Filmmaker Oliver Stone has been signed on to helm the sequel to his 1987 hit film Wall Street starring Michael Douglas. Douglas, who won an Oscar for the original film, is set to reprise his Gordon Gekko's role.
The total number of M&A deals announced till December 15 stood at 445 and its combined value was $30.72 billion, according to global consultancy firm Grant Thornton said. It hardly a match to last year's 676 deals worth $51.11 billion.
Manic Monday, Tragic Tuesday, Black Friday. We are not short of monikers to describe the current financial market meltdown that has dragged the world into recession. But everyone is suffering from a short-to-medium term memory loss and a failure to learn from past mistakes.
A Jet Airways spokesperson confirmed the pay cuts but said that the move was only temporary and once the situation improved, it would do a revision. The salary cuts range from 5 to 25 per cent and include the top management. In addition, other perks like car facilities and car maintenance allowances have also been withdrawn from May onwards, the source said.
As the global economic crisis unfolds, India expects further moderation in foreign capital flows and exports leading to slowdown in economy, minister of state for finance P K Bansal told the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. Referring to the impact of crisis on the country, Bansal, to another query said, "Industrial activity, particularly in the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors, is decelerating."
The impact of the global meltdown has forced India's second largest IT bellwether Infosys Technologies to freeze wage hikes and hiring in new fiscal 2009-10.
Industrialist Mudit Jain says companies need to cut costs and halt expansion plans to tide over the economic crisis.
Telecom Italia is targeting to reduce the debt significantly over the period 2009-2011. It plans to reduce net debt to earnings before by interest, tax and depreciation and amortisation ratio to 2.3 at the end of 2011 from over 3 at present.
The average pay of a chief executive at an American company fell by 6.8 per cent in 2008, as entities made steep cuts in bonuses in the wake of the financial meltdown.
Bookings in five-star hotels and inflow of foreign tourists into the country were already running low due to the global economic meltdown. With Wednesday's terror attack, the hotel industry is expected to see a rise in the number of cancellations and also a substantial reduction in tourist numbers since the terrorists have struck at the peak of the tourist season.
The minister, however, admitted that manufacturing sector remains a problem area. The manufacturing sector output nearly halved to 5.3 per cent from 10.1 per cent during the first half of the previous fiscal. The other problem areas include electricity, gas and water supply group which too witnessed a deceleration of growth to 3.1 per cent in the first half of 2008-09 compared with 7.4 per cent during the first half of the last fiscal.
The U.S. is mortgaging its future by outsourcing technological inventions in exchange for short-term cash.
It is bad news on the wages front in the wake of global economic meltdown. An International Labour Organisation study says the global economic crisis is expected to lead to 'painful cuts' in the wages of millions of workers worldwide in the coming year.
Experts predict that the slowdown will last through the first half of 2009 in India, after which a slow revival will begin. As and when that happens, a lot will need to be done to adjust to the new circumstances.
Barack Obama enters his first real moment of global diplomacy in London on Wednesday with a paradox: he is the most popular US president in a generation but you would have to go back more than two generations to find one with fewer cards to play.
Even as most of the 50,000-odd employees at Satyam Computer Services remain concerned about job and pay cuts, 250 to 300 employees working on the Merrill Lynch project have accepted an offer from Bank of America (BofA), the bank that bought the sub-prime meltdown-hit investment bank in September last year.
According to Silicon Alley Insider, Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive, Amazon.com, is working at a company distribution centre in Lexington, Kentucky, this week. His motto is to spend time with hourly employees to see what they do and hear their comments on work.
The Planning Commission may go for a correction in the 11th Five Year Plan targets as it gears up for mid-term assessment of goals next year in view of the global financial meltdown's impact on the economy.
The Wall Street Journal said the move, which is being closely watched, may be followed by other players at Wall Street. After months of internal debate at Goldman, the paper said the seven top executives at the firm, including chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein, asked the board's compensation committee to grant them no bonuses.
Industry insiders as well as sector experts said that companies are unlikely to miss this opportunity to rationalise bloated boom-time salaries.
The financial meltdown and heavy taxes on works of art imported or sold in India has caused many art galleries to shut down in recent times.
