Eye Of Singapore

It’s no secret that Asian merger fever is a major trend. It seems the Chinese government holds endless foreign reserves, and is using that cash to acquire Western firms and enter American market. China and India are showing the world they’re not just low-cost exporters, but also global M&A players.

We’ve seen examples with factories that made clothing and computers for American firms turning around and buying their overseas customers, such as the clothing factory Li & Fung in China, which purchased four of designer Liz Claiborne’s brands.

And while Lenovo’s purchase of IBM’s pc division wasn’t China’s largest acquisition, it certainly was one of the most newsworthy purchases.

Indian firms that were formerly outsourced back offices are purchasing their clients. The 2007 list of big-ticket purchases was impressive. In India: Hindalco Industries bought Novelis, a Canadian aluminum company, for $3.6 billion. Suzlon Energy (India’s largest wind power company) nabbed REpower, a German engineering firm, for $1.7 billion. United Breweries, India’s largest beer and spirits conglomerate, snapped up Whyte & Mackay, the world’s fourth-largest distiller of Scotch whisky, for $1 billion. Wipro, one of India’s software giants, bought New Jersey-based Infocrossing for $600 million.

In China: ICBC, a state-owned Chinese bank, put up $5.5 billion - China’s largest overseas investment ever - for a 20 percent stake in Standard Bank, South Africa’s biggest lender. China Development Bank announced a $3 billion investment in Barclays PLC to support the British bank’s bid for the Dutch bank ABN AMRO. In March, the Chinese government put together an investment fund that invested $3 billion for a 10 percent stake in the U.S. private equity firm Blackstone Group.

So what are Chinese and Indian firms actually buying? And how would we want to position our firms to sell to them, if desired? First, we have to see who the customer is.

In China, we are dealing primarily with government officials, even if they masquerade as business people and have titles such as CEO or director on their cards. Prominence within the Communist Party enables them to have cash to commit to overseas purchases; the party will be highly involved in all dealings.

In India, we’re usually dealing with actual business people. They will, of course, have strong government ties, but many are true entrepreneurs or come from entrepreneurial families.

What do these new buyers want? Chinese firms don’t necessarily demand management control of their acquisitions or investments, if the trend is any kind of indicator. When an American company buys a business, it asks one of two questions: Will it make a profit? Or will it give us market share?

When Chinese companies make acquisitions, they often do it as a way to educate themselves about a specific market or industry. Indian firms are quite different, and shouldn’t be examined through the same lens as Chinese firms. Indian firms clearly want control of the properties they buy. There is often a more strategic reason to make the buy, which fits into the parent firm’s business model.

What is the “win”? Both countries want a win. And that looks different in different countries. Tata’s (of India) acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover (two former British brands that were owned by Ford) seems to make little sense financially.

These brands steadily declined in the last several years (Ford paid about $5 billion for Jaguar, and sold it with Land Rover for $2 billion). One of many bad business deals?

Culturally, the acquisition makes sense, though. As a former colony of Great Britain, India is always showing the world that it’s a power to be dealt with. And if Tata can turn around Jaguar, it will demonstrate it can revive the sick brand, doing it better than either the British or Americans. It’s more about pride than money.

Chinese victories are about policy, and going global. Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been ordered to polish the Chinese reputation and spread Chinese multinationalism.

Last year, President Hu Jintao promised to “accelerate the growth of Chinese brand names in the world.” But since the acquiring firms from China are SOEs, they run into problems, and governments can block the purchase. But they may buy a company - even if it’s inferior - just to make the Communist Party happy, which they must do.

In selling to India, be prepared to give up control. Seek a piece of the matrix that’s missing from Indian buyers, and fill the void.

When dealing with China, add value in a different way. Show an opening to Chinese brands, education of Chinese executives and willingness to work with the Chinese to teach them your business, market and industry. Sound interesting? Visit MarketAccessToolkit.com for free business consulting with the purchase of the international business toolkit.

My friends call me nuts, but I’m crazy as a fox. I can’t even remember of all the places that have my social security number and date of birth over my lifetime. There’s no way I can go back and get it all changed. That’s why I decided to sign up for identity theft protection with Trusted ID. You can read a TrustedID review like I did and see what they provide.

