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SAT sets aside Sebi ban on Dilip PendseTata Group\'s former blueeyed boy Dilip Pendse has won a battle against the Securities and Exchange Board of India, or Sebi, in rigging of Global Telesystems case. CNBCTV18\'s Vivek Law delves deeper.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 21 Nov 2008 | 9:52 pm Govt working on sops for exporters: Comm SecyCommerce Secretary GK Pillai said the government is working on incentives for exporters and could take steps to boost credit. CNBCTV18s Economic Policy Editor Vivian Fernandes delves deeper.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 21 Nov 2008 | 8:00 pm Will realty body NAREDCO move result in price cuts?The NAREDCOis advising a 15% discount on existing projects to customers paying on time, 510% price decrease in new projects, and 1015% reduction in affordable housing, which means houses which cost Rs 3 lakh to Rs 20 lakh.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 21 Nov 2008 | 7:00 pm Rating agencies step up vigilance of realty cosLeading rating agencies like Fitch and ICRA say they have stepped up vigilance of real estate companies. While they reviewed ratings on a six monthly or yearly basis, now they are reviewing data almost on an ongoing basis.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 21 Nov 2008 | 6:32 pm Citi may be looking for partners; India div to cut jobsSenior officials at Citigroup have told CNBC US that they will have to make a strategic change in the firm\'s direction, including finding a possible merger partner or raising cash in the coming days to arrest a sharp slide in the firm\'s stock price.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 21 Nov 2008 | 6:01 pm U.S. STOCKS - Bargain hunters lift market, but Citi sinksNEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose in choppy trade on Friday as investors snapped up cut-price shares in beaten down sectors, including commodities and energy, a day after Wall Street slid to 11-year lows.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:23 pm No flexibility in recent WTO farm talks - chairmanGENEVA (Reuters) - Countries negotiating a new global trade pact showed no willingness to budge from their fixed positions in past days, the chairman of agriculture talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) said on Friday.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:22 pm EC approves airing political ads on private FM channelsNew Delhi: Political advertisements can finally be aired on private FM channels. The Election Commission of India, or EC, on Friday approved revised amendments to the radio advertising code.  Clearing air: Chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami. S. Irfan / PTI Mint on 19 November reported that the ministry of information and broadcasting had cleared a revised proposal to amend the programme code for radio and sent it to the EC for approval. The commission had earlier sent back the proposal put up by the ministry because it wanted some clarifications even while emphasising that airing of political ads on radio did not go against its code of conduct. With the commission giving its consent, coming state polls, which will be followed by general elections next year, will likely see extensive use of radio for campaigning. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:19 pm There’s help at handThe first of many sub-games in Prof. Nipan Maniar’s mobile game, C-Shock, involves prancing around a basketball court trying to avoid red balls while collecting green ones. Surely, you say, that sort of computer game was trendy when disco music was cool and a mullet was something to be proud of.  Mobile lessons: Maniar’s research at the University of Portsmouth led to a game which the professor hopes will now be licensed by other universities. But there is more to the little sequence than just 1980s style dodging and grabbing. Each red ball stands for a social evil—binge drinking and junk food—while the green ones are good habits—daily water intake and fresh fruits and vegetables. What Maniar, of the University of Portsmouth, UK, is trying to do with C-Shock is to give foreign students in the UK a fun and user-friendly way of getting to know the social norms and potential problem areas of British culture. Much of Maniar’s inspiration for the game came from his own experiences as a foreign student. The Indian professor recounts his transition in some detail: “I came to England on 13 September 2000, and it was the first time I left my family and country. For me, it was a different world, where I had no one to guide me or talk to.” When he spoke to us on phone from his office at the university, the professor was candid about the culture shock. The initial periods, he said, were particularly tough. “First job I did here was that of a cleaner and I still remember that morning when I walked into the building, the supervisors greeted me by saying ‘my love, my darling, my sweetheart’,” he recounted. For the graduate in math and statistics from Gujarat University, this was nothing short of scandalous. And the peck on the cheek that followed didn’t help much either. Shocks followed upon shock. When the professor first met the staff member who had recruited him from India, he immediately touched his feet—not exactly everyday social behaviour in Portsmouth. Maniar narrates incident after incident to make one simple point—that he still finds it difficult to drive home to critics the practicality of his game-based training approach. “It takes time to settle into a new culture. Many students think that they already know everything there is to know about a foreign culture. Students from big cities like Mumbai, for instance, might think that just because they have seen so many foreign television programmes they know exactly how the culture is here. This is completely wrong!” ‘Don’t be surprised if I come up with a degree which can be awarded via the gaming platform!’ Three years into his stay at Portsmouth, and after completing his masters in multimedia information systems, Maniar was weighing options for his doctoral thesis when he decided to work in the field of mobile learning. “That’s when the idea of something along the lines of C-Shock occurred to me,” explains the professor. By then, mobile phones had become ubiquitous among the student population and Maniar saw an opportunity to tap into that channel as a learning tool. So, in between churning out research papers on topics such as “The Effect of Screen Size on Video-Based M-Learning”, he found time to work on his pet project. Finally, in May 2007, the university announced that Maniar was working on a mobile game to combat culture shock. The international media lapped it up. “The response was great,” recalls Maniar. “Everyone talked about the idea but they focused on just some of the game elements like drinking, kissing and women’s attire.” For the professor, this was frustrating—his game had a much larger scope. After further development and welcome funding from the Higher Education Innovation Fund of the British government, “C-Shock: Travel to UK” was launched along with an online flash demo in September. “The game now contains a number of culture shock elements introduced to the player through 12 games and five quizzes,” says Maniar. The online demo of the game is both amusing to play, and revealing of the scope of Maniar’s concept. The game begins, aptly enough, at an airport. Hit the space bar and it transitions into the intro screen where a plane takes off and, as it proceeds to the UK, you are informed of the rules of the game. The ultimate aim is to empty your “culture shock meter” from a menacing “red” to a culturally acclimatized “green”. We then land on a mock-up of the University of Portsmouth campus and the protagonist, a cheery silhouette, starts walking down a street noticing things commonplace in British culture: a postbox, a bus stop, a double-decker and, of course, a couple kissing in public. That last one is accompanied with a pop-up box to inform you that kissing in public, even among individuals of the same gender, is kosher in the UK. But there are other lessons, too, on topics such as public transport, part-time employment, seasonal clothing and police services. The first sub-game occurs when you walk into the University of Portsmouth sports centre and prance around those red and green basketballs. The idea of that sub-game is to tell you to lay off too much alcohol, fats and sugar and opt, instead, for water, fruits and vegetables. Your next stop could be the office block—the itinerary around campus is entirely up to you—and here you learn about fire escapes and the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988. But you do this by running away from a mammoth raging fire through an office leaping over office chairs. But en route you must also douse flames with an extinguisher, set off fire alarms and avoid getting toasted yourself. For a simple, easily learnt game, C-Shock packs in a lot of content. “My aim is to make the educational process less painful and more entertaining. Don’t be surprised if I come up with a degree, which can be awarded via the gaming platform!” Maniar says. He now hopes to market the game to universities all over the world. Licensing rights for C-Shock are available for purchase and Maniar says that the game can be modified for any setting in any language. Universities could easily make fresh foreign students and their parents give it a shot on their mobile phones before they enrol for classes. The professor is hopeful: “It may not be a complete solution to culture shock. But it is a relatively simple way of making those early few days more comfortable for everyone.” The online demo version of C-shock can be accessed at www.c-shock.com Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:12 pm Tax break, big breakHow does Aravind Adiga owe his celebrity status to the West Indian slave trade and a loophole in the UK tax law? This month’s story of tax-break-meets-White-Tiger begins in the country of Guyana. Or to be more precise, the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, which makes it sound a little like a housing colony in Wadala, Mumbai. During the early 19th century on the coast of South America, the Congress of Vienna had sliced up the land among the larger colonial powers, giving the British a sliver called Guyana. Sugar plantations thrived, running mostly on the back of slave labour. Business boomed and the British living in Guyana soon came to be in need of goods from home.  