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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JPR who wrote (2824)	9/22/1998 11:23:00 AM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 12475

Pentafour Software plans 'big push' in the U.S,hires Silicon Graphics personnel. JPR: Here is some business news from India. BTW I did buy some more DELL at $59 and change,I am hoping the market will move higher in the afternoon if something positive comes out of Clinton's meeting with Obuchi,if not what the hell I don't mind holding Dell anyway. Excerpts Pentafour Software plans big push in US; hires Silicon Graphics staff Santosh Nair in Mumbai Pentafour Software & Exports, the Chennai-based software company has drawn up plans to step up its US operations in an aggressive way. As a first step in this direction, it has recently recruited 10 personnel from Silicon Graphics at senior positions in the company's US office. According to industry sources, these employees have been hired at a total cost of nearly $3 million per annum. They added that the employees have given a commitment to generate business worth at least $100 million in the current year. International consultancy Coopers &Lybrand will be advising the company on its US expansions. The board of Pentafour Software will be meeting next month to review the US operations. Commenting on the developments, V Chandrasekharan, managing director, Pentafour Software, said: " For the front end operations, mainly marketing and generation of business, we will be hiring more of local staff (Americans). Earlier, the front end staff used to be a 50:50 mix of locals and Indians. However,in order to step up the marketing operations, we need people with wider contacts henceforth the structure will be skewed more in favour of locals."... business-standard.com

To: JPR who wrote (2824)	9/22/1998 3:15:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 12475

Big IMF borrowers rank high in corruption index. JPR: Not in the least surprising wouldn't you say??? ================================================ Tuesday September 22, 2:54 pm Eastern Time Big IMF borrowers rank high in corruption index By Janet Guttsman WASHINGTON, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Countries which won billions of dollars of international loans are seen as among the most corrupt nations in the world, according to a survey released on Tuesday. The 1998 Corruption Perceptions Index from corruption watchdog Transparency International gives just one country, Denmark, a perfect 10, showing that investors, risk analysts and the public think Denmark and its leadership are clean. But well over half of the 85 countries on the list scored less than 5.5 -- the number which Transparency International views as pointing to a problem for the government concerned. ''It seems to me that any country that has a score of 6.0 or 5.5 or lower clearly has a huge problem,'' said Frank Vogl, vice president of the Germany-based institution, which has issued its surveys annually since 1985. Countries scoring particularly badly in the 1998 list include Indonesia, ranked 80th with a score of 2.0, Russia, ranked 76th with a score of 2.4 and Pakistan, which shares the 71st spot with Latvia in the Baltics, with a score of 2.7. In last place was Cameroon in West Africa, with a score of 1.4. ''The 1998 CPI score relates to perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by business people, risk analysts and the general public,'' Transparency International said. ''It ranges between 10 (highly clean) and 0 (highly corrupt).'' Vogl stressed that the index did not actually measure corruption, but concentrated on the perception of corruption, which he defined as ''the abuse of public office for private gain.'' ''We are not measuring corruption, we are measuring the perception of it. We do not have enough data to say these perceptions are accurate,'' he said. Russia, the largest country in the world, is also the biggest borrower from the International Monetary Fund, although the fate of its latest multi-billion dollar lending program is in doubt as the fund assesses the print-and-spend policies of the new government of Yevgeny Primakov. The IMF promised Indonesia more than $10 billion last year and has paid out just over half that. The two sides agreed to a new policy plan this month, clearing the way for a further payment, probably after the IMF's annual meetings next month. Vogl said Transparency's next aim was to develop a Bribery Propensity Index, which would look at which countries were the homes to ''bribe-paying corporations.'' ''It will be a parallel index which measures the perception of where bribery is coming from'' he said, noting that the United States was a rare example of a country with clear laws criminalizing bribery abroad. ''If bribery is criminalized in many countries, if there is enforcement and if there is monitoring, then we will see a change in corporate behavior,'' he said. The 1998 report is the most extensive Transparency International survey to date. The previous survey, released last year, ranked 52 countries, putting Denmark at the top and Nigeria at the bottom. It is drawn up on the basis of a dozen surveys carried out over the last three years.