Microsoft, the world’s biggest software maker is so much in love with Yahoo that it seems to be paving the way for a takeover of Yahoo.

It is common knowledge that Steve Ballmer, the chief executive office at Microsoft gave Yahoo a deadline to accept their $44.6 billion bid; however they Yahoo was not keen on going through with the deal and had not responded to Microsoft.

Microsoft is weighing the two options left for them – to let go or begin a hostile takeover battle. If they decide on fighting the crucial point is what they are going to offer the shareholders, whether they are going to stick to the original bid or increase the bid to win the shareholders over.

Microsoft has been looking to gain more foothold of the internet advertising market, with more searches, sell advertisements with more videos and graphics, and this is currently dominated by Google. The only way they can do this with the help of Yahoo and this is the reason Microsoft just cannot afford to let Yahoo go.

Having spent a billion dollars creating a web search engine and technology to sell ads, buying internet companies such as Yahoo and AQuantive would give Microsoft the prestigious No.2 spot in the $41 billion online ad market.

If we compare Google and Microsoft, while Microsoft faced losses of $228 million at Redmond, which is Microsoft’s Washington based internet business with sales of $843 million; Google, owner of the most used internet search engine had $3.7 billion in revenue, excluding the sales passed on to partner sites.

Google is much ahead of them because internet is all about advertising, and advertising linked to search results accounts for more than half of internet ad sales. According to researcher ComScore, Google handled six times more queries in the US in March than Microsoft. Read the rest of this entry »

Germany’s top international investment bank, which has been widely recognized for its progress, and had won a great deal of praise and notable envy in the financial circles for appearing to weather the storm of the credit crisis better than the others, has reported its first loss in many years as the credit crunch crumbled financial industry strength.

Hailed by many as one of the banks not affected by the credit crisis, unlike UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland who had to turn to shareholders to raise cash, Deutsche Bank finally bowed down to pressure.

Deutsche Bank earns most of its profit, almost 50% from fixed-income, such as asset-backed and other structured securities, and many of these business areas dried up due to the credit crunch.

The exact figures of the loss are reported be a net loss of 141 million pounds or 27 cents per share, for the first quarter of 2008, as well as a loss before income tax of 254 million pounds.

Deutsche Bank had to let go of its 2008 profits target by writing down 2.7 billion euros towards contribution to the global property-based asset mark-downs, which include loan commitments, leveraged loans, residential mortgage-backed securities and commercial real estate. Read the rest of this entry »

No cricket player looks forward to a string of zeros. However, the players of the DFL Indian Premier League Twenty20 had huge grins on their faces as the zeroes were strung on like pearls in an endless necklace.

Cricket is on a winning streak, with the Indian Premier League raining big bucks, fame and glamour. IPL has elevated the game to a new high and the rules of the game have been rewritten forever.

Cricket has always attracted big amounts of money in India. But post-IPL, it is set to enter levels never thought possible.

The player’s auction was a huge sale with no discounts. There were eight franchises from Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mohali and Delhi. These franchise owners, most of whom are billionaires, spent over $718 million between them to get the team rights. Each team was allowed to register a maximum of eight foreign players, only four of them will be able to play in the XI.

Big money was spent by the franchises and the highest spending franchise is Team Mumbai, with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. shelling out $111.09 million.

Bangalore was bought by Vijay Malya’s United Breweries for 111.6million. Deccan Chronicle payed $107million for Team Hyderabad. Team Chennai comes a close second with Srinivasan of India Cements paying $91million. Team Delhi was bought by GMR for $84million. Team Mohali went to Preity Zinta and Ness Wadia for $76million. Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla, franchise owners of Team Kolkata spent $75.09million. Team Jaipur bought buy Emerging Media was the cheapest at $67 million. Read the rest of this entry »

A ten year deal worth a whooping $50 Billion for developing IPLT20.com as an online presence of the Indian Premier League (IPL) has been clinched by Live Current Media (LCM,) a Vancouver, Canada based media company.

Live Current Media entered into an agreement with IPL and BCCI, which is the largest cricket body in the world, to provide exclusive online content for IPL through its website, IPLT20.com. The rights include building, launching and operating the online portal IPLT20.com. This deal includes a guaranteed $3 million per year to the BCCI and $2 million to the IPL, which amounts to $50 million over a ten year period. This is to be a combination of revenue generated through advertising percentages, sponsorships and merchandising sales.