Spy man: Author Ian Fleming. The Campbells made wise investments and generations later, in 1934, when young Jack “Jock” Middleton Campbell landed in Guyana to join the family business, the family controlled 35% or so of all economic activity in the colony. Of course, by then the firm was no longer known as John Campbell and Co. and had undergone many mergers and acquisitions. It became Curtis, Campbell and Co. for a while and then it merged with John McConnell and Co. to finally adopt, in 1900, the name we probably now recognize it by. But more on that later. Things began to change when young Jock came on the scene. A humanist with a deep sense of guilt about his company’s murky past, he began to institute changes and diversify businesses. It was thus, while looking for new business opportunities, that after a round of golf at a Caribbean course, Campbell was asked for assistance by Ian Fleming, he of that spy novel business. Fleming was dying from too much drink and smoke and wanted to make sure his family continued to make money from his books after his death. Campbell promised to oblige. And then, and human history is filled with such examples, Campbell was inspired while in the bath. He called up his tax accountant, who discovered a loophole in the UK Finance Act. Apparently the loophole allowed companies to buy out copyright from an author—after paying them a lump sum with taxpayers’ money—and then profit off the royalties. It was a sweet deal and Campbell’s company, after almost two centuries of history and now known as Booker McConnell Ltd, decided to open up an author’s division to cash in on this opportunity first with Fleming’s books and then with works by Agatha Christie and Harold Pinter, among others. The company made plenty of money; and in 1969, and perhaps partly due to Campbell’s voracious reading habit and need to give back to society, decided to set up the Booker McConnell Prize for Fiction for writers from the Commonwealth. It initially had a prize of £21,000 (around Rs15.3 lakh now). Almost 40 years later, Aravind Adiga’s tale of a poor servant in modern day India won him the Man Booker Prize, as it is known today. Write to Sidin at whatareyousaying@livemint.com Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:11 pm Shipping industry in a spin as rates sinkThe cost of shipping is sinking, and shippers are struggling to stay afloat. The Baltic Dry Index, which measures the spot price for chartering ships that carry dry bulk goods such as iron ore, is down 93% from its May peak.  Click here for breakingviews.com At current prices, shippers can’t cover their costs. Many are breaching bank covenants and a few have been forced into administration. In a move of sheer desperation, the notoriously secretive London shipping community convened on Wednesday to try to cut their losses. The meeting focused on reducing the counterparty risk involved in the shipping business’ complex chain of long-term agreements, which stretch from shipowners through traders to the operators, known as charters. The goal is worthy, since these agreements are creating unexpected losses for shipowners. That’s because ships are chartered and sublet, often several times as traders juggle long-term contracts to match supply and demand. But with spot prices at rock-bottom levels, long-terms contracts are being broken. The creation of charter clearing house could reduce the default risk up and down the chain. But even the most efficient clearing house can do little to address the underlying issues plaguing the sector. The industry always suffers when world growth slows—spot rates often drop by more than 60% over a year—but 93% in just six months is shocking, even by shipping standards. The boom was exacerbated by cheap credit, which made foreign trade less costly. That led to overestimations of the growth rate of world trade, and especially ambitious orders for new ships. The credit bust is now amplifying the downturn. Trade finance, which smoothes the waters for world trade, has become expensive and scarce. The demand for shipping has fallen dramatically. The hard times could get still worse if banks start calling in loans. That would flood the already glutted market with a wave of foreclosed ships. The only remedy is the breaking yard. Until capacity is cut or trading conditions improve, shippers will be at the mercy of markets and bankers. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:10 pm Bye bye party planning, hello spontaneityLast weekend, my plan was as follows: attend office party on Saturday night, help friend move home, watch Dostanawith visiting in-laws, go fish and vegetable shopping, get head massage from Magic Fingers at neighbourhood salon, and read final Loungepages. Then, in a casual phone conversation on Friday night, a friend informed me that we were having a party at my house on Sunday night.  Get groovy tip No. 1: This party season, whip up a last-minute feast for your pals. Now the husband’s theory about inviting people over is simple: “What’s to think? Leave it to me.” “I can easily cook for 20-30 people,” he is fond of saying. This relaxed attitude probably stems from the fact that when he was growing up, his friends frequently dropped in unannounced, often raiding the kitchen and finishing the whole tandoori chicken that was cooked for the family. Me, I grew up in a hotel suite and did my entertaining in the restaurant on the premises. One of my dearest friends always predicted I was unlikely to survive life without room service. It’s been nine years since we got married, but last-minute parties still faze me. Sure, the husband can flip through his favourite cookbook Prashad—Cooking with Indian Masters and whip up some exotic dishes but while he’s cooking, who’s the sidekick who answers his every query: “Where are the whole spices?”, “Do we have mace?”, “Don’t tell me the rice is over.”, “I need a vessel to dum cook (a slow-cooking method where you seal the lid with a flour paste) the chicken.” In addition to buying and organizing all the ingredients, I have to tidy the house, right? Hide the Kanchenjunga of old newspapers; wipe away the thick layer of dust that settles on the furniture every single day; wash the party crockery; and organize the snacks, salad, drinks and dessert (the husband’s a main course kinda guy). And while I’m doing all this, I have to listen to him yell that I’m wasting my time, that nobody even notices these things. And after the party is over, and the guests have had a great meal and a great time, I have to endure the husband saying: “Wasn’t I right?” Of course he was. The reason I’m sharing this story with you is that as we head into December, it’s time to jump off your party high horse. This is one time of the year when you shouldn’t get bogged down by details and dust. Just stock the bar and keep those friends flowing. I know I have decided to have a last-minute party every weekend. Incidentally, despite the party, I managed to catch Dostana. The film may be India’s first gay movie—though if you go by Karan Johar’s logic, Sholay was the first (why else would Gabbar Singh keep yelling “Kitne aadmi the?”)—but it’s also the first Hindi movie where a lead actor (Priyanka Chopra) plays a Sindhi who doesn’t speak in a funny accent and who is not money-obsessed. Watch it only if you track John Abraham’s bum. My favourite scene in the entire movie, though it’s targeted more at men than women, was when Abraham gets out of bed in his underwear and walks away from the camera, one side of his waistband lower than the other to reveal a glimpse of what lies beneath. And then, almost as if he’s got eyes in the back of his head and has caught you staring, he casually adjusts the waistband. You go boy! Write to lounge@livemint.com Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:09 pm ‘For a secure future, educate the child’My 16-year-old daughter has got a temporary job with a freelancer who does some work for a BPO. This has given her the positive feeling of earning, which we are happy with. However, it has also had an undesirable effect—she thinks that she does not need to study further, and can pick up all kinds of skills on the job now. She has declared that she will complete class XII, and then work full-time. The freelancer is also influencing her heavily to not bother with further studies. How do I convince her that there is more to life than earning quickly (and spending equally quickly)? That’s an unfortunate conclusion that your daughter has drawn. And, it looks like the person who is influencing her is pretty short-sighted, as well as unscrupulous. I’m sure you’ve tried to reason with your daughter, but currently the immediate gains—the flush of money, and the feeling that annoying and difficult studies are not needed at all—are blinding her thoroughly.  