ASBM Business
Updates is a Weekly Selective Compilation of Business News from Various
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ASIAN MANAGEMENT
London-based City Financial Investment Company plans
to launch an Asian macro fund in the first quarter of next year in a joint
venture with Hong Kong hedge fund manager, Geoffrey Barker.
The move is part of City Financial’s strategy to work
with external fund managers. Andrew Williams, chief executive, says the firm
has long recognised the potential of hedge fund managers based in Hong Kong.
Geoffrey Barker was previously director of Ballingal
Investment Advisors where he set up the BIA Pacific Macro Fund.
City Financial is setting up the joint venture
through its subsidiary, City Financial Investment Company (Hong Kong).
The market share of long/short equity hedge funds in
Asia has fallen as the market matures and investors increasingly seek
strategies that are less correlated to underlying markets.
Data by Eurekahedge for Funds Global Asia, Funds
Europe's sister publication, shows that macro strategies are gaining
popularity in Asia.
City Financial Investment Company is an independent
investment manager with about $1.3 billion (€956 million) of assets under
management. It has been active in Asia since 2010 from which time it has
managed assets on behalf of UK institutional investors..
BRIGHTON Council is leading the
way with cutting-edge software used around the world and is now looking to
provide management support services to councils in East Malaysia and the
Philippines.
Brighton Council's wholly owned company Microwise
Australia provides software used by Australian water authorities, 27 Tasmanian
councils and councils in Western Australia, NSW and Fiji.
Asian local government advisers are talking to
council about the provision of management and operational support services in
the two countries.
Brighton Mayor Tony Foster said the interest from
Malaysia and the Philippines was encouraging.
"We have the opportunity to sell our IT
software and also to provide our processes and procedures to assist in the
modernisation and efficiency of their councils," Cr Foster said.
Dr James Alin from the University of Sabah in East
Malaysia advises local government authorities in the two countries and he says
the potential market for Microwise is substantial.
Cr Foster said the company's local government
software was an ideal tool for improving council efficiency. It was developed
when Brighton Council was unable to source software specific for small to
medium councils.
ASIAN SCHOOL OF
BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
Noted educationist and Founder and Director of ace
B-school Asian School of Business Management (ASBM) Professor Dr. Biswajeet
Pattanayak has been nominated by Hon’ble President of India as the member of
the First Court, the Highest Body of Governance, of the Central University of
Rajasthan, for his outstanding contribution in field of management education.
He has more than 83 Research Publications in
National and International referred Journals and 20 books to his credit and has
presented a number of papers and also Chaired sessions both in National and
International Conferences. He is popularly known as the Lagaan Professor for
introducing the movie first time to the classrooms of IIMs and Board rooms of
several leading corporate houses.
Professor Pattanayak – a man of principles and
passionate promoter of creativity and commitment – has worked in different
coveted positions like as Professor in “IIM, Indore & Lucknow” and Director
of RBI Institution “Indian Institute of Bank Management (IIBM), Guwahati” etc.
Dr. Pattanayak has been honoured for his pioneer
work through citation in 'Reference India', 'Indo-European who's who',
'Asian-American who's who', 'Asia Pacific who's who', 'World who's who',
'Biography International' and 'Asia – Men and women of achievement’. Besides,
Dr. Pattanayak has achieved the rare distinction having been placed among the
Top 100 Educators in the World, 2008 by IBC, Cambridge, England.
BUSINESS
HCL
Technologies September quarter numbers testified to the improved business
environment for the sector, with net profit and operating margins exceeding
analyst estimates. Revenues, however, just about met market expectations.
Consolidated quarterly net profit stood at Rs 1416 crore, up 14 percent
sequentially and up 31.2 percent year-on-year. Consolidated revenues grew 14
percent quarter-on-quarter to Rs 7,961 crore. According to the average of a
CNBC-TV18 poll, net profit was estimated at Rs 1350 crore and revenues at Rs
7,974 crore. “Against the backdrop of encouraging macro economic trends, these
results cement HCL's position as a company with a strong and differentiated
business model”,said Shiv Nadar, Chairman & Chief Strategy Officer, HCL
Technologies in the press release. The IT services major’s earnings before
interest and taxes, or operating profit, stood at Rs 1895 crore, up 31.1
percent quarter-on-quarter, with margin increasing to 23.8 percent from 20.7
percent in the preceding quarter. “Our focus on Generation 2 propositions like
Enterprise of the Future in TM ITO and ALT ASM in Application Services
continues to drive the company's quality of revenue,” said Anant Gupta,
President and CEO, HCL Technologies. The company attributed strong growth in
the financial services and manufacturing verticals to the robust performance.
BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Communication solutions provider Avaya on Friday
unveiled a set of new software and cloud-based services, which makes it
possible to embed collaboration capabilities into other applications.
