pay for [the continuation of health coverage at group rates under] Cobra or give the employee six months to a year of health care, and we aren’t seeing that anymore.”

Separate surveys of several hundred companies, conducted within the past few months by consulting firms Mercer and Hewitt Associates, show that many employers say they don’t plan to modify severance policies, if they have one.

Still, consultants and employment lawyers say anecdotal evidence suggests that some cuts in severance packages should be expected and negotiating better terms is becoming harder to do.

Meantime, a few companies have turned to more fundamental changes in the way they compensate laid-off employees. Media company Gannett, for instance, is now offering supplemental unemployment benefit plans, which allow the company to share part of the cost of severance pay with the states.

On the Chopping Block

Tim Foley

In this economic environment, the first thing to likely get cut back is employer-paid continuation of medical benefits, says Ed Rataj, managing director of compensation consulting at CBIZ Human Capital Services.

Instead of providing benefits such as health insurance for the same length of time as severance payments, as has traditionally been done, says Lori Wisper, a senior consultant at Hewitt, some companies are looking to either share the cost of continued coverage or shift the full cost of coverage to the former employee. Health benefits under Cobra typically cost about $400 per month for an individual and more than $1,000 per month for a family. (A federal subsidy that covers 65% of Cobra premiums is available for those who have lost or who will lose their jobs between Sept. 1, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2009.)

There also could be changes to the cash side of a severance package, usually the most expensive part of a deal, Ms. Wisper says. For instance, two weeks of pay for every year of service might fall to one week of pay for every year worked.

In addition, some maximums for how many weeks of severance pay an employee can receive are shrinking to 26 weeks, from highs of 40 to 52 weeks.

The one area still holding steady, says Mr. Rataj, is outplacement services — mostly because it’s the cheapest thing to provide.

The amount of services offered tends to vary based on employment level. People in senior-level positions usually get access to full services provided by an outplacement firm, such as an office to use while job hunting, résumé preparation and administrative assistance. Lower-level employees are typically given résumé preparation and access to group seminars on job-search skills, says Ms. Wisper.

These services “provide goodwill among employees,” says Mr. Rataj. “It can create a good public image at a pretty low cost.”

What’s Negotiable

Tim Foley

Given the tighter purse strings, negotiating the terms of a severance package is becoming an even more awkward dance these days. This is especially true when a company has widespread layoffs, says Scott Hill, a financial adviser and senior vice president at Kanaly Trust, a wealth-management and financial-planning provider in Houston.

In the past, a rank-and-file employee could expect employers to be open to negotiating higher severance pay, extended health benefits or compensation for unused vacation days. “An employer would be open to trying to make it a palatable and amiable exit,” Ms. Lazar says.

But now, she says, “a lot of companies are taking a hard line.” They say, “this is the package — take it or leave it.”

Still, negotiating isn’t a complete waste of time. If you are leaving a senior-level post, you could have some leeway, especially if you’re asked, as a condition of the package, to sign a noncompetition agreement or nondisparagement clause.

By signing such an agreement, “you are giving the company something of value,” says Mr. Hill. That means you may be able to squeeze out something of value for yourself in return.

As for lower-level employees, they should think of things that can be of value to them, says David Cashdan, an employment lawyer and vice president of public policy for the National Employment Lawyers Association.

Some examples: flexibility in choosing an outplacement services firm, assurance that a person will be placed on a rehire list, a letter of recommendation and assurance that nothing negative will be said about the person to a prospective employer.

And if such things don’t cost the company a lot of money, that’s another plus.

In the end, take your time reviewing any package. Typically, companies will give you a deadline. But “take no more than half of that time to come back with some sort of counter proposal, says Mr. Hill, “because the company will want some time to consider that deal as well.”

Also, Ms. Lazar recommends having a lawyer look at the package to ensure you aren’t waiving any rights that could make it difficult for you to find another job or prevent you from suing the company for an existing claim.

Write to Anna Prior at anna.prior@wsj.com

By DIANA MIDDLETON

If you’re gearing up for a job search now as an undergraduate or returning student, there are several bright spots where new jobs and promising career paths are expected to emerge in the next few years.

Technology, health care and education will continue to be hot job sectors, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ outlook for job growth between 2008 and 2018. But those and other fields will yield new opportunities, and even some tried-and-true fields will bring some new jobs that will combine a variety of skill sets.

Jason Schneider

The degrees employers say they’ll most look for include finance, engineering and computer science, says Andrea Koncz, employment-information manager at the National Association of Colleges and Employers. But to land the jobs that will see some of the most growth, job seekers will need to branch out and pick up secondary skills or combine hard science study with softer skills, career experts say, which many students already are doing. “Students are positioned well for future employment, particularly in specialized fields,” Ms. Koncz says.

Career experts say the key to securing jobs in growing fields will be coupling an in-demand degree with expertise in emerging trends. For example, communications pros will have to master social media and the analytics that come with it; nursing students will have to learn about risk management and electronic records; and techies will need to keep up with the latest in Web marketing, user-experience design and other Web-related skills.

Technology Twists

More than two million new technology-related jobs are expected to be created by 2018, according to the BLS. Jobs that are expected to grow faster than average include computer-network administrators, data-communications analysts and Web developers. Recruiters anticipate that data-loss prevention, information technology, online security and risk management will also show strong growth.

A computer-science degree and a working knowledge of data security are critical to landing these jobs. Common areas of undergraduate study for these fields include some of the usual suspects, such as computer science, information science and management-information systems.

But those might not be enough. That’s because not all of those jobs will be purely techie in nature. David Foote, chief executive officer of IT research firm Foote Partners, advises current computer-science students to couple their degrees with studies in marketing, accounting or finance. “Before, people widely believed that all you needed to have were deep, nerdy skills,” Mr. Foote says. “But companies are looking for people with multiple skill sets who can move fluidly with marketing or operations.”

Social media has opened the door to the growth of new kinds of jobs. As companies turn to sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to promote their brands, capture new customers and even post job openings, they will need to hire people skilled in harnessing these tools, Mr. Foote says. In most cases, these duties will be folded into a marketing position, although large companies such as Coca-Cola Co. are creating entire teams devoted exclusively to social media.

