Vroom with a whew! Tatas set for motown debut

21 Dec 2007, 0052 hrs IST,TNN

WASHINGTON: When the patriarch Jamshedji Tata traveled to the United States in 1902, he visited many cities in the country’s rust belt, looking for technology for his proposed steel mill in India. But India's greatest business visionary searched for other opportunities too.

He went as far down as Georgia looking into the cotton industry, and in the north, he touched Michigan. There was only one reason he did not eye Motown and its most famous product. It wasn't even born. By the time the Ford T-model debuted in 1908, Tata had been dead four years.

Nearly a century later, Tata scions are poised to set right that historical missed opportunity by buying Ford's premier brand Jaguar and Land Rover, for an estimated $ 2 billion plus. The deal could be announced as early as Friday, various business media outlets are reporting, although Ford itself maintained a studied silence. But the natter in the auto industry is that the auto giant wants to get the deal out of the way before the Christmas holidays.

The world greatest automotive society is agog -- even horrified -- at the prospect of a Tata-owned Jaguar and Land Rover. Much of the debate has centered around Tata’s ability to handle luxury brands at a time there is great attention on its Rs 1 lakh car ($ 2500), whose January 10 debut is also the talk of the auto world.

How can Tatas own both the world's cheapest car and a luxury brand? For the record, Ford has announced that the latest model of the Jaguar 2009 XF sedan will go on sale March 1, 2008 at an MSRP of just under $50,000 with a standard V8 engine.

In contrast, Tata's $ 2500 scoop is less than the price of a Segway or some specialty bicycles sold in the US.

But if the Tata legacy is any indication, the US fears may be overstated. Tata's Indian Hotels run some of the world's finest luxury resorts.

During his 1902 visit to the US, the patriarch was so shocked by the condition in the American steel cities that he wrote to his son Dorab, who was handling the Jamshedpur project: "Be sure to lay wide streets planted with shady trees....Be sure there is plenty of space for lawns and gardens ...Reserve large areas for football, hockey and parks. Earmark areas for Hindu temples, Mohammedan mosques, and Christian churches."

Still, the image of India as a poor country incapable of making or marketing luxury brands persists -- perhaps for good reasons. One blogger wrote last week that "Instead of the Jaguar XK-R, we may soon see an XK-Vindaloo."

But early this week, as the inevitability of the Tata take over sunk in, another called the deal 'Gandhi's Revenge.'

"Family-run Tata certainly has the means, and the metal," Todd Lassa wrote on the Motor Trends website, referring to the Tata's acquisition of steel-maker Corus.

"For the Indians, owning these symbols of British civilisation is nothing less than poetic justice."

Ford has had a long and enduring relationship with India going back to pre-Independence days. Many Indian leaders of that era used Ford automobiles and there were Ford dealerships across India. The Ford patriarch, Henry Ford, exchanged correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi even though they were poles apart in their approach to life -- one a champion of the machine age and the other a fan of human labor.

Gandhi once sent Ford a "Charka" (a spinning wheel) as a gift. Little could Ford have foreseen that his scions would be turning over two luxury brands to an Indian company in return.

(http://timesofindia.com)

China blasts U.S. presidential hopeful for suggesting toy import ban

BEIJING, Dec. 20 KYODO

China on Thursday criticized U.S. presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama for suggesting he would ban Chinese toy imports if elected because of concerns over their safety.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said the overwhelming majority of Chinese toys are safe and he indicated that any suggestion of an important ban is a complete overreaction.

(http://home.kyodo.co.jp)

Children who are allowed to go out unsupervised grow up to be healthier and more sociable, according to a new study.

WASHINGTON: Children who are allowed to go out unsupervised grow up to be healthier and more sociable, according to a new study.

The study, led by Professor Roger Mackett of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at the University College London, found that kids who are permitted to leave the house without an adult supervision are more active and enjoy a richer social life than those who are constantly supervised.

For the study, the team studied 330 pupils from two schools in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, all aged between 8 and 11. The children completed questionnaires, kept travel diaries, had their movements logged using GPS monitors and wore portable motion sensors to measure their speed of travel, changes in direction and the number of ‘activity calories’ they consumed.