The offering also marks its shift from telecommunications to providing mobile, scalable collaboration and communications solutions, a transformation it started six years ago.
"These new offerings are part of the USD 2.5 billion investment in research and development (R&D) made by Avaya during this time to reshape its portfolio for the future of collaboration," Avaya said in a release.
Avaya's Aura Collaboration Environment is a software platform that dissolves the complexity of embedding collaboration and communications capabilities into business applications, making it possible to quickly develop creative new ways of doing business, it added.
This enables social, mobile or cloud-based collaboration capabilities to be added to business applications or processes generally without the cost and time previously required, it said.
Avaya IP Office software extends Avaya innovation to the midmarket, delivering a seamless collaboration experience across voice, video and mobility for up to 2,000 users for the first time.
Besides, Avaya Messaging Service extends SMS messages to and from smartphones, tablets, notebooks and desktop devices, thereby enabling one-number communications via text messaging.
It also brings the same level of security, compliance and quality companies expect in email to text messaging.
The offering also marks its shift from telecommunications to providing mobile, scalable collaboration and communications solutions, a transformation it started six years ago.
"These new offerings are part of the USD 2.5 billion investment in research and development (R&D) made by Avaya during this time to reshape its portfolio for the future of collaboration," Avaya said in a release.
Avaya's Aura Collaboration Environment is a software platform that dissolves the complexity of embedding collaboration and communications capabilities into business applications, making it possible to quickly develop creative new ways of doing business, it added.
This enables social, mobile or cloud-based collaboration capabilities to be added to business applications or processes generally without the cost and time previously required, it said.
Avaya IP Office software extends Avaya innovation to the midmarket, delivering a seamless collaboration experience across voice, video and mobility for up to 2,000 users for the first time.
Besides, Avaya Messaging Service extends SMS messages to and from smartphones, tablets, notebooks and desktop devices, thereby enabling one-number communications via text messaging.
It also brings the same level of security, compliance and quality companies expect in email to text messaging.
BUSINESS
MANAGEMENT
This week,
Ultimus, a leading global provider of BPM-based enterprise business solutions,
and developer of one of the most widely used business process management (BPM)
software suites in the world, announced the availability of the Ultimus Adaptive BPM Suite
Version 8.4, enabling customers to upgrade to the latest release. Deployed
throughout over 2,000 companies worldwide, Ultimus and its leading edge
technology provide the industry's most complete and scalable platform for
modeling, automating, managing and optimizing business processes.
New
Product Features
“Ultimus
8.4 provides additional technology support, usability and quality improvements,
and enhanced Ultimus Engine performance and robustness,” said Joachim Haas,
Director Product Management Technology at Ultimus. “This makes Ultimus 8.4 the
fastest and most reliable Ultimus Engine yet.”
Ultimus
Adaptive BPM Suite 8.4 is an update with new features driven by customer
feedback from thousands of real-world BPM deployments worldwide, and offers
unprecedented agility, full support for Ultimus Solutions Services, and support
for other new Ultimus technologies, such as Ultimus Advanced Task Service with
Ultimus WebClient 3.0, which are to be released next month. The Ultimus
Adaptive BPM Suite 8.4 provides significant flexibility and adapts to fit the
unique needs of different groups of people within an organization.
INDIA BUSINESS
Reliance Industries today reported a 1.5 percent
increase in September quarter profit, the slowest in a year, as refining
margins declined even as it became the first company in the country to achieve
sales of more than 1,00,000 crore in a quarter.
Net profit rose to Rs 5,490 crore in July-September
from 5,409 crore a year earlier, Reliance said in a statement. Turnover or
sales soared 14.2 percent to 1,06,523 crore. The oil-to-yarn and retail
conglomerate said higher sales in the refining and petrochemicals businesses
and a weaker rupee helped to cushion the impact of falling gas production at
its main fields in the Krishna Godavari basin, a dip in refining margins and
muted revenue from organised retail.
The company earned $7.7 on turning every barrel of
crude oil into fuel in Q2 compared with a gross refining margin of $9.5 a
barrel a year earlier and $8.4 in the preceding three months.
The company processed a record 17.7 million tons of
crude oil in the quarter.
Profit was also impeded by a 13.6 percent rise in
spending on power and fuel and selling expenses on increased exports to Rs
13,101 crore in the first half. The company had cash and equivalents of Rs 90,540
crore at the end of Q2, more than enough to cover 83,982 crore of debt.
RIL chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani
said the performance reflects the resilience of the firm’s business model in “a
period of volatility and uncertainty.”
“Our diversified and integrated petrochemicals
business captured margins across segments delivering near-record profit levels
even as the domestic economy slowed,” he said, adding the company earned
healthy operating profits by optimal utilisation of its twin refineries.
