PTI News

Indian conglomerate Tatas are set to be named on Friday the top choice for buying the US auto giant Ford’s iconic British brands Jaguar and Land Rover, according to a media report.

“The group has had its 1-billion pound bid accepted by Ford, the firm has beaten off competition from rival Indian firm Mahindra and Mahindra and private equity group One Equity Partners,” Birmingham Post reported on Thursday.

The report quoted unnamed sources at Land Rover as saying, “It is definitely Tata. There is one final meeting and so long as there is no last minute hitches, which are not expected, then an announcement will be made on Friday.” The final details would be worked out in the next six weeks, it added.

The report also quoted a union official as saying that Mahindra’s bid fell flat because of links to a private equity firm as the Indian firm was working with Apollo.

“When a private equity firm buys a company, the cost of buying it often goes onto the companies books. If anything then goes wrong how do you refinance the business?” industry officer for the Transport and General Workers’ Union section of Unite, Des Quinn, said. Read the rest of this entry »

After few weeks of speculation the Citigroup board has finally appointed Vikram Pandit to head its global operations. Pandit replaces Prince was the buzz at the Wall street.

Vikram Pandit, a Nagpur-born NRI who wowed Wall Street before intense flames began licking the financial world, was on Tuesday named CEO of Citigroup, the world’s largest bank, in what many see as a crisis rescue mission.

Pandit, whose elevation had been in the air for several days, replaces the charismatic Charles O.

“Chuck” Prince III, who was forced out after the giant bank in November this year after it reported its first loss in 17 years amid a massive financial crisis. Prince had brought him into Citigroup only a few months earlier.

On Tuesday, the Citigroup board led by its chairman, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin fulfilled Wall Street expectation by picking Pandit as CEO, while naming Win Bischoff, who was functioning as interim CEO after Prince left, as chairman. Rubin, also a stand-in, returns to his previous duties as Citi director and chairman of the executive committee of the board.

Pandit, who is 50, is the first person of Indian origin to scale such heights in the financial world, which has many well-regarded Indian executives.  Read more Economic Times

India is next to US and Switzerland in terms of intangible assets. In today’s world intellectual capital, customer relationship, brand and mature financial markets play an upper role than fixed assets, land, machinery etc..

Economic Times reports

World champion in Tennis Roger Federer and Cricket’s Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar  are joining hands in fighting drug addiction and criminality in youth. This is a Grand Slam event. As Tennis and Cricket put together represents the whole world.

Every Indian youth admires Sachin and worldover cricket followers rate him the best Batsman and probably next only to the legendary Sir Don Bradman. Federer is the cool, solid and talented champ of the Tennis world,..a mix of Bjorn Borg and Pete Sampras

Mid-day reports

Sachin, Federer  join hands to fight drugs, crime among youth

Vikram Pandit, head of institutional clients at Citigroup Inc, is a front-runner for the bank’s chief executive spot, according to media reports. If Pandit were made chief executive, his ascent at Citi would be fast. He joined in July, when the largest US bank closed on its purchase of his hedge fund, Old Lane Partners LP in a deal worth an estimated USD 800 million. Read more

Reuters news in Financial Express

Also read our previous article about Citibank in Bricwire

Next CEO of Citigroup Indian ?

Citigroup gets 7.5B from Abu Dhabi

Build or Buy ? Often this came up with every CIOs mind when deciding on any Application solutions. There is a new way of approaching investing into software applications through Assemble concept. Open Source softwares gives the flexibility of assembling software and implementing the business requirements straightway.

For some time I have been using some of these technologies for serious business use. Some of these software are giving proprietory software, in its category, a run for money.

1. Red Hat Linux - The most popular OS now

2. Mozilla - Firefox - The alternative to Internet Explorer

3. Application Development Environment - Java , Spring Framework, Hibernate, Maven, ibatis, Struts, …

4. MySQL - The biggest threat to Oracle, DB2 and Sybase. Everybody uses MySql for large sized database applications. www.mysql.com

5. Business Intelligence - Pentaho,..it surely valuable than the commercial ones,..www.pentaho.com

6. Content Management - Alfresco - Superb application and software ,..founded by the co founder of Documentum www.alfresco.com

7. Enterprise Service Bus - SOA - Mulesource - the best in class and co exist with any commercial EAI infrastructure www.mulesource.com

There are others like Wordpress, Drupal, Jhoomla, OScommerce,…all are making their marks in the internet world.

The business model of these new ventures promoting open source software are packaging the software and earning their revenues on support and consulting.

Also this is a way for BRIC countries, to look for more Open Source software to build their path for Information Systems model. This helps them to save a lot of money and gives them the best of functionalities. For sure the next Google is in the making somewhere in India or China or Russia.