Hello Company

In the current scenario, pertaining to the private or for that matter the governmental organizations, downsizing, has become a prominent feature. Today, organizations prefer to reduce the size of the manpower employed in order to come at par with the escalations and de-escalations of the profits and losses of shares in the market.

In this competitive market, another key organization to come forward is the Yahoo! Inc., the epitome of the internet networking, which has decided to shrink down their workforce up to seven percent. This has come as a consequence to the twenty-three percent loss of profit in the fourth quarter of the year that has gone by. The loss in the value of Yahoo has come as the other companies like Google and MSN have entered the online advertisement business.

Yahoo incorporated this decision as a cautious strategy to come into terms with any such losses that can be hypothetically anticipated in the current year. But this in turn has led to a big scaling down of shares of this esteemed group, almost 10 percent of the amount that was earlier. This has led to the exhaustion of almost $35 billion shareholder wealth.

Wal-Mart - does the name sound familiar? Well, this is one of the biggest retail chain in the U.S. But, with the growth of other brand names like KMart, Macy’s, as well as Kroger, Wal-Mart is facing a hard time in the retail business. With the ever growing customer demand to ‘rollback’ prices, Wal-Mart is facing a tough time.

Consumers have been demanding personalized service at low cost. Such is the nature of the retail business. They want everything at low price, otherwise they will simply move on to the next brand name. Also on the demand list are freshness and more choices.

Microsoft seems to have lost its patience with Yahoo. It is contemplating a hostile bid for the company, if Yahoo! does not begin talks with Microsoft soon. The outlook of Microsoft had been clarified by its chief financial officer Chris Liddell after Microsoft witnessed an 11 percent drop in its third-quarter profit. However, despite of drop in profit, revenues of Microsoft however rose from $14.39 billion to $14.45 billion in the last three months. Microsoft had offered Yahoo! $44 billion for take over while Yahoo! is vacillating over the issue.

In the Troy of the internet networking industry, Yahoo seems to be the very sought after Helen, pursued by two titans, Microsoft and Google, one trying to convince her to marry and the other trying to deter that. The proposed alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft and now the open condemnation of Google and its unceasing efforts to restrain this alliance from becoming a reality has amounted to a Trojan War situation, the outcome of which seems to rely on the sole decision of Yahoo although the $44.6 billion bid would not be an easy bait to resist.

A twist in the story is currently being seen as Google is trying its best to convince Yahoo out of this stipulation giving the reason that it would pose serious threats to the competitive nature of the industry, its openness and innovation. Google is keeping a continuous watch over the situation and seems to be suggesting Yahoo, ways that would help it to resist the irresistible bid. This is suggestive of hypothetical alliances or some kind of partnership between the two with the help of AOL, as Google owns five percent of its shares.

Airbus said on Tuesday it expects at least 290 plane orders from the Dubai Air Show, raking in some $85 billion in announcements this week. Airbus S.A.S. is the civil aircraft manufacturing subsidiary of EADS N.V. (European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company), a pan-European aerospace concern. Based at Toulouse, France with significant operations in other European states, Airbus produces around half of the world’s jet airliners, with most of the rest built by rival Boeing Commercial Airplanes, though the precise share varies every year.

Both Airbus and Boeing companies expect a record year, but Airbus says its orders at Dubai have helped push it ahead of Boeing. On Tuesday, Airbus added a $2 billion order with Yemen’s Yemenia for 10 A350 XWB planes and one for 8 single-aisle A320s from Pakistan’s Airblue worth about $520 million.

“We’re having a record year, Boeing is having a record year.It looks like quite the record show. It’s 290 orders, over half of which are firm. The others will be firm within 30 days,” said Airbus sales boss John Leahy.

The show, which ends on Thursday, has already dwarfed the total of $21 billion in new business announced when last held in 2005 and has put Dubai among the world’s biggest aerospace events alongside shows in Paris and in Farnborough, England. Sales figures are in list prices which conceal discounts that are an industry norm, but the sheer number of aircraft involved for both companies indicates 2007 will be their busiest year ever.

Airbus said the intake at Dubai had boosted it above Boeing this week in their battle for annual orders, a race Boeing won in 2006 for the first time in six years. At the end of September, Boeing was leading 903 to 854. High crude oil prices are helping sales of new more fuel efficient models such as the Airbus A350 and Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner.