India's motorbike manufacturer Bajaj Auto has been ranked sixth out of the ten top
motorbike sellers in Africa, the company has said.
The
company sold more than 600,000 units across Africa last year, creating a lot of
appeal with its brand "Boxer", a statement here by the company has said.
Bajaj Auto
also exported 1.5 million vehicles last year, including two- and three-wheelers
and has been ranked the third largest motorbike manufacturer in India. It
produced 3.83 million motorbikes during 2012-13 and over 515,000
three-wheelers.
Currently,
Bajaj's Boxer brand "commands a market share of 90% in Uganda, 40% in
Nigeria, 35% in Angola and 30% in Kenya", the statement said adding that
"one of the main success factors, apart from the quality of the motorbike
has been the company's ability to cater to the service and spare parts requirements
of its customers in these countries".
Bajaj Auto
also announced it has teamed up with SOMOCO, a locally-owned Indian company in
Ghana and a subsidiary of the Mohinani conglomerate, to distribute its products
in its 51st global market.
LOGISTICS
EHouse
Global, Inc. EHOS
+20.00% announced that it has signed a contract with Bradford Global Logistics
for warehousing and distribution of its brands of consumer packaged goods.
Bradford
Global Logistics CEO, Benjamin Richter said, "We are pleased to have
captured the EHouse Global contract to provide distribution support to such a
rapidly growing business. For more than a decade, we have had the opportunity
to offer world-class 3PL logistics management services to an amazing variety of
commercial organisations, from multi-national firms, Fortune 1000 companies, as
well as entrepreneurial enterprises." Bradford is headquartered in
Houston, Texas and currently provides the full-spectrum of logistics services
including global supply chain management, transportation management, and
warehousing services in more than 70 major markets across North America and
Canada. Richter further says, "By leveraging our in-house IT logistics
technology (OMNI(TM)), Bradford assumes tight command and control over EHouse's
inventory from the manufacturers' facility to their end-users across North
America. EHouse's consumer packaged goods inventory is positioned at a forward
stocking location that is in close proximity to their end user or retailer. A
Just-in-Time inventory model is utilised at this forward stocking site to keep
inventories at a minimum while maximising the rapid availability of product to
support demand." Bradford's entire North American network is integrated to
enable centralised administration, customer service, and coordination from
Bradford's corporate headquarters in Houston, TX. More information about
Bradford Global Logistics can be found at http://www.bradford-corp.com
MARKETING
As the search engine with more than two-thirds of
the market share, no Internet
marketing company can discount the power of Google, especially when new
algorithms are announced. These algorithms refer to what Google, Yahoo, Bing or
other search engines use to sort through the billions of websites on the
Internet to return the best results to first page, if not the first search
result. Given the name "Hummingbird," this new Google algorithm is
supposed to be precise and fast, like its namesake. Los
Angeles based company Cyberset has effectively brought clients the best Internet
marketing services by previously adapting to past Google algorithms Panda
and Penguin. Effective online
marketing depends on adapting to Google algorithms to ensure that clients
get the best search results for selected keywords and phrases. For Hummingbird,
Cyberset is conforming to the new algorithm and continuing to ensure their
clients stand out among the competition.
Internet marketing expert Omid
Samadi of Cyberset says Hummingbird is all about delivering search
results that reflect Internet users' experiences on websites. For instance,
Hummingbird tracks how long Google users are on a particular website, whether
they visit various pages on the website or, alternatively, simply leave after a
quick glance. That's why rich, compelling content and eye-catching web design
is crucial to Internet marketing companies and especially to the success of
their clients, said Samadi.
"The original Google algorithm was mainly based
on the PageRank when it was made in the 1990s," said Samadi, referring to
the way Google determines relative importance of websites by assigning
numerical weighting to measure their relative importance, solely based on
website's inbound links. "Now, the atmosphere of the Web has changed, and
social media is far more important than it used to be, and of course in the
1990s, it didn't even exist yet. Today, social media covers more aspects of
life than just chatting with friends; it also covers brand exposure."
ODISHA BUSINESS
Telecom major Airtel today said it has started
mobile charging service across 22 towns in Odisha impacted by cyclone Phailin
and offering talk time on loan to people having less than Rs 5 in their
account.
The company in a statement said that it has
“deployed over thousands of mobile charging points in Airtel BTS (mobile
towers) locations across 22 towns in the affected districts of Ganjam, Puri,
Khurda, Nayagarh, Dhenkanal, Angul and Jagatsinghpur.”
It added that its mobile towers in these locations
are running on alternative energy source and individuals would be able to
charge their mobile phones from these locations till restoration of electricity
in these impacted areas.
