ASBM Business
Updates is a Weekly Selective Compilation of Business News from Various
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ASIAN BUSINESS
Brent crude futures inched lower on Monday after
gaining more than 1 percent in the previous two sessions but they pared early
losses as Asian shares firmed on mildly upbeat Chinese trade data.
The European benchmark gave up nearly 60 cents in
early Asian trade as investors locked in profits on news that several prominent
U.S. lawmakers said they had not been persuaded to approve strikes against
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces.
The Obama administration faces a crucial test vote
set for Wednesday in the U.S. Senate on Syria. China urged the United States on
Monday to proceed with caution and return to the United Nations to discuss
Syria after Washington said it was not seeking Security Council approval for
action.
Brent, which rose 1.9 percent last week amid worries
over a U.S.-led strike against Syria, was down 21 cents at $115.91 by 0640 GMT
after settling up 86 cents on Friday. Brent hit a one-week high of $116.56 in
the previous session.
The losses in U.S. crude, which jumped more than $2
on Friday, were steeper, with the front-month trading down 42 cents at $110.11.
"After Friday's rally especially in WTI (West
Texas Intermediate), some profit-taking took place in the morning, but firm
equities in Japan on the back of Tokyo's winning Olympics bid and elsewhere
supported the oil complex," said Masaki Suematsu, energy team
manager at Newedge in Tokyo.
Rising equities broadly signal economic improvement,
which would mean higher oil consumption.
Markets were also supported by data which showed China's
broad exports rose more than expected in August, boosted by improving demand
for the country's goods in major markets and adding to evidence that the
world's second-largest economy may have avoided a sharp slowdown.
Geopolitical risks were kept elevated on Monday at a
time when markets were already coping with a loss of additional supplies from
Libya.
ASIAN MANAGEMENT
JC Consulting managing director Jason Cutrupi said
FOFA had strengthened the case for the business’ back-office service. The
services provider is based out of Australia but has its staff operating from an
office in Thailand, overseen by Australian-qualified financial planner Richella
Daly.
Cutrupi said 20 practices, most of them independent,
were now signed up to the back-office service, with most using it for
paraplanning and statement of advice (SOA) preparation.
“About 85 per cent of the work is around SOAs, where
we work through the technical details gathered by the planners in Australia
while they provide and insert the specifics around the strategy in their own
office,” Cutrupi said.
“However we have built our team and processes around
servicing the bespoke needs of practices, which is something we have expanded
into since our launch as many practices have systems or processes which are
unique or designed to cater to their own business model.”
Cutrupi said the business was only focused on
back-office services at present, as many people were reluctant to deal with
client services provided from overseas due to negative experiences with other
non-financial services providers.
“We do not think this would reflect well on the
practices we work with, so our focus is on the onerous back-office tasks many
planners find costly to do or struggle to find staff to do the work.”
Singapore overtook Japan as Asia’s biggest
foreign-exchange centre for the first time as trading surged in the past three
years, the city’s central bank said, citing a survey by the Bank for
International Settlements.
The city’s average daily foreign-exchange volume
increased 44 per cent to $383 billion as of April from $266 billion in the same
month in 2010, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a statement
yesterday. The average interest-rate derivatives volume climbed 6 per cent to
$37 billion over the same period, the highest in the region after Japan, it
said.
“Singapore has definitely established itself as a
hub for foreign-exchange trading,” Khoon Goh, a senior currency strategist at
Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Singapore, said before the
release of the statement. “Part of this emergence is due to the increasing
importance of Asian currencies, and Singapore’s time zone is well-suited for
that.”
The Chinese yuan entered the top 10 most-actively
traded currencies, according to the Bank for International Settlements or BIS.
Singapore’s increase in ranking puts it behind only the UK and US in the $6.67
trillion global foreign-exchange trading market, the BIS said.
ASIAN SCHOOL OF
BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
For the students of Asian School of Business
Management (ASBM), Fresher's day is one of the most fun-filled times. Campus of
the leading B-school, buzzed with cultural extravaganza on the occasion of
'AKANKSHA-2013', the Fresher's day programme, on 30th August
2013.Speaking at the occasion, Founder and Director of ASBM Prof. Biswajeet
Pattanayak welcomed the students and advised them to work hard and become good
management professionals and serve the country with their knowledge, moral and
ethical values.Stressing on the need of education, he said, "Future of the
country lies on the students and quality education has the power to transform
country."
He also advised students to make strong bonding with
each other."Both seniors and juniors should utilize occasions like
Fresher’s Day to break the ice and get friendly with each other," he
added.
