I'm very happy that our employees and others consider us a flexible, family friendly workplace. We also encourage employee volunteerism, giving 12 paid days off a year to each employee to give back to community groups. Henry Ford believed in the importance of sustainability and built it into his early model T's. And as a mother of two daughters, I care deeply about the quality of air they will breathe, the water they will drink and the safety of the food they will eat as they grow into adults. I'd like to talk a bit about the increasing power of markets and corporations.
Corporate executives are under excruciating pressure to maximize quarterly shareholder returns.
News of these earnings, mergers, acquisitions and litigation move capital and markets throughout the globe in milliseconds and infinite cycles. We invest with a view of a company's long-term potential and sustainable business practices. After all, most investors invest for retirement during their entire working life. Today, information technology is a dominant sector of our global economy. With increased use of the Internet, wireless and satellite telecommunications, we receive new information with astounding speed.