 |
| Friday,
March 23, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
|
Infosys to set up leadership institute
Back room
jobs galore US
slowdown to hit VisualSoft
Put
analysts in their place |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Israeli
demo project at Hisar HC seeks
SEBI explanation Haryana’s
plan outlay raised How
markets engendered mass stupidity Husband
sold for $ 516
An
errand-boy who built Hyundai empire
Opium
in the courtyard
|
|
Infosys to set up leadership institute
Bangalore, March 22 Infosys has acquired more than 200 acres of land in Mysore for setting up this leadership institute along with its regular software campus. With an earmarked investment of Rs 34 crore, the Institute is expected to be operational by October 2001. An array of training programmes, encompassing various leadership development elements will be conducted throughout the year. The accent will be on customising training programmes to suit the special needs of each participant. The institute, housing classrooms, a business centre, conference rooms and a big library, is expected to train up to 1,000 employees annually. While the Institute will be exclusive for Infoscions initially, it will later be expanded to cater to customers, suppliers and stakeholders. Expounding on leadership and its importance in today’s competitive business environment, Mr
N. R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Infosys Technologies said: “A true leader is one who leads by example and sacrifices more than anyone else, in his or her pursuit of excellence. It is our vision at Infosys, to create world class leaders who will be at the forefront of business and technology in today’s competitive marketplace. “The Infosys’ Leadership Institute has been conceptualised to instill in our employees creativity to bring new ideas to fruition, make transition to new paradigms and embrace change. We believe the Leadership Institute will play an instrumental role in equipping Infoscions to be leaders, contributing to the advancement of the IT industry.” According to Mr Nandan Nilekani, Managing Director, “Infosys is experiencing phenomenal growth in terms of geographical area. We need to create and nurture a large number of high quality leaders with a global perspective.”
Asiawire
|
|
Back room jobs galore
Washington, March 22 At the current growth rate, India will have a $ 900 billion economy in 2010, The New York Times last reported. Infosys Chairman
N. R. Narayana Murthy told the paper: “We need to broaden the base of technology in India. This will be very valuable as a way to generate jobs for people who are not as skilled as software programmers.” Mr Murthy contends that for technology to make a dent in the pervasive poverty of India, it must account for 10 per cent of the GDP which is only 2 per cent now. By 2008 “back room” jobs in India for firms abroad will generate 800,000 new jobs and $ 17 billion in revenue for India. One of the back room jobs is for Indians to answer telephones for American companies in the USA. Mr Murthy said that although back office work is not particularly challenging for a company like Infosys, he would consider expanding into it if only to create thousands of more jobs in Bangalore. The back office business, said the paper, may help cushion India from the economic slowdown in the USA. As companies cut their spending on new computer systems, Indian software producers are likely to feel the pinch. But routine work like processing insurance claims goes on, no matter what the economic climate. The paper said “improved telephone network has essentially erased the advantage of other countries that offer back office services — notably Ireland, one of the growth leaders of the expensive new Europe.” “India’s greatest strength in this business,” it said, “may prove to be its ability to adapt, chameleon-like, to its customers. For a decade, Infosys, Wipro and others have run development centres in the United States to reduce the anxiety of American companies in dealing with foreigners.” Ashok Soota, a prominent technology executive who recently started his own software consulting firm, noted that India’s high-technology industry was born in 1991, a recession year, when American companies first looked overseas for skilled, but cheap programmers. “This slowdown,” he said, “will force us to explore new markets.” Now, the companies in India are blurring the line between India and the USA further, the paper said. Ramdas of Bangalore Labs plans to relocate to Northern California so that he can live among his customers. Soota’s partner, Subroto Bagchi, also plans to move, to North New Jersey, in two months. “We see ourselves as a next generation company that is neither Indian nor American,” Bagchi said. In recent years, said the paper, the best engineers and programmers left India for the USA. However, as India’s industry has matured, emigrants are returning home to apply the lessons of the American market in local companies.
