MTN is proving to be hotter than other telecoms, going by the huge number of fans lining up to be acknowledged. Vodafone, China Mobile, Telkom South Africa, Bharti Airtel, UAE’s Etisalat, Reliance Communications have all entered the fray to win over MTN.

The reason for this interest in the largest mobile services company based in South Africa, is because a stake will give these other companies’ easy entry into the African markets. MTN has 68 million customers in 21 different countries with most of its subscribers in South Africa, Iran and Nigeria.

Vodafone, the world’s largest mobile phone operator may possibly be looking at the possibility of bidding for MTN, which is South Africa’s third-largest mobile phone group. Arun Sarin, Chief Executive of Vodafone is said to have instructed his in-house acquisition team leader, Warren Finegold to examine the options to buy MTN.

The Sunday Telegraph said, “Vodafone is contemplating a bid for South Africa’s third-largest mobile phone group, a move that could cost it £19 billion, but would transform its presence in some of the world’s fastest growing telecom markets.”

Vodafone’s interest in MTN comes on the heels of the Indian Telecom company Bharti Airtel wanting to buy 51% stake in MTN, and the talk about the two companies being in discussions. However, MTN said that the offer from Bharti Airtel undervalues the company.

Vodafone had a setback last year when they failed to take control of Vodacom, which is Vodafone’s existing presence in South Africa. This deal would represent another route they take across the huge African continent.

Analysts say that the whole thing is still in the initial stages and the deal may not even come through. If Vodafone does go ahead and makes an offer to buy MTN’s international and domestic business, then it will pick up assets in more than 20 emerging markets. People who are familiar with Vodafone’s thinking feel that it may not go ahead with offering to buy MTN or it may only opt to buy the international business. (more…)

The increase in gas prices have hit people very hard and increasing number of motorists in the U.S. are looking for alternatives.

This desperate need to control the rising costs, has given rise to the new fad called “hypermiling.” This is a radical driving technique that is designed to make use of every bit of power from the tank, which doubles the gas mileage even in vehicles that are guzzlers.

Hypermiling has become very popular with drivers worldwide, as concern over the increasing price of gas and environmental issues heightens. Whatever their reason, whether it is to save a few dollars or aim at helping the environment, hypermiling is being seen as the smart way to drive.

The practice of “hypermiling” was started by a few truckers a few years ago, but in fact it existed for a long time and the earlier name in 1936 was Mobil Economy Run, and during World War II gas rationing led people to use these techniques.

Hypermiling means pumping up the tires to their maximum pressure, higher than the recommended levels in the car manuals; using low viscosity engine oil (low weight engine oil), which is only filled to the low-level mark, and drafting behind other vehicles on the highway to reduce the aerodynamic drag, which is controversial. When tires are inflated to their maximum, less energy is required for the vehicle to move. (more…)

Engineering which was once the most popular profession in Japan and had thousands of aspirants waiting to be an engineer, has lost its charm, creating a void.

Japan is witnessing lack of interest from young people in joining the engineering and technology related fields.

This decline has grown so drastic that the industry has begun campaigns adverting engineering and showing it in all its glory as interesting and cool.

Once upon a time, their skill in engineering is what brought Japan to this level, giving it the distinction of being called the “super power” of the engineering and technology fields.

The American influence is being witnessed in the way youngsters in Japan think. Just as young people in America choose professions that pay better, in fields such as medicine, finance or other creative fields like the arts, rather than following in their fathers’ footsteps of becoming a salaried engineer working in a big manufacturing firm, Japanese youngsters too are steering towards the more glamorous and high-paying fields. (more…)

Gulf States have been torched with the rising inflation due to the declining dollar and this has become a huge political issue. After the US currency has fallen more than 13% against the Euro in the last one year, some Gulf States which have pegged their currencies to the US dollar, are considering dropping the pegs, as the inflation reaches new heights.

Marlos Maratheftis, head of research for Standard Chartered in the Middle East said, “Inflation is rising in the Gulf to a great extent because of loose monetary policy. Tightening monetary policy can only happen if they drop their currency pegs or strengthen the currency, preferably both.”

Inflation is high at 12% in the United Arab Emirates and about 18% of this inflation is due to the currency peg to the dollar. This is almost three times more than the government’s target and analysts expect it go up. Inflation in Saudi Arabia has hit 10% and Qatar reported of consumer prices rising almost 14% in the fourth quarter.

Kuwait became the only Gulf State to have dropped the dinar’s peg to the dollar about a year ago, and since then the dinar appreciated 7.9% against the dollar. Several contracts to buy the UAE dirham in about 12 months are trading at 2% premium and for the Saudi Riyal it is 1.2% premium to spot price, which shows that traders are betting that these countries will follow Kuwait in revaluing.

It was in November last year that the revaluation speculation reached a high after the UAE central bank governor said he was considering dropping the dirham’s peg to the dollar.

The reason Gulf countries are thinking on the lines of dropping the pegs has been due to the fact that the dollar has been going down for some time now. If given a chance most Gulf States would depeg the currencies from the dollar, which is falling rapidly. But the problem lies with Saudi Arabia, which has shown resistance in making this move. The U.S. was surely not impressed when Kuwait did this last May, even before the steep descent of the dollar. Gulf government officials reveal their worry about the consequences, as the U.S. may consider any such move as an economic war, since the global economy is fragile. (more…)

The US economy may be on the downslide but that is nothing when compared to the massive pall hanging over the Wall Street.

The heavy US investors say that although the nation’s economy is getting worse and it is continuing its downward slide, it will certainly recover later in the year, maybe in about six months or so.

However, things are different on the Wall Street, after more than $300bn vanished from the US equity markets. Wall Street is being taken to task, for the mistakes that led to this credit crunch and people who were part of it all are paying the price now. The prediction is that the way back to health for Wall Street is a very long one.

One economist from UK even warned that the world may be close to experiencing something like the Great Depression of 1930, and traders say that they have never felt this sort of fear before. The reason behind these feelings is the emergency funding package by the Federal Reserve and JP Morgan Chase to rescue Bear Stearns. This sort of funding procedure was first used in the 1930 depression and rarely used ever since.

Another problem facing the market is that, in spite of the Federal Reserve feeding $200bn, the banks are still not ready to lend to each other.

The general consensus is that the banking system has been broken since last summer and the credit crisis that it fostered is nothing like anything seen in the past many years. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)