On this occasion, the Second year students of PGDM
were seen performing several cultural activities like dance and songs.
The splendid performances by the students left all mesmerized.Professors and
staffs of ASBM were also present on this occasion.
Success in marketing depends on trust of consumers.
Being customer centric is a key element of marketing in complex and competitive
times, said Shri Sunil Gupta, Vice-President (Marketing), Paradeep Phosphates
Limited, while inaugurating the National Management Seminar on the theme-
'Marketing in complex and competitive times,' organized by Asian
School of Business Management (ASBM) here today.
Speaking on the occasion, Shri Gupta said,
"Strong and sustainable customer relationship gives support in difficult
period. So it is very essential for management students to understand the basic
skills of marketing before venturing into the corporate sector."
Stressing on various key aspects of marketing, he further
added, "Better pricing, good supply strategy along with the use of
technology like social networking can add on profit to your business”.
Lauding the effort of ASBM in the field of
management education Gupta said, "I am really impressed with the growth
that ASBM has achieved in these seven years. It is exceptional." He
advised students to serve the society with their management skill in coming
years.Addressing the seminar Shri KVJ Rao, Senior Regional Manager (Direct
Sales), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited said, "There should be
quest for innovation. Good innovation brings affluence."
He advised students to be honest and enrich
themselves with social and fundamental values. Professor Biswajeet
Pattanayak, Founder and Director ASBM enlightened the students by saying
"Innovation is the only way to overcome from economic
meltdown."Investment in marketing, especially in social medium of
advertisement is a worth investment. Multi-medium of advertisement builds
strong relationship with customers," added the Lagaan Professor.
BANKING
ICICI Bank
Ltd, India’s largest private sector bank, has launched ICICI Bank Carbon in
partnership with Visa.
“The ICICI
Bank Carbon will be offered to select ICICI Bank credit card members only. It
is available at an inaugural one-time fee of Rs 1,000 plus applicable service
tax,” the bank said in a statement.
The member
initially needs to generate a CodeSure PIN on the ICICI Bank Web site before
using the card. This is a one-time activity.
The PIN
can instantly help generate a one-time-passcode (OTP) on the card plastic
itself. The display panel on the back of the card then shows this OTP which can
be used to authenticate online transactions.
In case of
a loss of the physical card, it cannot be used for online transaction without
the CodeSure PIN, the bank said.
The card
provides reward points, complimentary movie tickets, access to culinary treat
programme, access at select airport lounges in India and complete waiver of 2.5
per cent fuel surcharge at HPCL fuel stations.
Powered by
Visa CodeSure, it provides EMV chip technology with embedded microchip that can
minimise the risks of skimming and counterfeit of cards, especially for online
shopping.
Banking aspirants, including Shriram
Capital and Religare
Enterprises, are running from pillar to post to get clearances from a
plethora of bodies such as the Cen-tral Bureau of Investigation, the incometax
department, as the Reserve Bank of India accelerates processes to grant new
licences by January.
The central bank, which is in a hurry after Raghuram
Rajan took charge, has sought details of the ultimate beneficiary shareholders
in some of the group companies and more details about finance beyond what
appears in annual reports. "The RBI has asked for more
information on shareholders, financial results of group companies for last five
years and a lot more details on financials," said GS Sundararajan, group
director, Shriram Capital. He did not detail the specific questions. "We
have received queries from the Reserve Bank of India," said Shachindra
Nath, group chief executive officer, Religare Enterprises, which is among the
26 aspirants. While the central bank may have turned active, the process in
other bureaucracyriddled organisations such as income tax
and the CBI have been as slow as ever which may cause some delay, say some of
the applicants who did not want to be identified. "I hope to announce the
licences within, or soon after, the term of deputy governor Anand Sinha who has
been shepherding the process. His term expires on January 2014," the RBI
governor said soon after taking charge. One of the applicants, requesting
anonymity, said that RBI wanted them to present a plan to cover the unbanked
area.
BUSINESS
COMMUNICATION
Instaply, Inc. today announces the expansion of its
business communication platform. Available on iPhone and Android,
Instaply now helps you find, connect and instantly text message with all your
business contacts.
Reading and answering emails takes up about 28% of
our workweek. According to analysts, the average email response time is at 2.5
days. With short messaging on the rise, it is natural to take our business
communications to a shorter, more efficient form.
"Communications are going realtime, in the
form of streams of short messages. Text messaging apps are
exploding," says Fabien Degaugue, Instaply CEO. "So what about
business communications? How come we still always follow up by email with all
our business contacts? With Instaply, we are creating the business graph: a
platform dedicated to all the business-related communications, built for mobile from the
ground up, with a Web access coming soon."