PTI
|
|
US slowdown to hit VisualSoft
Mumbai, March 22 This may result in negative growth sequentially for the current quarter, VTL said in a communication to the BSE here today. However, the company was likely to register more than 90 per cent growth in revenue and net profit for the full year ending March 2001 as compared to previous year. VTL has also reported that the business of high-end project services has witnessed growth and the visibility for this business has improved, the communication said.
Suit against Indo-Rama
A Nagpur court has adjourned to April 4, a suit filed by Washington-based International Finance Corporation (IFC) against Indo-Rama Synthetics (India) Ltd for recovery of loan to the tune of Rs 132.36 crore. The sixth joint Civil Judge, Senior Division, S.N. Pathak, has asked all the parties to submit their pleadings to enable the court to fix a date for regular hearing.
Satyam Computer
Satyam Computer Services Ltd., has been rated as one of the 10 most well-regarded companies in India in a prestigious 2000-2001 Review 200 survey conducted by the Hong Kong-based “Far Eastern Economic Review”. The survey, which had been conducted for the past 8 years, ranks companies in Asia on corporate leadership. The survey asked Executives and professionals to offer their opinions on more than 500 Asian and non-Asian firms.
Sun Pharma
The Board of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd (SPIL) has approved the proposal for merger/amalgamation of Sun Pharmaceutical Advanced Research Centre Ltd, SPIL’s wholly-owned subsidiary, with itself. SPIL board has also declared an interim divident of 9.5 per cent per annum on redeemable cumulative, non-convertible preference shares for the year ending March 31, 2001, on a pro rate basis, the company said in notice to the BSE.
S. Kumars
After the exit of Ogden Energy of US and German energy giants Bayernwerke and VEW Energie, S Kumars Group has now offered to the financial institutions 49 per cent stake in the Rs 2,254 crore Maheshwar Hydel Power Project in Madhya Pradesh. Industry sources said the IDBI, IFCI, LIC and GIC have evinced interest in the 400 MW
project. PTI
|
|
Put analysts in their place London, March 22 You might think it odd that the FT of all papers should attack financial analysts, because there must be more quotes from analysts per square inch in that distinguished newspaper than in any other publication, with the possible exception of the Wall Street Journal. Indeed, quotes from analysts are surely the FT’s bread and butter. Well, just for good measure, the paper’s editorial column also attacked itself for having taken analysts so seriously. The kernel of the case for the prosecution was that analysts had been transformed over the years from being objective backroom boys, who kept track of corporate widget production and earnings per share, into key figures of the financial sector’s sales force. The attack was not dissimilar to the assault on investment analysts in the New York Times at the beginning of January. In a nutshell, said the New York Times, buy recommendations outnumber recommendations to sell by an absurd majority. Analysts under the influence of the aggressive investment bankers who dominate the world’s financial centres, are in the hype business, having abandoned their original role of precautionary adviser. There is a lot in this. It is impossible to pick up a financial page at present without encountering an article explaining that the bloodbath currently being taken by the world’s financial markets is a necessary reaction to that irrational exuberance of previous years. The bubble that has now burst was undoubtedly encouraged by the great army of investment analysts. Those who sounded cautionary notes were vastly outnumbered and in London, they could almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. In fact, one of the most prominent analysts in London eventually lost his job as the market continued to defy gravity . One rival analyst rather pointedly commented that anyone who had listened to this man had missed out on the biggest bull market in history. The apex of the irrational exuberance was of course reached with the launch early in the year 2000 of all those dot.com companies whose prices went through the roof despite the absence of anything resembling sensible earnings projections . Old fashioned tools such as price/earnings ratios were simply thrown out of the window. The obsession with the financial markets in general and financial analysts in particular reached the stage in recent years when it was almost impossible to turn on a television in a European hotel room without seeing some newscaster interviewing an analysts at breathless speed about the latest developments in the markets. The world seemed to have gone money mad. The worship of analysts has also affected the quality of newspaper reporting. Traditionally financial correspondents would talk to their contacts and then try to produce as informed a report as possible, illustrating key points with appropriate quotes. Nowadays, however, such reports tend to be stitched together around what analysts have said, with input from the people you really want to read — eg Greenspan himself — reduced to a minimum. ‘It’s all right, you can read Greenspan on a website’ is the current all-too-common justification. Although WAP and 3G mobile phone technology will in the long term allow readers to check out that essential quote, it’s not only extremely premature for a newspaper to assume this today, it’s also lazy. So, let’s put analysts back in their place, returning to the laudable objective of creating newspapers of record once again.
