In fact Bols required several years of financial nursing before it started to generate decent profits.

ECONOMIST: BolsWessanen

Its results on August 5th, which showed decent profits despite a slowdown at its investment bank, helped bolster this view.

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And yes, banks will make less money than before but the industry will still return decent profits and still pay its people well.

ECONOMIST: Banks will still make money, just less of it

Fiat makes mostly small, mid-market cars for Italy and southern Europe, and needs its factories to run at full capacity to generate decent profits.

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When decent profits were being made in one part of a corporate empire, say, just as an example, Latin American telephone systems, then those profits were used internally to fund the purchase of North American hotel chains.

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And contracting out can work only if the PT overcomes its distaste for decent private profits: the many risks in project-execution mean that otherwise investors will stay away.

ECONOMIST: Brazil��s economy

Be prepared to either go with him all the way, or take your profits whenever they look decent enough.

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Possibly, the bank's risk controls were decent enough, but its bosses chose to ignore them for the sake of profits.

ECONOMIST: German banks