Aircraft Manufacturers flying high

Boeing and Airbus both have landed quite a large amount of orders this year for respective aircrafts. Boeing, in fact broke its own 15+ year record and sold more planes than ever -- almost 4 times as much as last year! So, if such big planes are being sold, somebody must be buying them. With US airlines moving under bankruptcy protection faster than flights taking off on a snowy Chicago morning .. its the foreign airlines which are holding up Boeing and Airbus. AirIndia was a major customer for Boeing in 2005 .. with total orders amounting to 68 aircraft. [Boeing figures]
Its quite clear that while the American airline industry is in the doldrums, the rest of the world is doing quite well in that respect. Some European airlines had a scare or two in the recent past, but most of them are doing rather well. In India too .. all airlines are doing exceedingly well. This just illustrates the point that I have been trying to make all along. That the US Airline problems are not just due to low passenger demand and high fuel prices. All the flights I see nowadays are full, and fuel prices are high for all the airlines all over the world. Bad Management coupled with a lack of foresight and the ability to fall back on bankruptcy protection, I suspect, had more to do with it.

Simpler Gadgets

All around, companies are trying to push on us services, products or substances we don't really need. They create a market if one doesnt already exist for their product. As a producer - that may very well be what you want to be doing - creating new markets to overcome stagnancy in old ones. But as a consumer, I have to figure out what I actually need and will use or like, instead of what is being hyped as being cool or even essential.
I know I don't need a PSP, as I hardly if ever play computer games these days. Nor do I need a pre-paid tank of gas when I rent a car. Similarly I don't need a cell phone with Bluetooth or even Internet access. I don't want to chat online with people using instant messenger from my cell phone - I do it all day at work and home. This has been a major issue with me. The only things I want and demand from my cell phone are these -

* Excellent signal reception
* Excellent battery life
* Alarm
* Simple, intuitive interface
* Good capacity phone book

Thats it. I don't even really want a colour screen as it consumes more battery. Make it simple, make it effective. I find these basic issues are sidelined while trivial functions and features are highlighted these days.
So this article rung true. As the service providers dictate the actual phones used in the US, I doubt these kind of simple phones will easily become popular here.

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

BusinessWeek has a HUGE issue on China and India. Exhaustive. It will take me a more than a week to go through all of that! Okay, a month. [I work on the side too].

The yawing of the Yuan

China has finally revaluated the Yuan. Fixed at 8.28 to a dollar for years, China has chosen to move towards a flexible currency. The shift from 8.28 to 8.1 - albeit small (2%) is a significant one. First of all the very fact that China revaluated it's currency is significant. Second, it has chosen to restrict the Yuan within a very strict band of change. The People's Bank of China will allow the Yuan to vary by just 0.3% per day. So, baby steps it is. Don't look at the 0.3% and go 'aaargh' .. its 0.3% per day .. which can very well mean a significant change over time.

China, though reluctant to make the change, chose to do so at an opportune time. Chinese manufacturers will find their products more expensive for their customers to buy, but their (Chinese) imports will be cheaper. This will mean good news for those who import their raw materials. In the US, I doubt that major traders with China will increase prices. Walmart, in typical style will probably aim to make itself leaner - and meaner to soften the blow instead of raising prices.

For China, this means a variety of things. The Chinese economy, growing at break-neck speed since time unknown, can now be effectively regulated. Also the growing tension between the US and China will decrease somewhat. I think this is a nice trick China is playing. With tensions high over the revaluation, Unocal and Maytag, the Chinese are foxing the emotionally high-strung anti-China US senators into thinking that China blinked first. This is bound to result in a laxness - an opportunity the Chinese will not let go waste.

Ebbers gets 25

Bernard Ebbers, ex-CEO of Worldcom was sentenced to 25 years in prizon for his role in orchestrating the largest fraud / accounting scandal in US history. Bernie and associates cleaned off a cool 11 billion dollars. Lets hope all that money will help to keep him out of trouble in prizon. [It will].
Ebbers claimed having a weak heart and so, a lenient sentence. Interestingly the judge observed that she did not believe Ebber's heart condition was serious enough to warrant a lenient sentence. Way to go judge!
Bernie's fraud impacted tons of investors (directly) and more 'innocent bystanders' (indirectly) as Worldcomm went into banruptcy and re-emerged as MCI. MCI pestered millions of people by flooding them with junk mail and cold calls to take up their service.

Remaining Giant?

I have always compared the house of TATAs and Reliance and have noted the differences between the two. Now, everyone will no doubt be comparing them again and drawing their own conclusions. With Reliance splitting up, it is surely tempting to consider the TATAs as the sole family owned/run empire now remaining in India. (if we doscount Ranbaxy, Birla and other whatnots).

