Euro Disney said that although attendance levels had been high, \will sustain a net loss for the financial year ending September , \
It added that \the remaining portion of the critical European summer vacation period\
The announcement amounted to an extraordinary reversal for Euro Disney, which opened amid immense celebration and widespread predictions of immediate success.
At the time of the opening, on April , the company's shares were trading at . francs($.), and had been as high as francs earlier in the year.
They dropped . percent Thursday to close at . francs.
Mr. Forsgren said he thought the market had \a bit emotionally to preliminary information\
He added, \all objective standards the park is very successful. The long-term acceptance is strong, the rest is just details.\
The company said that . million people had visited the park from April to July , a performance superior to that of comparable start-upperiods at other Disney theme parks.
But it warned that, given the likely strong seasonal variation in attendance, it was not possible to predict future attendance or profits.
Reacting to the announcement, stock market expert Paribas Capital Markets Group issued a \recommendation on Euro Disney stock, saying that attendance levels for the period were percent below its expectations and profit from sales of food and other goods was percent below.
It predicted that the company would lose million francs in the current financial year and continue losing money for two more years.
The main problem confronting Euro Disney appears to be managing its costs and finding an appropriate price level for its over , hotel rooms.
Clearly, costs have been geared to a revenue level that has not been achieved, and the company is beginning to drop hotel prices that have been widely described as excessive.
Mr. Forsgren said the number of staff, now at ,, would \months, mainly through the loss of seasonal employees\
Of the current staff, , are employed on a temporary basis, he said.
He also acknowledged that the lowest-priced rooms at the resort had been cut to francs ($) from francs at the time of the opening, and that some rooms were being offered at francs for the winter season.
Analystsbelieve hotel use has been running at about percent of capacity, although it is currently over percent.
\
\an appropriate level.
The stock's still too expensive, but I think in the long term they'll get it right.\
Still, huge doubt hangs over the company's plans to keep the theme park open through the cold European winter—something no other theme park in Europe has ever attempted.
Last month, the company said it was having difficulty attracting people from the Paris region. Mr. Forsgren said that French attendance was improving and accounted for million of the . million visitors, with most of the rest coming from Britain and Germany. Only percent of visitors have been American.
For its third quarter ending June , the first in which the park had been operating, the company announced revenues of . billion francs ($ million), but gave no profit or loss figures in line with the French practice of only giving such figures at year's end.
In the first half, the company earned million francs, mainly from investment income and sale of construction rights on its site. Unit_passage_english_a
What is the most valuable contribution employees make to their companies, knowledge or judgment? I say judgment.
Knowledge, no matter how broad, is useless until it is applied.
And application takes judgment, which involves something of a sixth sense—a high performance of the mind.
This raises interesting questions about the best training for today's business people.
As Daniel Goleman suggests in his new book, Emotional Intelligence, the latest scientific findings seem to indicate that intelligent but inflexible people don't have the right stuff in an age when the adaptive bility is the key to survival.
In a recent cover story, Time magazine sorted through the current thinking on intelligence and reported, \intelligence.\
The basic significance of the emotional intelligence that Time called \was suggested by management expert Karen Boylston: \are telling businesses, 'I don't care if every member of your staff graduated from Harvard. I will take my business and go where I am understood and treated with respect.'\
If the evolutionary pressures of the marketplace are making EQ, not IQ, the hot ticket for business success, it seems likely that individuals will want to know how to cultivate it.
I have a modest proposal: Embrace a highly personal practice aimed at improving these four adaptive skills.
Raising consciousness.
I think of this as thinking differently on purpose.
It's about noticing what you are feeling and thinking and escaping the conditioned confines of your past.
Raise your consciousness by catching yourself in the act of thinking as often as possible. Routinely take note of your emotions and ask if you're facing facts or avoiding them.
Using imagery.
This is what you see Olympic ski racers doing before entering the starting gate.
With their eyes closed and bodies swaying, they run the course in their minds first, which improves their performance.
You can do the same by setting aside time each day to dream with passion about what you want to achieve.
Considering and reconsidering events to choose the most creative response to them.
When a Greek philosopher said , years ago that it isn't events that matter but our opinion of them, this is what he was talking about.
Every time something important happens, assign as many interpretations to it as possible, even crazy ones.
Then go with the interpretation most supportive of your dreams.
Integrating the perspectives of others.
Brain research shows that our view of the world is limited by our genes and the experiences we've had.
Learning to incorporatethe useful perspectives of others is nothing less than a form of enlarging your senses.
The next time someone interprets something differently from you—say, a controversial political event—pause to reflect on the role of life experience and consider it a gift of perception.
