商务英语BEC初级阅读材料8

　　(1)An old problem is getting new attention in the United States: bullying. Recent cases included the tragic case of a fifteen-year-old girl whose family moved from Ireland.

　　Phoebe PrincePhoebe Prince hanged herself in Massachusetts in January following months of bullying. Her parents criticized her school for failing to protect her. Officials have brought criminal charges against several teenagers.

　　Judy Kuczynski is president of an anti-bullying group called Bully Police USA. Her daughter Tina was the victim of severe bullying starting in middle school in the state of Minnesota.

　　JUDY KUCZYNSKI: "Our daughter was a very outgoing child. She was a bubbly personality, very involved in all kinds of things, had lots of friends. And over a period of time her grades fell completely. She started having health issues. She couldn’t sleep. She wasn’t eating. She had terrible stomach pains. She started clenching her jaw and grinding her teeth at night. Didn’t want to go to school."

　　Bullying is defined as negative behavior repeated over time against the same person. It can involve physical violence. Or it can be verbal -- for example, insults or threats.

　　Spreading lies about someone or excluding a person from a group is known as social or relational bullying.

　　And now there is cyberbullying, which uses the Internet, e-mail or text messages. It has easy appeal for the bully because it does not involve face-to-face contact and it can be done at any time.

　　The first serious research studies into bullying were done in Norway in the late nineteen seventies. The latest government study in the United States was released last year. It found that about one-third of students age twelve to eighteen were bullied at school.

　　Examples included being made fun of, pushed, spit on, threatened or excluded from activities. Some students had their property damaged. About four percent reported being the victims of cyberbullying. The study took place in two thousand seven.

　　Susan Swearer is a psychologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and co-director of the Bullying Research Network. She says schools should treat bullying as a mental health problem to get bullies and victims the help they need. She says bullying is connected to depression, anxiety and anti-social behavior, and bullies are often victims themselves.

　　What can be done to prevent bullying? That will be our subject next week.

　　And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. You can find this story and post comments at voaspecialenglish.com and at the VOA Learning English page on Facebook. I’m Steve Ember.

　　(2)一份新的研究报告称，未来3年，全球私人银行有望迎来前所未有的增长局面，预计其管理下的资产规模每年将增长30%。调查发现，私人银行计划通过收购进军这些利润更为丰厚的市场。

　　Private banks around the world are expected to enjoy unprecedented growth over the next three years with assets under management expected to increase by 30 per cent per annum, according to a new study.

　　一份新的研究报告称，未来3年，全球私人银行有望迎来前所未有的增长局面，预计其管理下的资产规模每年将增长30%。

　　Asia-Pacific and eastern Europe are expanding the fastest as banks rush to tap into the growing ranks of the wealthy in these markets, according to the 2007 global private banking study by PwC which questioned senior executives of 265 organisations in 43 countries.

　　普华永道(PwC)对43个国家265家企业的高管进行问卷调查，发布了2007年全球私人银行业研究报告。报告称，亚太和东欧地区的增长最为迅速，各大银行竞相争夺这些市场上日益扩大的富人阶层。

　　In Asia-Pacific, those chief executives questioned expect assets under management to increase by an annual rate of 34 per cent, and in Russia between 30 per cent and 50 per cent.

　　亚太地区接受问卷调查的首席执行官们预计，该地区管理下的资产规模每年将增长34%，而在俄罗斯，这一增速将在30%至50%之间。

　　The study found that private banks planned to move into these more lucrative markets through acquisitions.

　　调查发现，私人银行计划通过收购进军这些利润更为丰厚的市场。

　　Almost 90 per cent of chief executives believe there will be at least some, if not significant consolidation, in the private banking industry and more than half of chief executives questioned plan to open operations in new countries over the next two years to target new wealthy clients.

　　几乎90%的首席执行官认为，私人银行业至少会出现一些整合--如果说不是重大整合的话，而逾半数的受访首席执行官表示，计划未来两年内在新兴国家开设业务，将目标瞄准新的富裕客户。

　　Bruce Weatherill, global private banking and wealth management leader at PwC, said: “Buoyed by rising global wealth, wealth managers everywhere are anticipating extremely high rates of profitable growth that have not been seen during the 14-year history of our survey and probably at any other time.”

　　普华永道全球私人银行及理财业务主管布鲁斯o韦瑟里尔(Bruce Weatherill)表示：“在全球财富日益增长的支撑下，全球各地的财富经理正期待实现极高水平的有盈利的增长，在我们启动调查的14年里，都从未见 过这种速度的增长，在其它任何时期可能也是一样。”

　　It was “a time when strategic choices have to be made and finite resources have to be focused on serving existing clients as well as supporting highly ambitious growth plans”。

　　目前“必须做出战略抉择，将有限的资源集中在为现有客户服务，并且为雄心勃勃的增长计划提供支持”。

　　The study also suggested that in future, wealth managers will be responsible for investing a greater proportion of their clients wealth.

　　研究还表明，未来财富经理负责代理其客户投资的财富比例将进一步扩大。

　　Currently, under half of all wealth managers hold more than 40 per cent of their clients’ investable wealth - but over the next three years this proportion is expected to increase dramatically so that 80 per cent of wealth managers hold 40 per cent of a client’s wealth.

　　目前，不到半数的财富经理管理着其客户逾40%的可投资财富 --但未来3年内，这一比例有望大幅提高，届时80%的财富经理将管理着客户40%的财富。

　　The study found the biggest challenges were recruiting and retaining enough relationship managers to support the aggressive growth of private banks.

　　研究发现，要想为私人银行业大幅增长提供支撑，最大的挑战在于招募和留住足够数量的客户经理。