The recovery of General Motors

The medicine starts to work

Profits are back at General Motors, but it is too soon to declare a return to health

Labour law overhaul to ease separation pain

Retrenched Staff Can Access Labour Tribunals Within 45 Days, Firms Employing Over 20 Staff To Have In-House Grievance Cell, BPO Staff To Gain

Four PSUs may get Maharatna tag next month

Four state-owned companies--ONGC, SAIL, NTPC and IOC--are likely to get the Maharatna status next month that will allow them to take investment decisions of up to Rs 5,000 crore independent of the government.

India and Europe’s tribulations

It is well understood that when the question of confidence is raised, the best and the only way to respond is immediately . If you let the problem fester, it gets worse and contagion begins to spread.

RIL-RNRL verdict: What will the cos renegotiate?

The verdict on one of the fiercest corporate battle between the Ambani brothers, Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries (RIL) and Anil Ambani’s Reliance Natural Resources (RNRL) over the supply of gas from the Krishna-Godavari basin is out.
After listening to both sides, in what was a split verdict approach, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of RIL by 2:1.

A glut of MBAs?

Hard data supports the onset of this glut of MBAs. In 2000, there were about 600 colleges in India offering about 70,000 MBA seats. By the end of 2009, the number had increased to 1,400 colleges offering about 120,000 MBA seats! The intake of the top-20 institutes alone has increased from 1,500 in 2000 to over 5,000 in 2009, and is poised to increase further in the next five years as more IIMs come into operation while the current top-ranked ones (IIMs and others) further expand capacity or add new campuses and programmes. By comparison, the US (whose economy is over 10 times bigger than that of India) has about 1,000 colleges offering about 150,000 MBA seats to both US citizens and to a growing pool of international applicants. In the entire European Union (EU), whose economy is also over 10 times that of India and which has much more diversity in terms of number of countries and businesses, there are just about 550 colleges offering about 100,000 MBA seats. Major EU economies such as Germany, France and the UK individually offer between 8,600 and 27,000 MBA seats despite each being significantly larger and more global than India is at this time.

Is it too late to enter China market?

s it too late to enter the China market? Foreign companies have long seen the country with its 1.3 billion people as a potential bonanza. But have those foreign companies who have yet to make their move missed the boat?

China's influence grows in global auto market

Automakers are modifying luxury cars to suit China's new rich and creating scaled-down sedans and minivans for the populous but lower-income family market.

China's growing influence echoes defining periods of expansion in the industry's history -- from Europe to Detroit a century ago and the rise of Japan since the 1970s.

China's influence grows at World Bank

World Bank member countries reached an agreement on Sunday to shift more power to emerging and developing nations, under which China's votes increased to 4.42 percent from 2.77 percent, making it the third largest voting power holder in the Washington-based international institution.

A Birthday Present : View From Israel

Obama is a man of many talents, but most of all he has the ability to convince. He is capable of touching the profoundest emotions of people and peoples. I hope he uses this talent for the good of the two long-suffering peoples of this tortured country.

An Eruption Of Reality

For the third time in two years we’ve discovered that flying is one of the weakest links in our overstretched system. In 2008 the rising cost of fuel drove several airlines out of business. The recession compounded the damage; the volcano might ruin several more

Nokia looks beyond handsets

Two days to Christmas, on an unusually warm afternoon in the capital, management guru Ram Charan is pacing a large conference hall at a Radisson hotel in south Delhi. His audience, the most successful consumer sales force in the country, some 250 sales and marketing people from Nokia, each key to the e4 billion, or Rs 22,700 crore, annual revenues the world's biggest phone maker counts from India.

Decline Of The West?

The West may have to choose between being left behind by Chindia and innovating for them

Cambridge University keeps in touch with its past students by sending them Cam, a free magazine. It does not merely give news about the university; it is meant to educate and entertain. The last issue carried a debate between Jaideep Prabhu, who teaches Indian business and enterprise in the Judge Business School, and Professor Peter Williamson who was visiting Cambridge from INSEAD in France. Williamson argued that the view of India and China as manufacturers of cheap and inferior imitations was outdated. They were generating new technology, consumer choice and business models at a lower cost; so the idea that western countries could keep ahead through innovation was mistaken. Reva, the Indian electric car, was being driven around and being charged at kerbside power points in London; Huawei had won a contract from Telenor for the latest video-on-demand. A single Indian firm, Piramal Lifesciences, was developing 14 new compounds to treat all the major diseases of the West. The West was in trouble; its belief that it could keep ahead of the East with its innovation capabilities was wrong. It had to think of something else.