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Even after the end of the Cold War and the rising US political and commercial hegemony, Russia is still nurturing its ambition to revive its former glory by becoming a major force to reckon with has become clear with the recent move by the state-controlled Gazprom’s foray into Libya. Gazprom, the largest producer of natural gas in the world has joined forces with Eni of Italy to pipe natural gas from Libya across the Mediterranean to Southern Europe. This move by Gazprom is aimed at controlling the gas supply routes to Southern Europe.

Libya has the fourth largest natural gas reserve in Africa after Algeria, Nigeria and Egypt. Besides Libya, Gazprom is trying to win production contracts in Algeria, which already supplies 13 percent of Europe’s total gas requirements. By creating a natural gas cartel, Russia would geopolitically surround Europe with its pipelines, further increasing its monopolistic hegemony in the European energy sector.

The troubled Wall Street investment bank Merrill Lynch, now has a new chairman and chief executive - John Thain, the chief executive of NYSE Euronext. He replaces Stan O’Neal who stepped down two weeks ago after the company announced that it was facing $7.5 billion write-down on its sub prime-related holdings.

News of Mr. Thain’s appointment pushed up the price of Merrill Lynch’s share by 2%. A former co-president of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Thain worked in the bank’s bond department and later headed the risk management as chief financial officer. Mr. Thain is further credited with transforming NYSE since he took over as its chief executive in January 2004.

Last year Merrill was the largest issuer of collateralized debt obligations, based on sub prime mortgage securities and has been left with large holdings of highly illiquid investments. Merrill is facing write-down on these holdings in the fourth quarter and is facing lawsuits from investors alleging it invested their money in risky sub prime securities.

Mr. Thain faces a rather daunting task of setting Merrill’s house in order.

Source:ft
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Renowned carmaker BMW announced Friday that it is planning to discharge thousands of workers as a step to combat increasing costs and rivalry from its competitors such as Mercedes. This action would mark the company’s first noteworthy layoff in a span of 10 years. BMW spokesman, Bill McAndrews declined to disclose the number of jobs that will be reduced until the beginning of next year. He however did not corroborate the Der Spiegel Internet version which had reported that BMW will liberate around 8000 workers.

Following several years of being the most flourishing carmaker in Germany, Bayerische Motoren Werke faced several losses in its business. The layoff will mainly focus on restoring profitability of the German company. In the recent past, there have been many other instances of such layoffs in Germany with General Motors eliminating several thousands of workers from its Mercedes, Volkswagen and Opel departments. BMW’s concern was to manufacture more number of cars without expanding payments. As BMW is enhancing its car production in the US, it is unlikely that US will be witnessing such a layoff.

According to BMW spokesman Bill McAndrews, many employees with provisional contacts with the Munich-based BMW will be affected as a result of this mass layoff. The company will be proposing voluntary buyouts and will also have a discussion with its unions to settle for more flexible working hours. He added, ‘This will be done with a BMW approach... It will be socially acceptable.’

No amount of cajoling or coaxing made Yahoo accede to Microsoft’s demand for acquisition. Heartbroken, Microsoft has finally given up its plan to acquire Yahoo. It will instead tread a solitary path to achieve its goal of increasing its share in online advertising, albeit at a slower pace.

26 April 2008 was the deadline set by Microsoft for Yahoo to accept its $44.6 billion offer for acquisition. The unresponsive Yahoo made Microsoft threaten the company with a hostile take offer. However, with Yahoo remaining undeterred, Microsoft agreed to raise its offer by $5 billion to $47.5 billion or $33 per share. But Yahoo remained adamant and demanded $53 billion. A desperate chief executive of Microsoft Steve Ballmer in a letter to Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang formally withdrew the offer in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders.

Cognos, is to be acquired by I.B.M. for $4.9 billion. The takeover of Cognos, which is based in Ottawa, followed last month’s acquisition of the French company Business Objects, another maker of business intelligence software, by SAP of Germany for $6.8 billion. In March, Oracle bought Hyperion, another competitor of Cognos.

Software that sifts through data to tease out things like a customer’s buying habits or a corporation’s inefficiencies is hardly new. Cognos itself was founded in 1969. Cognos 8 BI, which was launched in September 2005, combines the features of several previous products: ReportNet, PowerPlay, Metrics Manager, Noticecast, and Data Manager (formerly Decision Stream).