“A talk-time on loan service is also available for
Airtel mobile prepaid customers particularly in the cyclone affected areas, who
are unable to avail any recharge option,” it said.
Airtel’s customers having mobile balance of below Rs
5 can dial *141*10# or call 52141 to receive an additional talk-time loan worth
Rs 10, which is recoverable from the main account when the number is suitably
recharged, the statement said.
RETAIL
Reliance
Retail plans to enter e-commerce in
six to eight months, a move that will pitch it against established players like
Amazon for a
slice of India's fastgrowing online retail market.
A technical team of Reliance Retail is working on
the project and may adopt the marketplace model, a person aware of the
development told ET. Reliance Retail is a unit of billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led
Reliance
Industries. "If the marketplace model makes sense, we will do it. We
are evaluating all possibilities. We will adopt multi-channels to retail, which
has been made clear in presentation to analysts during the latest quarterly
results," the person, who did not wish to be named, said. "Companies
are still discovering the best model in this space."
The spokesman for Reliance did not respond to ET's
e-mailed query on the development.
Reliance Retail operates over 1,500 stores,
including hypermarkets,
digital stores, jewellery outlets and apparel stores, in 136 cities nationwide.
For the quarter ended September, the company's sales jumped 31% from a year ago
to Rs 3,456 crore. Its profit before depreciation, interest and taxes stood at
Rs 165 crore in the first half of fiscal 2014.
According to consultancy firm Technopak Advisors,
India's e-commerce market, which is dominated by travel-related services, is
worth $10 billion at present and is expected to touch $200 billion by 2020. Of
this, online retailing stands at $600 million a year and has the potential to
swell to $70 billion by 2020.
Barely a week after the world's top retailer
Walmart ended its association with Bharti Group,
its British rival Tesco has moved a step closer to entering the $450-billion
Indian retail
market with the Tatas launching a neighbourhood convenience store format
modelled on Tesco Express.
Tesco Plc, the world's third largest retailer, has a partnership with Tata Group's Trent under which it provides back-end support and retail expertise to the Indian conglomerate's Star Bazaar hypermarkets.
Tesco Hindustan Wholesaling, the Indian unit of the British retailer, supplies merchandise including some of its own labels, to 15-odd Star Bazaar outlets, sized anywhere between 40,000 sq ft and 80,000 sq ft and selling food and grocery to apparel to consumer durables.
The new format, Star Daily, is completely different. The first Star Daily outlet, opened in Pune last week, is just about1,800 sq ft in size and stocks mainly fresh foods, groceries and essential items, a person aware of the store launch said. "Similar to a kirana store, Star Daily is kept open almost 15 hours starting at seven in the morning," the person added.
Tesco Plc, the world's third largest retailer, has a partnership with Tata Group's Trent under which it provides back-end support and retail expertise to the Indian conglomerate's Star Bazaar hypermarkets.
Tesco Hindustan Wholesaling, the Indian unit of the British retailer, supplies merchandise including some of its own labels, to 15-odd Star Bazaar outlets, sized anywhere between 40,000 sq ft and 80,000 sq ft and selling food and grocery to apparel to consumer durables.
The new format, Star Daily, is completely different. The first Star Daily outlet, opened in Pune last week, is just about1,800 sq ft in size and stocks mainly fresh foods, groceries and essential items, a person aware of the store launch said. "Similar to a kirana store, Star Daily is kept open almost 15 hours starting at seven in the morning," the person added.
SUPPLY CHAIN
The Global Environmental Management Initiative is
developing a tool focused on supply
chain sustainability and the procurement decision-making process.
The free, interactive online tool is
intended to help companies prioritize supply chain processes and identify
“hotspot” processes as well as opportunities for improvement, according to the
green business alliance whose members include ConocoPhillips, FedEx, Kraft
Foods, Procter & Gamble and Southern Company, among others.
The GEMI Supply Chain Sustainability Tool (SCS) will
be useful to sustainability and purchasing professionals and will link
market-oriented sustainability claims, economic input-output (EIO) and
life-cycle assessment (LCA) results, and supply chain sustainability
performance metrics, GEMI’s chair Neville Dias says.
The project is supported by and conducted in
partnership with the Northstar Initiative for Sustainable Enterprise (NiSE) at
the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota and the Erb
Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan.
Smithfield Foods assistant vice president for
environmental affairs Bill Gill, and 3M corporate sustainability manager Keith
Miller are leading the development of the tool and serve co-chairs of the
development process.
The new tool builds on GEMI’s two existing supply
chain sustainability tools, New
Paths to Business Value (2001) and Forging New Links (2004) and
enhances supply chain transparency using a scalable platform to help guide sustainable
procurement and sourcing, Gill says.
__________________________________________________________
Source of
Information for this issue: Google alert accessed on 21st and 25th Oct 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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