I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine, an entrepreneur who runs a boutique marketing firm, about a difficult client she just finished working with. The conversation was actually a follow-up from a few months early, when she was still negotiating the contract and expressed some hesitancy to take on this particular client. At the time she was closing the deal, she had a lot of questions about how difficult this client would be to work with and whether he would make good on various promises made during the negotiation.

Applications are rising at many elite U.S. business schools, but the increase may be more of a triumph of marketing than a growing appetite for business degrees.

Dr. Dre's main obsession is perfecting the sound of Beats headphones, but the music producer weighs in decisively on everything from TV ads and font styles. It's an impulse he brings with him to his new role inside Apple.

Just four months after relocating to the U.S. from Asia, Ed King, Barclays PLC's executive chairman for mergers and acquisitions, has resigned from the firm, a person familiar with the matter said.