It doesn’t take a lot for an identity thief to be able to impersonate you. My friends think all banks, lenders and credit bureaus are perfect and never make errors. But that’s not true. Because we all want instant credit and instant transactions, these places work on a ‘close enough’ model of checking information. On top of that, stores and merchants may not have the latest security measures on their electronic transactions. Most don’t. That’s how come there are so many data breaches nowadays that affect hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of people at the same time.

Laptops, hard drives and backup tapes that have zillions of pieces of personal info on them go missing all the time. (Okay, I know ‘zillions’ isn’t really a word, but it just seems to fit here!) Heck, hackers don’t have to even be computer whizzes anymore because most businesses have security holes in them big enough to drive a truck through. Sloppy security procedures and just plain stupid mistakes happen all the time.

Every year, identity theft increases. Thieves are very organized and clever. They all play a little part in the theft, which makes it well-nigh impossible to track them down. Even if caught, a conviction is tough to get. Identity thieves know this and it’s a crime that’s very attractive and profitable.

I chose TrustedID’s plan because they’ve been around for a while and have a good track record of protecting people. Suze Orman - that financial lady from TV - advocates them. She knows what she’s talking about. They have all the right tracking and monitoring tools to keep me safe. On top of that, I can call them 24/7 and get a real breathing person to answer my questions. Just try that with one of the credit bureaus and their identity theft monitoring services!

I got a Trusted ID promotion code which lowered my membership cost a whopping 15%. Plus I got a free month.

Psychotic? Who cares - I’m staying safe.

Whilst some energy experts place grasshopper like pumps across the landscape to draw fossil fuel to the surface others are dotting the landscape with massive windmills. However, one maverick California company is indicating that inexpensive balloons may be the true future of energy.

Cool Earth Solar, Livermore California; has developed eight-foot plastic balloons which its creators believe will transform the way we think about energy.

The evidence may be strongly scrutinized in the next few years as Cool Earth installs a small power plant online using balloons equipped with solar receptors. The first plant is expected to produce 250,000 watts of electricity from the balloons that resemble an eight-foot wide Mylar party balloons. The first plant is scheduled to be open by the year’s end.

The next stage in their global solar outreach is for a 1.5 million watt plant to be developed in Tracy, California. Cool Earth fully intends to go global.

Company officials indicate the plastic material used in developing the balloons cost as little as $2.00 per balloon and energy resulting from these balloons is expected to be cost competitive with natural gas derived electricity.

This is good news for renewable power enthusiasts who have long wished for commercial viability of this renewable source. CleanTechnica.com indicates the inflated balloon, “Focuses sunlight onto a photovoltaic cell held at its focal point. The design produces 400 times the electricity that a solar cell would create without the company’s concentrator.”

The balloons are used primarily due to the surface area being considerably bigger than usual solar receptors. Because the cost is reduced due to the low-cost material used for the inflated balloon the surface can be replaced as needed whilst captured energy from the sun is safely stored at Cool Earth facilities and then redistributed for consumer use.

In describing the exclusive receptors Eric Cummings, Founder and CTO of Cool Earth Solar, noted the pending patents filed in the summer of 2007, “The filing of this intellectual property is a milestone in the development and protection of Cool Earth Solar’s radical approach to solar concentrating technology. We believe this technology makes deployment of solar power economically viable as a utility scale application.” Investors sound as if they agree as the coolearthsolar.com website declared an infusion of 21 million dollars in funding associated to this breakthrough technology.

Cool Earth sources sought to demonstrate the point by saying, “The amount of sunlight that hits the Earth’s surface in one hour is enough to power the entire world for a year.”

Company officials are intent on capitalizing on this knowledge and permitting consumers to benefit from their findings. Cool Earth describes the technical side of their system by saying, “Much like using a magnifying glass to concentrate light, concentrated solar systems use lenses or reflectors to concentrate sunlight onto highly efficient solar cells. By concentrating the light onto a single high efficiency cell, the technology vastly reduces the amount of traditional solar cell area needed to produce electricity. Multi-junction, high efficiency cells derived from satellite technology allow CPV systems to generate the same amount of electricity as traditional flat-panel PV systems while using up to 300 to 400 times less solar cell material.”