Money talks: Teenagers should not mistake part-time jobs for career options. You really must sit her down and give her a larger world view than the one she has now, for her to see that what she’s doing right now is not really a career path. You will have to line up people to tell her this. Coming only from her parents, it won’t make too much sense to her right now. You need to enlist the help of other adults, preferably young adults who’re earning well as a result of their qualifications. Someone of that profile will be able to tell her more convincingly that there is more to a working life than earning money. There’s mental challenge, there’s growth, there’s exposure to the larger world, all waiting for her if she goes beyond the lure of money right now. This person, who you find to speak to her, should explain that she will remain “coolie” labour if she decides to be satisfied with the money that comes her way easily, and does not qualify for anything better. Also, as you may have tried to tell her, entire industries change/vanish, and it is essential to acquire many different skill sets. If she refuses to see reason, you’ll have to pull rank with her, and simply insist that she complete some kind of qualification above and beyond class XII. This you will have to tie in with a judicious mix of reward and punishment—easier said than done, I know, with a stubborn 16-year-old who has made up her mind and thinks that she is on to a good thing. Perhaps you can come to some kind of balance wherein she keeps a part-time job going and continues to study. Lastly, I don’t know if this is feasible, but can you not talk to this freelancer who seems to be playing Pied Piper? Appeal to the person’s reason: However much of a success story the person is minus qualifications, the person has no business influencing young people to ditch studies. You (or ideally, that young working adult that I suggested earlier) need to also point out to your daughter that this “employer” is speaking from the point of view of someone who needs “coolie” labour to keep his work going, and is not speaking with her future in mind. Gouri Dange is the author of ABCs of Parenting. Write to Gouri at learningcurve@livemint.com Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:09 pm Remember this: Forgetting has its benefitsThere’s an old saying that inside every 70-year-old is a 35-year-old wondering, “What happened?” What happened is that countless days, nights, meetings, commutes and other unremarkable events went by, well, unremarked. They didn’t make a lasting impression on the brain or they were overwritten by so many similar experiences that they are hard to retrieve. In short, they’ve been forgotten.  Illustration: Jayachandran / Mint That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Neuroscientists say forgetting is crucial to the efficient functioning of the mind, to learning, adapting and recalling more significant things. “We focus so much on memory that forgetting has been maligned,” says Gayatri Devi, a neuropsychiatrist and memory expert in New York City. “But if you didn’t forget, you’d recall all kinds of extraneous information from your life that would drown you in a sea of inefficiency.” That was what prompted Jill Price to contact the memory experts at the University of California (UC) at Irvine in 2000. As she wrote in a book published this summer, The Woman Who Can’t Forget, Price could recall in detail virtually every day since she was 14, but she was mentally exhausted and tormented by her memories. UC Irvine scientists are interviewing at least 200 people who say they have similar “autobiographical” memories but so far, only three more have been found. Memories of singular, significant events are generally easy to recall; people typically store them in long-term memory with many associations attached. Memories of mundane, recurring events compete to be recalled, and scientists say the brain appears to be programmed to forget those that aren’t important. Neuroimaging studies show that it’s the brain’s prefrontal cortex that sorts and retrieves such memories. Researchers at Stanford University’s Memory Laboratory demonstrated last year that the more subjects forgot competing memories, the less work their cortexes had to do to recall a specific one. In short, forgetting frees up brain power for other tasks, says psychologist Anthony Wagner, the lab’s director. In fact, forgetting is a very active process, albeit subconscious, neuroscientists say. The mind is constantly editing information, all at lightning speed. “Your brain is only taking a small amount in, and it’s already erasing vast amounts that won’t be needed again,” Devi says. Much that happens during the day doesn’t make an impression because our attention is focused elsewhere. Take your daily commute, says Wagner: “A heck of a lot of stuff is landing on our retinas as we’re driving down the road. But if you were focusing on the presentation you have to give, you didn’t perceive it and it didn’t get stored.” He notes that people face such a constant cognitive barrage that they frequently fail to attend to information that isn’t essential at the time. Studies have shown that when people are asked to focus on one thing, they fail to notice others—a phenomenon called “change blindness”. In one famous test, when viewers are asked to count how many times a basketball changes hands in a video, roughly half don’t notice that a gorilla walks through the scene. Are memories for events you didn’t focus on, but stored in your brain nevertheless? That’s an area of much debate. Some experts believe hypnosis can trigger long-buried associations. “Memory consists of billions of puzzle pieces, and many of them look the same,” Devi says. “Each time you retrieve a memory, you’re reconstructing a puzzle very quickly and breaking it down again. Some of the pieces get put back in different places.” What if you want to remember more about each passing day? One simple method is to keep a journal. Writing down a few thoughts and events every day not only makes a tangible record, it also requires you to reflect. “You’re elaborating on why they were meaningful, and you’re laying down an additional memory trace,” says neuroscientist James McGaugh at UC Irvine. Taking photographs and labelling them reinforces memories too. But remember that forgetting can be very useful, says McGaugh: “If you used to go out with Bob and now you’re married to Bill, you want to be able to say, ‘I love you, Bill.’ That’s why forgetting is important.” Write to wsj@livemint.com Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:09 pm It’s a wrapHeavy 1. s.Oliver: Yellow outdoor jacket, at s.Oliver stores at Ambience Mall, Gurgaon; Select Citywalk mall, Saket, New Delhi and Mega Mall, Andheri (W), Mumbai, Rs5,999. Also See: Warm up (Graphic) 2. EDC by Esprit: Pink tweed coat, at Esprit stores in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi, Rs7,500. 3. Promod: Off-white eight-button coat, at Promod stores in Mumbai and New Delhi, Rs5,490. 4. Allen Solly: Pink wool babydoll jacket, at Allen Solly stores in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi, Rs3,399. 5. Guess: “Dream” jacket, at Guess stores in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi, Rs6,795. 6. Gant: Checked caban, at Gant stores in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi, Rs19,995. Light 1. s.Oliver: Black checked blazer, at s.Oliver stores at Ambience Mall, Gurgaon; Select Citywalk mall, Saket, New Delhi and Mega Mall, Andheri (W), Mumbai, Rs3,999. 2. Mango: Green cotton jacket, at Mango stores in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi, Rs5,750. 3. Tommy Hilfiger: Grey tweed jacket with blue velvet piping, at Tommy Hilfiger stores in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi, Rs4,600. 4. Mango: White overcoat with knit collar, at Mango stores in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi, Rs6,990. 5. Esprit: Black corduroy jacket with detachable wool collar, at Esprit stores in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi, Rs5,500. Photographs by Harikrishna Katragadda and Abhijit Bhatlekar / Mint Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:08 pm The girl who saw too muchBest known for the 11 Teenage Worrier Pocket Guide books and the Trixie Tempest series, Ros Asquith has a regular cartoon feature to her credit in The Guardian, too. The one-time graphic designer and mural painter has also been a theatre critic. Apart from her own books, Asquith has illustrated books for authors such as Dick King-Smith (Dirty Gertie Mackintosh), Anne Fine (Charm School) and Francesca Simon (Helping Hercules).  The Girl Writer stories are about a budding author, Cordelia Arbuthnot. This 12-year-old has a passion for writing fiction and draws inspiration from real-life events. She wants to follow in the footsteps of her aunt—the celebrated author Laura Hunt. Besides studying up on global warming and the environment, Cordelia’s head is always buzzing with ideas for stories. In this book, she is working on a spy story—The Girl with the Golden Pun—with Jane Bond as the central character. Anything in everyday life that strikes as material worthy enough for her story is picked up—including her classmate Vladimir Vyshinsky, the Russian boy who is immediately labelled Vlad the Lad and The Evil Force. The poisoning of the neighbourhood lake and a mysterious explosion in Vladimir’s block of flats are reasons enough for Cordelia’s imagination to take flight. She suspects that Vlad is out to poison the town’s water supply. Cordelia enlists the help of her neighbour Callum to raid Vlad’s house and discovers photographs of the major water bodies in the state—including one in Buckingham Palace. “Even the Queen is not safe,” both imagine. Cordelia’s suspicion turns to certainty on a school trip to the lonely Norfolk marshes, where she spies Vlad collecting some algae. The only problem is that Vlad is very popular with the girls of her school and that Viola, her best friend, thinks she is in love with the Russian boy. Nobody, thinks Cordelia, would believe her without irrefutable evidence about Vladimir’s crimes.  