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- Google Company Review
- Samsung wants Siemens’ unit banned in US
- Flexible strategies enhance intellectual property value
- Maritime countries agree first ever shipping emissions regulation
- UTech lecturer gets award for dual-citizenship letter
- French yacht from grounded flotilla sails for Gaza
- Immigration can help Detroit state
- International Wealth Business – from Lloyds Banking Group
- Mobile banking to promote financial inclusion in Nigeria
- Regulators Approve Measures to Prevent Banking Crises
| Posted: 19 Jul 2011 03:07 AM PDT Company Review for American multinational public corporation Google Google Company Basics
Google Company Overview and BackgroundGoogle was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin as a university research project that analysed the relationships between websites and the number of pages that linked back to an initial website. Google registered its domain name in September 1997 and was first incorporated on 4th September 1998. As one of the most popular search engines in the world, Google experienced dramatic growth within a short period of time. In May 2011, Google exceeded the one billion visitors mark, demonstrating an increase in 8.4% from the previous year. With a primary focus on internet searching, the IT company generates most of its profit from advertising through its programe, AdWords. Today the IT company has a massive global influence, running over one million data centre servers globally and processing over one billion search requests every day. Google first issued an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in August 2004, offering 19,605,052 shares at $85 each, boosting the company's market capitalization to over $23 billion. By 2007, shares hit an all time high of $700 each. Renowned for its relaxed working environment, in 2010, Google was ranked fourth best company to work for by Fortune magazine, with a positive reputation that largely appeals to university graduates. Endorsing a project called Innovation Time Off, Google encouraged employees to spend 20% of their working time doing projects that they were primarily interested in. This project gave birth to new initiatives including Gmail, AdSense and Google News. The IT company also endorses environmental policies and in 2006 they installed thousands of solar panels to provide 30% of its headquarters' energy. Services Offered by GoogleGoogle is a fast-growing global corporation offering online IT services to every corner of the globe. Its primary services lie in internet search, cloud computing and advertising programmes. Google's most prominent services lie in internet searching. This enables website users to search for text within web pages, using key words, and thus directing them to websites that will be of interest and relevance to them. In addition to text searching, Google offers a number of subordinate features, including Google weather forecasts, stock quotes, money conversions and time zones, amongst many others. Google's advertising programmes encompass 99% of the company's revenue. Using advanced technology from the company DoubleClick, the IT company is able to highlight advertisements based on the interests of its users, making internet searching a more cohesive, attractive and well-rounded experience. In addition to the above, Google also offers Cloud Computing, a system set up within large corporations to allow multiple users and computers to share the same server power. Another service offered by Google is Google Adwords, which enables advertisers to present their advertisements in the Google Content network. Since August 2006 the highly popular software, Google Analytics, enabled marketers to establish where and how people use websites, giving strong insight into where a site's website traffic is coming from and a thorough analysis of traffic data. With the vast number of global internet consumers and corporations using Google on a daily basis, all of the above services highlight the international attraction and appeal of the IT company, Google.
