Tag Archive for 'Globalisation'

Sony, Hitachi and Toshiba to Merge LCD Units

Published on August 31, 2011 in Global Strategy. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi announced on Wednesday that they would work with a government-backed fund to spin off and merge their liquid crystal display businesses, joining forces in the face of rising global competition.

The deal could create the world’s biggest maker of LCDs for mobile phones and cameras, with 22 percent of the market for small and
midsize screens, according to DisplaySearch.

The fund, the Innovation Network Corporation, will invest 200 billion yen ($2.6 billion) in the new company for a 70 percent stake, while the three manufacturers will equally split the other 30 percent, they said in a statement.

The Japanese government has long encouraged the nation’s manufacturers to consolidate as a way to increase their presence in global markets and better fight mounting competition from rivals like Samsung Electronics of South Korea, which is now far bigger and profitable than any single Japanese electronics maker [Source].

Why diversification is back in fashion

Published on March 4, 2011 in Emerging Markets. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Over the past decade the world’s corporate pecking order has been disturbed by the arrival of a new breed of multinationals from the emerging world. These companies have not only taken on Western incumbents, snapped up Western companies and launched exciting new products. They have challenged some of the West’s most cherished notions of how companies ought to organise themselves: focusing on their core activities and buying ever more services from the market [Source].

Many emerging-market multinationals are focused companies that are admired in the West: the likes of India’s Infosys Technologies (for IT services), Brazil’s Embraer (aircraft) and South Africa’s MTN (mobile phones). But others are highly diversified. In some ways these groups look like throwbacks to old-fashioned Western conglomerates such as ITT. But in other ways they are sui generis: much more diversified and readier to blur the line between public and private [Source].

A growing number of them are proving that they can compete in global markets as well as in sometimes rigged local ones. The Boston Consulting Group lists the rise of diversified global conglomerates as one of five trends that will shape the future of business.

In the long run most of these emerging conglomerates are likely to follow the same path as Western companies: focusing on their core activities and buying ever more services from the market. But Western companies also need to recognise that—for the time being at least—these diversified giants have plenty to offer [Source].

The Future of the Internet

Published on September 4, 2010 in High Tech & Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it.

The first internet boom, a decade and a half ago, resembled a religious movement. Omnipresent cyber-gurus, often framed by colourful PowerPoint presentations reminiscent of stained glass, prophesied a digital paradise in which not only would commerce be frictionless and growth exponential, but democracy would be direct and the nation-state would no longer exist.

The internet is too important for governments to ignore. They are increasingly finding ways to enforce their laws in the digital realm. The most prominent is China’s “great firewall”. The Chinese authorities are using the same technology that companies use to stop employees accessing particular websites and online services.

It should come as no surprise that the internet is being pulled apart on every level. “While technology can gravely wound governments, it rarely kills them,” Debora Spar, president of Barnard College at Columbia University, wrote several years ago in her book, “Ruling the Waves”. “This was all inevitable,” argues Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, under the headline “The Web is Dead” in the September issue of the magazine. “A technology is invented, it spreads, a thousand flowers bloom, and then someone finds a way to own it, locking out others.”

[Source]

The breakfast index

Published on August 8, 2010 in International Business and International Finance. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The cost of breakfast rises. Raw ingredients for breakfast in much of the rich world have increased in price by 25% since the beginning of June.

Severe drought and wildfires in Russia, the world’s fourth largest wheat producer, have destroyed a fifth of the country’s crop and sent prices soaring. Since the end of June wheat prices have more than doubled. But wheat is not alone. The price of orange juice has also risen recently, probably thanks to bets placed on the likelihood of tropical storms. Coffee prices, which hit a 13-year high, are a result of poor harvests [Source].

APEC Leaders Call for New Growth Strategies

Published on November 15, 2009 in Emerging Markets. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Singapore APECStimulus spending and other emergency measures have set the stage for global economic recovery, but nations must push ahead with free trade and investment to ensure growth, President Barack Obama and fellow Asia-Pacific leaders said Sunday.

Obama and 20 other leaders, meeting in Singapore for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, rejected protectionism and agreed to develop long-term strategies that take into account the diverse needs of economies in a region stretching from Chile to China [Source].

