Sunday, December 23, 2012
Insider-trading in Satyam Computer
Monday, November 5, 2012
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Citigroup fined $2 million over facebook IPO
Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin announced the charges Friday. Citi agreed to the settlement without admitting or denying wrongdoing.
Citi was part of the team of banks that helped underwrite the deal that made Facebook a public company in May. When a bank helps underwrite such a deal, it has information about a company that the broader investing public does not have. The bankers who underwrite the deal are not supposed to act on that information or share it with any favored clients, because it would give them an unfair advantage over the public.
The arrangements can also bring accusations of conflicts of interest; banks not only help companies go public or do other deals, they also have units that provide research on the companies. The research is supposed to be impartial, but the banks have a stake in how a company does if it is helping it with underwriting.
According to Galvin's office, a junior analyst in Citigroup's San Francisco office was assigned to help research Facebook. On May 2, the junior analyst sent an email to two employees at the technology website TechCrunch.com, with proprietary information about Citigroup's research on Facebook.
"I am ramping up coverage on FB and thought you guys might like to see how the street is thinking about it (and our estimates)," the junior analyst wrote.
A TechCrunch employee wrote back: "There's no way I can publish this doc from an anonymous source, right?"
A minute later, the junior analyst replied: "My boss would eat me alive."
The analyst and the TechCrunch employee were friends, according to Galvin's office, and had gone to Stanford together.
Citigroup fired the junior analyst in September. The bank told Galvin's office that the junior analyst acted alone. In addition to agreeing to the $2 million fine, Citi also agreed to review its policies for overseeing analysts' communications, and to strengthen compliance training for the analysts.
http://profit.ndtv.com/news/international-business/article-citigroup-fined-2-million-over-facebook-ipo-312538?pfrom=home-latest
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Euro zone rot........
Euro
zone rot spreads to Germany ,
China
mending
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
How to use Twitter for more than just tweeting
15 OCT, 2012, 03.23AM IST, KARAN BAJAJ & HITESH RAJ BHAGAT,ET BUREAU Twitter may limit you to only 140 characters but the add-ons you can get for it are virtually unlimited. ET introduces you to 35 less-known ways that let you do a lot more with your Twitter account.
tweriod.com: Tweriod analyses your tweets and followers to let you know the best time to tweet. Tweeting then will get you more responses/retweets.
tweetwally.com: Here, you can see a page that collates tweets with a particular hashtag or keyword — makes it easy to track a topic on twitter.
twylah.com: Twylah aggregates your tweets and shows links/images tweeted by you on a single web page. Your followers can easily get a glimpse of topics that you tweet about. The service is currently in beta so you have to request an access code.
manageflitter.com: This tool categorises your followers — inactive, no profile pic, spam or by language. Use this information to unfollow the irrlevant ones. You can also schedule tweets.
tweetalarm.com: Get notified (by email) when someone mentions specific keywords on twitter — notifications can be instant, daily or weekly.
monitter.com: Here, you can search for a particular topic or keyword on twitter and sort the results based on the location of the tweeter.
nurph.com: At Nurph, you can create a virtual chat room where followers can tweet-chat with you. You also get a robot assistant that learns from the ongoing conversation and can reply on your behalf.
useqwitter.com: Sign in to Qwitter to find out who unfollowed you. The free version lets you track a single twitter account — it updates weekly.
futuretweets.com: Ever wanted to send automated tweets in the future? Here, you can schedule a tweet for later (day or time). Hint: use it as an alibi.
twit-twoo.net: Create an account & they'll tweet you with reminders for an event or happening. Use it to remind you of anniversaries or to-dos.
splitweet.com: Effortlessly manage multiple twitter accounts with this handy tool. Great for corporate use too.
flashtweet.com: Simply put, FlashTweet allows you to acquire targeted followers. You can also use it to mass follow based on a keyword or location.
twitchamp.com: Like a friendly competition? Compare how you're doing on twitter with your friends. You only need to enter the usernames.
tweetcube.com: Use this free service to share files (up to 10MB) on twitter. You can share any sort of file, but the catch is that it gets deleted in 30 days.
tweetstats.com: Just enter your username here to get detailed stats — tweet density, replies, retweets — it's all there.
tweetwrappr.com: Useless but funny, TweetWrappr lets you 'gift wrap' a tweet and send it to someone as a URL.
visibletweets.com: Just enter a keyword or hashtag and watch as everything gets animated for you in real time.
tweetrans.com: Want to be a global tweeter? Use this tool to send tweets in multiple languages in one step.
tweepsmap.com: Simply shows you where in the world your followers are.
Monday, October 15, 2012
IDEA CHANGED THE MARKET SHARE!!!!
Telecom's dark horse rises |
Idea Cellular has almost doubled market share, made profits & is third-largest operator today |
Krishna Kant / Mumbai October 12, 2012, 0:10 IST |
Idea Cellular Managing Director Himanshu Kapania says Aditya Birla Group’s taking control of Idea was the game-changer. “For 10 years, we had three parents but no godfather to provide a clear-cut vision. This was a recipe for failure and, obviously, the company failed to compete,” says Kapania, who re-joined the company in 2006 after it came under the Birla umbrella.
The company knew its limitations and decided to follow a calibrated growth strategy. “We were not democratic in our resource allocation. We over-invested in circles where Idea was strong and could increase its revenue share and under-invested in circles where it was financially prohibitive to get market share,” says Kapania. Specifically speaking, the company focused its attention on its circles in Western, Central, Southern and Northern India and under-invested in Eastern India where it was a late entrant.