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| Samsung wants Siemens’ unit banned in US Posted: 19 Jul 2011 12:49 AM PDT Times of India – Samsung LED Co Ltd said it had filed a complaint with the US fair trade commission to ban imports of LED products from Siemens’ light bulb unit Osram and affiliates Osram Opto Semiconductors and Osram Sylvania Inc. Samsung LED said in a statement it had also filed a lawsuit for patent infringement with the US District Court for Delaware “to seek damages and a permanent injunction barring Osram’s infringement.” The complaint and the lawsuit were filed separately with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) and the Delaware court, according to the statement. Samsung LED alleged Osram infringed eight patents on core LED technologies. The patented technologies are used in a range of products, including lighting, automobiles, projectors, mobile phone screens and TVs. A spokesman for Osram said the company believed it was in a good position and well prepared for any complaints filed by Samsung. Osram said on June 6 it was suing the Samsung and LG group of companies for alleged infringement of patents on light emitting diodes (LED) technology. The complaints filed by the Korean LED maker, affiliated with Samsung Electronics, target Osram’s TopLED, Dragon, Oslon, Ceramos and Oslux devices and the products in which they are used. Samsung warned in the statement it would continue to take additional legal action against those who may import, use or deal with the named Osram LEDs in the US market. “Samsung LED intends to vigorously enforce its intellectual property rights, and these lawsuits reflect Samsung LED’s commitment to that enforcement,” the statement said. Samsung LED said it had applied for and registered about 4,000 patents, including 2,000 in Korea and 700 in the US. In June, Samsung LED filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Osram Korea and two Korean sales agents of the German company at a Seoul district court. Another South Korean electronics giant, LG Electronics Inc, joined Samsung LED this month to countersue Osram, after the German firm filed lawsuits against the Korean rivals in the US, Germany and Japan, and another against LG in China. | ||||||
| Flexible strategies enhance intellectual property value Posted: 19 Jul 2011 12:46 AM PDT China Daily – The phenomenal economic growth in China has brought with it a stronger focus on intellectual property (IP) as Chinese companies increasingly develop their own IP and recognize the importance of protecting their valuable intellectual assets. Indeed, China is now the world’s fastest growing market for IP and one of the top filers of international patents. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, China’s international patent filings grew by around 56.2 percent in 2010, ranking the country the fourth largest filer in the world after the US, Japan and Germany. In the US, filings are estimated to have dropped 1.7 percent, but it is still the largest international filer with an estimated 27.5 percent of total patent filings in 2010, compared with China’s 7.6 percent. That imbalance is certain to change as China’s growth in IP continues to accelerate. A number of major Chinese companies are already leading the way on the global stage. Telecommunications companies ZTE Corporation and Huawei Technologies, for example, are the world’s second and fourth biggest patent filers respectively. Chinese companies are also quick to protect their IP, bringing an increasing number of cases against infringers of their IP rights both in China and overseas. For many observers, there is a great irony in this “poacher turned gamekeeper” transformation, with Chinese companies, so often accused of infringing the IP of others, now being the ones who are being infringed against. This “build and protect” IP strategy is a common approach among Chinese companies, and, indeed, many other corporations around the world. Companies build up their IP portfolios to safeguard their innovation, and take swift action against anyone infringing their IP rights. However, as patent portfolios mature and new technologies are developed, there comes a time when companies realize that, in addition to protecting their most valuable intellectual assets, they could create greater value for the organization by making some of their less important patents work harder for them – through licensing or selling them to third parties and saving on high renewal costs. Through a comprehensive patent portfolio review process, companies can gain important insights and make informed strategic decisions about how to best protect and leverage their patents, addressing questions such as: Which patents are business critical and need to be protected? Which patents are potential future strategic assets that may become more valuable to the company over time? Which patents can I sell or license for profit? Which patents in my portfolio should be pruned? Armed with answers to these questions, companies are able to evaluate how they can: Better protect their prized IP assets to enhance the company’s competitiveness. Encash non-critical assets. Reduce costs associated with maintaining patents that are no longer of use or of little value to the company. It also helps to know what the competition is up to. Making an assessment of competitors’ patents will help companies ring fence their own innovations, benchmark against the market, track the evolution of fledgling inventions, and identify potentially lucrative opportunities for monetizing patents. While a particular invention