*Connect with everyone you do business with*
Just like the Facebook or Twitter search, Instaply
now makes it dramatically easier for any user to engage with
business contacts without having to remember their cell phone numbers or
professional emails.
*Be efficient*
Get in the flow and get things done. Business
conversations now live in a friendly, cloud-based environment. By building
your business graph on Instaply, you now have an alternative to email for all
business-related communications. All communications on Instaply are secured
and private.
Russia successfully put three satellites into orbit, the
federal space agency Roscosmos said Thursday.
"The launch was carried out at 3:22 Moscow time
(2322 GMT Wednesday) from the Plesetsk Defense Ministry's space center (in
Northern Russia)," the Roscosmos said in a statement.
A carrier rocket Rokot equipped with the Briz-M
booster placed three Gonets-D1M communication satellites into a designated
orbit, Roscosmos said.
The Gonets satellites joined a low-orbit group of
telecommunication satellites designed to provide communications services for
remote areas of Russia, Xinhua reported.
This was Rokot's first launch after a nine-month
suspension used to fix malfunctions in the Briz-M booster.
In January, the Rokot equipped with the same type
booster failed to place three military satellites into orbit due to a glitch in
the Briz-M systems.
Rokot is the RS-18 (SS-18 by NATO classification) intercontinental ballistic missile
converted for commercial space launches. The carrier rockets were put into
service since 2000.
BUSINESS
MANAGEMENT
Support
Ticketing tools on the Cloud have become very popular in the marketplace today.
However, most of these tools are web based and do not provide accompanying
Smartphone apps. Increasingly, Companies are demanding solutions that enable
their Customers to quickly open and manage Support Tickets, using both their
Smartphones and their laptops. Talygen,
the world leader in Business Management Automation, has now introduced an
advanced Android app that is fully integrated with its state of the art Cloud
based Software as a Service (SaaS) application. Now, Companies and their
Clients have one integrated solution to manage and submit Support Tickets.
Whether someone is on the Web, or using a Tablet or a Smartphone, they can now
use Talygen’s advanced functionality to create and manage their Support
Tickets. The app has rich functionality for Support Tickets. It allows Users to
create Support Tickets, view their status, see a list of all pending Support
Tickets and much more.
Android is
the most widely used smartphone platform for Business users and Talygen is
committed to making sure that all Business users have access to the best
Business Intelligence, CRM, Time Management, Project Management, Human
Resource, & Collaboration software in the market. Talygen’s Android
application is designed to both Company Users and their Clients at multiple
levels. This means Android users can now quickly and easily manage their
Support Ticket functions. The interface is intuitive and easy-to-use, and is
perfect for savvy Android users who are accustomed to having the best user
experience in the marketplace today.
INDIA BUSINESS
Global chip maker Intel has developed a new
processor to enable Indian enterprises meet demand for new services with
greater efficiency and flexibility, a company official said Wednesday.
"Our new Xeon processor offers 45 percent more
efficiency and 50 percent higher performance to benefit Indian enterprises in
the service-oriented mobile world," Intel Asia-Pacific director Narendra
Bhadari told reporters at a preview.
The company also unveiled a new version of its Atom
processor and the fourth generation core processors to enhance security and
productivity in data centre with faster boot and application start times.
"Our goal is to re-architect data centre to
provide a common, software-based foundation for both data centres and cloud
service providers spanning servers, networking, storage and security,"
Bhandari said.
The company's global data centre develops solutions
to help enterprises keep pace with demand for cloud services and managing data
generated from billions of users and connected devices worldwide.
"Our new products and technologies will allow
us to expand into new segments of the data centre in India by becoming the
means to deliver new services to businesses and consumers than reducing cost
and increasing productivity," he said.
As data centres enter a new era of rapid service
delivery, the company is betting on growth opportunities across network,
storage and servers to deliver scale and efficiency.
"We are looking to accelerate our progress in
the Indian enterprise segment with solutions that address the high performance
needs of the fast evolving space," Bhandari asserted.
INDIA MANAGEMENT
BlackBerry on Thursday announced the launch of its
new social BlackBerry 9720 smartphone in India, priced at Rs 15,990.
The BlackBerry 9720 smartphone features a spacious
BlackBerry keyboard with keys for optimal typing, a 2.8'' touchscreen and trackpad
for easy navigation.
The device runs on BlackBerry 7.1 OS, which features
an updated interface that lets you swipe to unlock the phone or access the
camera from the lock screen, as well as additional enhancements.