Vinod Khosla among Forbes' 'greenest billionaires'

Vinod Khosla -- a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a longtime partner at venture capital powerhouse Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers -- has, with fellow billionaire and green business supporter John Doerr, been pouring millions of dollars into green tech companies.

They're super rich--and motivated to mint more money while leaving a green footprint.

also click on this link
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/corporate-trends/Vinod-Khosla-among-Forbes-greenest-billionaires/articleshow/5855395.cms

Five Billionaires Who Live Below Their Means

1. Warren Buffett 
2.  Carlos Slim  
3. Ingvar Kamprad 
4. Chuck Feeney  
5. Frederik Meijer

Russia's Pipeline To Chinese Capital

Companies that traditionally sought investment from Europe are now looking to China.

The New Face of Japanese Deflation

Falling prices in the 1990s were a sign of restructuring. Now they're a warning that something's going wrong.

In the face of seemingly intractable deflation, some in Japan are now trying to put a happier face on a phenomenon more often portrayed as a major problem. "We should enjoy mild deflation, rather than to deplore deflation as a disease," Eisuke Sakakibara, known as "Mr. Yen" during his stint running international economic policy at the Finance Ministry in the 1990s, said recently.

China's Half-Open Door

Reform momentum has stalled and the business environment is deteriorating.

From the dawn of the reform era in 1979, one of China's best cards in attracting foreign investment has been policy momentum. No matter how bad the problems were at any given moment, you could pretty much count on tomorrow bringing improvement in the business climate. Even the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre only briefly interrupted the progress toward a market economy.

India's Dirty War

A violent struggle over resource-rich land is pitting billionaires against Maoists. Thousands of villagers have been killed and displaced.

Singles Have 'No Life' And Other Work Stereotypes

Singles may be able to devote more time to their careers, but some say they feel stigmatized in the workplace for not being married with children.

IMF, World Bank Seek Stability

Proposals to address financial instability have yet to overcome political and technical barriers.

Cross of Gold

How the rush to crucify Goldman Sachs is clouding our judgment and distorting public policy

Is Greece's tragedy in its final act?

After months of market turmoil, Greece's government succumbed to reality and asked for a $60 billion bailout from its Eurozone compatriots and the International Monetary Fund. The rescue, once it is finalized, will likely calm markets for a while, since it will at the very least ensure Greece won't default on its massive pile of sovereign debt in the short term.

Obama’s Bad Cop

Clinton's played the heavy with Iran, Russia, and even Israel—and her sometimes hawkish views are finding favor with the president.

The film business

Rich pickings for the sharks

The author argues that a film’s theatrical run is little more than a marketing campaign for the subsequent release of DVDs and TV broadcasts, where the real money is to be made. Cinemas become less and less important as piracy and digital distribution eat away at Hollywood’s “windows”: the time that separates the appearance of a film in cinemas from its arrival on DVD and pay-TV. Eventually, Mr Epstein predicts, studios will release films almost concurrently in all formats. Executives have “as much chance of reversing the secular shift of audiences from the theatre to the home as King Canute had in commanding the tide to recede.”

Aliens exist: Hawking

‘Might raid Earth for its resources' 

Do aliens exist? They do, but humans should try to avoid any contact with them — at least, that's what one of the world's leading physicists, Stephen Hawking, claims.

'Privacy Is A Fundamental Right'

The privacy officials of 10 countries write to Google CEO raising concerns about privacy issues surrounding social network tool Google Buzz and Google Street View

Dear Mr. Schmidt:
Google is an innovative company that has changed how people around the world use the Internet.  We recognize your company’s many accomplishments and its dramatic impact on our information economy.  As data protection regulators mandated to protect privacy rights, we also applaud your participation in discussions in many jurisdictions about new approaches to data protection.

Delhi Diary : Vinod Mehta

The life and times of Shashi Tharoor resemble a morality tale. Here is a man who begins life with an extra-long silver spoon in his mouth. Clever, even brilliant, awesomely well-educated, lucky enough to land one of the most coveted jobs on the planet, author of several critically acclaimed books, he comes within a whisker of being elected Secretary General of the UN, manages to win a Lok Sabha seat, becomes a minister in the privileged foreign affairs ministry—and then throws it all away. Why? Is this man carrying an irresistible death wish? Or is he just a flawed hero of Shakespearean proportions? According to me, the above discussion is infinitely more interesting than whether he is a gentleman crook.

Once upon a time I used to read Vinod Mehta regularly........ He is very intelligent chap

India's Thinker : OBITUARY: C.K. PRAHALAD

He was a Professor of Corporate Strategy at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and was well known for writing best sellers on management subjects, including The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profit.

If they were crooks, wouldn't they be richer?

Millions of poor Indians are considered criminal by tradition. Most are nothing of the sort