may be of value now, it could be susceptible to being overtaken within a relatively short period by a new technology. A detailed review of the relevant IP landscape might lead a company to take full advantage of that value while it still can, and generate short-term revenue by selling the relevant patents or through third-party licensing. This, in turn, can lead to opportunities for strategic alliances and collaboration between companies, with mutual licensing of patents to help fill potential gaps in their respective technologies. In any patent portfolio assessment, the input of the company’s research and development team is vital in order to provide the technical perspective.But it is also important for companies to gain an independent view, helping them to value their IP assets from an objective, market standpoint. Together with the insights gleaned from within the company, this will create a more accurate assessment of the value of a company’s patent portfolio and how that value can best be realised. For IP-rich Chinese companies, a more flexible approach to their IP strategy represents an opportunity to maximize the value of their intellectual assets, while, at the same time, continuing to demonstrate to the world the increasing strength of Chinese innovation. | ||||||
| Maritime countries agree first ever shipping emissions regulation Posted: 19 Jul 2011 12:41 AM PDT The Guardian – Countries have taken a first step towards reducing climate emissions from shipping with a global agreement to reduce energy use in new vessels from 2013 onwards. The belated action on Friday by 55 of the world’s biggest sea-faring nations meeting at UN’s international maritime organisation in London will force all ships over 400 tonnes built after 2013 to improve their efficiency by 10%, rising to 20% between 2020 and 2024 and 30% for ships delivered after 2024. The first ever regulation of emissions in shipping is expected to lead to greenhouse gas emission reductions of 45-50m tonnes a year by 2020. But China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and South Africa have secured a six and a half year delay for new ships registered in developing countries, which could mean the first guaranteed effective date of the reform will be in 2019. Shipping accounts for 3-4% percent of man-made CO2 emissions worldwide and this figure is expected to rise to 6% by 2020, with emissions doubling by 2050 if no action is taken. Shipowners, who traditionally do not pay for the fuel that their ships use, have long resisted any regulation despite increasing pressure from environmental groups and reformers within the industry. Environmental NGOs welcomed the tightening of the energy efficiency design index (EEDI) standard but cautioned that because it only applies to new ships replacing older ones at the end of their long lives, the full effects of today’s decision will take a long time to have any major impact. There is a significant danger, said some, that many shipowners will elect to have their new ships flagged in developing countries that provide a waiver. “Today’s decision should result in fuel savings of $5bn a year by 2020 and CO2 reductions of 22m tons. This is an unprecedented economic and environmental opportunity and the IMO has taken an important step forward”, said Peter Boyd, COO of Carbon War Room. If the same standards were applied to the existing fleet of more than 30,000 ocean-going ships it could save $50bn a year in fuel and 220m tons of CO2, he said. “There will be no change to existing ships which are currently pumping out a billion tones of CO2 each year, and for new ships it will take another dozen years until the EEDI is really delivering benefits. Operational changes could be delivering major benefits today,” said Jacqueline Savitz, the senior campaign director for the marine conservation NGO Oceana. The efficiency improvements are expected to be met through better engine design, more efficient hull shapes, improved waste heat recovery systems and the use of hull coatings to make ships more “slippery”. The deal is not likely to satisfy the European Commission that the maritime organisation is successfully regulating greenhouse gas emissions. The EC is therefore expected to proceed with its threat to bring shipping into the Emissions Trading Scheme, as it is doing in aviation, where there have been recent legal challenges from non-European countries. In a separate development on Friday, the European Commission said it plans to tighten ship fuel sulphur regulations, which should lead to public health savings of billions of dollars, especially in countries like Britain and Holland that border busy sea lanes. The proposal would cut the maximum permissible sulphur content of fuels to 0.1% from 1.5% from 2015 in sensitive areas such as the Baltic Sea and the Channel, and to 0.5% from 4.5% in all other areas from 2020. Shipping burns some of the most polluting fuels, and the proposal is expected to fine particle emissions from ships by up to 80 percent, the commission said. The expected cost to the shipping industry of the new standards is between €2.6bn and €11bn ($3.7-$15.6bn), which the EU executive argues would be far outweighed by public health savings, of up to €34bn | ||||||