Similarly, employment for public-relations positions should increase 24% by 2018. Job titles—like interactive creative director—will reflect the duality of the required skill sets.

Back to School

Students will have to study strategy to maximize relationships between third-party content providers and their company’s Web team. Other key skills will be search-engine optimization to maximize Web traffic and marketing analytics to decipher the company’s target demographic, says Donna Farrugia, executive director of Creative Group, a marketing and advertising staffing agency in Menlo Park, Calif.

Many universities and community colleges are offering certification programs focused on burgeoning sectors. For example, the University of California at Los Angeles’s extension program offers a certificate in information design.

That, program, like similar certificate studies at other schools, aims to give students an edge in Web site search optimization—a major attraction for Web-based companies who want to boost user traffic, says Cathy Sandeen, dean of UCLA’s extension program.

User-experience design—a sort of architecture for information that Web viewers see—is another emerging field. Jobs there include experience specialists and product designers at firms ranging from computer-game companies to e-commerce Web sites.

Ms. Sandeen says the school will offer a certificate program for user-experience design as well, at a cost of about $3,000 to $5,000. The program will run one to two years, depending on a student’s schedule, and will couple product design with consumer psychology and behavior.

“Our students [will] learn to think like anthropologists, evaluating how easy it is to utilize the products,” she says.

Not surprisingly, green technology, including solar and wind energy and green construction, are also booming areas. Engineers who can mastermind high-voltage electric grids, for example, will have a great advantage over other job applicants, says Greg Netland, who oversees recruiting for the U.S., Latin America and Canada for Sapphire Technologies, an IT staffing firm in Woburn, Mass. that is a division of Randstad.

“Global sustainability will become more important to employers,” Mr. Netland says. “It cuts costs, making experts in the field highly attractive to employers.”

Jobs in alternative-energy systems, including wind and solar energy, will require a variety of skills: engineers to design systems, consultants who will audit companies’ existing energy needs, and those who will install and maintain the systems.

Financial Opportunities

Despite the slashing of positions seen in the financial sector during the economic crisis, recruiters also expect thousands of new jobs to be created in the compliance field, says Dawn Fay, district New York/New Jersey president of Robert Half International.

Ms. Fay counsels job seekers to look at the misdeeds of the past year or two to identify where new jobs will bloom in the financial sector. “It was a year of Ponzi schemes and banking meltdowns,” she says. “Be strategic and position yourself as someone who can mitigate those risks.”

That makes risk management an emerging specialty with strong growth in jobs expected. Those on track to be financial analysts can get additional certification in risk management through organizations like the Risk Management Association or the Risk and Insurance Management Society.

“Risk management was a mainstay in financial companies, but I believe it will be present in every Fortune 500 company,” says Jeff Joerres, chairman and chief executive officer at staffing firm Manpower Inc.

Hospital Upgrades

Health care is expected to continue to see a surge in hiring, with more than four million new openings estimated by 2018, according to the BLS. Hiring for physical and occupational therapists will likely be strongest. But new specialties are popping up, particularly in case management, says Brad Ellis, a partner with Kaye Bassman International, an executive-search firm based in Plano, Texas.

Case managers do everything from managing the flow of information between practitioner and insurance company to mitigating risk to the hospital.

“If you’re a licensed nurse, for example, getting a certificate in risk management from the state board of health would make you extremely competitive,” Mr. Ellis says.

Harris Miller, president of the Career College Association in Washington, D.C., says IT will be increasingly important in the quest to drive down health-care costs, too. Students specializing in nursing informatics, which combines general nursing with computer and information sciences, at the master’s degree level will swap a clipboard for a smart phone to manage patient data. Schools like Vanderbilt University are offering nursing informatics degrees via distance learning, and certification is offered through American Nurses Credentialing Center, based in Silver Springs, Md.

The strong push toward making medical records and information more accessible through computerized record-keeping means opportunity, Mr. Miller says. “This is going to require people who are skilled in the hardware and software of nursing informatics.”

Write to Diana Middleton at diana.middleton@wsj.com

Forget the free toaster. If you’re looking to open a brokerage account or IRA, or add to an existing one, you may well be rewarded with a chunk of change—not to mention free trades and Apple gift cards—if you act soon.

Financial firms are in a slugfest for your business, and brokerage companies have “elevated their game” to compete more openly with traditional banks, says Scott Smith, associate director, Cerulli Associates, a financial-services research firm.

It can make sense for brokerage firms to “buy” deposits from bargain-hunting investors because the firms can earn back the costs of the promotions over time through ongoing asset-management fees, explains Mr. Smith.

Investors, however, should weigh several factors—including investment selection, costs and performance—before taking any deals

And don’t forget, some “freebies” are taxable. Many Citibank customers felt blindsided last month when they received notices that airline miles they got for opening new accounts last year produced taxable income.

Companies are required to report the value of certain promotions to the Internal Revenue Service, but they aren’t required to tell you this ahead of time—and most don’t. “The IRS expects us to know that we don’t get anything for free,” or at least tax-free, says Cheryl Riedlinger, a lawyer with the Tax Reporting Group and an expert on the taxation of financial institutions.

So look before you leap. Here’s a rundown of some of the limited-time-only deals:

• TD Ameritrade is offering free trades and cash if you open a regular brokerage account or individual retirement account by Feb. 29. A $2,000 investment gets you 500 free trades for 60 days. Deposits of $25,000 and up also earn cash bonuses of $100 to $600.
• ING Direct will add $50 to IRAs opened by March 1 with a minimum deposit of $200.
• Merrill Edge is paying cash bonuses of $50 to $500 for IRAs opened by April 15. Minimum investment requirement: $10,000.
• Scottrade will kick in $100 to IRAs opened before April 16 with a minimum rollover of $15,000. It also will reimburse account-transfer fees (up to $100) charged by your old broker.
• Charles Schwab is doling out cash bonuses of $200 to $2,500 for rollovers of $50,000 or more made by April 17 to new or existing IRAs.
• E-Trade is offering 500 free trades over 60 days for IRAs opened by April 17 with a minimum deposit of $2,000. Deposits of $25,000 and up also earn cash bonuses of $100 to $600.
• Fidelity Investments is handing out Apple gift cards worth $100 to $500 with deposits of $75,000 or more into new or existing brokerage accounts (but not IRAs) by June 30.