Vladimir, on the other hand, is just interested in chemistry. As Cordelia, helped by her staunch friend Callum, “gathers evidence” against Vladimir, her spy story shapes up very well. In the story, Jane Bond—sister of James, complete with a boss called Z and fancy gadgets—fights Aurelia, a bikini-clad temptress with her retinue of young slaves. Cordelia and Callum try to prevent a catastrophe of their own. As both stories race towards unexpected climaxes, Cordelia and Callum are in for a big surprise. Spies and Lies is the third book in this series. The other two are Castles and Catastrophes and Sleuths and TruthsHumour—and irreverent humour at that—plays a major role in most of Asquith’s novels. Light and easy, Girl Writer is no exception. The writer is the editor of Heek, a children’s magazine. Write to lounge@livemint.com Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:08 pm Stringent norms for minority institutes set to plug loopholesNew Delhi: A quasi-judicial panel set up by the ministry of human resource development is tightening norms to curb the practice of educational institutions seeking minority status simply to escape a legal provision to reserve seats for the other backward classes, or OBCs. The National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI) is finalising the norms that would bind institutions to admit a fixed percentage of students from the minority community concerned. It will also make the grant of minority status more stringent by mandating authentication of documents submitted by institutions. “The commission has the mandate to check abuse and misuse of the educational rights of the minorities enshrined under Article 30 of the Indian Constitution,” said M.S.A. Siddiqui, chairman of the NCMEI. “We have received complaints that institutions were misusing the minority status to just escape the quotas and not acting to benefit students from their community.” “Even as the minority tag exempted them from implementing all kinds of quotas, including the recently introduced reservation for the other backward classes, many were found to be admitting students from non-minority communities in large numbers. So, we felt the need for comprehensive guidelines to stop the abuse and misuse of privileges granted to a minority institution,” he said. The guidelines are expected to be final by November-end. Under the NCMEI Act, an institution must be established and run by a religious minority—Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Zoroastrians—to qualify for the minority status. Under the commission’s rules, it must admit minority students under a “prescribed percentage governing admissions”. But no rules governing this percentage actually exist, allowing the institutions a free hand in deciding admissions and fee structures. Until the extension of quotas to OBCs, many of these institutions voluntarily admitted students both from the general and scheduled caste/scheduled tribe categories, while favouring admissions for their own communities. However, after the Supreme Court’s decision in April approving 27% reservation in higher education institutions for OBC students, the NCMEI was flooded with applications seeking minority status—some 600 till September, as reported by Mint earlier. Minority institutions are exempt from implementing all quotas which leaves these institutions, and the trusts that often run them, free to formulate their own admission rules. “This has led to corruption and put students from the minority community at a disadvantage. The new guidelines would make sure that the community for which the institution has sought the status gets opportunities in education,” Siddiqui said. The NCMEI has issued 1,537 minority certificates since 2006, out of which 771 were granted in 2007. Just 35 were granted in 2005. It expects the numbers to go down once the norms are tightened. “We need a foolproof system where we can identify deserving applicants and not be misled by documents submitted,” he said. Source: LatestNews-Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:07 pm Bond yields drop on hopes of further rate cut by central bank - Livemint
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:02 pm Credit Suisse auto ancillary report: An analysisAccording to a Credit Suisse report on the Indian auto ancillary sector, exports account for 20% of total sales by all auto component makers. Meanwhile, vendors with high exposure to local automakers may see doubledigit decline in sales and severe margin pressure.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 21 Nov 2008 | 4:49 pm 44 oil and gas blocks may fetch $1.5 bn - Indian Express
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 4:37 pm Pressure grows on Obama as world economy deterioratesLONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - US stocks recovered some ground on opening on Friday, though Citigroup fell further, amid continued fear that central bank moves to stabilize financial markets might not be enough to prevent a prolonged global recession.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Nov 2008 | 4:24 pm Gold jumps to 1-month high as dollar falls, oil gainsLONDON (Reuters) - Gold jumped almost 6 percent to its highest in a month on Friday, buoyed by a weakening dollar and rising oil prices while other precious metals rallied, tracking bullion's gains.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Nov 2008 | 4:05 pm Religare & AEGON to rearrange Asset Management Partnership in India - Equity Bulls
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 4:03 pm October exports down 12% yoy: Govt - India Infoline.com
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 3:58 pm Govt restricts imports of hot-rolled coils - Press Trust of India
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 3:54 pm RILRNRL imbroglio: HC wants to wrap case by Dec 12On November 14, a Bench of the Bombay High Court adjourned hearing in the Reliance IndustriesReliance Natural Resources case to November 27. Today, government counsel Mohan Parasaran said the court has positively directed all counsels to cooperate and finish the matter in two days, i.e. December 11 and 12Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 21 Nov 2008 | 3:47 pm Capex plans intact, funding not a concern: SelanRohit Kapur, Chairman, Selan Exploration Technology, said the companys capital expenditure plans for this year and the next remain unchanged as he sees significant volume growth in the next 23 years. He said raising capital for capex plans would not be difficult as the company have had good relation with several banks.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 21 Nov 2008 | 3:40 pm Court asks Pepsi to remove mountain picture from water bottleThe Delhi High Court Friday directed Pepsi to remove the picture of a snow capped mountain from its packaged water product Aquafina, saying it gives a misleading impression to the consumers.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Nov 2008 | 3:31 pm Parties blame Dunlop chief, not recession for unit closureRefusing to buy Pawan Kumar Ruia-owned Dunlop Tyres' claim that the global meltdown had affected its business, West Bengal's mainstream political parties are up in arms against the company management for suspending operations at its Sahaganj unit near here.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Nov 2008 | 3:31 pm Bangalore airport chief executive Brunner quitsBangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL) chief executive officer (CEO) Albert Brunner is quitting the high-profile post and has decided not to renew his contract, the company said here Friday.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Nov 2008 | 3:31 pm Citigroup shares slide as bank mulls merger, asset salesNEW YORK (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc shares fell sharply again on Friday as the second-largest U.S. bank by assets mulled a variety of options including a possible merger or asset sales to restore the bank's health and investor confidence, a source said.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Nov 2008 | 3:29 pm Oil rallies from 3-1/2 year lows, tracks sharesLONDON (Reuters) - Oil rallied from three-and-half-year lows on Friday, spurred partly by gains in global stock markets reflecting hopes that central banks around the world might cut interest rates, including China.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Nov 2008 | 3:20 pm Gujarati-origin entrepreneurs in Uganda, Kenya seek Gujarat's helpA group of entrepreneurs of Gujarati origin settled in Uganda wants to set up an industrial development park in Gujarat, a senior state government official said here Friday.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Nov 2008 | 3:02 pm 'India not comfortable to work under any other command besides UN'India will be 'very uncomfortable' taking part in any anti-piracy operation under any other nation's flag if NATO nations objects to the United Nations taking the lead in coordinating action to protect merchant ships against hijacking.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Nov 2008 | 3:01 pm Delhi airport gears up to tackle winter fogWith winter setting in, airport officials here are gearing up to fight the fog menace, expected to be more this year in comparison to last year, a government official said Friday.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm Relief package for exporters being draftedA special relief package to prop the export sector is expected to be presented to an apex committee chaired by the prime minister by the weekend, Commerce Secretary G.K. Pillai announced here Friday.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm India must reform, shift policy for growthNEW DELHI (Reuters) - Financial reforms could still help India's economy grow 7.5-8.0 percent this fiscal year but with a sharp global downturn, monetary policy must shift further in favour of supporting growth, a top economic adviser said.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Nov 2008 | 2:56 pm Realty body calls for 15% price cuts for affordable housingThe National Real Estate Development Council, or NAREDCO, is advising a 15% discount on existing projects to customers paying on time, 510% price decrease in new projects, and 1015% reduction in affordable housing, which means houses which cost Rs 3 lakh to Rs 20 lakh.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 21 Nov 2008 | 2:47 pm Citi India may lay off over 1000 employees: WSJ - Business Standard