| UTech lecturer gets award for dual-citizenship letter Posted: 19 Jul 2011 12:35 AM PDT Jamaica Gleaner – Michael Nicholson, a lecturer at the University of Technology (UTech), was recently honoured with The Gleaner’s Silver Pen award, given for the best letter published by the paper each month. Nicholson, a three-time holder of the award, copped his latest prize with his letter of the day, ‘Shameful political shenanigans’, published December 7, 2010. His missive was written in the midst of the dual-citizenship issue having to do with North East St Ann Member of Parliament (MP) Shahine Robinson. In the letter, Nicholson indicated strong opposition to the approach taken by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in dealing with the matter which led to her being reinstated as MP. “Can this be the same JLP and Shahine Robinson who wantonly abused the Constitution and the courts over the dual-citizenship issue? Lest we forget, her party put her forward as its candidate for North East St Ann in the 2007 general election, shortly after she became a US citizen. Did her party not know this? Was it not aware of the constitutional provisions against just this situation? What did it do when it became aware of her status? That’s easy. Nothing!” the letter read. Not dealt with properly: Yesterday, Nicholson maintained his stance that the issue was not dealt with properly by the party. “When the party selected her as the candidate, I thought that they should either have known or perhaps did know that she was a dual citizen and still put her up,” he argued. He said Robinson’s case stood out from the other dual citizen cases . “Her case is particularly disturbing to me because the courts booted her out of Parliament and the party rallied around her and she was reinstated, only to resign without mounting a defence when the Opposition presented incontrovertible evidence that she was in fact a dual citizen,” he charged. “This is really an abuse … . I took strong objection to it. They should have stepped in and put an end to it, and not only that, when the by-election was called they put her up as the candidate again almost as a reward,” he added. He said he was surprised but honoured to have received the award. The lecturer in UTech’s finance department said he loves writing and was happy to be given the opportunity, through a letter to the editor, to voice his opinion about issues affecting the country. The previous awards that he won were for letters he wrote about anti-corruption legislation and the use of technology in cricket. | ||||||
| French yacht from grounded flotilla sails for Gaza Posted: 19 Jul 2011 12:32 AM PDT Reuters – A French yacht carrying pro-Palestinian activists sailed for the Gaza Strip Monday after other ships in a flotilla that had planned to challenge Israel’s blockade were grounded in Greece, organizers said. They said the 17-passenger “Dignite-AlKarama,” having declared an Egyptian port as its official destination, left Greek waters Sunday and was on course to reach the Palestinian enclave by Tuesday. “It is now the voice of the whole Freedom Flotilla, as all its ships were forbidden to sail by the Greek government thereby fulfilling a clear demand by the Israeli government,” said a statement issued by French campaigners aligned with the umbrella Free Gaza Movement. Passenger Dror Feiler said the yacht planned to dock in Gaza at around noon Tuesday. “We don’t want to sail at night,” he told Reuters via satellite telephone. Israel, whose marines killed nine Turkish activists while storming a Gaza-bound flotilla on the Mediterranean high seas last year, has vowed to stop any new attempt to breach a naval blockade it deems necessary to prevent arms from reaching the ruling Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. “If this boat is on its way to Gaza, which is a breach of international maritime law, and it is trying a provocative act, yes, we will intercept it,” Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told foreign journalists in Jerusalem. “But I assure you that we will try our best to make all those on board very comfortable.” Activist vessels that had berthed in Greece last month were refused permission by local authorities to sail on to Gaza. Two were turned back by the coast guard after leaving port without authorization. Organizers said two boats were also sabotaged. Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza Movement said the Dignite-AlKarame had declared Alexandria, Egypt, as its destination “in order to get out of Greece.” “But you can change destinations in the middle of the Mediterranean, any time you want to,” she said. “It’s legal to do that.” Palestinians and their supporters consider the Gaza blockade illegal and say it stunts the economic development of the territory, most of whose 1.5 million residents rely on aid to survive. | ||||||
| Immigration can help Detroit state Posted: 19 Jul 2011 12:27 AM PDT Detroit Free Press – Proposed state laws viewed as anti-immigration are too divisive to be taken up with Michigan’s economy struggling, Gov. Rick Snyder said Monday. “Those are negative issues that have no value,” Snyder said after a speech on immigration at Wayne State University. “We’ve shared that general premise with the Legislature.” Bills introduced in the state Legislature this year would allow law enforcement officers to ask for immigration status if they suspect someone might be in the country illegally and require businesses to use a federal database to verify a potential employee’s status. Snyder said the proposals “are creating divisiveness. There are a lot of good reasons that we have to embrace immigration in a positive way.” State Rep. David Agema, a Grandville Republican who has sponsored some of the immigration bills, said he agrees with Snyder “Legal immigration is good. Illegal immigration is bad,” he said. “It’s a security issue. It’s a jobs issue, and it’s a fiscal issue for the state.” Snyder said he wants to encourage foreign students to stay in the state once they have completed their education at state colleges. “They’re already participating in our economy and we should be finding ways to embrace them and keep them here,” Snyder said at the New Michigan Media Conference in Detroit, which focused on immigration’s impact on the state’s economy. He said he wants to find ways to connect foreign students to Michigan businesses so student visas become work visas more easily. Snyder also said he plans to introduce a Global Michigan initiative to make it easier for immigrants and refugees to find jobs in their fields. And he envisions a Cultural Ambassador Program to encourage people from different ethnic groups to get more involved in their communities. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who created a stir in May when he suggested Detroit could solve its population loss problems by pushing for a law that would guarantee citizenship for foreigners as long as they agree to move to Detroit for seven years, spoke at the conference by a video link. Asked about his Detroit proposal, Bloomberg said city leaders should look to states which have passed anti-immigration laws and reach out to immigrants living there. “I’d go as fast as I could to recruit immigrants who are already here,” he said. Once in the city, he said, immigrants will buy abandoned housing, pay taxes, fill schools and create new businesses. Both Bloomberg and Snyder said the current political climate in Washington isn’t conducive to comprehensive immigration reform. “The issue has gotten caught up in too much politics for far too long,” Snyder said. | ||||||
| International Wealth Business – from Lloyds Banking Group Posted: 19 Jul 2011 12:22 AM PDT PR Web – Lloyds Banking Group has announced that it will simplify its wealth management and private banking offering by creating two new distinct wealth businesses. The delineation of International Wealth from UK Wealth will allow Lloyds Banking Group to create a clear focus for the development of an international portfolio. All international wealth management and private banking divisions will be brought together under a single banner with one managing director. Entitled International Wealth, the unit will support all of Lloyds’ wealth customers across the globe on a mass affluent, high-net worth and ultra-high net worth basis. Lloyds Banking Group has prepared for the change for several months now and it is hoped that the move will clearly demonstrate its commitment to its customers in the international wealth market. At the helm, Russell Galley will take the role of Managing Director for International Wealth, bringing 28 years of banking experience with him. Galley was most recently the MD of Savings Investment and Protection for Lloyds Banking Group – the UK's leading savings institution, with deposits of over £200bn, and the UK’s largest bancassurance business. His experience also includes a stint as MD of the UK's largest unsecured lending portfolio and a £300bn mortgage portfolio. Additionally, his extensive product expertise and experience in both Private Asset Management and distribution make him a great choice for the role. Galley will relocate, with his family, to Geneva, Switzerland as part of the change, making the country the leadership location of the new International Wealth business for Lloyds Banking Group – which has had a presence in Switzerland since 1919. ''This is a very exciting time to be in the wealth management industry," Galley explained. "I believe that we have a unique opportunity to deliver an outstanding international wealth and private banking business and I am really looking forward to leading it." It has also been announced that Piero Grandi, Managing Director of the much of the group's private banking to date, will also play a large role in supporting the business during this time of transition. Particularly, this will mean supporting relationships with clients and regulators, as well as working with Russell Galley directly and continuing to report to Wealth and International Director, Antonio Lorenzo. In the past, Grandi has been widely credited with having played a key role in building the Bank’s high net worth capabilities. This has included recruiting strategically from across the banking and finance industry, as well as strengthening a number of services and being responsible for the setup of a full high net worth and ultra-high net worth offering for LBG's UK clients. | ||||||
| Mobile banking to promote financial inclusion in Nigeria Posted: 19 Jul 2011 12:16 AM PDT BusinessDay – With about 67 percent of Nigeria's adult population being unbanked, and a meagre 30 percent of the adult population with bank accounts, the pain still resides in the neck of financial experts to seek ways to foster financial inclusion and aid the unbanked. Mobile banking through cell phones, however has been identified as a feasible tool to provide basic financial services to millions of the unbanked in urban and rural communities in Africa, and will become a booming industry, experts revealed at the recently concluded Unbanked Africa Summit held in Lagos last week. Analysts said that the major obstacle to having a bank account include irregular income, unemployment and distance to the bank branch, especially to the rural population. Badewole Olufemi from GTBank said that mobile banking was a way of getting banking to the rural channels where banking services can not be reachable. Presently, there are only 22 million individuals who have a bank account out of the 150 million population but there