(eC)...

viewpoints are my own et cetera /ɛtˈsɛt(ə)rə,ɪt-/

[julieswilliams-blog]

Airports operator BAA has decided to sell Stansted Airport, ending its long-running legal battle.

It has been fighting a 2009 Competition Commission ruling that it must sell Stansted because of the lack of competition between London airports.

BAA was told to sell off Stansted and Gatwick, but by then it had already started the process of finding a buyer for Gatwick.

[julieswilliams-blog]

Swiss private bank Julius Baer (BAER.VX) is to buy Bank of America's (BAC.N) Merrill Lynch private bank outside the United States, paying 860 million Swiss francs (563 million pounds) to boost its assets under management by 40 percent and backing the deal with plans to raise 1.19 billion francs in new capital.

[julieswilliams-blog]

Starbucks, the giant coffee seller, just invested $25 million in Square, the San Francisco-based payments startup.

Starbucks is taking a small piece of that round. Square authorized $200 million in new shares at a valuation of $3.2 billion. The company didn't say who—if anyone—is buying the rest of the new shares, but the New York Times reported that Rizvi Traverse Management, an investor in Playboy and Twitter, was leading the round.

[julieswilliams-blog]

Reality documentary following an experiment by minicab firm Addison Lee to help its employees manage their work/life balance by putting their babies right next to their desk

[julieswilliams-blog]

A BBC investigation suggests companies are wasting large sums of money on adverts to gain "likes" from Facebook members who have no real interest in their products.

It also appears many account holders who click on the links have lied about their personal details.

A security expert has said some of the profiles appeared to be "fakes" run by computer programs to spread spam.

Facebook said it had "not seen evidence of a significant problem".

"Likes" are highly valued by many leading brands' marketing departments.

Once a user has clicked on a link the company it belongs to can then post content on their news feed, send them messages and alert their friends to the connection.

Facebook makes money by charging companies a fee to show adverts designed to attract new "likes".

Some companies have attracted millions of "likes".

But the BBC has been contacted by one marketing consultant who has warned clients to be wary of their value, and carried out an experiment that backed up his concerns.

The vast majority of Facebook's revenues come from advertising and its performance will be scrutinised when it releases its financial results on 26 July - the first such report since its flotation.

Puppet masters

Earlier this year Facebook revealed that about 5-6% of its 901 million users might be fake - representing up to 54 million profiles.

Graham Cluley of the security firm Sophos said this was a major problem.

"Spammers and malware authors can mass-produce false Facebook profiles to help them spread dangerous links and spam, and trick people into befriending them," he said.

"We know some of these accounts are run by computer software with one person puppeteering thousands of profiles from a single desk handing out commands such as: 'like' as many pages as you can to create a large community.

"I'm sure Facebook is trying to shut these down but it can be difficult to distinguish fake accounts from real ones."

A spokesman for the social network said: "We don't see evidence of a 'wave of likes' coming from fake users or 'obsessive clickers'."

But Mr Cluley said it was in the firm's interest to downplay the problem.

"They're making money every time a business's advert leads to a phoney Facebook fan," he said.

[ continue ]

[julieswilliams-blog]

Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) board members are dissatisfied with Chief Executive OfficerRobert McDonald’s performance and are discussing a possible leadership change, according to people familiar with the situation.

Some P&G directors are talking about contacting former executives to potentially take the top job, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the matter is private. James McNerney, who is chairman of the board’s compensation and leadership development committee, has told other members of the board he is unhappy with McDonald’s performance, especially after the company cut forecasts three times this year, another person said.

The board’s discussions in part come as activist investor William Ackman takes a stake in P&G. Ackman plans to press for management changes and is seeking more investors to join his push, the people said.

The moves increase pressure on McDonald, 59, who has been CEO for about three years and came under fire from analysts earlier this year when P&G lost market share to competitors. The stock had fallen 8 percent this year through July 11, giving the Cincinnati-based company a market value of about $168 billion. The stock rose 3.8 percent in regular trading yesterday, its largest gain in more than two years, and gained 0.2 percent to the equivalent of $63.84 at 10:13 a.m. in Frankfurt today.

Former Executives

“This is a really good company with some serious problems,” said Ali Dibadj, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York. He has recommended P&G consider a breakup if earnings don’t improve this year. “A lot of those problems have been driven by management.”

Directors don’t see a clear internal candidate to replace McDonald, one person said. A.G. Lafley preceded McDonald as CEO, while other former executives include Paul Polman, the CEO of Unilever, who ran P&G’s European business until 2006.

Paul Fox, a spokesman for P&G, declined to comment. McNerney, who is also the CEO of Boeing Co. (BA), wasn’t available for comment through his spokesman.