“We asked children whether they were allowed out without an adult and then looked at where they go and how they behave. In general, children who aren’t constantly supervised tend to leave the house more often – exploring their surroundings, playing with other children and using up more calories than their sedentary, house-bound peers,” Prof Mackett said.

They found that children allowed out without adults were more active and burnt more calories than their constantly supervised peers.

The study also showed that children walk faster and take a more direct route when an adult is present, but they do not use more energy than unaccompanied children. This is because unsupervised children move in a more meandering fashion as they investigate their environment and socialise with other children.

The results indicated that access to local open space is a noteworthy factor in determining whether boys are allowed out of the house without an adult. 71 percent of those with access to open space were allowed out, compared to just 51 percent of those without such access.

The team also found that of the three types of activity monitored during the study (walking, unstructured play and participation in organised clubs), walking used up the most activity calories.

“Fears over road safety and ‘stranger danger’ need to be balanced against soaring levels of childhood obesity and poor health. Letting a child out to play is one of the best things a parent can do for their child’s physical health and personal development,” Prof Mackett said.

“Allowing children to leave the house without an accompanying adult has significant benefits, but we need to design and build environments that children feel comfortable in and that parents feel confident to let them use on their own. The health benefits are clear, but without action the less tangible benefits of increased independence, self-reliance and general ‘growing up’ are in danger of being lost,” he added.

The study is published in a special edition of the journal Built Environment .

(http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

IBM's Employee Count in India 73,000 - up from 9000 in 2003

BOSTON: IBM Corp's expansion in developing countries shows no sign of relenting. The technology company revealed that it now has 73,000 employees in India, almost a 40 per cent leap from last year.

IBM did not provide updated figures for its work force in the US, which has held steady around 125,000 people in recent years.

Nor did IBM project its total head count. It had 355,766 employees worldwide at the end of 2006.

If the total has risen by the same rate as in 2006, almost one in five IBM workers now is in India, its second-largest center.

Like many other technology providers, IBM has rushed to take advantage of the lower labour costs India offers even for highly skilled workers. IBM's base in India numbered only 9,000 people in 2003, but it was about 53,000 last year.

IBM has been stressing not only the lower expense of working in India but the potential of the Indian market. IBM executives said that the company expected to see revenue from the Indian market jump to nearly $1 billion this year, from $700 million in 2006.

Armonk, NY-based IBM is also ramping up in other key developing markets. Its chairman and chief executive, Sam Palmisano, recently formed a new organisation that will spur IBM's investment in emerging economies.

The plan is meant to capitalise on the higher growth rates in the so-called “BRIC” countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China. IBM's revenue from these countries rose 18 per cent in the first three quarters of this year, even after discounting the benefit of currency fluctuations.

IBM's total employee count in these countries now is nearly 100,000, up from 70,000 a year ago.

IBM's vice president of financial management, Jesse J Greene Jr, would not forecast how much more hiring the company still might do in emerging markets.

However, he said “we see continuing good stability in the BRIC countries in general and good opportunity for growth in these countries as well.”

(http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

Conservative wins S Korea presidency

From correspondents in Seoul

December 20, 2007 05:10am

LEE Myung-Bak won South Korea's presidential election by a landslide overnight, as voters backed the former Hyundai chief executive to revive the economy and disregarded fraud allegations against him.

Mr Lee's two closest rivals conceded defeat to the opposition conservative candidate, whose victory ends a decade of left-leaning rule.

Official results with 89 per cent of the vote counted gave him 48.2 per cent to his closest challenger's 26.7 per cent, the biggest victory margin in the nation's democratic history.

"Dear people, today you gave me overwhelming support," the Grand National Party (GNP) candidate said in brief comments to the electorate after a rapturous welcome at party HQ.

"I will serve you politely and humbly...I will do my best to revive the country's economy which is facing a crisis."

Mr Lee's nearest rival, Chung Dong-Young of the liberal pro-government United New Democratic Party, and right-wing independent Lee Hoi-Chang conceded defeat.

"I humbly accept the people's choice," said Mr Chung, who seemed close to tears.

Koreans grappling with high youth unemployment, an ever-widening income gap and soaring property prices gave the candidate whose slogan was "Economy First!" the unprecedented mandate despite a looming fraud investigation.

