| Microsoft-Yahoo Merger Faces Antitrust Hurdles
For shareholders, Microsoft's offer of $31 per share — 62 percent more than what Yahoo's stock was worth when the market closed Thursday — has to be attractive. Yahoo also would gain access to Microsoft's extensive computing power and data capacity, which might make it possible to offer software like Microsoft's Office suite over the Internet. This isn't the first time Microsoft has made an offer. What happened last time? Microsoft and Yahoo have talked about a possible deal since 2006, and the software giant made a similar offer last year. Former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel rejected that deal, but Semel resigned from Yahoo's board on Thursday. As Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer said in a letter sent to Yahoo's board shortly after Semel's departure, "A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved." Could government regulations stand in the way of a deal? The Justice Department has said it would be interested in looking into the potential takeover to see if it would violate any antitrust regulations.
Citi buys 14.5 pc of Globe Capital for Rs 168 cr
Citi Venture Capital International (CVCI), the private equity arm of Citigroup, has picked up around 14.5 per cent in the Delh-based Globe Capital for Rs 168 crore. At this price the company is being valued at over Rs 1,000 crore. While confirming the deal, Ashok Agrawal, chairman of Globe Capital, said Citi had invested $42 million for a minority stake in the company.. The company would use the proceeds for expanding into the retail segment and margin financing, he added. Globe Capital had reported a net profit of Rs 70 crore on a gross income of Rs 130 crore in the first nine months of 2007. Last fiscal, the company posted a net profit of Rs 50 crore. One of the leading clearing members in the futures and options (F&O) segment, the company plans to expand overseas and has already established operations in Dubai through a subsidiary and plans to acquire ICON Capital, a member of the London Stock Exchange.
Share market plunges
Wall Street itself was closed for a holiday, but a big fall on a key futures contract signalled a slump on the opening tonight. Tags: business-economics-and-finance, finance-markets, stockmarket, futures-markets, currency-markets, australia .
Upbeat IBM helps propel Dow by 171
Stocks advanced sharply Monday, with a strong profit outlook from IBM encouraging investors to go back into the stock market after last week's rout. IBM, one of the 30 Dow stocks, released preliminary earnings estimates for the fourth quarter that were 24% above year-earlier levels. The results would easily beat analysts' estimates. After falling nearly 250 points on Friday, the Dow leapt 171.85 to 12,778.15 yesterday. "The market was pretty oversold," said Richard Cripps, chief market strategist for Stifel Nicolaus. "We were due to bounce back, and the IBM news didn't hurt." IBM's news, coming before earnings season is about the get under way in earnest, did raise some hopes that quarterly results might not be as bad as feared.
Govt: RP budget deficit lowest in a decade
Revenue in 2007 totaled 1.135 trillion pesos, up 15.8 percent from the previous year. Expenditures totaled 1.144 trillion pesos, 9.5 percent more than total spending in 2006.
Increased spending in infrastructure last year helped boost economic growth in the Southeast Asian nation to 7.3 percent, the highest in 31 years.
Taxes collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the government's main revenue-generating agency, were 7.1 percent short of the target of 765.9 billion pesos.
But revenue from other offices, including proceeds from asset sales, surged to 144.7 billion pesos, more than double the target of 71.2 billion pesos and 166 percent higher than the previous year's 54.3 billion pesos.
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Journey to the Lands of Cotton: A Brief Manual of Globalisation
Though synthetic fibres dominate the market (60 per cent), cotton is holding its own (40 per cent). And so cotton clothes the human race. And it doesn't stop there. It goes into the making of medical compresses, of course, but also specialized papers (including banknotes), photographic film and candlewicks. And, in their constant concern to make themselves useful, its fibres go into the composition of cosmetics (nail varnish, haircare products), toothpastes, ice creams ... And even though the taste of some Bolognese sauces or German sausages might seem strange, how were we to know that they contained cotton? The seeds are no less generous. Rich in protein, they provide us, without our knowing it, with a large part of our table oil. As the marketing men apparently fear that the 'cotton oil' label will put off the potential buyer, it is dubbed, more vaguely and more generally, 'vegetable oil'.
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