— The Observer |
|
Israeli demo
project at Hisar Chandigarh, March 22 This was announced by Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala during a meeting with the Ambassador of Israel, Mr David Aphek, who called on him here today. Mr Aphek offered his country’s collaboration in setting up joint ventures. Haryana and Israel reaffirmed their faith in mutual cooperation, especially in the areas of agriculture, agro-industry, food processing, dairy, information technology and irrigation. Mr Aphek also visited TK India, a subsidiary of the Israeli medical equipment manufacturing group, Truphatek Holdings. The unit, which is 100 per cent export oriented, manufactures laryngoscpes. From April onwards, Truphatek will also set up a marketing company which will offer services to doctors in India. |
|
HC seeks SEBI explanation New Delhi, March 22 A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Arijit Passayat and Justice D.K. Jain directed SEBI counsel Alpana Poddar to seek instructions from the share market regulator why it is discriminating between individual investors and institutional investors in the application of “margin rule” during trading. The court issued the direction after a brief argument on a petition alleging that stock market sentiments were being manipulated by FIIs, Indian Financial Investors, Mutual Funds and major brokers with “active support” of SEBI, which had put common investors in disadvantageous position. Seeking CBI investigation into alleged involvement of SEBI officials in “manipulating stock market artificially” to the benefit of FIIs and big Indian investors, advocate Manohar Lal Sharma, who filed the petition, said “this amounts to robbing individual investors of their hard earned money.” The court, while fixing next hearing on the PIL on April 19, said SEBI should explain under which provision of law it was giving waiver to FIIs and other big investors for trading without depositing margin amount of transaction while the same was being charged from the individual investors. Sharma said there was no statutory rule under which SEBI could compel a set of investors to perform transactions in a particular manner and waive off the conditions to others.
PTI
|
|
Haryana’s plan outlay raised New Delhi, March 22 The allocation, approved by the Commission after the Haryana Chief Minister, Mr Om Prakash Chautala, called on the Deputy Chairman of the Commission, Mr
K. C. Pant, is higher than the revised outlay of Rs 1815 crore for the annual plan, 2000-2001. While making sectoral allocations of the approved outlay for different sectors, the highest priority has been given to the development of basic infrastructure of irrigation, power, roads and road transport. Allocations for these sectors comprises of 54.6 per cent of the plan outlay, which is Rs 1174.45 crore. Expansion of irrigation facilities in the State has been given priority with 17 per cent of the allocation (Rs 361.10 crore) going towards this. This includes an outlay of Rs 210 crore for externally aided water resources consolidation project. An amount of Rs 485 crore, which is 22.6 per cent of the Plan outlay, has been kept for the generation, transmission and distribution of power. It includes the externally aided project —Haryana Power Restructuring Project with an outlay of Rs 110 crore. Transport sector which includes construction of roads and bridges and extension of transport services has been allocated an amount of Rs 322.35 crore, which is 15 per cent of the total outlay. The backward areas of Mewat and Shivalik have been given Rs 21.50 crore in addition to the normal departmental provisions for their development. An outlay of Rs 112.72 crore has been given for agriculture and allied activities sector. Of this Rs 31.70 crore have been earmarked for the poverty alleviation programmes in the rural areas. Social and Community Services such as education, including technical education, health services, water supply and sanitation, welfare of Scheduled Castes and Backward Castes, social security (pensions) and women and child development etc. have also been given a high priority. An outlay of Rs 700.76 crore representing 32.6 per cent of the total outlay has been kept for these services.
