Oracle Financial Services Data Warehouse hints at how Oracle, along with Microsoft and Salesforce.com, are aiming IT services at specific industries and tasks. – In the midst of the global recession, most businesses put a
lockdown on IT spending. No upgraded hardware or software, executives insisted,
until we find a way out of this mess. The problem or the opportunity, if youre
a software or hardware provider is that IT infrastructure continued to age in
…
Telcom firms have launched a major advertising, marketing and promotional blitz to attract new and existing customers after the government launched a pan-India scheme that allows them to switch operators while retaining the numbers. Although mobile number portability may not be a big game changer for the industry, it is certainly proving to be a [...]
Singapore shares may climb higher on Wednesday after modest gains on Wall Street overnight. Energy firms may outperform the market as US oil prices jumped 2% on the back of supply concerns. Singapore’s benchmark Straits Times Index <.FTSTI> rose 0.38% on Tuesday to 3,241.49 points.
Here are some stocks and factors to watch:
At 0316 GMT, shares of Golden Agri-Resources (GAGR.SI) gained 2.5%, Indofood Agri Resources (IFAR.SI) rose 3.2% and First Resources (FRLD.SI) added 1.9%.
Ronald Coase, the author of “The Nature of the Firm” (1937), turns 100 on December 29th
FOR philosophers the great existential question is: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” For management theorists the more mundane equivalent is: “Why do firms exist? Why isn’t everything done by the market?”
Today most people live in a market economy, and central planning is remembered as the greatest economic disaster of the 20th century. Yet most people also spend their working lives in centrally planned bureaucracies called firms. They stick with the same employer for years, rather than regularly returning to the jobs market. They labour to fulfil the “strategic plans” of their corporate commissars. John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company made him the richest man in America in the 1840s. But it never consisted of more than a handful of people. Today Astor’s company would not register as a blip on the corporate horizon. Firms routinely employ thousands of workers and move billions of dollars-worth of goods and services within their borders. …
Temasek Holdings Pte and Government of Singapore Investment Corp. raised about US$9.9 billion ($13 billion) from international investors over the past year, selling more debt and equity than any other state investment firm.
Temasek, based in Singapore, sold almost US$6 billion of bonds since October last year. Temasek-controlled Mapletree Industrial Trust and Global Logistic Properties, GIC’s overseas logistics unit, raised $5.1 billion selling shares in October, accounting for 10% of the record initial public offerings in the Asia-Pacific region that month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Shares of Singapore-listed property firms with exposure to the China market fell in morning trade on Monday after the Chinese central bank raised bank reserve requirements.
At 10:05 a.m., shares of Hong Kong Land <HKLD.SI> and City Developments <CTDM.SI> were down more than 2%, while CapitaLand <CATL.SI> and Keppel Land <KLAN.SI> fell nearly 1%.
“The move caused the China stock market to drop and this affected the property counters,” said a local trader.
China ordered lenders on Friday to lock up more of their money at the central bank for the second time in two weeks, stepping up its battle to pull excess cash out of the economy before inflation has a chance to take off.
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Apple’s iPad is most popular among Good Technology’s financial services customers, followed by high-tech and government sectors, the software maker said in a survey. – Financial services firms proved to be the biggest users of Apple’s iPad
tablet computer, followed by high-tech and health care sectors, according to a
new study by mobile management software provider Good Technology.
Good, which just upgraded its Good for Enterprise
iPad app, surveyed its user b…
Graduates of American law schools are finding that their chosen career is less lucrative than they had hoped
THIS year “The Apprentice”, a television show in which contestants compete for the privilege of working for Donald Trump, features 16 who are down on their luck, having lost previous jobs or otherwise having to start anew. No fewer than five of them are lawyers. The legal-job market in America remains dire. But the numbers applying to law school are still soaring, and students are taking out ever bigger loans as tuition fees grow faster than lawyers’ salaries. Increasingly, they are graduating into a world of overblown expectation and debt.
Between 1996 and 2008 private law schools’ median tuition fees almost doubled, to just under $34,000 a year. At public law schools fees grew even faster, albeit from a lower base: for those going to schools in their home state they almost trebled, taking the median to around $16,000. Starting salaries at the biggest firms—those with more than 500 lawyers—roughly doubled, to $160,000. But such plum jobs are hard to get, especially for graduates of the less prestigious public schools. At smaller firms starting pay has for years failed to keep up with soaring tuition fees, and of late has fallen (see chart). …
There is an increasing need for recruitment and placement agencies to automate their processes so as to be able to close positions faster and bag more deals with clients. A lot of them have chosen to do this by implementing an ATS or recruitment software to help them stay ahead of competition.
Singapore Exchange, which is bidding for Australia’s ASX, plans to quote American depositary receipts of Indian, Taiwanese and South Korean companies by the first half of 2011.
The bourse, Asia’s second-largest publicly traded exchange by market value, will first build up trading volumes on the 19 Chinese ADRs it started trading last week, Rick Aston, head of product sales, said in an interview in Hong Kong yesterday. Those ADRs range from PetroChina Co., Asia’s biggest company by market value, to search-engine operator Baidu Inc.
Shares of Mapletree Logistics Trust <MAPL.SI> rose as much as 6.8% on Thursday ahead of the trading debut of sister firm Mapletree Industrial Trust <MAPI.SI>.
Mapletree Industrial, which is to make its debut at 2:00 p.m., is managed by Mapletree Investments, a real estate company owned by Singapore state investor Temasek that already manages Mapletree Logistics and Lippo-Mapletree Indonesia Retail Trust <LMRT.SI>.
A question of holding the accountants to account
THESE are tough times for bean-counters. Recent revenue figures for two of the big four accountancy firms show small declines. Their auditing and tax-advice businesses are stagnant. But consulting is buoyant. PWC’s consulting revenues, announced on October 4th, rose 7.9% between 2009 and 2010. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu’s grew by 14.9%. Ernst & Young’s grew by a more modest 2%, but the trend is clear. For the big four—which also include KPMG—consulting now generates between a sixth and a third of global revenue, and this figure is growing.
Some people find this worrying. In America, accountants are barred from providing most non-audit services to firms they audit. (This rule was introduced after the collapse of Enron, whose auditor, Arthur Andersen, was thought to have gone easy on the crooked energy firm to protect its lucrative business advising it.) In other countries, however, the rules are less strict. …
Shares of Singapore’s property firms with exposure to China fell on Thursday after the world’s most-populous country introduced new measures to cool its real estate market, traders said.
CapitaLand <CATL.SI> shares fell as much as 1.2% to $4.06, with nearly 9 million shares changing hands by 9:44 a.m.
China on Wednesday told banks to demand a downpayment of at least 30% from all mortgage applicants and to halt loans to buyers of third homes.
Keppel Land <KLAN.SI> fell as much as 1% to $4.01, with over 2.2 million shares changing hands, while Hongkong Land <HKLD.SI> retreated 1.6% to $6.03.
“This news will definitely have a negative impact for those property developers with higher exposure to China, like Keppel Land and CapitaLand,” said a local trader.
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Shares of property firms with significant exposure to the office segment were up on Monday as investors were more upbeat due to rising office rentals and falling vacancy rates.
At 11:13 a.m., shares of Hongkong Land <HKLD.SI> were up 2.5%, City Developments <CTDM.SI> gained 2.3%, while Keppel Land <KLAN.SI> and CapitaLand <CATL.SI> rose 1% each.
“The rentals are up quite substantially compared to what the market expectations were. Therefore developers associated with the office space are gaining a lot of momentum,” said Vikrant Pandey, an analyst at UOB Kay Hian.