Reports say that IPLT20.com will feature all the news about IPL, including profiles of players, interviews, audio-visual, photographs, live scoreboards, summaries match results, schedules, statistics and ticketing. They wish to make this an interactive site, where fans will be able to take part in polls and contests as well as sign up for newsletters for up-to-date information. Live Current Media also plans on developing fun applications such as Fantasy Cricket on their IPLT20.com site, which will endear it more to their numerous fans around the globe, which Live Current Media estimates at about one billion.

Since Live Current Media also owns cricket.com, in addition to IPLT20.com, it is also planning on developing it as another destination as well as BCCI.tv, BCCI’s official website. The BCCI site will be a premier sports website and will be the ultimate destination for all cricket fans to get all the information they need about teams and players. Read the rest of this entry »

You are on candid camera! No more messing around and getting away with it. Gone are the days when employees dared to pass on a company’s vital data to a competing firm. Bosses have proof of who has done it and when it was done.

This is the 21st century and “snooping at workplace” has become a fact of life, more so if you are using a computer.

It is no wonder that bosses have gotten smarter. Looking around us, we can see youngsters with changing loyalties and increasing need for extra money, whatever their earning may be or even need for power.

The current “technology aware” employers have various options in surveillance software that monitors everything – as if a camera is watching the computers employees are working on. This software is said to work perfectly and hidden without being identified, even by an anti-virus program.

A survey revealed that about three out of four US companies keep track of the sites their employees visit. More than half of them use surveillance software to check office email and even look for hot-button keywords like “sex.” More than a third of the companies monitor the time their employees spend on the computer and log every keystroke or log the downloads. The survey also revealed that one in four companies report firing an employee for improper email use. Read the rest of this entry »

Verizon and AT&T, two of the largest cellphone service providers, won the Spectrum auction, leaving Google behind.

A Spectrum auction is a process where governments throughout the world sell the rights to transmit signals. Companies who are in the business of providing wireless communication services need to bid at these auctions and win the licenses provided by the government.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) conducts these auctions and assigns thousands of licenses to many firms. These auctions are sold for billions of dollars. This auction method for assigning Spectrum resources, which are scarce, is being used widely everywhere in the world.

Earlier, before these Spectrum auctions were started in the US, lotteries and administrative process were used. Later on, they were rejected because they were found not to be efficient enough.

These auctions are not awarded to everyone. The main thing that is looked into is efficiency – which means that the Spectrum has to be given to those that are best able to use it. The second consideration is maximization of revenue. Even with all the concern about efficiency, governments have to care about the revenues raised at these auctions as they are huge sums.

Armed with this knowledge about Spectrum, you would understand better the heavy competition there is, to win these auctions. In the auction that ended this week, both Verizon Wireless and AT&T won a greater part of radio Spectrum.

The winning of this auction is a great thing to happen to Verizon, as it will help Verizon in catching up with AT&T, which is currently the nation’s largest wireless carrier and also the largest portfolio holder of Spectrum.

Google also participated in bidding for C block frequencies for $4.7 billion, but lost the auction to Verizon. C block frequencies can be used for wireless voice and data service nationwide. Read the rest of this entry »

The recently imposed restriction on H-1B visas that prohibit employers from filing more than one petition for an employee in the fiscal year, did not go down too well with many people, as was expected.

In fact, there have been demands from various US employers to raise the cap on H-1B visas. A new study reveals that American businesses are finding it difficult to fill the skilled positions, even with the large number of foreign professionals coming to US on H-1B visas.

These quotas on H-1B visas have been a sore spot for a long time with companies like Microsoft and other high technology companies. Even heads of education are miffed with these visa rules that have become even more strict post 9/11. The Institute of International Education estimated that the number of foreign students coming into the US to study has dropped since 2003, for the first time in more than 30 years. It blamed the decline to stricter visa rules and increased competition from other foreign universities.