For taxable accounts, if you earn $600 or more in promotions in a year, your brokerage firm sends you a 1099-Misc tax form letting you know the income that was produced. This is the amount it reports to the IRS and on which you owe tax. (Typically, firms don’t have to report promotions totaling less than $600, but investors still owe tax on them.) For example, TD Ameritrade is treating its cash awards as taxable but not the free trades, which it considers rebates, which are neither reportable nor taxable.

The reporting requirement for gift cards is murkier, says Ms. Riedlinger. Fidelity, for one, will report the face value of its Apple gift cards on the 1099-Misc if an investor’s total miscellaneous income from Fidelity hits $600 or more during the year.

For IRAs, make sure cash bonuses don’t put you over your annual contribution limit—typically $5,000 for investors under 50 and $6,000 for those age 50 and up—or you will end up with a mess on your hands having to remove “excess” contributions.

Find out how the firm is treating IRA bonuses. At ING Direct, they will be paid to accounts by March 16, designated as 2012 contributions, and reflected on next year’s Form 5498 for IRA contributions. At E-Trade and Scottrade, by contrast, the bonuses will be considered IRA income, which isn’t currently reportable or taxable.

If you’re looking to switch brokers anyway, a bonus award can at least make up for any account-transfer fees assessed by your old firm. Just be aware that most of these offers require you to keep your new account open for at least several months, otherwise you’ll forfeit your award.

Finally, don’t let an offer for free trading be an inducement for frequent trading, which studies have shown rarely pays off. Aim instead to keep your investment costs low by, for example, sticking with inexpensive index funds. All else being equal, it’s not what you earn that counts but what you get to keep after taxes and fees.

—
investingbasics.wsj@gmail.com

Por SCOTT PATTERSON e JENNY STRASBURG

Para se ter uma ideia de como o mercado financeiro pode ser obscuro hoje em dia, veja o caso da Pipeline Trading Systems LLC.

Usando software desenvolvido em parte pela Fidelity Investments dez anos atrás, a Pipeline provê um meio de comprar e vender ações fora das bolsas de acesso público. Em seu sistema alternativo, grandes investidores seriam protegidos de uma espécie que muitos acham irritante: operadores que usam computadores poderosos para ver pedidos assim que eles surgem e negociar instantaneamente à frente deles.

O que muitos investidores que estavam usando a Pipeline não sabiam é que uma afiliada dela estava fazendo exatamente esse tipo de operações relâmpago.

Essa revelação, descrita num acordo judicial em fins do ano passado, foi uma dura lição de como o mercado acionário movido a computadores de hoje se tornou, sob vários aspectos, menos transparente do que quando a maioria das operações acontecia no pregão de uma bolsa.

Preços de títulos de investimento hoje em dia não são tão fáceis de enxergar para investidores. Menos de metade dos investimentos hoje é negociada em bolsa com cotação facilmente acessível, dizem analistas do mercado. Muitos investidores continuam sem conhecer as estratégias que firmas tecnologicamente espertas usam para ganhar vantagem, e mesmo grandes casas de investimento geralmente têm pouca garantia de que ninguém está tirando vantagem de suas ordens.

A SEC, como é conhecida a comissão de valores mobiliários dos Estados Unidos, está estudando os chamados operadores de alta frequência, examinando se alguns podem ter ganhado vantagens desleais por meio de seu relacionamento com as plataformas computadorizadas em que eles operam, tais como a Bats Global Markets Inc., a bolsa onde um defeito de software no mês passado matou sua própria abertura de capital. A investigação, por sua vez, deriva da atenção mais ampla das autoridades para operações computadorizadas, depois do “flash crash” (“quebra relâmpago”) de maio de 2010, que derrubou as bolsas americanas sem razão evidente.

A Pipeline não é objeto da investigação da SEC. A firma e dois de seus executivos chegaram a um acordo com a agência em fins do ano passado, comprometendo-se, sem admitir nem negar as constatações da SEC, a não enganar clientes investidores da Pipeline sobre a maneira como as ordens são processadas.

A história da Pipeline, baseada em emails internos e entrevista com ex-operadores, clientes, executivos e autoridades, além das constatações da SEC, mostra como uma firma criada para oferecer um sistema de negociações que protegeria investidores contra os perigos do mercado eletrônico se transformou em algo que traz seus próprios riscos.

A Pipeline operava o que se conhece como “dark pool”, uma expressão que une o adjetivo “escuro” ao termo em inglês que, além de piscina, também é usado para definir grupos de investidores. Trata-se de uma plataforma que une vendedores a compradores em privado, usando software para conectar suas ordens. A função crítica que faz uma dark pool proteger investidores é que as ordens deles não se tornam públicas antes de serem executadas.

As dark pools ganharam força conforme as bolsas de valores migraram de pregões humanos para operações eletrônicas em que quase todas as ordens são publicadas instantaneamente, uma situação que alguns investidores comparam com jogar pôquer com as cartas viradas para cima. A Pipeline prometia ajudar investidores a evitar os perigos. Ela oferecia “proteção contra predadores”, conforme os anúncios da firma, um escudo contra os “tubarões” no mercado.

Hoje há mais de 50 dark pools, que respondem por 12% das negociações com ações nos EUA, ante 4% em 2005, segundo a firma de pesquisa Tabb Group.

Segundo a Comissão de Valores Mobiliários, não há “dark pools” no Brasil. Otavio Yazbek, diretor da CVM, disse que tem havido sondagens de interessados em abrir “dark pools” no país, mas as regras de transparência da agência para o mercado impedem o surgimento de “dark pools” no modelo tradicional americano.

