At 8 a.m. on a dreary Wednesday in London, Jeff Clarke, the square-jawed CEO of travel-services provider Travelport, listens as managers explain why their division is losing money. They tick off a list of problems: technology errors, fewer bookings, higher marketing costs, and on and on. One executive estimates that the business could break even in 2009. Clarke has a different idea: 2008. "Be aggressive!" he commands. For Clarke, the onetime chief operating officer of Computer Associates International who took over at Travelport in April, 2006, such exhortations aren't cheesy bits of CEO stagecraft—they're expressions of deep-seated fear.
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