Available in a variety of vibrant colors, the new
smartphone comes packed with all of your favorite social apps.
"The new BlackBerry 9720 smartphone builds on
the incredible success of the BlackBerry 7 OS," said Sunil Lalvani,
Managing Director for India at BlackBerry. "This new smartphone provides
an ideal choice for urban youth and customers who are looking to upgrade from a
feature phone or existing BlackBerry Curve smartphone to an affordable,
easy-to-use smartphone with rich messaging and social networking
connectivity."
The device features a dedicated BBM key and BBM
Voice.
The latest version of BBM, which features BBM
Channels, will also soon be available for download on the BlackBerry World
storefront, said the company.
The smartphone also integrates BlackBerry Balance
technology, which separates work from personal content on the smartphone,
supporting the needs of the enterprise and the BYOD customer.
The BlackBerry 9720 smartphone is expected to be
available from authorised retailers in India from September 14.
LOGISTICS
Africa Oilfield Logistics (AOL) has invested $4
million to acquire 49 percent stake in Ardan Risk & Support Services, an
oilfields and logistics company, to increase its market share and expand
operations.
In an official statement, the AIM-listed investment
company said the investment was in line with its strategy of expanding its
presence in the rapidly developing sub-Saharan Africa oil and gas industry by
“by providing loan funding.”
The group’s Director Andrew Groves said: “we are
committed to provide funding to enable the Ardan team to accelerate its
expansion into new services and geographic regions”.
According to an official statement, AOL is also
looking at additional markets, particularly in Madagascar, West and North
Africa. And with an aggressive expansion programme underway, a high calibre
management team in place and top quality projects underway and in the pipeline,
Ardan expects to continue its growth trajectory over the next few years.
The group which is a multi-divisional Africa-focused
support service and logistics company, has established international client
base providing a full spectrum of products and services ranging from the
provision of remote workforce accommodation to facilities management and
medical support.
It now services multiple sectors including oil &
gas, mining, construction, engineering, industrial, NGO and governmental,
allowing its clients to operate and develop their businesses and services
efficiently on the African continent.
Founded in 2008, Ardan provides logistics and
support services solutions to international corporate clients operating
primarily in the mining, oil and gas and sectors in Kenya.
ODISHA BUSINESS
The Odisha
Integrated Power Ltd (OIPL), a fully owned subsidiary of Power Finance
Corporation (PFC) will conduct the bidding process for selecting the developer for the first 4,000 Mw ultra mega power plant
(UMPP) proposed at Bhedabahal in Sundargarh district.
OIPL, a
special purpose vehicle (SPV) formed for implementing the UMPP has been
authorized by the Odisha government to take all necessary decisions that may be
required for selection of the developer. The decisions are to be taken by the
SPV in accordance with the 'Guidelines for Determination of Tariff by Bidding
Process for Procurement of Power by Distribution Licensees' issued by the Union
power ministry under Electricity Act-2003.
State
owned power trading firm Gridco Ltd has been appointed as the lead utility
among all the utilities that have been allocated power from the Bhedabhal UMPP.
As the lead utility, Gridco will discharge the obligations on behalf of all the
individual entities.
The
Government of India recently scrapped the initial bids received from 20 power
companies for setting up this UMPP since the bids were invited as per the
previous standard bidding documents (SBDs). With the new SBDs finalized now,
fresh bids for the Bhedabhal UMPP are expected to be invited in a week.
Bigwigs in the power sector like NTPC, Tata Power, Adani Power, JSW Energy and
Jindal Steel & Power Ltd (JSPL) had evinced interest in developing the UMPP.
_____________________________________________________________
Source of
Information for this issue: Google alert accessed on 16th and 17th Sept 2013
We welcome your suggestions in improving this information updating service.
Knowledge Is Power. Be Informed, Be Knowledgeable, Be Powerful.
Best wishes
Compilation
Sabita Sahu
Sabita Sahu
Junior Librarian
Concept, Layout and
Editing
Syamaghana Mohanty
Chief Librarian
Chief Librarian
Information and
Documentation Division, Chanakya Central Library
Asian School of
Business Management
Shiksha Vihar Bhola,
Barang Khurda Road,
Chandaka
Bhubaneswar-754012
Tel:0674-2374832, 2374833
E-mail:library@asbm.ac.in, chieflibrarian@asbm.ac.in
Sabita Sahu :Junior Librarian and Syamaghana Mohanty : Chief Librarian, Knowledge and Information Services Unit, Chanakya Central Library, Asian School of Business Management, Bhubaneswar. chieflibrarian@asbm.ac.in ; www.asbm.ac.in
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