GNP headquarters erupted with joy when exit polls flashed on a screen. Officials and supporters hugged each other, wept and yelled "Hurrah!"

Thousands of others celebrated in the streets in near-zero temperatures, chanting "Lee Myung-Bak!" setting off firecrackers and cheering and dancing.

Mr Lee, who turned 66 on polling day, will be the nation's first leader from a business background and the first president-elect to face a criminal inquiry.

He will be inaugurated on February 25 to replace incumbent Roh Moo-Hyun, who congratulated his successor on his victory.

State prosecutors cleared Mr Lee early this month of involvement in a 2001 share-rigging fraud involving his former business partner, an issue which had dogged his campaign.

But apparent new video evidence surfaced on Monday of Mr Lee's past connection to a firm linked to the scandal, prompting rivals in parliament to vote for an inquiry by an independent prosecutor.

Media reports said the prosecutor may report just before the inauguration but most voters were clearly willing to accept the awkward situation.

"I saw the video clip but I don't care about anything else but my livelihood," said a small restaurant owner who gave his name as Han. "My business is so bad these days."

Despite the share scandal, in which Mr Lee strongly denies involvement, many see him as having the best background to boost the economy.

The man once nicknamed the "bulldozer" rose from childhood poverty to become a Hyundai construction executive and mayor of Seoul, where he pushed through an ambitious and hugely popular waterway beautification scheme.

Mr Lee's "747" campaign pledge aims to achieve seven percent growth, increase per capita income to $US40,000 ($46,606.47) and make South Korea the world's seventh largest economy by encouraging market forces.

"I know many people are now in a difficult situation," he told cheering supporters in a televised message.

"I will solve their problems... I will show you that we can do anything if we all work together."

Apart from the economy, Mr Lee promises a firmer line on North Korea, accusing the Roh government of pampering the communist state with unconditional aid. He said he would offer it massive help but strictly tied to denuclearisation.

"The election outcome was amazing," Sungkyunkwan University political science professor Kim Il-Young said.

Prof Kim said Mr Lee might have benefited from the lowest ever turnout in a Korean presidential election of 62.9 per cent.

"The disclosure of the video claim prompted conservative voters to band together while many liberal voters gave up and did not vote," Prof Kim said.

"The outcome reflected widespread public despair at President Roh's administration."

(http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph)

Research Request #5 (U.S. Prison Population Sets Record)

Associated Press
Friday, December 1, 2006; Page A03

A record 7 million people -- one in every 32 U.S. adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, a Justice Department report released yesterday shows.

Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to the report.

More than 4.1 million people were on probation and 784,208 were on parole at the end of 2005. Prison releases are increasing, but admissions are increasing more.

Men still far outnumber women in prisons and jails, but the female population is growing faster. Over the past year, the female population in state or federal prison increased 2.6 percent and the number of male inmates rose 1.9 percent. By year's end, 7 percent of inmates were women. The gender figures do not include inmates in local jails.

"Misguided policies that create harsher sentences for nonviolent drug offenses are disproportionately responsible for the increasing rates of women in prisons and jails," Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group that supports criminal justice reform, said in a statement....

(http://www.washingtonpost.com)

Is India Bad for Jaguar?

Friday, Dec. 14, 2007 By SIMON ROBINSON/NEW DELHI

The Orient Express Hotel Chain's Hotel Cipriani in Venice; a Jaguar XF

Orient Express Hotels; Jaguar

India likes to trumpet its corporate successes, and this week the emerging global power had plenty to shout about with the appointment of Indian-born Vikram Pandit to head troubled financial giant Citigroup. But even as it celebrated, India Inc. was also up in arms over perceived slights to its ability to run two of the world's most prestigious brands.

India's currency comes of age, spurring complaints among exporters and bringing cheer to wealthy globetrotters

First, a group of U.S. Jaguar dealers said they opposed the possibility that Ford, Jaguar's owner, might sell the British luxury car brand to an Indian firm. Two of the three firms that Ford has shortlisted as potential purchasers are Indian: Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Motors. The dealers said that the sale to an Indian company would hurt Jaguar's image. "I don't believe the U.S. public is ready for ownership out of India of a luxury car make," Ken Gorin, chairman of the Jaguar Business Operations Council, told the Wall Street Journal. "And I believe it would severely throw a tremendous cast of doubt over the viability of the brand."

