Thursday, November 29, 2012

After Hyundai fiasco, will more auto companies admit to overstated mileage?

Hyundai Motor Co's admission that it overstated fuel economy claims on several of its top-selling cars has the industry worried, with speculation rife among executives and analysts at the Los Angeles auto show that more automakers may have to do the same.

Four weeks ago, Hyundai and its affiliate Kia Motors Corp conceded that they overstated the fuel economy by at least a mile per gallon on more than 1 million recently sold vehicles.

"I think we might see more of this," said Jake Fisher, the head of automotive testing at Consumer Reports. "There are other vehicles that don't really stack up to the EPA estimates."

Hyundai, which had centered marketing campaigns on superior fuel economy, says that so far its US sales have not been affected by the admission. But it has had to implement a compensation campaign that Moody's Investors Service estimates could cost them $100 million a year until the cars are scrapped. It also faces lawsuits over the matter.   
         

ravi kumar /pgdm 1st

Strategies adopted by Zensar Technologies to become a billion dollar enterprise in four years?

few months ago, Zensar TechnologiesBSE 3.30 % won the Porter Prize for the best strategy process in the IT & Communications sector — the first time the prize, named after strategy uber-guru Michael Porter was held outside Japan in India.

For the RPG Group firm, it was just further validation of its efforts to ensure that it was indeed relevant in a crowded sector.

The Porter prize was awarded to the company for 'creating a competitive advantage by aligning its strategy to customer centricity and continuous innovation' and vicechairman & CEO Ganesh Natrajan says that the company's focus has been on innovation since inception.

"When we started in 2001, we were a brand new software company with no reason to exist. We had to have a different point of view if we were to be taken seriously and do something different from our more established peers. We wanted to be a company clients would come to if they wanted to challenge the way they did software development," he says. The focus seems to be paying off.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Fiscal Cliff


What is the Fiscal Cliff?


  • The fiscal cliff is a term referring to the effect of a number of laws which (if unchanged) could result in tax increases, spending cuts, and a corresponding reduction in the budget deficit beginning in 2013.
  • “Fiscal cliff” is the popular shorthand term used to describe the conundrum that the U.S. government will face at the end of 2012, when the terms of the Budget Control Act of 2011 are scheduled to go into effect.
  • It is meant to describe several big events, all fiscal in nature, that are set to occur in the U.S. at the end of the year.
These include:
ü The expiration of tax cuts initiated by Mr. Obama’s predecessor, at the   end of 2012, including current lower tax rates on capital gains, dividends, income, and estates
ü The expiration of stimulus measures like payroll tax cuts and extended unemployment benefits.
ü Spending cuts scheduled to be triggered automatically in January.

     RAZI ANWAR
PGDM 2nd year

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Weekly Market wrap

Market ends week with modest gains; Sensex rises 0.04%

     The 'Weekly Market Wrap' for October 19, 2012

This was the forty second trading week of 2012 for the Indian markets which closed with marginal gains owing to mixed cues. Global cues were encouraging as the euro zone debt worries eased after Moody's Investors Service retained Spain's sovereign-debt rating at investment grade. The political worries in India, kept gains in check while corporate numbers announced by major Sensex stocks also affected the market direction. Key benchmark indices gained in three out of five trading sessions. 

The BSE Mid-Cap index underperformed the Sensex, falling 0.08% while the BSE Small Cap index outperformed the Sensex, rising 0.84%.

The BSE Sensex rose 7.13 points or 0.04% to 18,682.31 in the week ended on Friday, (October 19, 2012) while NSE Nifty rose 8.20 points or 0.14% to settle at 5,684.25.

RAZI ANWAR
PGDM 2nd year

Tuesday, October 9, 2012


The BSE Sensex erased previous day's gains in early trade on Wednesday following weakness in global markets amid sluggish economic growth and concerns over Eurozone.
The 30-share BSE benchmark went down 88 points to 18,705.35 and the 50-share NSE Nifty slipped 28.55 points to 5,676.05. The Indian rupee too declined by 16 paise to 52.88 against the US dollar.
Suresh Mahadevan of UBS expects the Nifty to trade in a range of 5,400-6,250 in the next 3-6 months. "A breakout beyond this range would need sentiment to translate into real fundamental improvement," he says.

Jaiprakash Associates plunged 3 percent as the UK's CRH Plc has terminated talks to buy Jaypee Cement's (a part of JP Associates) Gujarat operations on valuations differences.

Realty major DLF too was down 3 percent after Arvind Kejriwal demand special investigation team (SIT) probe on business relationship between Robert Vadra and the company.

BHEL shed another 1.6 percent on profit booking. Reliance Infrastructure, L&T, SBI, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Reliance Industries, Maruti and Bharti Airtel were other losers in early trade.

Infosys went down 0.86 percent ahead of second quarter results that scheduled to be announced on Friday.

Ranbaxy Labs, Cipla and Sun Pharma continued to outperform, rising 0.5 percent each. HCL Tech gained 1 percent.

The CNX Midcap Index rose 32 points to 7,903. About two shares declined for every share advancing on the National Stock Exchange.

In the second line shares, Polaris tanked 5% after the market regulator SEBI has barred its CMD Arun Jain from capital markets for two years on insider trading charges.

Indiabulls Real slipped 3.5 percent and GMR Infrastructure was down 2 percent after Arun Kejriwal named these companies in corruption.

IndusInd Bank declined 1 percent ahead of its September quarter results today.

HDIL and Adani Enterprises were down nearly 3 percent. Pantaloon Retail and Unitech fell 1.4 percent.

Emkay Global bounced back sharply with 5 percent gains. The National Stock Exchange said Emkay Global has met all financial obligations w.r.t freak trade. Therefore, Emkay terminal has been enabled today, the NSE said.

Peninsula Land rallied 6 percent as the company is in pact to develop 190-acre property in Central Mumbai (Sewree).


Dk Seth pgdm