I remember writing about Dhirubhai Ambani, long back .. in fact on my old site. (I still havent transferred the archives). I should have written about the TATAs as well, just to balance the offset. Well, Newsweek has done a spendid job here.

The taste of India .. gone sour?

Amul, the well known and well respected Indian dairy co-op is in hot water. Or soured cream, if you prefer. Apparently, the Amul facilities were raided by Gujarat's Food and Drugs Control Administration last week, on complaints of worms being found in their milk powder. The raid however, revealed much more.
1. Amul was printing the 'packed on' date as a day late than the actual date for milk pouches.
2. Amul butter packets, being manufactured currently (Jan 2005) had a manufacturing date of March 2005.
Me thinks printing such a late date would apparently have limited use as Amul would have to hang on to the butter for 2 months and then release it in the market. That means additional cost of storing it properly etc. If true, this is gross misconduct on the part of Amul and calls for strict action.

whoa ..

Cingular bought AT&T Wireless [$41 bil]
KMart bought Sears [$11 bil]
Oracle bought Peoplesoft [$10.3 bil]
Symantec is buying Veritas [$13.5 bil]
J&J is buying Guidant [$25.4 bil]
Sprint and Nextel are merging.
So many acquisitions, hostile takeovers and mergers. Slow it down fellows, I don't even have enough time to read the news about the earlier ones and here are companies recklessly announcing more mergers. Its in the season I think. Like critters drawn towards each other in the mating season, companies suddenly fall in love and become one .. so to speak. Of course, sometimes there are cases of hostile takeovers which if anything, make for interesting reads. Then there are the child marriages, and arranged marriages. Who says real life doesnt reflect real life?

Let the fun begin

Cingular acquired AT&T wireless .. big news, yes. Quite big in fact. I didn't realize how big until I absorbed the details. Its a $41 billion acquisition, as a result of which a thousand AT&T wireless shops across the US will stop sporting the oh-so-familiar blue and white AT&T logo, and adopt the orange Cingular one. The new company is now bigger than Verizon wireless .. the leader .. until now that is. I forget the numbers, but Verizon had some 40 million subscribers and Cingular+AT&T make up some 40+million. Big figures.
What remains to be seen is now will Cingular continue to be the leader; for Verizon, in anticipation of the oncoming acquisition has braced itself up. New phones, new promotions are waiting in the wings. Verizon has a top-rated network and the highest subscriber retention rate, while AT&T had one of the worst. Verizon continues to lead in the adding of new customers as well.. 1.7 million new subscribers in the last quarter as against just 650,000 by Cingular and AT&T combined. Till now Verizon boasted the largest network .. the new network threatens it with one of almost the same size. Cingular-AT&T subscribers will now get the advantage of the strongest signal of the two on their cells .. again threatening Verizon's advantage of the best signal strength. Also .. now one can call free within each network .. a virtual bonanza for groups of friends of family or even businesses.
Far from winding up, the games are just beginning.

Also, [unrelated] KMart has made a successful bid to acquire Sears, making the combined company the 3rd largest retailer in the US.

One more for the TATAs

The Tatas are having a good time. Tata Motors registered on the NYSE a few weeks back, there are talks of investments in Bangladesh and China .. things are looking up. And now, I read this.

So if I move to Delhi ..

Rediff reports that Delhi has the most crorepatis in India. The figures are based upon the National Council of Applied Economic Research's forthcoming 'The Great Indian Middle Class' which is based on a sample of over 3,00,000 households and is a part of NCAER's annual household survey.

They have defined crorepati households as those having an annual income of Rs 1 crore [USD 220,000]. So Delhi it seems has 5,085 super-rich households [which comes to roughly 1 in 500] and Mumbai has 4,439 [1 in 800].

Interestingly, Nagpur shows the fastest growth in this elite group and has 425 super-rich households.

The whole study looks pretty interesting and it would be fun to delve into other parts of it, also into other classes of income as well.

Ranbaxy shining?

I first became aware of Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. (RLL) when I was in school.. probably around 4th std .. I was bitten by a dog and my dad (who is a doctor) gave me 3 Rabies Vaccines manufactured by Ranbaxy. Ever since .. for no particular reason I have liked the company.

Ranbaxy has manufacturing facilities in 7 countries and are expanding day by day. They have notable global acquisitions and alliances. A decade ago .. Ranbaxy dared to dream .. to achieve the impossible.. to become a billion dollar company by 2004. Today RLL is India's largest generic drug manufacturer, with annual global sales exceeding $1 billion. Whats impressive is they are trying to shake off the 'generic drug manufacturer' tag and are investing in research facilities heavily. So whats next? $5 billion by 2012 :-)