A few days later Indian Hotels, which owns the luxury Taj hotel chain and is itself a branch of the Tata empire, was told its overtures to New York Stock Exchange-listed luxury hotel and cruise firm Orient-Express were unwelcome — and potentially damaging. Indian Hotels recently upped its stake in Orient-Express to 11.5%. But Orient-Express CEO Paul White, in a letter to Indian Hotels Vice-Chairman R. K. Krishna Kumar, wrote that "any association of our luxury brands and properties with your brands and properties would result in a reduction of our brands and of our business and would likely lead to erosion."

Indian Hotels' Kumar told TIME that his first reaction upon receiving the letter "was that Paul White could not possibly have drafted [it]... I came to the conclusion that the person who drafted this letter needs counseling." Indian Hotels, he said, had proposed a friendly partnership in which each company would take an equity stake in the other, share expertise but remain independent. "At no time did we moot the the idea of a merger," Kumar says. White's letter, he says, "will go down as one of the most uncivilized exchanges of views between two companies in the 21st century." Its sentiments, Kumar says, reflect "an era that is now prehistoric."

Many Indians shared Kumar's sense of outrage. Commerce and industry minister Kamal Nath warned that, "There cannot be any discrimination against outward investment from India." In an era of globalization, he said, "trade and investment [is] a two-way street." Industrialist Venugopal Dhoot, who heads the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, told the Press Trust of India that Orient-Express had shown "arrogance toward one of India's most respected business houses." The discriminatory tone of Orient-Express's letter was "close to racism, barely camouflaged in the language of branding," opined an angry editorial (entitled "Racism Can't Halt Indian Takeovers") in India's Economic Times. The days of "white supremacy are disappearing rapidly, and white brand value with it," the piece went on. "When Arab financiers are needed to rescue Citigroup, notions of white cachet seem ludicrous."

Both Orient-Express and Jaguar's Gorin emphasize that their judgments were based on business strategy alone. Gorin told the Wall Street Journal that his sentiments also applied to a Chinese company buying Jaguar and should not be read as a judgment on Mahindra or Tata's management abilities. "My concern is perception," he said. "And perception is reality." Pippa Isbell, an Orient-Express spokesperson, says that "our letter was purely based on business rationale." Orient-Express, she says, owns properties around the world, and the company's decision to decline a closer relationship with Indian Hotels "is not related to the fact that the company is Indian but is based entirely on the rationale that their dominant business in India is not a strategic fit with our business."

To be sure, the image of a luxury brand requires delicate and careful grooming. And while Tata and other Indian manufacturers could soon be world beaters in producing ultra cheap cars, their track record in running a luxury auto brand is untested. At the same time, however, America's Ford has not exactly made a great success of Jaguar over the past few years: that's one reason the company is selling it. And when it comes to hotels, the Taj chain owns, among its wide range of properties, some of the most luxurious hotels in the world. It is also expanding: in the past few years it has snapped up properties in Boston, Manhattan and San Francisco. "It would be very easy for us to make an open offer [for Orient-Express]," says Kumar. "Except for our own restraint."

Indeed, if history is any guide, Indian companies take rebuttal as a challenge. When British-based Indian-born businessman Lakshmi Mittal first bid for French steel maker Arcelor last year, the company's French CEO said he was horrified by the idea of an Indian taking over, likening Mittal Steel to eau de Cologne and Arcelor to perfume. Within months, Mittal had won out. A century earlier, when Tata founder Jamsetji Tata suggested making steel for the colonial railway system, a British administrator dismissed the idea with barely concealed contempt. Earlier this year, Tata paid almost $14 billion to buy Corus, British Steel's successor. The moral of that story is not lost on India's corporate captains. They say that Western companies had better get used to the idea of Indians taking over.

(http://www.time.com)

Russia delivers first nuclear fuel to Iran

By Reuters, December 17

Iran will not halt uranium enrichment even with delivery of fuel from Russia for its first nuclear power plant, a senior Iranian official said on Monday, adding he could not yet confirm Iran had received the fuel.

The Russian state agency building the station said in a statement on Monday it had delivered the first fuel shipment for the Bushehr plant. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the move would create the conditions for Iran to suspend enrichment....

(http://ft.com)