O modelo da Pipeline nasceu no laboratório de tecnologia da Fidelity no início dos anos 2000. A firma de fundos mútuos buscava formas de negociar grandes blocos de ações fora do mercado público, onde temia que operadores oportunistas pudessem saltar adiante de suas grandes ordens, afetando as cotações. Havia alguns sistemas alternativos, mas a Fidelity queria fazer um melhor, disse um ex-executivo. Programadores da Fidelity colaboraram com Fred Federspiel, um físico que havia levado seus conhecimentos para Wall Street.

No sistema que desenharam em conjunto, quando um investidor fazia um pedido, o símbolo da ação acenderia em alaranjado nas telas dos computadores dos investidores que integravam o grupo, ou “pool”. Mas ele não mostraria se o pedido foi para comprar ou vender, em que quantidade ou a que preço.

A Pipeline alugou software da Fidelity e abriu um escritório em Nova York, tendo Federspiel como diretor superintendente. A controladora da firma, que pertencia em parte a várias firmas de capital de risco, nomeou como presidente do conselho Alfred Berkeley III, um ex-executivo da bolsa eletrônica Nasdaq com conexões e reputação que poderiam atrair investidores.

Um amplo fluxo de pedidos era fundamental para a Pipeline dar certo. Executivos da empresa esperavam que a Fidelity a usasse para boa parte de suas transações, mas logo antes de a Pipeline entrar em operação, em setembro de 2004, ficou claro que receberia só algumas ordens da Fidelity.

Sem garantias de um volume substancial, a firma dona da Pipeline, a Pipeline Financial Group Inc., deu um passo fatídico: criou uma empresa de negociação interna que assegura que as ordens são realizadas. Se um investidor quisesse comprar certas ações e não houvesse vendedores das mesmas na “dark pool” da Pipeline, essa afiliada poderia tentar cumprir a ordem comprando ações no mercado aberto.

Não há sinais de que a Fidelity soubesse da existência dessa afiliada. “Nosso contrato com a Pipeline Trading Systems se limitava ao licenciamento de propriedade intelectual”, disse um porta-voz da Fidelity.

A Pipeline planejava eliminar sua afiliada de trading quando o volume fosse suficiente, disseram pessoas familiarizadas com a firma. Mas, nesse ínterim, embora a Pipeline tenha revelado que afiliadas não especificadas poderiam estar usando a “dark pool”, ela disse várias vezes a clientes que eles estavam negociando com outros grandes investidores, aos quais se referia como compradores e vendedores “naturais”, segundo a SEC.

Nunca houve suficientes compradores e vendedores naturais. Os operadores da afiliada foram instruídos a evitar usar os mesmos elevadores dos empregados da Pipeline, muitos dos quais nem sabiam dela, disseram pessoas a par do assunto. “Tomamos todas as precauções que podíamos” para não revelar o relacionamento com a Pipeline, disse Gordon Henderson, que chefiou a afiliada em anos recentes.

A Pipeline, a princípio, batizou a afiliada de Exchange Advantage LLC. Executivos depois consideraram dar a ela um nome que obscurecesse suas atividades, disseram a SEC e pessoas a par do assunto. O nome acabou virando Milstream Strategy Group (“mil” é um jargão de Wall Street para um décimo de um centavo).

A princípio, ela operou com prejuízo. Mas, em 2006, a Pipeline transferiu as rédeas da afiliada a Henderson, um empregado da Milstream com vasta experiência em Wall Street, e o autorizou a contratar pessoal e fazer mudanças para reduzir perdas e tornar as operações mais lucrativas, segundo pessoas a par do assunto.

“Praticamente fizemos dela uma trading real”, disse Henderson ao The Wall Street Journal.

Ele contratou vários traders, a maioria pessoas com pouca experiência mas com ligações com a Pipeline. “Todo mundo que contratei tinha um relacionamento” com a Pipeline via parentes ou amigos, disse Henderson. “Nenhum trader que contratei tinha experiência com operações de tesouraria. Tive de treiná-los.”

Entre os contratados estava seu filho adotivo, Tom King, um advogado. Henderson disse que achou que seria mais fácil punir empregados que cometessem erros se fossem parentes. “Adoro nepotismo”, disse ele.

Traders da Milstream logo acharam meios de lucrar com ordens de clientes da Pipeline, disse uma pessoa familiarizada com a operação. Eles tinham a ajuda de um sofisticado sistema de negociações velozes desenhado em parte pelo primeiro diretor da afiliada, Henri Waelbroeck, que, assim como Federspiel, é físico. Waelbroeck não quis comentar.

O processo de trading dependia de perceber — quando o símbolo de uma ação aparecia em laranja no software dos investidores, conhecido como Block Board — se a ordem era para comprar ou vender. Para isso, a Milstream usava várias técnicas, tais como checar a demanda para aquela ação em outras “dark pools”. A Milstream também fazia e, em seguida, cancelava ordens para testar o interesse dos clientes da Pipeline numa ação, afirmou a SEC.

Certos passos dados pela Pipeline facilitaram a vida da Milstream, segundo a SEC e pessoas a par das operações da firma. Por exemplo, um link eletrônico especializado para a Milstream fazia com que, quando uma ordem era aberta, a afiliada poderia ser informada sobre ela não apenas visualmente, mas também através de dados enviados por uma conexão.

Isso ajudou a afiliada a montar um banco de dados que acompanhava o tempo exato em que uma ação permanecia em laranja, assim como certas informações de preço, informou a SEC. Embora a Pipeline oferecesse o link para outros clientes, poucos o usavam e nenhum o usava como a Milstream: para negociar extensivamente e todo dia na Pipeline.

Além disso, Federspiel “encorajou a Afiliada a abrir ordens em ações ou categorias de ações específicas que Federspiel achava que interessariam a clientes da Pipeline”, afirmou a SEC, enquanto “outras vezes, Federspiel e outros empregados da Pipeline telefonavam para a afiliada durante o dia para pedir à Afiliada que negociasse certas ações”. Handerson disse que ele e Federspiel conversavam diariamente depois do fechamento do mercado. Federspiel não quis comentar.