The force of habit—literally the established wiring of your brain—will pull you away from practicing these skills.
Keep at it, however, because they are based on what we're learning about the mechanism of the mind.
Within the first six months of life the human brain doubles in capacity.
It doubles again by age four and then grows rapidly until we reach sexual maturity.
The body has about a hundred billion nerve cells, and every experience triggersa brain response that literally shapes our senses.
The mind, we now know, is not confined to the brain but is distributed throughout the body's universe of cells.
Yes, we do think with our hearts, brains, muscles, blood and bones.
During a single crucial three-week period during our teenage years, chemical activity in the brain is cut in half.
That done, we are \wired\with what one of the nation's leading brain researchers calls our own \
He says it is impossible for any two people to see the world exactly alike.
So unique is the personal experience that people would understand the world differently.
However, it is not only possible to change your world view, he says, it's actually easier than overcoming a drug habit.
But you need a discipline for doing it. Hence, the method recommended here.
No, it's not a curriculum in the sense that an MBA is.
But the latest research seems to imply that without the software of emotional maturity and self-knowledge, the hardware of academic training alone is worth less and less.
Unit_passage_english_b
It turns out that a scientist can see the future by watching four-year-olds interact with a piece of candy.
The researcher invites the children, one by one, into a plain room and begins the gentle torture. \
\back.\
And then he leaves.
Some children grab for the treat the minute he's out the door. Some last a few minutes before they give in. But others are determined to wait.
They cover their eyes; they put their heads down; they sing to themselves; they try to play games or even fall asleep.
When the researcher returns, he gives these children their hard-earned pieces of candy. And then, science waits for them to grow up.
By the time the children reach high school, something remarkable has happened.
A survey of the children's parents and teachers found that those who as four-year-olds had enough self-control to hold out for the second piece of candy generally grew up to be better adjusted, more popular, adventurous, confident and dependable teenagers.
The children who gave in to temptation early on were more likely to be lonely, easily frustrated and inflexible.
They could not endure stress and shied away from challenges.
When we think of brilliance we see Einstein, a thinking machine with skin and mismatched socks. High achievers, we imagine, were wired for greatness from birth.
But then you have to wonder why, over time, natural talent seems to waken in some people and dim in others.
This is where the candy comes in.
It seems that the ability to delay reward is a master skill, a triumph of the logical brain over the irresponsible one.
It is a sign, in short, of emotional intelligence. And it doesn't show up on an IQ test.
For most of this century, scientists have worshipped the hardware of the brain and the software of the mind; the messy powers of the heart were left to the poets.
But brain theory could simply not explain the questions we wonder about most: Why some people just seem to have a gift for living well; why the smartest kid in the class will probably not end up the richest; why we like some people virtually on sight and distrust others; why some people remain upbeatin the face of troubles that would sink a less resistant soul. What qualities of the mind or spirit, in short, determine who succeeds?
The phrase \like understanding one's own feelings, sympathy for the feelings of others and \emotion in a way that enhances living\
This notion is about to bound into the national conversation, conveniently shortened to EQ, thanks to a new book, Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman.
Goleman has brought together a decade's worth of research into how the mind processes feelings. His goal, he announces on the cover, is to redefine what it means to be smart.
His theory: When it comes to predicting people's success, brain capacity as measured by IQ may actually matter less than the qualities of mind once thought of as \
At first glance, there would seem to be little that's new here.
There may be no less original idea than the notion that our hearts have authority over our heads. \
Neither is it surprising that \ But if it were that simple, the book would not be quite so interesting or its implications so controversial.
This is no abstract investigation.
Goleman is looking for methods to restore \life\
He sees practical applications everywhere for how companies should decide whom to hire, how couples can increase the odds that their marriages will last, how parents should raise their children and how schools should teach them.
When street gangs substitute for families and schoolyard insults end in knife attacks, when more than half of marriages end in divorce, when the majority of the children murdered in this country are killed by their parents, many of whom say they were trying to discipline the child for behavior like blocking the TV or crying too much, it suggests a demand for basic emotional education.
And it is here the arguments will break out.
While many researchers in this relatively new field are glad to see emotional issues finally taken seriously, they fear that a notion as handy as EQ invites misuse.
\ \ Some people can't take joy.
So each emotion has to be viewed differently.\
EQ is not the opposite of IQ.
Some people are blessedwith a lot of both, but some with little of either.
What researchers have been trying to understand is how they work together; how one's ability to handle stress, for instance, affects the ability to concentrate and put intelligence to use.
Among the ingredients for success, researchers now generally agree that IQ counts for about %; the rest depends on everything from social class to luck.