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 2:46 pm UPDATE 1-Dabur buys Fem Care to bolster skin care range - Reuters India
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 2:33 pm Gloom will give way to optimism if voted to power: AdvaniLeader of Opposition L.K. Advani Friday said the gloom and pessimism which he was seeing all around the country due to the financial crisis will turn into optimism if the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) were elected back to power.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Nov 2008 | 2:32 pm Work on Kolkata monorail to begin in MarchA city-based firm, Andromeda Technologies, has bagged the order for constructing the first stretch of a monorail in the city, with the work scheduled to begin in March, a top company official said here Friday.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Nov 2008 | 2:31 pm Rupee falls 2% on week as stocks crumble - India Infoline.com
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 2:18 pm Developers to slash property prices by up to 15 percentIt seems that the realty froth is finally settling down. After holding property prices for a long time, developers across the country agreed Friday to cut prices by up to another 15 percent.Source: IndiaeNews.com: Business News | 21 Nov 2008 | 2:03 pm Indian property to fall further before funds biteHONG KONG (Reuters) - Indian property prices are likely to fall by a quarter in the coming year as the global economic crisis saps homebuyer confidence, adding to the problems of capital-strapped developers.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Nov 2008 | 1:49 pm Lower prices boosts gold demand in India - Hindu Business Line
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 1:46 pm Markets snap losing streak, Sensex gains 464 ptsThe benchmark Sensex on BSE on Friday gained over 460 points to reverse hammering of the past seven daysSource: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 21 Nov 2008 | 1:38 pm Dues issue between Kingfisher, AAI settled: MallyaVijay Mallya said on Friday that Kingfisher Airlines and the state-owned airport body had worked out a "mutually satisfactory" arrangement on the issue.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 21 Nov 2008 | 1:35 pm Reuters Summit-India business, politics confront global slowdown - Reuters India
Source: Google News India - Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 1:27 pm Citigroup weighing sell-off option: WSJWith the stocks of Citigroup dipping a record 26 percent in a single day on Thursday, its top executives are now look at various optionsSource: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:44 pm BSE Sensex snaps 7-day slide, rises 5.5 pctMUMBAI (Reuters) – The BSE Sensex snapped a seven-day slide and climbed 5.5 percent on Friday, after large domestic funds bought in late trade triggering short covering ahead of the weekend.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:23 pm Textile cos may cut 500,000 more jobs - secyNEW DELHI (Reuters) - The textile sector could shed 500,000 jobs in the next five months, Trade Secretary G.K. Pillai said on Friday, quoting textile ministry estimates.Source: Reuters: Money News | 21 Nov 2008 | 11:54 am Stock picking gets social onlineThe stock market is caught in a downward spiral. Analysts views dont seem to matter. Who do you turn to when you need to hear news you can use? To other likeminded people, of course! As markets tumble, social networking sites targeting stockpickers have suddenly mushroomed.Source: Moneycontrol Top Headlines | 21 Nov 2008 | 11:41 am Markets snap losing streak, Sensex gains 464 ptsMumbai: Cutting short prolonged losses of the past seven days, the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex on Friday gained over 460 points on confident remarks of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that economy would grow at a rate of 8%. After losing nearly 2,100 points, or 25%, in the past seven days to touch the three-year low, the BSE barometer on Friday bounced back to close higher by 464.20 points at 8,915.21. National Stock Exchange index Nifty also shot up by 140.30 points at 2,693.45. The Sensex has shed a massive 57% since January after surging to over 21,000 level in the same month. Foreign institutional investors have pulled out Rs 53477 crore this year so far. Domestic markets had fallen in sync with global bourses which plunged primarily due to looses and write-downs to the tune of one trillion dollars by global financial companies after the collapse of the US mortgage market. Besides, Singh’s optimistic remarks, anticipation of another round of rate cuts by the central bank encouraged investors to buy. “We have the ability to sustain a growth rate of about eight per cent. And we will do so,” the Prime Minister said at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in New Delhi on Friday. Barring realty major DLF Ltd, Jaypee Associate, ACC and Tata Power, rest of the stocks in 30-share BSE index ended higher on emergence of buying at existing lower levels. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 11:31 am Realty body asks members to cut prices by up to 15%New Delhi: Realty industry body National Real Estate Development Council on Friday asked its members to cut rates on housing projects by up to 15% to revive sales. Companies like Ansal API, Omaxe, Assotech and DLF have already agreed to cut prices, while Bangalore-based Sobha Developers has promised to evaluate slashing rates, NREDCO President Rohtas Goel told reporters. The Council has asked members to cut sales price by 1-5% for existing projects, 5-10 % on future projects and 10-15% on affordable housing ranging between Rs3-20 lakh. Earlier this week, Finance Minister P Chidambaram had asked the Indian industry to cut prices to revive sales and reduce inventories. “We respect the concerns of the Finance Minister and we are ready for price cuts. On existing projects the prices have already fallen by 20-40% across the country,” said Goel, who is also the Chairman and Managing Director of Omaxe. In existing projects, there is no cushion on account of higher steel and cement prices that have been prevailing for the last one year. NREDCO claims to have 500 members, including all big realty players. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 10:15 am Indira's bank nationalisation has kept Indian economy afloat, says SoniaCongress president Sonia Gandhi said that but for the "much reviled" bank nationalisation four decades ago, the country's financial institutions would have been hit hard by the global economic crisis.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 21 Nov 2008 | 9:30 am Glenmark gets USFDA nod for ulcer tabletsPTI Mumbai: Pharmaceutical firm Glenmark today said it has received the US administration’s approval for marketing Ranitidine tablets, used to treat and prevent ulcers. The company through its subsidiary Glenmark Generics has received Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) approval from US Food and Drug Administration, Glenmark said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange. “This recent approval will be the third product added to the US subsidiary’s product portfolio within this month of November alone,” Glenmark Generics Chief Executive Officer Terrance Coughlin said. Further, Coughlin added GGI has already completed two launches earlier this month as well as Azathioprine Tablets 50mg, the company said. Glenmark Generics will soon commence marketing and distribution of these products in the US market, the filing added. The firm’s current portfolio consists of 37 generic products authorised for distribution in the US market. The company company currently has 40 ANDA’s filed with the US FDA pending approval, the filing added. Glenmark was trading at Rs315.60, up 2.87% on the BSE. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 9:14 am HT Media forms mobile marketing JV with Velti PlcNew Delhi: Publishing company HT Media Ltd. said it formed a new venture to provide mobile marketing services to other brands, ad agencies and network operators, in collaboration with Velti Plc, a London Stock Exchanged-listed applications and services firm. HT’s digital subsidiary, Firefly e-Ventures Ltd, will have a 65% stake in the venture, which will be based in Gurgaon, outside Delhi. Amit Garg, the head of Firefly, will also manage the new venture, HT Media said in a statement. Financial terms of the agreement, signed on Friday, were not disclosed. The venture marks HT Media’s entry into mobile marketing, and the publisher said the new venture will provide solutions to other media houses as well. The venture will use Velti’s mobile marketing platform to deliver mobile marketing and advertising services throughout India, which is now the world’s fastest growing mobile market in terms of number of new subscribers added each month. “We look forward to offering breakthrough and patented mobile based marketing services to our valued customers. It also reinforces our position as India’s leading media house, providing a multi-channel advertising platform across print, radio, internet and mobile,” Rajiv Verma, chief executive officer of HT Media, said in the statement. HT Media publishes the Hindustan Times, Hindustan and Mint, which together reach some 12 million readers every day. HT also owns Fever 104FM radio network as well as digital offerings such as Shine.com, a jobs portal, and DesiMartini.com, a social networking offering, in addition to hindustantimes.com and Mint’s web offering, LiveMint.com. “India is a key market for Velti and establishing this JV (joint venture) with the Hindustan Times represents a significant strategic move in our global expansion,” Alex Moukas, CEO of Velti, said. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 8:58 am Indian property to fall further before funds biteReuters Hong Kong: Indian property prices are likely to fall by a quarter in the coming year as the global economic crisis saps homebuyer confidence, adding to the problems of capital-strapped developers. A property market boom has been waning for a year, with land prices already falling about 15% from a mid-2007 peak, although forced sales have been rare. But consultants and investors at the MIPIM Asia conference in Hong Kong this week predicted tougher times ahead. “We’re expecting a horrible 2009,” said Anshul Jain, chief executive for property services firm DTZ in India. “Prices have already shown signs of coming off, and chinks in the armour are surfacing.” Indian property prices doubled in the two years after the country eased rules in early 2005 on inward investment in the construction industry, sparking interest in home-building among foreign funds. Developers, sometimes in league with funds run by the likes of Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, snapped up land. The bigger firms, such as DLF Ltd and Parsvnath Developers Ltd, launched huge initial public offerings to fund new townships in a country where little housing had been built for 50 years. But the sharp rise in prices, coupled with interest rate hikes designed to calm inflation in the booming economy, slowed home sales. And the global crisis has added to the gloom, with residential transactions down by half from a year ago. “We could see a 20 or 25% price correction,” said Anurag Mathur, joint India managing director at consultants Cushman and Wakefield. “There’s a lot of pressure. Whether we reach distressed sales, only time will tell.” Shares Slide Faced with overheated markets, India followed the lead of China in clamping down on loans to the property sector -- a policy that will probably force some small and medium-size developers out of business in both countries. The global credit crunch and a stock market slump cut off the supply of funds from capital markets. And now a drop in home sales is shrinking cash flow. A barometer of the troubles is DLF’s share price, which has tumbled more than 80% this year, compared to a 58 percent drop in Mumbai’s BSE index. Foreign investors, with their own economic worries at home and bargains popping up elsewhere, are unlikely now to jump into a market muddied by red-tape, land disputes and unclear titles. But the funds already raised, somewhere between 75 and 100 of them, are waiting for developers to drop their pricing for joint ventures, so they can get the 30% internal rates of return they hanker for, even in a bad market. “Right now our focus is on making sure we’re buying good assets in the better locations, working with better developers and getting better terms,” said Chetan Dave, chief executive at Sun-Appollo Real Esate Advisors, which manages a $630 million fund. However, developers are still hoping that as inflation softens, falling mortgage rates will make homes affordable again, especially if they start building $60,000 apartments for the middle class rather than $1 million homes. But financing deals, to perk the market up again, will not happen until developers get a better grasp on how far the market will fall, DTZ’s Jain said. “Private equity players think prices will fall more and developers are in the semi-denial stage,” Jain said. “They were in complete denial a few weeks ago.” Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 8:05 am Citigroup executives mull sale of assets: reportNew York: Amid plunging stock price, executives at troubled banking firm Citigroup are mulling the possibility of auctioning off all or parts of the financial giant, says a media report. Quoting people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal said: “Executives at Citigroup Inc, faced with a plunging stock price, began weighing the possibility of auctioning off pieces of the financial giant or even selling the company outright.” WSJ further said that “the internal discussions are at a preliminary stage and don’t signal that Citigroup’s board and management are backing down from their insistence that the New York company has ample capital, funding and strategic direction.” “Citigroup officials have decided they need to reckon with a range of scenarios that were unthinkable only weeks ago,” the newspaper said. Investors are dumping financial sector stocks on concerns over global woes. JP Morgan Chase shares slid 18 per cent, while Bank of America fell 14% and Citigroup declined 26.41%, or $1.69, to $4.71. Meanwhile, another daily The Australian quoting people familiar with the situation reported that the board of directors of Citigroup are scheduled to have a formal meeting tomorrow (AEDT) to discuss the options. The Australian, added that the sell-off in Citigroup shares has led executives to start laying out possible contingency plans. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 7:45 am Religare out of mutual fund JV with Dutch AegonReuters Mumbai: Financial services firm Religare Enterprises Ltd said on Friday Dutch insurer Aegon would take full control of their asset management joint venture, but a life insurance venture would carry on unchanged. Religare agreed to buy Lotus India Asset Management Company Pvt Ltd earlier this month. Lotus India AMC a joint venture between Fullerton Fund Management Group, a unit of Singapore’s state-run investor Temasek, and London-based Sabre Capital Worldwide, has more than Rs50 billion ($1 billion) of funds under management. Religare is controlled by the Singh family, who recently sold their stake in drug maker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd to Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 7:36 am Indian bond yields ease to lowest since Dec ’05Mumbai: Indian federal bond yields fell to their lowest in nearly three years on Friday as lower oil prices and falling inflation bolstered expectations the central bank would cut interest rates soon. At 10:05am, the benchmark 10-year bond yield was at 7.13%, off an early low of 7.10% which was its lowest since December 2005. It had ended at 7.26% on Thursday. “I expect the 10-year to be 7.15% on the top and 7.07 on the lower side. Even if RBI doesn’t cut rates, I don’t see yields going beyond 7.40%,” Anoop Verma, associate vice president at Development Credit Bank said, referring to the Reserve Bank of India. Oil fell to a 3- year low below $49 a barrel on Friday, to be down nearly $100 from a record high in July. Annual inflation eased to a 5-month low of 8.90% in early November, from a peak of 12.91 percent in August. With further moderation in inflation expected given the fall in oil prices, the market thinks the central bank can cut interest rates further to shore up growth. A auction of of $1.8 billion of government bonds on Friday will be watched for signs of the strength of demand. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 7:01 am Asia stocks continue at 5-year lowHong Kong: Waves of selling in world stock markets crashed into Asia on Friday, with gains from the region’s 5-year bull run now erased as a global recession tightened its grip, and investors sought refuge in government bonds and cash. US stocks were at the lowest in more than a decade and oil prices fell to 3-1/2-year lows, trading below $50 a barrel, as commodity prices slumped on expectations of reduced demand as economies from the euro zone to Taiwan contract. The fate of US corporate titans like General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Citigroup was uncertain, adding to a general mood of anxiety. Citigroup, not long ago the world’s most valuable financial firm, was reportedly considering selling itself. Democratic congressional leaders demanded executives at the Big Three automakers come up with a detailed business survival plan in exchange for their support of up to $25 billion in loans. Investors priced in a 1-in-3 chance that the US Federal Reserve would cut its benchmark interest rate to 0.25% from 1% on or before its last policy meeting of the year on 16 December. A growing number of Fed officials are talking about an unprecedented monetary expansion, with more economists expecting the base rate to hit zero. Japan’s Nikkei share average dropped 2.2%, extending its weekly decline to around 12%. Stocks in the Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan were down 2%, according to an MSCI index, after earlier slipping to their lowest since October 2003 when global markets were just beginning to recover from the bursting of the dotcom bubble. The MSCI All-Country World Index fell 0.5%, plumbing the lowest levels since April 2003, having now fallen 53% this year. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index shed 3%, with widespread weakness most acute in the financial, real estate and commodity-related sectors. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:46 am Honda to cut production by another 18,000 vehiclesAP New York: Honda Motor Co said it will cut its North American production by another 18,000 vehicles, citing the industry wide drop in demand for new vehicles. Honda spokesman Ed Miller yesterday said the cuts are on top of others announced earlier this year and bring the automaker’s total production cuts since August to 50,000 units. Miller said 12,000 of the cuts will be made at Honda’s plant in Lincoln, Alabama, which makes the Odyssey minivan and Pilot sport utility vehicle. The other 6,000 will be made at a plants in East Liberty, Ohio, which makes the Element, CRV and Civic; and Marysville, Ohio, which makes the Accord along with the Acura TL and RDX, Miller said. Honda said it won’t need to make work force changes as a result of the cuts. Production will be slowed at the Lincoln plant, while the plants in Ohio will be shut down for an additional two days around the Christmas holiday, Miller said. Tough economic conditions and tight credit markets have cut into auto sales across the industry this year, forcing many automakers who produce vehicles in the United States to cut production. With the cuts, Honda said it now expects to produce about 1.41 million vehicles in North America for the fiscal year ending 31 March, down from 1.44 million in fiscal 2007. Source: World Business - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:23 am Honda to cut production by another 18,000 vehiclesAP New York: Honda Motor Co said it will cut its North American production by another 18,000 vehicles, citing the industry wide drop in demand for new vehicles. Honda spokesman Ed Miller yesterday said the cuts are on top of others announced earlier this year and bring the automaker’s total production cuts since August to 50,000 units. Miller said 12,000 of the cuts will be made at Honda’s plant in Lincoln, Alabama, which makes the Odyssey minivan and Pilot sport utility vehicle. The other 6,000 will be made at a plants in East Liberty, Ohio, which makes the Element, CRV and Civic; and Marysville, Ohio, which makes the Accord along with the Acura TL and RDX, Miller said. Honda said it won’t need to make work force changes as a result of the cuts. Production will be slowed at the Lincoln plant, while the plants in Ohio will be shut down for an additional two days around the Christmas holiday, Miller said. Tough economic conditions and tight credit markets have cut into auto sales across the industry this year, forcing many automakers who produce vehicles in the United States to cut production. With the cuts, Honda said it now expects to produce about 1.41 million vehicles in North America for the fiscal year ending 31 March, down from 1.44 million in fiscal 2007. Source: Home - Livemint.com | 21 Nov 2008 | 5:23 am No manipulative trade in ICICI shares!SEBI on Thursday said it did not find evidence of manipulative trading in ICICI Bank`s shares.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:26 am FIIs offload equities worth Rs 762.94 crore on BSE!Foreign Institutional Investors on Thursday shed equities worth Rs 762.94 crore amid the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex closing down by 3.68 percent at 8,451.01 points.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:26 am Inflation in Sept, Oct negative: Fin Min!Bolstered by decline in inflation, the Finance Ministry on Thursday said the rate of price rise has been negative during September and October.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:26 am Govt unlikely to reduce petroleum prices !The government is not considering reducing prices of petrol and diesel, planning to use the profits earned on the two auto fuels to make up for part of the hefty losses on sale of domestic LPG and PDS kerosene.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:26 am Emerging markets to drive mobile growth: British watchdog!The top emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China will drive mobile services growth in the coming years, a new report by Britain`s telecoms regulator Ofcom said on Thursday.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:26 am `Large-scale job cuts in India unlikely`!India is unlikely to see any large-scale job cuts as it has a strong domestic market to consume what it produces, Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar said.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:26 am Sensex closes at 3-year low!Amid reports of a weak overseas trend, the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex on Thursday tumbled to three-year lows by losing over 322 points on panic selling by investors and funds.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:26 am Inflation down to 8.9%, FinMin bullish!The inflation rate, which is on a downward spiral, slipped further to 8.9 percent.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:26 am No plan to stop short-selling, says SEBI!Capital market regulator, SEBI, on Thursday ruled out stopping short-selling as it has no evidence that short-selling is driving the market down, a top official said.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:26 am 7,000 jobs on razor edge globally!Layoffs are turning out to be the flavour of the week, with nearly 7,000 jobs set to be slashed.Source: Zee News : Business | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:26 am SEBI has no plans to stop short selling: BhaveMumbai, Nov. 20 Capital markets regulator the Securities and Exchange Board of India has no intention to stop short selling in India, as there is no evidence that short-selling is driving the equity markets down, said the SEBI Chairman, Mr C.B.Source: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:00 am Hindustan Unilever standing tall in the stormThe Nifty sports a decline of over 58 per cent so far in 2008 and a few index stocks have even tumbled by 80 per cent or more. But there’s one stock that has actually delivered a gain of 9.5 per cent in 2008 and a handsome return of 16.5Source: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:00 am No evidence of manipulation of ICICI Bank share price: SEBIMumbai, Nov. 20 Investigations carried out by the capital markets regulator show no evidence of manipulation in the share prices of ICICI Bank, said a news release from SEBI.Source: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:00 am ONGC, partners bag 20 blocks under NELP-VIINew Delhi, Nov. 20 Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC) and its partners have bagged 20 out of the 44 blocks that have been awarded under the seventh round of the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP-VII).Source: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:00 am Importers’ $ demand puts rupee under pressureChennai, Nov. 20 The rupee is likely to depreciate further in the coming months because of demand for dollars from importers, according to Dr Saumitra Chaudhuri, noted economist and Member, Prime Minister’s Economic AdvisorySource: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:00 am Higher pay for Central PSU officers gets Cabinet nodNew Delhi, Nov 20 After Government employees, it is now the turn of public sector executives to reap the pay revision bonanza. On Thursday, the Union Cabinet gave its nod to a pay enhancement for officers of Central Public Sector EnterprisesSource: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:00 am Alphageo (Rs 108.05): BuyWe recommend a buy in Alphageo (India) from a short-term perspective. It is apparent from the charts of Alphageo that it has been on a long-term downtrend from its life-time high of Rs 1,078 recorded in early January. Since then, the stock hasSource: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:00 am Cos use case study to woo talent from campusNew Delhi, Nov. 20 Companies are hunting for fresh ideas from B-schools using case study contest as a plank.Source: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:00 am Public sector cos tapping bond market for fundsBangalore, Nov. 20 Public sector entities are increasingly tapping the domestic bond markets for funds with External Commercial Borrowing (ECB) window remainingSource: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:00 am Day Trading GuideA short-term support is at Rs 305 level for the stock. Buy the stock in dips with tight stop-loss at Rs 305 level.Source: Business Line - Home Page | 21 Nov 2008 | 12:00 am Port volumes take a dip in OctoberIn October this year, the dozen ports handled a total traffic of 42.18 million tonnes compared with 44.49 million tonnes in the same month last year.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 20 Nov 2008 | 10:49 pm McLean Foster, PwC in race to guide Trai on spectrumAround 10 global consulting firms with expertise in spectrum trading have offered to share their know-how with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of IndiaSource: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 20 Nov 2008 | 10:47 pm Birla Minerals halts Aussie projectAditya Birla Minerals, a subsidiary of aluminium giant Hindalco Industries Ltd, has suspended work on the Ezperanza South Project at its Mount Gordon operations in Australia.