A SEC disse que a Pipeline não manteve a confidencialidade da informação referente a seus clientes, permitindo que a afiliada soubesse às vezes que pedidos vinham de “um dealer” ou de um cliente que era “agressivo” ou “passivo”. Um porta-voz da Pipeline, que recentemente passou a se chamar Aritas Securities LLC, disse que não houve troca inapropriada de “informações de ordens pertinente a clientes” entre a Pipeline e a Milstream.

Para a afiliada, a combinação de tecnologia, seus laços com a Pipeline e um bom tato para o mercado, desenvolvido através de constantes operações contra clientes da Pipeline e via técnicas sofisticadas, permitiu à Milstream melhorar sua avaliação dos pedidos de clientes da Pipeline.

Quando concluía que uma ordem para uma determinada ação era para comprar, a Milstream geralmente comprava tais ações em outro mercado e logo as usava para atender ao pedido do cliente, disseram a SEC e pessoas familiarizadas com a operação.

Se a Milstream achasse que o cliente da Pipeline queria vender a ação, ela geralmente vendia primeiro, tomando emprestado ações de uma corretora e vendendo a descoberto. Então a Milstream comprava as ações do cliente — realizando assim a ordem de venda — e usava as ações que acabou de comprar para fechar sua posição a descoberto, segundo a descrição da SEC e essas pessoas familiarizadas com a afiliada.

O problema era que negociar primeiro pode afetar o preço: comprar a ação antes de a ordem de compra do cliente ser atendida pode elevar a cotação, criando o risco de o cliente obter um preço menos favorável — exatamente o que investidores querem evitar ao usar uma “dark pool”.

“Em qualquer operação, quanto melhor o preço que o cliente recebia, pior o preço que a Afiliada recebia, e vice-versa”, disse a SEC.

Grandes investidores geralmente querem o mínimo de movimento na cotação de uma ação entre o momento em que fazem uma ordem e quando ela é preenchida. Mas o movimento na cotação ficava maior quando a ordem era preenchida pela Milstream, segundo a SEC, do que nos casos bem mais raros em que eram preenchidas na maneira como a “pool” anunciava: por um casamento com a ordem de outros clientes da Pipeline.

A Pipeline tinha seu próprio método de medir a qualidade do atendimento das ordens dos clientes. O método considerava quanto a cotação variou nos 20 minutos em torno do momento em que a ordem foi atendida. Por essa medida, a firma executava bem as ordens dos clientes, sem grandes oscilações de preço, disse o porta-voz da Pipeline.

O porta-voz acrescentou que o sistema foi desenhado para alinhar os interesses dos operadores da Milstream com os clientes da Pipeline, e “incentivava os operadores a prestar execuções de alta qualidade”. A SEC, apesar de admitir esse incentivo, disse que os pagamento dos operadores também era baseado na lucratividade de suas operações.

Henderson disse que ele considerava a Milstream uma mesa de operações de Wall Street independente e não estava focada na satisfação dos clientes da Pipeline. “Eu não ligava para esses clientes”, disse ele. “

A Milstream teve US$ 18,4 milhões em lucros com trading em 2008, segundo a SEC, seguido por US$ 9,3 milhões em 2009 e US$ 4,5 milhões em 2010. Dadas suas despesas, e levando em conta as perdas com operações em seus primeiros anos, a afiliada teve prejuízo líquido em sua existência.

A SEC havia sido informada de vários detalhes das atividades da Milstream por um denunciante, disseram pessoas a par das investigações, e em 24 de outubro anunciou um acordo para encerrar o inquérito.

A SEC disse que a Pipeline executava a vasta maioria das ordens de seus clientes não pela estrutura da “dark pool”, mas pela sua afiliada de trading, “uma firma de alta frequência”. A agência mandou a firma parar de dar informações errôneas aos clientes.

A Pipeline aceitou uma punição de US$ 1 milhão e Berkeley e Federspiel aceitaram pagar US$ 100.000 cada, sem admitir ou negar as alegações da SEC. O porta-voz da firma disse ao WSJ que “a Pipeline concorda que informou mal os clientes”.

(Colaborou Paulo Trevisani)

Por DAVID LUHNOW e ARCHIBALD PREUSCHAT, da Cidade do México e Amsterdã

O bilionário mexicano Carlos Slim ofereceu US$ 3,4 bilhões para aumentar a participação na alquebrada operadora holandesa de telecomunicações Royal KPN NV. O anúncio gerou especulações de que o homem mais rico do planeta poderia começar a adquirir ativos europeus em baixa e enfrentar a espanhola Telefónica SA no próprio “quintal” da velha rival.

A América Móvil SAB, parte do grupo de Slim e a maior operadora de telefonia celular da América Latina, fez uma oferta na segunda-feira para elevar sua participação na antiga estatal holandesa de 4,8% para 28%. Ofereceu 8 euros (US$ 10,44) por ação, um prêmio de 24% sobre a cotação da ação no fechamento da segunda-feira.

A ação da KPN disparou. Investidores especulavam que Slim poderia simplesmente tentar assumir o controle da empresa. Na terça-feira em Amsterdã, a ação da KPN subiu 17%, para 7,58 euros.

Pela legislação holandesa, um acionista que detenha 30% ou mais de uma empresa é obrigado a fazer uma oferta pública pelas ações de todos os demais investidores.

Muitos investidores questionaram a decisão da empresa mexicana de entrar no conturbado mercado europeu, onde o crescimento é fraco, a concorrência acirrada e a regulamentação pesada. Os ADSs (“American Depositary Shares”) da América Móvil na Bolsa de Valores de Nova York caíram ontem 9%, para US$ 25,53. Foi uma das quedas mais acentuadas da ação em anos, que varreu US$ 9 bilhões do valor de mercado da empresa.