Discover.com may have said it best when they reported, “Millions of these balloons could hover low over the landscape, each concentrating sunlight onto a photovoltaic cell inside, and pumping out electricity more cheaply than power from fossil fuels.”

Although some will pursue other forms of alternate energy there will be one company in California enjoying the sunshine while expanding solar potential.

Has your Xbox 360 given up on you? I can feel your pain since I had exactly the same problem. But, instead of sending the Xbox 360 in for repairs I took the matter into my own hands and found the fix.

You see, there is a flaw within the Xbox 360 which causes this error and it is very easy to fix. Microsoft can fix it, but you may have to wait weeks to get your system back. Your local electronics shop can fix it (maybe), but they might want to charge you and arm and a leg.

Since I really didn’t want to wait or pay through the nose, I searched the web until I found someone who had put together the complete fix in a step by step guide. And, the best part is they guarantee you will be playing your games again by this evening!!

What’s more is they included two fixes within the guide and one of them does not even involve taking the Xbox 360 apart. If you’re handy, with this info you could make $$$’s just buying broken Xbox 360’s and repairing them in about 1 hour.

Sound neat? Here’s where you can get more information… Xbox360 Three Red Lights Fix

If you’ve been putting off getting your Xbox 360 fixed because you are out of warranty or because you thought it was too hard, time-consuming, and so on; Xbox 360 3 Red Lights Repair Guide will show you exactly how to fix it. Don’t suffer with this problem any longer get the complete Xbox 360 3 Red Lights Repair Guide today.

Because you can fix the problem - easily! - with the Xbox 360 Rings of Death Repair Guide.

Whoops. 210 pounds. OMG. Where did it all come from? From my eating habits, that’s where. I was always around the 185 pound mark since my early 20’s(I am 48 now) but the last 3-4 years has seen me gain 25 more.

I guess you are the same as me where you look in the mirror and declare that one day, just one day, I am going to lose this midriff. I would like a dollar for everytime I said it to myself. I could buy a donut store with the money.(kidding).

Anyway, 10 weeks ago I made the conscious decision that the weight was coming off. No more mucking around. Now, I am not one for shakes and pills and meetings etc so I devised my own plan to do this.It is very simple and does not have you eating lettuce and cabbage leaves.

You do not have to go organic or Eastern or low fat, high carb mumbo jumbo. It is so seriously simple you will kick yourself after reading how I went about losing the weight. Actually, I think you will love this eating plan. I do. And I am going to tell you the only ingredient that you have to stop which I hope does not cause to much angst among you.

Here it is. Firstly, throw out your dinner plate. Well, put it away somewhere. Go to a store and buy a plate apporoximately half the size of the one you are now using. Now when you serve up dinner instead of putting 3 roast potatoes on the plate only put 1.5, instead of 5 slices of roast beef only put 3. Instead of smothering it in gravy only put on a modest amount.

See the pattern? When you have apple pie for dessert only have half the portion you would usually have. And for that cup of coffee only put in half the sugar you normally would have. Has the penny dropped yet? We are still eating exactly what we have before but we are eating less of it.

Now be serious here. Do you really need to have the amount you are having now? Do you absolutely have to eat every morsel of food that is dished up? Of course not. Limit the amount that goes in and the pounds will fall off. I averaged 2 pounds a week for 10 weeks.

I still eat my favorite chocolate biscuits but I only have 2 instead of the 5 or 6 I used to have. I eat exactly what I ate before only in smaller portions. Sure you may still be hungry doing this method but that will only last a week or two until your stomach adjusts to what it being fed. We can top up with water if we feel empty anyway.

I alluded previously to the one ingredient we must delete from our regime. What is it? Simply put it is alcohol. Yep. Give up the grog. I was fond of a drink 10 weeks ago but realised that this was contributing to the weight gain. be honest, do we really need it? I don’t so giving up was a cinch for me.

There you have it. The plan that made me lose 22 pounds in 10 weeks. I feel better, my stamina has improved and I can see body parts I could not before. Put in simple terms, only eat 60-50% of what you are eating now to help with your weight loss plan.

Breakfast is vital in any health regime. Do you know why breakfast is important? It is the kick start you need on the way to your weight loss goal or any other fitness plan you undetake. Go to http://craigmcpherson.info/why-eating-breakfast-is-important.html to get the low down on breakfast.

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