are more than 80 million mobile phone users, which provide huge opportunity for the development of mobile banking. "Telecommunication companies have wide reach so there are places where an operator can reach but a bank cannot. Mobile banking enables you do branchless banking. You can perform basic transactions with your mobile phone anywhere in Nigeria", Oluwafemi said. This, he further added was the rationale behind GTBank partnering with MTN to roll out mobile money in Nigeria. According to him, mobile banking will enable financial institutions get more customers in the country because MTN covers 70 percent of the Nigerian population. Nigerian Postal Service, which has outlets all across Nigeria, is also searching for partners to take advantage of the mobile banking to reposition the national postal network, the deputy postmaster general Yashim Isa Bitiyong revealed at the summit. Moreover, low literacy, poor network coverage in remote villages, high cost of mobile printers and large number of people without cellphones are the challenges facing the mobile banking practitioners, Derick Kwaku Denkyi, chief executive officer, G-Life Financial Service in Ghana said. The firm aims to see banking delivered to the doorsteps of 70 percent of unbanked population in Ghana. It is the first Micro Finance Institution in Ghana to deploy mobile phone banking services in the delivery of its Microfinance operations. Now over 15,000 people are trading on their platform, both depositing and withdrawing. "Around the world we have about 100 mobile money implementation already working. I haven't really heard about any major problem of someone for instance making a decision to shut down the service because it's too insecure," he said. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has been making efforts under the Payments System Vision 2020, to promote and entrench electronic payments, as the major channel for payment and settlement, by all economic agents, away from the current dominance of cash based transactions. In this regard, mobile phone was identified as a channel for effecting electronic payment between person-to-person. The CBN has given approval-in-principle to about 20 mobile payments operators to enhance the person to person payments services in Nigeria to commence operations. This shows that majority of the money in Nigeria is outside the banking industry and this poses a very real challenge to banks today. They open bank branches everywhere, yet the issue remains unaddressed". About 60 percent of Nigerians are within the cell phone coverage. This is an opportunity and a way of bringing financial services to the unbanked, through their mobile phones". The one-day Unbanked Africa Summit attracted about 100 experts from banks, mobile technology developers and mobile network operators from Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe and the United States. | ||||||
| Regulators Approve Measures to Prevent Banking Crises Posted: 19 Jul 2011 12:11 AM PDT New York Times – PARIS — A group of global financial regulators has given its backing to measures to prevent future banking crises, Mario Draghi, the incoming president of the European Central Bank, said Monday. Officials of the Financial Stability Board discussed the risks posed to the global financial system by too-big-to-fail banks — also known as systemically important financial institutions, or SIFIs — and endorsed higher capital requirements for the riskiest institutions and measures to allow the authorities to wind down such banks in an orderly fashion should they fail, Mr. Draghi, speaking at the French Finance Ministry, said. The F.S.B. was set up in Basel, Switzerland, by the Group of 20 nations in April 2009 to coordinate regulatory efforts to prevent a recurrence of the global financial crisis. Mr. Draghi said officials endorsed the recommendations of a panel of international financial and monetary officials, who said last month that such banks should set aside a special cushion of high-quality capital — equivalent to 1 percent to 2.5 percent of their assets — to reduce the risks posed by a failure. F.S.B. officials discussed "the current strains in financial markets arising from sovereign debt," but Mr. Draghi did not give details of their discussions and left without taking any questions on the subject. Banks seen to be engaged in particularly dangerous activities would be subject to an additional surcharge, which could raise the requirement to 3.5 percent of assets. That is in addition to the proposed minimum capital levels of 7 percent of assets for all banks under the Basel III rules, which are to be phased in gradually through 2018. Capital gives a financial institution the ability to withstand losses. Many banks were so heavily leveraged, meaning they had borrowed so much money relative to their capital when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 that they would have failed without massive taxpayer-funded bailouts. Mr. Draghi called the F.S.B.'s plan for the orderly disposal of failed institutions "a very major change in national and cross-border policies." The resolution is meant to harmonize rules governing such matters as the relations between international banks' home governments and the host governments of their overseas operations. Officials want banks to prepare so-called "living wills" to facilitate their resolution in case of collapse. All of the measures are to be presented for public consultation this month, with a final presentation in November to G-20 officials meeting in Cannes. |
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