Outros, contudo, deram um voto de confiança à jogada de Slim, um homem visto por muitos como a contrapartida mexicana do megainvestidor americano Warren Buffett. Segundo eles, a aquisição segue a regra tradicional de Slim de comprar ativos em tempos difíceis. Antes da terça-feira, a KPN tinha perdido 40% do valor de mercado em 12 meses, um dos maiores declínios no setor de telecomunicações da Europa.

“O Slim é muito bom para comprar bons ativos e na administração em um mercado em baixa”, disse Damian Fraser, diretor de renda variável para a América Latina do banco de investimentos UBS. “É uma ação bem barata, que lhe dá conhecimento e uma presença na Europa”.

A nova investida de Slim, cujo patrimônio líquido é estimado em US$ 69 bilhões, leva a velha rivalidade com a Telefónica na América Latina para a própria casa da empresa espanhola.

A América Móvil — dona no Brasil da Claro, Net e Embratel — e a Telefónica são as duas maiores companhias telefônicas da América Latina, disputando ferozmente mercados como México e Brasil. A KPN é dona da E-Plus, uma operadora de telefonia celular alemã que compete com a O2, da Telefónica, e de uma pequena empresa de celular na Espanha, a Simyo.

A primeira investida de peso de Slim para fincar pé na Europa se deu em 2007. Foi frustrada pela Telefónica, que bateu a empresa mexicana na compra de uma fatia minoritária na Telecom Italia.

A KPN declarou que a oferta de Slim, que teria de ser aprovada pelas autoridades holandesas, atribui à empresa um valor “consideravelmente” baixo e que buscaria esclarecimentos sobre as intenções da América Móvil.

A América Móvil declarou que não tem interesse em elevar a participação na KPN acima dos 28% e espera ter um “relacionamento duradouro” com a gestão da empresa e seus acionistas.

A telefônica mexicana tem 246 milhões de clientes de telefonia celular em 18 países. Ultimamente, seu estonteante ritmo de crescimento começou a topar com limites, levando a empresa a buscar oportunidades em outras regiões. No México, onde já tem 70% do mercado, há quase tantos celulares quanto habitantes. Ou seja, a expansão da base de assinantes desacelera.

Carlos García Moreno, diretor financeiro da América Móvil, disse que a empresa correu os olhos pela Europa e considerou a KPN — que atua em telefonia convencional e celular nos mercados da Holanda, Bélgica e Alemanha — como a mais adequada para o investimento.

Certos acionistas da América Móvil temem que o investimento — embora a um preço provavelmente bom e equivalente a uma pequena fatia do valor total de mercado da América Móvil — marque o início de uma onda de aquisições na Europa que derrubaria a capacidade da empresa mexicana de dar retorno aos acionistas. A América Móvil gera cerca de US$ 1 bilhão em caixa livre por mês, significativamente mais que seus pares, disseram analistas.

“Nossa esperança era que a empresa tivesse desistido da expansão na Europa e que fosse devolver o dinheiro em caixa aos acionistas. Ao que parece, não será assim”, escreveu a clientes o analista Carlos Sequeira, do BTG Pactual. Sequeira rebaixou sua classificação da América Móvil de “comprar” para “neutro”.

Outros analistas disseram que a intenção de Slim provavelmente era manter abertas suas opções, para usar a compra como um lance estratégico na Europa ou simplesmente um bom investimento. Ainda que decida mais à frente que adquirir o controle da empresa custaria caro demais, Slim pode ter um retorno decente, já que o dividendo anual da KPN tem um retorno médio de cerca de 12%, disse Fraser, do UBS. “Não há muito a perder”, disse ele.

Em várias ocasiões, o bilionário já provou que tinha razão — e o mercado, não. Entrou no mercado de telefonia celular da Argentina pouco depois de 2000, no auge da crise financeira do país. E, em seguida, no Brasil, quando muitos analistas achavam que o país podia dar o calote na dívida. Nos dois casos, a aposta foi acertadíssima.

“Investir no atual cenário [macroeconômico] da Europa nos faz lembrar de alguns dos investimentos mais baratos que a América Móvil fez para montar sua presença na América Latina cerca de dez anos atrás”, disse Andrew Campbell, analista do Credit Suisse, em nota a clientes.

Filho de um imigrante libanês que saiu comprando ativos durante a revolução mexicana para montar uma próspera empresa de varejo, Slim há muito exibe o mesmo tino do pai para farejar ativos desvalorizados, sobretudo em tempos de crise.

Parte de seu império, que vai de operações de telefonia a mineração, foi construído durante as repetidas desvalorizações cambiais do México em 1976 e 1982, quando muitas empresas no país foram vendidas a preço de banana.

Slim entrou no setor de telefonia em 1990, quando comprou a antiga estatal mexicana, a Teléfonos de México SA. De lá para cá, botou ordem na casa e derrotou adversários, ao usar a rede da empresa para cobrar caro para completar ligações e se valer do bizantino sistema judiciário do país para retardar investidas de concorrentes.

Mas, mesmo em casa, o crescimento de Slim é cada vez mais limitado. Na condição de homem mais rico do mundo, está sob vigilância maior de órgãos reguladores e governantes. No ano passado, o Supremo Tribunal do México decidiu que sua empresa já não podia ignorar as decisões de reguladores do mercado telefônico enquanto o recurso da empresa corria na Justiça. Isso obrigou sua operadora de celular a derrubar drasticamente tarifas de interconexão cobradas de rivais.

O interesse de Slim na combalida KPN fez alguns investidores especularem que a mexicana poderia trocar ativos com a Telefónica, dando à empresa espanhola a E-Plus na Alemanha em troca de uma operação da Telefónica na América Latina ou algum outro lugar.

(Colaboraram Anthony Harrup e Laurence Iliff, da Cidade do México.)

Por SHARON TERLEP y CARLOS TEJADA

BEIJING—La competencia se acelera en el lucrativo segmento de autos de lujos de China, a medida que marcas como Cadillac, Jaguar e Infiniti entran en la carrera en la que Audi y BMW llevan la delantera, y a pesar de que hay señales de un menor crecimiento en el mercado automotor más grande del mundo.

