12.12.2006

• Corus steel acquisition – the key issues and key players
• With the acquisition, what is at stake is the No. 5 slot among the world’s biggest steelmakers.
• Tata Steel proposed to acquire Corus Steel an Anglo Dutch company and world’s 7^th largest steelmaker for 455 pence a share initially. When CSN of Brazil also has evinced interest and it proposed a price of 500 pence a share. Now CSN has upped the ante by willing to pay a price of 515 pence a share.
• CSN (Companhia Siderurgica Nacional) board of directors is Chaired by Benjamin Steinbruch.
• Corus Steel’s Chairman is Jim Leng.
• A truism about market capture that we learn as part of our MBA folklore, worth remembering
• Marketers go great lengths understanding the needs of the customer, only to find the needs have changed by the time the product or service is out. One way to time this is to get away from understanding the needs of the customer to anticipating the needs.
• Indian biotech industry
• In 2005-06 its size is pegged at $1.4 bn.
• Industry pundits envisage that it may grow up to $25 bn by 2015.
• Government’s measures to promote biotech industry:
• Creation of global technology acquisition fund to help companies acquire overseas firms
• Opening up education sector while setting up centres of excellence in about 20-40 universities to train faculty and pass the Bayh-Dole Act.
• The Bayh-Dole Act or Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act is a piece of United States legislation from 1980. Among other things, it gave US universities, small businesses and non-profits intellectual property control of their inventions that resulted from federal government-funded research. The act, sponsored by two senators, Birch Bayh of Indiana and Robert Dole of Kansas, was enacted by the US Congress on December 12, 1980. The Bayh-Dole Act is one of the most important 20th century pieces of legislation in the field of intellectual property in the US, along with the creation in 1982 of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Perhaps the most important contribution of Bayh-Dole is that it reversed the presumption of title. Bayh-Dole permits a university, small business, or non-profit institution to elect to retain title first.
• India’s policy on e-waste is ambivalent
• Recently the 8^th Conference of Parties (CoP) to the Basel Convention took place between November 27 and December 2 at Nairobi, Kenya.
• The Convention seeks to control the trans-boundary movement of hazardous substances and their disposal and also lays down standards for e-waste management and trade. The Convention prohibits the import and export of e-waste for disposal.
• India ratified the Basel Convention, but is yet to ratify the 1994 amendment to the Convention. The amendment bans the import and export of e-waste for recycling also.
• In 1997, the Supreme Court had given directions to follow the Basel Convention and amendments to it.
• India has not yet taken a firm stand on e-waste.
• Kiran Karnik’s commentary on growth without development
• I can’t agree more with his comments. I am excerpting some I felt are really deserving our attention. These are the same thoughts that would usually cross any sane man’s mind at one time or the other.
• Sustainability of economic growth does not depend merely on containing the fiscal deficit and inflation, or on energy security and foreign investment; equally it is contingent on social stability. In the present approach to long term growth, social stability is at best, paid lip service.
• As long as our metrics are based primarily on GDP growth rates, FDI, sensex and the like, it is inevitable that we will focus on things that drive these: fast-growing sectors like services, manufacturing and exports; foreign investment regulations and caps; corporate taxation rates etc. The story could be different if, instead, the metrics were: poverty ratio, infant and maternal mortality, nutrition levels, educational standards, employment, literacy, school enrolment and drop-out rates etc.
• Kerala used to be referred to as a unique case of development without economic growth; now, we seem to have growth without development. Obviously, we need both. This requires far greater consciousness about the criticality of the social sector and of rural-urban and regional disparities. Lop-sided economic growth is a time-bomb, and the faster the pace of growth with greater skews, the shorter the fuse.
• "For an Asian Bretton Woods" by M.K. Venu
• What we are currently witnessing are calls for the establishment of Bretton Woods type of institutions for the Asian region in view the Asian countries’ growing economic power.
• The West is still in some sort of a denial mode when it comes to recognizing the rapid rise of Asian economies this century.
• The West needs to appreciate that a rising Asia might need to design its own unique institutions in the coming years.
• Asian economies will need to create a framework for optimal resource-sharing.
• Japan had foreseen the need for an Asian Monetary Fund way back in 1997, after the Asian financial crises.
• The way US had been able to make Japan consent to the Plaza Accord, it may not be able to do with rising economies like India and China.
• But what is this Plaza Accord? There is also a related Louvre Accord. We will see them in Discover It blog. Read about them here.
  
• HDI and HPI
• Human Development Index: a composite measure of economic and educational development, and health.
• Human Poverty Index: a composite percentage based representation of deprivation vis-à-vis longevity/health, educational and economic well-being.
• Devised by the UNDP, these indices have become the standard measures for social development and empowerment.
• Global jewellery sales
• Are currently pegged at $146 bn
• The US is the largest buyer accounting for almost 31% of this sales.