|
|
How markets engendered mass stupidity London, March 22 The entire rickety American economic success story has rested on a crazy stock market boom so that even taxi drivers were trading in dot.com stocks and accessing unparalleled levels of credit because they felt so wealthy. Now they are
left, like the rest of America, with the debts and worthless stocks. And the crisis in the American financial system is matched by one in Japan. Japan’s massive financial bubble burst 10 years ago and it has yet to clear up the financial detritus. The banking system is racked by up to US dollars 350 billion of bad debts, but the banks’ capacity to ride the financial hit is undermined by the downward plunge of the Japanese stock market because so much of their
own capital is invested in the shares of other banks. This ‘double whammy’ already means many are technically bankrupt. And if we take seriously the hint from Japanese Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa that Japan might be the first major state since the war to unilaterally write down the value of its national debt, its financial system has to be regarded as on the brink. For the world to have one calamity would be bad enough; to have two simultaneously is more than careless. It is eerily reminiscent not of the kind of recessions of the post-war period which have been painful enough- but of the recessions up until 1930, as Larry Summers, the outgoing US Treasury Secretary, has said. Japan and the USA have in their different ways made the cardinal error: they allowed their stock markets to become too intertwined with their overall financial system, reinventing the impulses that made nineteenth and early twentieth century recessions so vicious. What made those recessions last twice as long as post-war recessions was that they were accompanied and reinforced by bank and stock market collapses. My hunch is that the world is about to learn an awesome lesson; the conservative theorists were wrong and the liberal Keynesians right. The information technology revolution may have constructed a new economy, but it is one that has ancient parallels. It could never have got off the ground so quickly without stock market finance, but it had the impact of making an already febrile and irrational investment community even more stupid, speculative and herd-like than usual, as it chased what it imagined were new pots of IT and dot.com gold. Moreover, IT has been one of the reasons it has been so hard to regulate finance, with the borders between banks and the stock market becoming so much more porous. Banks may be bigger but their disastrous nineteenth century-type exposures to stock market losses have been reinvented. To be effective, regulation had to become smarter, faster and more international. But in the current environment, building the essentially left-of-centre coalitions that might effect such regulation has been difficult. So we are where we are. In the US, rather like the 1920s, the stock market boom spawned a massive misallocation of savings as Americans abandoned caution and played the markets. They have been duped into running up a scale of personal debt rarely witnessed. Worse, the prospect of easy profit has created a new populism in which stock ownership and speculation are portrayed as democratically enfranchising- while progressive politics, with its instinct to contain and regulate finance, is cast as against the best interests of the people. Unravelling stock market bubbles are always painful, when the linkages have been allowed to infect the entire financial system. And the ordinary credit lines that lubricate the wider economy become polluted by what has happened in the stock market. In this respect Japan presents a warning. The losses go so deep that policy interventions such as lowering interest rates and reducing taxes are much less effective than they were in the immediate post-war period. The US has a market structure that means it will get the adjustment over more quickly and radically than in Japan. But this also implies any recession in the US will be compensatingly more intense. Europe will not escape the fall-out, although it is in a much stronger position precisely because its stock markets (except in Britain) have a much less central role in its financial system. And despite some wobble under fire from ignorant American critics and their British poodles, Europe has maintained a regulatory structure that retains that insulation. As that realisation grows, the European Union will be seen as a safe haven. And Britain will be glad to be a member of club in which economic activity is not seen as the by-product of a casino.