General Motors Co. anunció el lunes que, de aquí a 2016, lanzará entre cinco y 10 nuevos modelos Cadillac en China y que construirá al menos una planta que estará dedicada exclusivamente a fabricar estos autos. Su objetivo es aumentar la rentabilidad de la marca y reducir el costo de producción por unidad.

“Toda automotriz exitosa debe tener una marca de lujo exitosa que compita en el mundo”, sostuvo Dan Akerson, presidente ejecutivo de GM, al presentar modelos Cadillac durante el Salón Internacional del Automóvil de Beijing.

Nissan Motor Co. también ha aprovechado el evento para presentar una nueva versión de su auto híbrido Infiniti M35, que tiene más espacio en los asientos traseros pensando en los chinos ricos que contratan choferes personales. Ferrari ha anunciado que va a ofrecer su F12 Berlinetta de 12 cilindros mientras que Lamborghini, de Volkswagen AG, presentó su todoterreno Urus.

“No podemos dormirnos en nuestros laureles porque esto se va poner duro”, dice Bob Grace, presidente en China de Jaguar Land Rover, del grupo indio Tata Motors Ltd. Jaguar presentó el lunes una versión de su sedán XJ Ultimate que incluye iPads incorporados en el asiento trasero, y copas y una hielera para champán.

Por supuesto, estas marcas de lujo tienen un largo camino por recorrer para alcanzar a los líderes del mercado: Audi, que vendió 331.604 unidades en China el año pasado, y BMW, que vendió 225.692 vehículos allí. En comparación, las ventas chinas de Cadillac sólo alcanzaron los 28.000 autos en 2011.

Sin embargo, el mercado de autos de lujo en China sigue creciendo gracias a la mayor cantidad de millonarios. El año pasado, las ventas de autos de alta gama subieron 32%, según la firma de investigación IHS Global Insight, incluso cuando la industria en general creció sólo 2,5%, una desaceleración considerable frente a los avances de dos dígitos registrados en años anteriores. Ello ha hecho de China un motor de ganancias para los principales fabricantes de autos de lujo y la mayor esperanza de revitalizar sus ventas para las marcas premium de segunda categoría.

Aun así, algunos en el sector dicen que una desaceleración es inevitable, incluso si el crecimiento de las ventas generales repunta, a medida que la economía de China pierde fuerza y crece la competencia.

BMW tiene planes de duplicar su producción en China a 200.000 vehículos cuando inaugure una segunda planta este año, pero esperará para aumentar esa capacidad. “Tenemos el potencial de elevar la producción hasta 300.000, pero no lo vamos a hacer hasta que no estemos seguros de que el mercado puede sostenerla”, dice Ian Robertson, director de ventas de BMW AG.

Otros ejecutivos aseguran que aún hay suficiente margen para crecer. Peter Schwarzenbauer, miembro de la junta gerencial de Audi, una filial de Volkswagen, sostiene que la expansión de concesionarios de lujo en las ciudades del interior de China y un creciente interés en nichos como los autos premium más básicos ayudarán a que el país se convierta en el mercado de vehículos de alta gama más importante del mundo para 2015, eclipsando a Estados Unidos, que registra ventas anuales de cerca de 1,3 millones de unidades en el segmento. China superó a EE.UU. en ventas totales de autos en 2009.

Akerson prevé que para mediados de esta década, las ventas de Cadillac en China igualen a las de EE.UU., donde vendió 152.389 unidades el año pasado. El ejecutivo agrega que si Cadillac alcanza el éxito en China, podría a la larga otorgar el mismo alto margen a nivel global que la empresa obtiene hoy de las camionetas y los vehículos todoterreno en EE.UU.

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN AND ANGUS LOTEN

WSJ’s Sarah Needleman reports on concerns facing the small business community as the Supreme Court hears arguments on Tuesday regarding the mandate associated with Presidnet Obama’s health care law. AP Photo.

Small-business owners will be in the center of the Supreme Court debate Tuesday about whether the requirement that most Americans carry health insurance or pay a penalty violates the Constitution.

National Federation of Independent Business lawyer Michael Carvin will argue against the “individual mandate” in President Barack Obama’s health-care law, together with former Solicitor General Paul Clement, who is representing 26 states.

NFIB, a conservative-leaning small-business lobby based in Washington, D.C., spent more than $1.2 million total on the lawsuit in 2010 alone, according to one recent disclosure.

“This is new to us, unchartered territory for us,” NFIB president Dan Danner said in an interview Friday. “We’ve never been a lead plaintiff in a case before the Supreme Court. We’re learning along the way.”

The NFIB, which took in almost $95 million in revenue in 2010, joined the legal challenge initiated by 13 states in May 2010.

The lawsuit moved through the lower courts based in part on an assertion by Mary Brown, the owner of an auto-repair shop in Panama City, Fla., a recent NFIB member. Ms. Brown said her business planning was jeopardized by the need to set aside funds to pay for her health insurance beginning in 2014, when a provision requiring most Americans to carry such coverage or pay a penalty takes effect.

Ms. Brown closed her shop in August and filed for personal bankruptcy the following month. And, in January, the NFIB filed a motion to add two other NFIB members as plaintiffs: Dana Grimes, the owner of a roofing company in Greenwich, N.Y., and David Klemencic, who runs a flooring business in Ellenboro, W.Va.

Mr. Grimes, 50, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal earlier this year that if he had to pay for health coverage, he would likely have to close his company because he wouldn’t be able to afford new equipment.

Not all small business owners are on the same page, however.

Mike Roach said he opposes the lawsuit, even though he’s been a member of NFIB for 36 years. The owner of Paloma Clothing in Portland, Ore., said he initially joined the group because it was a “strong voice for small businesses.” But, he added: “They’re doing a very big disservice to their members,” by opposing the health-care law.

Mr. Roach launched a group insurance plan at his businesses in 2008, and currently pays 85% of health insurance costs for six full-time employees. Last year, those costs came to $17,000, he said.