US businesses actually benefit from the issue of H-1B visas to employ foreign workers in various fields where practical and theoretical expertise in certain specialized occupations needs a Bachelors or a higher degree, including engineers, computer programmers and scientists.

The current cap on these visas is 65000 per fiscal year. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reveal that the first 20,000 H-1B petitions files by foreigners with US-earned masters degree or higher are exempt from this cap. Read the rest of this entry »

Gold has soared in recent times and has reached high proportions in the past year. It rose to $1000 an ounce for the very first time in futures trading and is a wonderful thing to happen to investors, but the worst thing for consumers and jewelers. The increasing gold prices may just force the jewelry industry to re-invent itself. Analysts say that the $65 billion jewelry industry in the US is at stake.

Increase in gold prices proves to be a deterrent to consumers and a major concern for jewelry shop owners. As a jeweler laments, a gold chain that was priced at $189 will now cost $346 and there is nothing they can do. Even brands like Rolex increase their prices and this increase has to be passed on to the customers. Consumers are reluctant to buy as much gold as they did earlier because of the price increase.

The price of gold has risen by about 32 percent in 2007 and jumped almost 20 percent since the beginning of this year. This is the result of a weak dollar and high crude oil prices. The dollar fell very low against the yen for the first time in 12 years and also hit a low against the euro.

Analysts say that the low interest rates do not help the dollar and that gold may go even higher, if the Federal Reserve cuts the interest rates again as is expected.

To make it easier to understand the above jargon, gold price rises when dollar falls. Soaring oil prices cause inflation and gold rises at least 90% of the time when oil price increases. Gold prices always correlate closely with oil prices and go in the opposite direction of the dollar.

Where jewelers are concerned, the amount of increase and the time of increase in gold is based on the size of the store selling gold. Top jewelry stores like Tiffany and others sell jewelry to big retailers, and order jewelry for a whole year in advance and have plenty of stock. Since their stock is bought much before the increase in rates, they will not need to raise prices immediately. Some of these large stores even elect to absorb part of the increased cost, just to remain competitive in the current market. Read the rest of this entry »

You must have heard the term, “Fortune 500” when talking about companies. Fortune Magazine, for the last 45 years has been publishing a list of the largest companies annually, meaning companies with the largest revenue for the previous year. Since Fortune calculates the revenue of companies using data available publicly, only companies having common stock that trades on a stock exchange are eligible. Even US subsidiaries of foreign companies are not included. The top 500 in the list are Fortune 500 companies.

Basically, Fortune 500 companies are among the most profitable and powerful companies in America. You would have heard of blue-chip companies like General Electric and Philip Morris, both are ranked very high on the Fortune 500 list.

Looking at the profits these companies make, the topmost company on the list made above $210 billion in revenue and even the lowest ranked in the list, Qualcomm made $3 billion.

The economic strength of a city is said to be quantified by the presence of Fortune 500 companies. The companies that fall into this category represent a variety of industries that have diversified with alliances from several business entities or partnerships. The cities that headquarter these companies also gain recognition globally and these companies contribute to the education, cultural and arts in the area.

We know what Fortune 500 companies are but do we know what gives them the edge over other businesses and puts them on this prestigious list?

There are several factors that go into making them the top few. The first one being their attitude. These companies are humane and understand that their power lies in their employees. If you look into the rise of each of the Fortune 500 companies, you will notice that they followed wonderful human resource practices like good pay, benefits and keeping the spirit of the employees high. Read the rest of this entry »

Remote check deposit (also known as Check 21) refers to depositing (electronic) checks into your account directly over the internet eliminating the hassle of visiting the bank at the end of each business day. An electronic check is the electronic version of a paper check and is used to conduct essentially the same transactions.

Remote check deposit was an unimaginable reality not long ago. This has, however, changed with recent developments in technology. Banks all over America are offering tools for converting paper checks to electronic checks. This development is expected to have a major impact on both the banking industry and businesses (of all sizes and industries). Remote check deposit is faster, simple and has a high percentage of accuracy.

Steps for Remote Check Deposit

Following are the steps for remote check deposit:

1. Open An Internet Banking Account – The first step for depositing your checks electronically is to open an internet bank account. This can be done be both by activating internet banking on your existing bank account and opening a new internet banking account altogether.
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