The Observer
Husband sold for $ 516 Hanoi, March 22 The state-run Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper said the younger woman paid the angry wife immediately and set up home with the husband. It said the 41-year-old wife was now living alone in the southern province of Dong Nai. ($1=14,533 dong)
|
co
An errand-boy who built Hyundai empire Seoul, March 22 Chung, the honorary Chairman of Hyundai, died of old age, a Hyundai statement said. For months Chung had suffered from exhaustion and loss of weight. In early March he was hospitalised with pneumonia and died on Wednesday evening with family members at his bedside. He had retired from active business only last year. His immediate family included his wife, six sons and a daughter. Chung, who rose from rags to become one of Asia’s richest and most powerful men, was a controversial self-made man known for taking risks in business and politics. The development and widespread diversification of the Chung family-controlled empire reflected South Korea’s rise from one of the world’s poorest nations in the 1950s to the status of a leading industrial nation. Chung himself came to symbolize the nation’s ascendancy after the 1950-53 Korean War to its reputation as an economic wonder. He often took chances that other entrepreneurs would not. For instance, he began Hyundai’s ship-building branch by taking orders even before he had facilities to make the ships. The expansion of the Hyundai chaebol, or group, was a leading force in South Korea’s expansion in all industrial areas. In the 1960s and 70s the group was making such products as ships, cars, electronic equipment, computer chips as well as providing financial services. In 1999, sales of the 50 hyundai subsidiaries totalled 70 billion dollars. However, the Hyundai group, which had 170,000 employees, was hit especially hard by the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and came under sharp criticism. Business leaders who worked for Chung were accused of delaying efforts to reform the overextended Hyundai group. They were said to have held on too tightly to the strict hierarchical chaebol culture. Chung himself stepped down from managing the group amid the growing financial difficulties of its subsidiaries. During his active career, Chung ran unsuccessfully in 1992 as a South Korean presidential candidate. In 1988, he was successful in his efforts to gain the 1988 Olympics for South Korea. His political efforts were marred, however, when he was found guilty of violating election laws and was sentenced to three years in jail. But the sentence was dropped later because of his age. In the final years of his life, he played a key role in South Korea’s reconciliation policies with communist North Korea. He even shipped hundreds of cattle across the heavily fortified border to famine-devastated North Korea at his own expense to further the reconciliation campaign. In 1998, Chung entered into an agreement with the North Korean government for the development of a joint tourism and industrial project under which Hyundai was to provide $ 942 million. Chung was born in 1915 as the first son of a poor family in North Korea. At the age of 18, he left his home and went south to take his first job as an errand boy. Later, he worked at a car repair shop. At the end of World War ii he founded a construction company which was the foundation stone for the step-by-step building of the Hyundai empire. The first divisions of that empire to suffer acute financial ills were the construction and semiconductor wings.
DPA |
cr
Opium in the courtyard Bathinda, March 22 As the police authorities are making efforts to contain the menace of smuggling of narcotics in this area from the other states, including Rajasthan, Haryana and Madhya Pardesh, the “merchants of death” have changed their modus operandi. However, they keep falling into the net of police. This district, which is having close proximity with the Haryana and Rajasthan border, has emerged as a hub for the smugglers as well as consumers of opium and poppy husk. The district police have registered unprecedently high number of criminal cases against the smugglers since January 2000 and have also recovered huge quantity of opium, poppy husk and other type of intoxicants. For the past many days, the Bathinda district police have started facing a new problem as the smugglers have started growing opium in their own premises clandestinely and have been selling off narcotics to the consumers by producing the same on their own. In this way, they have succeeded in saving themselves from the fear of being caught by the police while transporting the consignment from neighbouring states to Punjab. Dr Jatinder Kumar Jain, SSP, when contacted, said that three cases had been registered against those who were cultivating the opium. One case was registered against three accused of Hans Nagar locality of the city, one case was registered against the junk dealer of Bhucho Mandi, Raj Kumar and third case was registered today against Joga Singh of village Chauke, who had been cultivating the opium in his farms. About 40 kg of opium plants and three kg of opium buds were seized from him. He further pointed out that a “total war” against smugglers of narcotics and drug-addiction, which was launched by district police last year, had been producing excellent results and general public had been coming forward to help the police in containing this menace. Meanwhile, the district police has also arrested Jasmel Kaur of village Dadwali and recovered about 10 kg of poppy husk from her. Apart from it, one kg of opium had been recovered from Mithu Singh of village Gulabgarh. The accused was smuggling opium from Haryana for the last two years and had been selling off the same in this district.
|
bb
Dishman Pharma Guntas Visuals SBI criticised Haryana Chamber |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | In Spotlight | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 121 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