P&G, the maker of Tide laundry detergent and Duracell batteries, most recently cut its profit forecast last month, citing currency fluctuations and rising commodity costs, even as competitors reaffirmed their projections. In February, McDonald announced a $10 billion cost-reduction plan that included 5,700 job cuts.

[ continue ]

[julieswilliams-blog]

In a post on its blog, LinkedIn has announced that it will stop sharing a stream of Tweets on user profiles, in order to comply with stricter rules that Twitter is enforcingwith regards to its API.

Essentially, the changes mean that you’ll no longer be getting a straight-up stream of your Twitter posts in your LinkedIn profile. Twitter’s Michael Sippey says that these changes “highlight the increasing importance of us providing the core Twitter consumption experience through a consistent set of products and tools.”

He refers to the fact that Twitter’s Developer Rules of the Road say that developers should not “build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.” That, apparently, includes this new enforcement that affects LinkedIn.

[julieswilliams-blog]

Dmitry Grishin, the chief executive of Russian e-mail and social networking giant Mail.ru, has an elaborate wedding fantasy. He sees robotic drones flying around the guests and snapping their every move from every angle. “People today have very standard pictures,” Grishin says. “If you have drones, you can attach a camera and make very nice and different movies and pictures.” Add some bartender robots, and you get quicker refills, too.

On Friday, Grishin, 33, declared his intentions to fund a robotics revolution. He’s going to set up an investment company—Grishin Robotics—in New York, backed by $25 million of his dollars, that will look out for startups doing promising robotics work. Grishin intends to focus on consumer, as opposed to industrial robotic, applications. ”I think it’s very important to bring robotics to the mass market,” Grishin says. “Huge innovation will only come when people see the results in their everyday lives.”

In the mid-1990s, Grishin studied robotics while at university in Russia. He found that a lot of the technology was expensive, which limited it to industrial settings where large companies could afford to make the necessary investments. These days, cheap but powerful cameras, sensors, and other electronics are being used to form the basis of robotics projects. Grishin hopes to find 10 to 20 companies per year doing interesting work and to give them about $500,000 each.

The Mail.ru Group, a Russian investment company co-founded by Grishin, has stakes in Web giants Facebook (FB), Zynga (ZNGA), and Groupon (GRPN), among others. It’s also behind the Mail.ru service, which is Russia’s largest e-mail provider and a purveyor of social networking, instant messaging, and gaming sites.

Grishin wants to transfer his experience driving fast-paced consumer Web services to the robotics realm. “I believe in the Internet culture where you aim for big audiences and innovate quickly,” he says. “Robotics innovation should not happen at big corporations but instead in small startups with 20 to 30 engineers.”

Grishin Robotics will be located in New York, as it’s close to the thriving robotics scenes in Boston and Pittsburgh and not too, too far from Silicon Valley. “There’s also good work being done in South Korea, Germany, France, and Japan,” Grishin says. “You need a true international city, and New York is a great example of that.”

Source: Bloomberg

[julieswilliams-blog]

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. jumped into the slumping private-jet market again with a record order valued at $9.6 billion, betting on a rebound later this decade with a third plane purchase in less than two years. 

Buying as many as 425 jets from Bombardier Inc. and Textron Inc. (TXT)’s Cessna will bolster Berkshire’s NetJets in “a long-term bet on the global economy,” Chief Executive Officer Jordan Hansell told Betty Liu in an interview today on Bloomberg Television’s “In The Loop.”

Deliveries will start as soon as two years from now as NetJets refreshes and looks to expand a fleet of more than 700 planes. The Columbus, Ohio-based company probably won favorable terms as planemakers work to rebuild order backlogs, said Michel Merluzeau, an aviation consultant for G2 Solutions inSeattle.

[julieswilliams-blog]

World's Biggest Airline to Form in $11B Merger: Video - Bloomberg

Lan Airlines SA will merge with Brazilian airline TAM to form the world's biggest airline in a deal worth $11 billion. 

[julieswilliams-blog]

Gijs van Wulfen has developed a structured innovation approach connecting creativity and business reality in five steps: 1. Full Steam Ahead, 2. Observe and Learn, 3. Raise Ideas, 4. Test Ideas, 5. Homecoming. Here he summarizes the benefits of his method in a 66-point innovation checklist.

The fuzzy front end is the nickname for the start of innovation or innovation phase. Why? Because getting innovative ideas is a vague process. [ continue ]

[julieswilliams-blog]

Coach travelers on Singapore-based carrier Scoot, the budget unit of Singapore Airlines (SINGY) that launched service on June 4, can while away the hours with a $17 rented iPad (AAPL) chock-full of movies, music, games, and TV shows. Last fall, Jetstar, the budget offshoot ofQantas Airways (QUBSF), also started offering iPads for $10-$15 on flights over two hours. While the tablets are undeniably popular, their inclusion in inflight entertainment (IFE) offerings has more to do with their weight.