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 20 Nov 2008 | 10:45 pm Net-based PCs to end desktop era?Personal computer-usage habits are changing, to the extent that it may spell doom for desktop computers.Source: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 20 Nov 2008 | 10:41 pm 'Fund-raising clearance can come in 24 hours'Zarinah Anwar, the chairman of Surhunjaya Sekuriti, the market regulator in Malaysia, was in Mumbai on Thursday for a forumSource: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 20 Nov 2008 | 10:32 pm Principal-PNB venture rides to sunset?Even as insurance brokers are gearing up to push volumes in the upcoming 'tax-saving quarter' - January-March is when people invest the most to save taxSource: Daily News & Analysis: Money News | 20 Nov 2008 | 10:29 pm Ship owners avoid ransom insurance, seek naval helpIndian ship owners who have so far not borne additional insurance costs against piracy are awaiting three more naval vessels and marine commandos to ensure the safety of the voyage through the Gulf ofSource: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 20 Nov 2008 | 7:20 pm Left steps in as travel agents stop ticket salesAround a fourth (700) of the over 2,700 IATA airline ticket agents across the country are boycotting ticket sales of the 16 airlines, foreign and Indian, that have refused to pay them commission, evenSource: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 20 Nov 2008 | 7:18 pm Aegon, Religare end mutual fund tieupA month after getting the Securities and Exchange Board of Indias (Sebis) nod to launch an asset management company, Dutch financial services major Aegon and Religare Enterprises haveSource: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 20 Nov 2008 | 7:18 pm Govt mulls Rs 75,000 cr refinance windowThe government and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) are working on opening a massive Rs 75,000 crore refinance window to provide concessional funds for infrastructure, housing and small and mediumSource: Business Standard | Front Page Headlines | 20 Nov 2008 | 7:17 pm Outcome-based model links revenue to service parametersNew Delhi: Jai Menon shot to the limelight about four years ago as the brains behind Bharti Airtel Ltd’s big push on outsourcing network and tech management functions to vendors such as Telefon AB LM Ericsson, Nokia Oyj, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and Oracle Corp. Instead of carrying such fixed costs on its balance sheet, Bharti Airtel, India’s biggest mobile phone services firm, converted the expense into an operational cost linked to efficiency and usage levels. These days, Menon is trying to drive similar changes in customer service at Airtel, which had some 75 million customers. In an industry infamous for its poor customer service and technology support, Airtel’s group chief information officer and director of technology customer service wants to change the way phone subscribers are served by placing incentives before its outsourced service firms to focus on the outcome of customer interaction. In an interview, he explains how he expects this to change his company as it aims to reach 125 million customers by 2010. Edited excerpts: How have the last quarters been?  Cutting edge: Menon says a new initiative he had just completed was a platinum centre to take care of the end-to-end life cycle of the customer. Madhu Kapparath / Mint To get to this, if I had to look at the top three programmes that we have put together for service—one is implement a very solid shared service capability for all customers including business to business and business to consumer (B2C). Second one is, empower the customer enormously through self care, and the third one is, building intelligence in to service so that you can actually do customized service. Something like a concierge service but not the expensive kind. Any of this being driven by models used elsewhere? A few things are, but a few things we are inventing for the first time in the world. Within shared services, there are some best practices we are adopting from the world...one practice is taking all the fragmented shared services and consolidating them. For example, we have now consolidated 105 agencies that did our address verification work to four agencies. This allows us to build quality control and repeatability into the system. It has taken about a year to finish this. Another example is bill printing that just got done last Friday. We print a lot of postpaid and prepaid bills for both the mobile business and the broadband business. This has been consolidated from 18 to two locations in Manesar and Chennai with one partner, EIH (East India Hotels Ltd, the owner of Oberoi hotel chain). We can print 1,000 pages a minute (each machine) with the ability to do targeted marketing inserts and every customer can get a customized bill. Same for document management (digitizing address verification documents, for instance) where 23 locations have come down to four. All this, brings in a lot of quality and repeatability along with a number of other advantages. Similarly in inbound calling, how do you handle quality with one million calls a day? We work with only six large BPO (business process outsourcing) firms. Then, a new initiative I completed just a few weeks ago is a platinum centre to focus on our top customers. This centre takes care of the end-to-end life cycle of the customer ranging from the initially hello to informing if a service is down among other things. The key innovation here is that I am working on fundamentally changing the BPO business model (serving telecom firms). I call it the O/E ratio or output-effort ratio. The payment mechanism for the BPO industry today is all about when an agent picks up a customer phone call and when it is put back—the duration of my call is what I am paid for. That does not necessarily mean my customer query has been answered or issue resolved. It was never linked to business outcome. This model is very similar to the IT industry—you pay money to buy servers or software or systems integration. In the IBM transformation, we linked everything to revenue. Here also I started thinking—how can I link BPO performance to churn or customer satisfaction. This has already been done in the platinum centre that is handled by IBM Daksh. We already have a outcome-based model with them where churn, customer satisfaction, everything is linked to KPIs (key performance indicators) and revenues are linked to these parameters. How do you measure these? Though rigorous customer service management techniques that we do through (research agency) IMRB. We are in the middle of rolling it out and you will expect to see it at work between November and February. We just signed the agreement and we are recruiting and training people and by the end of this month it should start. If I’m a platinum customer and during an interaction with a customer service agent, my call gets dropped do I get reconnected to the same agent I was speaking with when I call back the BPO firm or do I go to a new guy and explain my trouble all over again? We want to take you to the same guy. We can keep the guy free for the next few minutes and it is in our records who you called. What about Blackberry customers who get frustrated with mail delays? BlackBerry will be part of platinum. We are rolling BlackBerry, data cards, platinum broadband and mobile customers, all enterprise customers and some SME (small and medium enterprises) customers into this service. And if customers give us more ideas, we want to implement them. We are going to invest in it and it’s not about cost cutting, it’s really about investment for service. You have earlier talked about a single screen for your agents. How does that work? This is the third innovation in shared services driven by technology. Within tech, there are two things we are doing. One, we are bringing down the screen of the call centre agents to one from 12 to 14; we call it UDT or unified desktop. It is now rolled out in the eastern part of the country and it is getting “massified” across the country. There are multiple applications behind the scenes, which have all been stitched into one single screen for the agents and makes the interaction so simple for the agents, making their response time very fast. The second thing that was done is called hosted CCT—contact centre technology, which routes calls where agents and skills are available among our BPO firms. Not only does the BPO firm not have to worry about the technology but more importantly, the entire pool (of six firms) becomes available to resolve a query. Tell us about self-care. Within shared services, there are some best practices we are adopting...one is consolidating all shared services. We have so far not advertised this above the line but only below the line through word of mouth. I am going to take an above the line campaign on service soon. The great thing about this is that today it is the menu with five or six options such as unpaid billing, etc.… In future, I can add other options to it. People don’t have to wait on a call to get this information and can just dial *121# and get all they need. What self care is on the web for financial services industry, this is for the mobile sector. This tool is very popular for rural but can only be done in vernacular in the fields of education and agriculture. We are working closely with handset manufacturers and moving towards taking all our services vernacular. How much has this self-care service reduced stress on the system? Rather than stress reduction, this service has made the level of interaction with call centres a little higher. You don’t need to call. Then, we launched the mChek platform for mobile payment, post and prepaid. Today we have about half million users registered. Customers using e-bills today is crossing 20% and web usage is 30% of postpaid and fixed line customers. We are going to go really aggressive on self care as the customer should feel all powerful and give the customer the benefit of needing help from someone else only in a dire situation. From cost perspective, what are the benefits of self-care? I think the way we see it, this is more curative in the sense it gives you immediate response. From our own cost point of view, we are not trying to reduce the human contact with customers. We like the human contact. We are looking at it as changing the value proposition of the contact. What else? We are building a credit scoring system based on the one used by the financial services sector based on payment patterns, usage, volume or size of the bill and other such factors. This allows us to inject segmentation into all our platforms allowing us, for instance, to change our policy where the service barring policy is different for gold customers or silver customers and so on. We are also working on predicting churn using business intelligence and analytics to understand customer behaviour patterns. Source: Tech News - Livemint.com | 20 Nov 2008 | 7:05 pm
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