Future of finance

Published on May 31, 2009 in International Finance. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

futurefinance
From the ruins of the credit crunch, a new financial order will emerge. Its shape is not yet known, but is already hotly debated. Will there be a new model for investment banking? The socialisation of risk? A return to Keynesianism? What role will hedge funds and private equity play? And government and regulators?

In this series of exclusive video interviews, Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, talks to some of the chief protagonists – bankers, policymakers, financiers – and asks them to explain not just what happened, but also how they think finance will adapt to the post-crash world.

From Russia With Love

Published on May 27, 2009 in Global Strategy and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

facebook Venture Capital RussiaFacebook, the popular social network, has found a deep-pocketed friend in Russia.

Digital Sky Technologies, an Internet investment company based in Moscow, said Tuesday it has invested $200 million in Facebook in exchange for a 1.96 percent stake in the company, and would eventually offer to buy at least $100 million in Facebook’s common stock. Facebook said the deal values the entire company — which Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, founded in his Harvard dorm room in 2004 — at $10 billion.

More details about the deal can be found here. A backgrounder on this story can be found here.

Globalisation of entrepreneurship

Published on April 20, 2009 in Global Strategy, High Tech & Media and International Business. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Globalisation of entrepreneurshipThe globalisation of entrepreneurship is raising the competitive stakes for everyone, particularly in the rich world. Entrepreneurs can now come from almost anywhere, including once-closed economies such as India and China. And many of them can reach global markets from the day they open their doors, thanks to the falling cost of communications.

The world’s greatest producer of entrepreneurs continues to be America. The lights may have gone out on Wall Street, but Silicon Valley continues to burn bright. Entrepreneurship also flourishes in clusters. A third of American venture capital flows into two places, Silicon Valley and Boston, and two-thirds into just six places, New York, Los Angeles, San Diego and Austin as well as the Valley and Boston.

The information age is making it ever easier for ordinary people to start businesses and harder for incumbents to defend their territory. Back in 1960 the composition of the Fortune 500 was so stable that it took 20 years for a third of the constituent companies to change. Now it takes only four years. Source

New Hope?

Published on January 19, 2009 in International Business. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

obamaShortly after midday on January 20th, Barack Obama will sit for the first time at the desk where the buck stops. The American presidency is always the world’s hardest and most consequential job, but it seems particularly so this month. A global recession of a severity not seen for perhaps 80 years; a new war in the Middle East and old ones in Africa; missions very far from accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan; a prickly Russia and a rising China.

These international challenges must jostle for the president’s attention alongside noisy domestic concerns like rocketing unemployment, the desperate need for a better health-care system, exploding deficits and failing cities. The burdens, surely, are too many for one man to bear.

The Beginning of a Multilateral Economic System

Published on November 17, 2008 in Emerging Markets, Global Strategy, International Business and International Finance. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Global economic meetings used to mean the G7 and then the G8. However, last weekend marked the emergence of a new phenomenon the G20. Which have set stage for the beginning of a better multilateral economic system.

It used to be a rich-country affair with Russia invited in during in the 1990s – but that was to tackle international political issues, not for the sake of a contribution to the economic discussions. However times have changed. A global economic problem needed a presence from developing country leaders.

This being said. In light of aforementioned, last weekend, Presidents and prime ministers from a score of rich and emerging economies descended on Washington, DC, ostensibly to remake the rules of global finance. They came to Washington, as countries hit by the developed world’s financial crisis and, in some cases, as countries that might be able to help fix it.

The G20 (more formally, the Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors), created after the emerging-market crises a decade ago, is not perfect for today’s problems. It excludes a big economy with an admired system of financial regulation (Spain) but includes a mid-sized country that has become irrelevant to global finance because of its own mismanagement (Argentina). Still, the G20 includes most of the key parts of the rich and emerging world, making it a better forum for global economic co-operation than the G7 group of rich countries, which has until now held the stage (Source: The Economist).

A recapitulation and highlights of the G20 meeting can be found here:
- BBC News: G20 summit: In quotes
- BBC News: G20 declaration: Full text