The bottom line: To save fuel, some airlines are using lightweight tablet computers to replace inflight entertainment systems that can weigh a ton.

[ full article ]

[julieswilliams-blog]

Remaining in the single currency is no longer a rational choice for many countries – but will its creators listen?

[ Full article - Telegraph ]

[julieswilliams-blog]

American banks consider technology investment a top spending priority for the year ahead, with platform simplification the most important IT-related project, according to a KPMG survey.

The poll of over 100 senior executives reveals that, in the face of regulatory reforms and a lacklustre economy, banks are focused on re-examining business models and initiatives that increase operational efficiency and reduce costs. This means a focus on technology: asked to identify the three areas where their bank would most increase spending over the next year,

58% of respondents say IT, ahead of products or services (37%), 

acquisitions (32%), and 

business model transformation (20%)

Among those respondents who have significant cash on their balance sheets, the most likely time frame for investment was this year (39%) or next year (40%), while 21% said 2014 or later. Platform simplification - IT infrastructure, applications - is the most important IT-related project in the next year for 58%, with mobile payments cited by 39%, using data more effectively for regulatory requirements by 38%, and creating an integrated view of customer accounts by 37%.

Asked to identify the channels commanding the most capital investment from their bank, 38% of respondents cite m-banking and payment platforms for mobile devices, compared to just 24% for purchasing more branches and 23% for online banking. Judd Caplain, national account leader, banking and capital markets practice, KPMG, says: "The shift away from investing in the traditional branch customer channel to the channels utilising mobile technology is noticeable, and we expect this trend to continue at an accelerating pace."  More generally, 69% of respondents identify regulatory and legislative pressures as the most significant barrier to growth over the next year. To help counter this, most are looking at which types of customers to focus their growth strategy on, with mass-affluent, young professionals and the unbanked the top targets. Meanwhile, although 32% still consider national banks the biggest threats to their organisation, 28% cite new market entrants such as PayPal and retail outlets like Walmart.

Source: Finextra

[julieswilliams-blog]

 France's new Socialist government moved Wednesday to lower the retirement age from 62 to 60 years old for certain workers, bucking a global trend in a gesture to unions that critics say is a costly mistake.

Governments from North America to Europe have been pushing retirement ages higher and higher in recent decades, as people live longer and spend more years on state-sponsored pension check.

Raising France's legal retirement age was one of conservative former President Nicolas Sarkozy's key reforms, aimed at reducing heavy government debts as Europe sunk into a continent-wide financial crisis. The reform met huge, nationwide protests — yet many economists said it didn't push the retirement age high enough. [ continue ]

[julieswilliams-blog]

Mobile communications company Vodafone Group PLC (VOD.LN) Thursday said Telefonica U.K. and Vodafone U.K. have entered into a partnership agreement for the creation of one national grid running each operator's independent spectrum. 

Facts:

Companies to pool basic network infrastructure to create one national grid of 18,500 sites. 

Both companies will be running independent spectrum and competing services. 

Both companies to close the digital divide between rural and urban areas targeting 98% indoor population coverage across 2G and 3G by 2015. 

Agreement will lay the foundations for two competing 4G networks to deliver the capability for a nationwide 4G service faster than could be achieved independently. 

New 50/50 joint venture company will be created through the consolidation of both Telefonica U.K. and Vodafone U.K.'s existing basic network infrastructure, including towers and masts, which will be transferred to the joint venture or decommissioned over time. 

Joint venture will be responsible for the building of new sites needed to extend coverage into rural and remote areas. 

Expects there will be a more than 10% overall reduction in the total number of sites, in the U.K., used by the two operators. 

Currently engaged in discussions with Ofcom. 

Intends to establish the joint venture and network sharing arrangement later in 2012. 

Shares of Vodafone Group on Wednesday closed at 169 pence. 

Source: (JPM) DowJones

[julieswilliams-blog]

Weaker construction survey in May makes the case for another round of stimulus at today's meeting

Pressure has increased on the Bank of England to announce more stimulus today to boost the UK economy, after a key survey pointed to a weakening construction sector. The Markit/Cips survey of purchasing managers for May showed the slowest growth in the building industry for three months and a pronounced downturn in confidence.

The PMI index fell from 55.8 in April to 54.4 last month, with any figure over 50 signalling expansion, while the index of positive sentiment fell to its lowest level since last October.

About a third of respondents thought their output would increase over the next 12 months, while a fifth expected a contraction. The resulting balance signalled that the degree of positive sentiment about future business was at its lowest level in six months. [ continue ]