But what really shifted the tide in Idea’s favour was its branding and marketing campaign. When Idea went national with its new brand campaign in 2005, most others in the category talked about features and various tariff plans and they mostly talked to metro and urban consumers. Idea decided to break the mould. It positioned mobile as a life changing device and began to talk in universal themes. “We always believed in the transformational power of mobile and its potential to change the life of an average Indian,” says Kapania. This is the genesis of the brand punchline – “An Idea can change your life” –and brand campaigns themed on universal themes like caste wars, identity (at the time of the Mumbai launch), saving paper by increasing the usage of mobile, how mobile usage can cut population growth etc.
However, for all its achievement in past few years, Idea is still to deliver meaningful returns to shareholders. “What growth? Idea shares trade at the same level as they were during the IPO. And given the regulatory uncertainty and likely capex on additional spectrum acquisition, nobody knows when it will start delivering,” says an analyst. He is not exaggerating. In FY12, Idea’s return on capital employed (on consolidated basis) was just 8.14 per cent while return on net worth was even lower, at 5.7 per cent. At these return ratios, a shareholder is better off putting money in a bank deposit than investing it in Idea.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Sunday, May 6, 2012
NIFTY bearish below 5,130
Wkly Tech Analysis: Bias to remain bearish below 5,130 |
Among the index stocks, Hero MotoCorp slumped almost 10% to Rs 1,981, and Maruti plunged over 8% to Rs 1,283 |
Rex Cano / Mumbai May 05, 2012, 23:59 IST |
The markets, as expected, began the week with hopes of a counter rally by the bulls. We saw the Sensex touch a high of 17,432, but eventually the gains turned into significant losses by the end of the week as technically the momentum oscillators were not supportive. |
Sunday, March 11, 2012
SUCCESS A WAY OF LIFE
11 MAR, 2012, 10.38AM IST,
Lesson's from AM Naik and L&T's leadership change
Managing leadership succession is very challenging for all organisations, tougher for more complex entities. Unfortunately, in several cases, neither the incumbent nor the board wakes up to address this challenge early on.
Typically, in their hurry to grow the organisation, they either forget or do not devote adequate attention to such a strategically important matter before it becomes a crisis. The leadership change at L&T has attracted a lot of attention precisely for the same reason. There are several lessons from this experience.
Every Lap Counts
Leadership succession is like a relay race. Choice of the runners for each lap depends on the challenges ahead, the first and last runners being the fastest. There has to be adequate preparation and perfect understanding between runners about the timing of passing the baton.
The person handing over the baton should feel confident that the person receiving it has caught hold of it. The two runners have to have perfect understanding between them about each other. In a well-trained context, this happens in split seconds. Played out in slow motion, the same thing happens in leadership succession in corporations.
In this highly professionalised organisation, the board and management have always been aware of the need for finding a successor to Mr Naik, who is already 70. In fact, media reports that appeared about two years ago had described the dilemma that the company was going to face.
It is unfortunate that the board did not do much then or earlier about choosing the runner for the next lap with all the appropriate capabilities, and prepare the ground for a smooth change over. This was in spite of the fact that the entire team of executive directors was over 60 then!
Start Early
The board should have started the process of identifying the successor at least five years back with a definite deadline, and intensified the search especially when it was clear then itself that there was no obvious choice available.
The company would have been better off with a younger top leadership to steer the organisation to achieve the 25 percent compound growth planned in the next several years. Such an approach would have guaranteed smooth transition of leadership at L&T, with an over lapping phase for the baton change to be trouble free.
Doubles Game
The current decision to split the responsibilities between chairman and managing director appears to be a convenient decision. The new duo of chairman and MD/CEO is going to face sharing the responsibilities of shaping the destiny of the organisation. It may not be easy for the new entrant to flourish when Mr Naik's shadow continues to loom large as the executive chairman.
Given that Mr Naik and Mr Venkatraman will play a doubles game for the next five years, it is critical for them both as well as the board to objectively discuss the roles they will actually play independently and jointly. The new MD should not become a figure head
Prepare Next Runner
Mr Naik has built L&T into a giant organisation, fighting several odds. He has a larger than life image. In such a scenario, it is for the incumbent to remind himself of the trusteeship role he is playing and prepare the organisation for the next leader. It appears that Mr Naik did not do it early enough.
By asking Mr Naik to continue as the executive chairman, the board has signalled its lack of preparedness for a change which is inevitable for anyone. Many leaders in business and politics do not believe that their time for retirement would ever come; they tend to think that they alone are capable of running subsequent laps. They do not recognise the need to prepare the next lap runner early on. Mr Naik and the board failed in their trusteeship responsibility.
Insecurity of Retirement
The longer a leader stays and the bigger the success, the greater is likely to be the challenge for his departure. Individual egos play a dominant role in refusing to accept realities. This is where some of the basic teachings of this country such as detachment, contentment and feeling of duty become all the more helpful. This is when leaders show their maturity.
National Institution
L&T is a national institution, respected and regarded for its professionalism by multiple stakeholders. The top team, representing all the stakeholders has a responsibility to ensure that it starts preparing for the next lap runner now itself. As trustees, they have to constantly remind themselves that no individual is indispensable.
(The author is Thomas Schmidheiny Chair Professor of Family Business & Wealth Management,