UK's leading department store chain Debenhams has so far opened two stores in India alongwith its franchisee partner, Planet Retail.
"It would be lucky if we get 6 per cent (growth rate) this year," he said while describing the 7.1 per cent gross domestic product growth rate projection of the Research and Information System for Developing Countries as 'very optimistic'. RIS director-general Nagesh Kumar in his presentation projected an economic growth rate of 7.1 per cent for the current fiscal, even as he pitched for a fiscal stimulus of $50 billion to neutralise the impact of the global slowdown.
Unemployed Paul W Nawrocki of New York, hangs a poster around his neck seeking job, giving his resume to everyone, outside the Grand Central Station, 42nd Street New York on November 8, 2008. Employees across the globe are worried with many global giants laying off their staff in big numbers in the wake of the global financial crisis.
The Business Confidence Index formulated by NCAER stood at a seven-year low of 91.4 points in January 2009, plummeting 41 per cent compared to a year ago period. On a quarterly basis, the index lost 24 per cent compared to October 2008. 'This (BCI) is the lowest since January 2002,' the NCAER said in its quarterly review of the business expectations survey. It said the slowdown in the markets appears to be a leading factor in influencing the fall in business expectations.
Financier Bernard Madoff has pleaded guilty to all 11 charges in one of the largest swindles in Wall Street history. He faces as many as 150 years in prison when sentenced.
India Inc on Monday asked the government to pull out all stops to ensure availability of enough money to drive the economy on a high growth trajectory despite the global meltdown.
NRI steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal has suffered a $50 billion decline in the value of shares he holds in the ArcelorMittal following the global financial meltdown, a leading economic daily has claimed.
UTI Asset Management Company, the country's fourth-largest mutual fund, is reviewing its proposed initial public offering in view of the turbulence in the global financial markets and the meltdown in Indian equities. The management is having a rethink on the IPO because of the bearish sentiment prevailing in the markets and a lack of investor appetite, according to a source familiar with the development.
The investors shouted slogans against Chidambaram, holding him responsible for the crash in the market on Tuesday morning.
The IT and BPO services provider's CEO says there are no salary cuts yet, but can't say what will happen three months ahead. According to MphasiS' (interim) Chief Financial Officer, Susanto Banerjee, the company has already been working to so convert its fixed costs, "progressively over the quarters." It is also looking at fixed costs involving infrastructure. "We are thinking of having our future infrastructure on pay-per-use basis," he said.
This happened in a year which witnessed the overall increase in the CPSEs' profits from Rs 89,578 cr a year ago to Rs 91,140 cr. It is not linked to the global financial crisis, which resulted in the loss of jobs of 5 lakh workers during four-month period ending December 2008. The CPSEs' employee strength has been reducing since 2001-02, during which they had a staff of about 20 lakh. The number fell gradually to 16.14 lakh during 2006-07 and further to 15.7 lakh in 2007-08.
India has a better chance of growing independent of the West than any other country in Asia.
Sample this. Five cyber-thieves, allegedly part of a network that hacked into the account of a Noida businessman, were nabbed today for a Rs 1.66 crore (Rs 16.6-million) cyber hack. They used Internet banking to transfer the money from the businessman's account with the Punjab National Bank's Noida branch to their own account.
The White House announced on Wednesday that President George W Bush will invite Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the other leaders of the G-20 countries for a major White House Summit to discuss the Wall Street meltdown.
Indian economic growth has slowed down drastically to 5.3 per cent in the third quarter of fiscal year 2008-09 as against 8.9 per cent in the same period a year ago.
The prime minister also said that he expects inflation to come down in next two months. He, however, did not rule out 'indirect impact on th eIndian economy' due to the global financial crisis.
It will take a big change in economic policy and very radical, coordinated action among all advanced and emerging-market economies to avoid disaster.
The motion was given by Gurudas Dasgupta (CPI), Rupchand Pal and Santashri Chatterjee (both CPI-M) who were sharply critical of the government's "insensitive" attitude to large scale retrenchment and wage cuts and spoke of job losses to the tune of 20 lakhs (Rs 2 million) in the country.
C B Bhave, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, said on Monday that the 40 per cent limit on investment through offshore derivative instruments, or Participatory Notes, will be removed.