Four more workers are covered under plans from separate providers, he said. The health-care tax credits saved his business about $5,500 last year, he said.

A large crowd of people protesting, and supporting, the health care overhaul descended Monday on the Supreme Court, which is deciding whether the law is constitutional. WSJ’s Neil Hickey reports the people had a variety of reasons for being there.

“I wouldn’t quit [NFIB] over this, but I’m not very happy about it,” he said about the lawsuit. “If you look at it carefully, this bill does a lot to help businesses with 10 to 20 employees,” he said. “We don’t get breaks like this very often,” he added, referring to the tax credits tied to the law.

Sara Garcés, chief executive of Red F Marketing in Charlotte, N.C., said she approves of the health-care law, adding that health-care coverage for her company’s 51 full-time workers accounts for about 32% of its total payroll costs.

“We’re in the advertising industry, so we’re competing with some very large national firms. We need to compete for talent on that level,” she said of her decision to provide coverage for employees.

The firm, launched in 2000, pays 80% of health insurance premiums for employees and their families, in addition to other benefits. Part-time employees who work more than 30 hours per week are also covered.

The cost of Red F Marketing’s premiums surged by 21% last year, but have since started to fall. She added that she believes the health-care law “has the potential” to bring those costs down. She isn’t an NFIB member.

According to a 2010 financial report for its legal center released last month, NFIB incurred legal expenses of about $2.9 million on the lawsuit that year, of which the NFIB itself paid roughly $1.2 million.

About $1.6 million was described in a footnote as “contributed services,” referring to an agreement with an outside law firm to handle the case.

NFIB’s Mr. Danner, declined to specify the group’s total spending on the lawsuit so far, but said that while the group opposes the health-care law’s individual mandate, it is strongly in favor of health-care reform, such as curbing medical malpractice lawsuits.

In a summer 2010 ballot, in which about 20,000 NFIB members voted, about 93% said they believed Congress should repeal the health-care law.

The NFIB has about 340,000 members, and says its average member is a business with 10 to 15 employees.

By BETH GARDINER

Just like large companies eager to get a foothold in one of the world’s most important markets, international business schools are moving into China in a big way.

Eager to capitalize on demand in a fast-growing economy that has a huge need for well-trained managers, big name B-schools from Europe and the U.S. are launching and expanding M.B.A.-program collaborations with Chinese universities or going it alone with courses aimed at mid-career executives.

Experience in China is also a selling point at home, since Western students increasingly see the benefits of studying at an institution whose faculty have close-up experience of the country. Such links can also give M.B.A. students the chance to study in China for a module or a semester.

“The lure is to go and learn about what’s happening, and be in the middle of the action in one of the most dynamic economies in the world,” says Krishna Palepu, senior associate dean for international development at Harvard Business School. The school has had a faculty research base in China for about 20 years but now shares a new Shanghai classroom with other Harvard schools.

“In the last four or five years we have ramped it up to a much larger scale,” he says.

A flurry of deans from top international institutions who have moved recently to run programs in Asia shows the influence the continent’s institutions now wield in the B-school world, says Matt Symonds, whose company, Symonds GSB, does consulting for business schools.

George Yip is leaving the top post at the Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands for the China Europe International Business School, or CEIBS, where John Quelch, a onetime head of London Business School, recently became dean. Arnoud De Meyer quit his job as director of the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School last year to become president of the Singapore Management University.

China has scores of its own business schools, which now attract thousands of students a year.

“But nonetheless, such is the thirst for a managerial talent pool that there remains tremendous demand for the Western business-school product,” Mr. Symonds says.

Duke University is setting up a campus in Kunshan, near Shanghai, and its Fuqua School of Business is slated to be the first to offer programs there. Some other Western universities run full-fledged M.B.A. programs in partnership with Chinese institutions, and many more offer shorter training courses.

Chinese companies are growing so quickly that training programs can barely keep up with the demand for qualified managers. With companies vying for their services, such employees jump ship frequently, so firms must make sure they have a pipeline of new talent available to manage their own growth, says Mr. Palepu.

Big multinational firms also look to the major business schools to train managers for their Chinese operations. And given the projections for China’s economic growth, the need is only likely to get bigger.

“The demand is already huge, but it’s going to grow several-fold,” says Rama Velamuri, academic director of the international executive M.B.A. program at the China Europe International Business School. CEIBS was one of the first international business schools in China when it opened in 1994 as a joint effort of the European Union and the Chinese government.

But Chinese students are no longer willing, as they were then, to listen unquestioningly to anyone bringing Western ideas to the classroom, he says.

“The market has become very discerning now,” Mr. Velamuri says. “It’s no longer good enough for you to come up with a theory that was done up in the West and present it to an audience in China. The Chinese will push back and say ‘Tell us how it will apply here.’”

The most promising new source of students may be from Chinese companies that are looking to expand globally and seeking to educate employees about Western markets.

Chinese companies “are now looking outward to the rest of the world,” Mr. Symonds says. “A lot of their executive-training demands will focus on the Western business schools teaching them how to reach out.”

Harvard Business School is among those seeking to tap that market with a new, simultaneously translated program for Chinese CEOs who do not speak English and whose companies are aiming to go international.

It is not just Chinese students who want a global perspective. Building a presence in China is key to a school’s attractiveness at home too, says Bernard Ramanantsoa, dean of HEC Paris business school, which offers joint M.B.A. degrees in China with Tsinghua University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and executive M.B.A.s in partnership with Chinese government agencies.

“It becomes a strong marketing tool if a school has this China engagement,” Mr. Velamuri of CEIBS says.

In many ways, though, China is still not an easy place for foreigners to do business. Bureaucratic and cultural hurdles can be high, Mr. Symonds says. And while many Western schools boast of their links with Chinese universities, “they happen at such different levels,” Mr. Symonds notes. “There are lots of flimsy partnerships.”

Markets like Singapore are becoming overcrowded with international B-schools, but Mr. Symonds predicts China may get only a few more.

“If it was as easy to do business in China as it is in Singapore, perhaps we’d see other main players setting up there,” he says.