03.07.2007

• In today’s Discover It blog, I have noted for you some solid suggestions that are given in an article about making MFIs a viable model. Do read it here.
• Similarly those of you, who want to get a solid understanding of the country’s import export trade, should read today’s “Figuring it out” column by Vinay Pandey. I couldn’t find a web link for it. Read it in page 15 of today’s ET.
• What is ‘profit petroleum’?
• It is the government’s share of profit from an oilfield.
• Government can decide to take either royalties or petroleum in kind.
• New technology in TV broadcasting “HITS” the market
• HITS – Headend in the Sky
• It gives the viewer the flexibility to subscribe to a one-time programme on a channel, rather than the channel, thereby bringing down his bill.
• The I&B ministry has asked TRAI to launch a consultation process to explore the possibilities of permitting cable operators to roll out HITS in the country.
• How it works? The infrastructure provider downlinks all the pay channels and decodes them. These signals are then scrambled according to the requirement after going through the conditional access system. They are uplinked again to a satellite which acts as a ‘Headend in the Sky’ and beams these signals to all the Headends at the local cable operator’s end.
• To select the content, the subscriber calls up a toll free number which connects him to the Subscriber Management System (SMS) and logs in his request. The SMS centre gives the message to the earth station which executes the request through a data controller and also generates the monthly bills of the subscriber, which are then distributed by the local cable operators.
• Illycafe India Coffee Prize
• Illycafe is the world’s biggest supplier of a single brand espresso. It is based in Italy.
• It is organizing a contest for Arabica coffee growers from India to give the prize to promote espresso.
• How many millionaires are there in the world?
• According the 2006 Merrill Lynch-Capgemini World Wealth Report, there are 8.7 mn millionaires holding about $33.3 trillion in assets.
• The VIX index
• It is the premier benchmark stock market volatility index in US.
• It captures market expectations of future volatility and therefore risk.
• What is securitization?
• I know I have covered it earlier also. But how many of you remember this? Let’s take a look at it again.
• One way of putting it is: Under this, banks transfer receivables to a special purpose vehicle and issue pass-through certificates to multiple investors.
• When we read some headline like “Home loan securitization loses sheen”, we struggle to understand what ‘securitization’ is. Now I hope, you will understand the heading well.
• BTW, the home loan segment is losing sheen because the RBI has stipulated that a selling bank (aka Originating Bank) should assign capital on the loan that is securitized. This dampened the enthusiasm among the originating banks to offload loans through this route.
• A little about full convertibility and what it can mean
• A good single sentence definition can be: Absence of any restriction on the holding of foreign currencies by residents and of the national currency by foreigners, and on the free conversion between currencies.
• With full convertibility in place, you can travel abroad and buy dollars you need over the counter. That is, you can carry rupees abroad and buy dollars or for that matter any currency.