11th Mumbai Film Festival...my interactions with World Cinema!

(The Candidate, Danish)



(Disgrace, Australia)




(The Maid, Mexico)




(Rage, USA)




(Muhafiz, India)




(The White Meadows, Iran)

Vacation Relaxation !

Nomura: The Global Powerhouse

Every Saturday evening, Kenichi Watanabe leaves his Tokyo home and heads to a Buddhist temple in the hills outside the city, where he practices zazen, or Zen Buddhist meditation, from midnight to 5:00 a.m. The practice helps Watanabe, the chief executive of Nomura Holdings, to clarify his thoughts and stay sharply focused. ―It calms my mind, he says.



Watanabe needs all the calm and clearheadedness he can get. One year ago, during some of the darkest hours of the worldwide financial panic, he rolled the dice in the biggest gamble of his 34-year career by acquiring the European and Asian operations of the failed Lehman Brothers Holdings after Britain's Barclays snapped up its U.S. assets. The price was modest — $225 million for the Asian business and a token $2 for the European unit — but the deal carried enormous risks.



Nomura increased its head count by nearly 50 percent at a stroke and committed to paying ¥140 billion ($1.5 billion) in bonuses to the former Lehman employees to keep them on board. Such largesse risked a backlash from Nomura's existing staff, most of whom work for much lower pay than their new colleagues in return for the near guarantee of lifetime employment, but didn't guarantee that Lehman staff wouldn't bolt after final bonus payments are made this month. Moreover, there was no immediate prospect that Nomura could earn a decent return on its investment, given the depressed state of markets in the aftermath of Lehman's collapse.



Watanabe, however, is convinced that the Lehman assets represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a global platform. With his daring move he aims to transform Nomura — a powerhouse in Japan but a perennial weakling in foreign markets — into a titan to rival the likes of Goldman, Sachs & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Deutsche Bank around the world.



"My vision is to create an Asia-based global investment bank that is within the ranks of the global top five," a broadly smiling Watanabe, 56, told Institutional Investor in an interview in the 12th-floor boardroom of Nomura's headquarters in Tokyo's Otemachi financial district. "I have no doubt I will succeed."



The CEO will need more than confidence to win over Nomura's many skeptics. Over the years the firm has tried several times, unsuccessfully, to parlay its dominance of Japan's securities markets into global leadership, without success. Nomura built a top-five position in the eurobond market in the 1980s by underwriting equity-linked bonds, only to retreat after Tokyo's stock market bubble burst after 1989. More recently, Nomura expanded aggressively into the U.S. mortgage market earlier this decade but pulled out with big losses after the subprime crisis erupted; the firm took ¥126 billion in subprime write-downs in the financial year ended March 31, 2008, prompting a shakeup that elevated Watanabe to the CEO post in April 2008 in place of Nobuyuki Koga, who was demoted to chairman of Nomura's securities subsidiary.



With the Lehman acquisition, Watanabe hoped to achieve global scale in one fell swoop. So far, however, the CEO has had to acknowledge far bigger losses than his predecessor did. After taking write-offs of ¥120 billion for expenses related to the Lehman acquisition and ¥415 billion for everything from exposure to Bernard Madoff's hedge fund, U.S. monoline insurers and failed Icelandic banks, Nomura in April reported a loss of ¥708 billion for the year ended March 31, then a record for a Japanese company. That performance, and doubts about the Lehman deal, have depressed the firm's share price; at ¥573 late last month, the stock was down 61.5 percent from a year earlier, compared with a 13.7 percent decline in the Nikkei 225 index over the same period. (The drop also reflects two share issues, one in March and one this month that will dilute existing shareholders by about 45 percent.)



Some analysts believe the bloodletting is far from over. "We think they might have more problematic assets and more losses in the coming year, and we're not sure they can downsize expenses to an appropriate level or when the domestic equities market might recover," says Yuri Yoshida, director of financial institutions ratings at Standard & Poor's in Japan, which downgraded Nomura by one notch, to BBB+, in January. Watanabe has ordered his managers to cut the group's annual operating expenses by 10 percent, or ¥100 billion yen, to restore profitability. Nomura reduced its head count by nearly 600, to 25,730 employees, in the first half of 2009.



Yet for all the doubts and the tremendous costs involved in the Lehman bet, Nomura is showing signs of attaining some of Watanabe's goals. The firm has made significant market share gains in equities and mergers and acquisition advisory in Asia outside of Japan so far this year. According to data provider Dealogic, Nomura ranked third in equities in the Asia-Pacific region this year as of September 9, acting as book runner on $13.2 billion of deals, up from No. 8 in 2007, the last full year prior to the merger. In M&A, Nomura rose to No. 8 in the region from No. 17 in 2007, advising on $33.3 billion of deals. Watanabe's team has made slower progress in Europe, but even there Nomura has succeeded in retaining Lehman's leading position on the London Stock Exchange, with a market share of about 6 percent, up from a lowly rank of 82nd before the acquisition.



Such gains helped Nomura return to the black in the quarter ended June 30. The firm posted net income of ¥11.4 billion in the period, compared with a loss of ¥76.6 billion a year earlier. Revenue was up 41 percent, at ¥363.6 billion; crucially, revenue from the firm's global markets division, bulked up by the Lehman acquisition, exceeded domestic revenue for the first time in Nomura's 84-year history. The results, which beat most analysts' expectations, put Nomura on track to meet or exceed Watanabe's targets for the financial year ending March 31, 2010, which analysts say aim for revenue of ¥1.0 trillion to ¥1.1 trillion and pretax profits of ¥100 billion to ¥200 billion.



"The Lehman integration seems pretty stable, and Nomura is leading in a number of areas,"says Neil Katkov, a Tokyo-based analyst with the financial research firm Celent. "I'm a lot less skeptical now than I was a few months ago about Nomura's chance of success."



Watanabe has also managed to bolster Nomura's capital, raising ¥278 billion with a share offering in March that boosted the firm's tier-1 capital ratio to 11.7 percent. The company plans to raise a further ¥511 billion with another share offering this month. Nomura's difficulties over the past year stand in sharp contrast to the smooth absorption of Lehman's U.S. operations by Barclays. The British bank paid $1.75 billion for the business and Lehman's New York headquarters, which gave it a serious presence in equities and M&A to go with its global debt franchise. Barclays Capital, the investment banking unit, slipped one place, to ninth, in global investment banking in the first three quarters of this year, with $1.39 billion in revenue, according to Dealogic. Nomura edged up two places, to 12th, with revenue of $741 million. The firm lacks a meaningful presence in the U.S., still the largest market for investment banking fees, but has been hiring there aggressively in recent months.



Nomura is not the only Japanese financial institution seeking to exploit the weakness of global giants to raise its profile. One year ago, Mitsubishi UFJ Group, the country's largest bank by assets, bought a 20 percent stake in Morgan Stanley for $9 billion, giving the U.S. firm a critical capital injection. In May, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group took advantage of Citigroup's distress and bought Citi's share of Nikko Citigroup, a retail brokerage joint venture with Nikko Securities, for $5.2 billion. The deals appear to put an end to nearly two decades of retreat by Japanese financial institutions since the collapse of Japan's equity and property bubbles in the late 1980s.



Turning Nomura into a global bulge bracket player is a daunting challenge. The history of cross-border acquisitions in investment banking is checkered at best. UBS and Deutsche Bank struggled to make headway in the U.S. market despite spending billions to buy PaineWebber and Bankers Trust Corp., respectively, while Credit Suisse splashed out $11.5 billion for Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, only to watch many of DLJ's top bankers walk out the door.



Nomura's recent history also offers plenty of grounds for skepticism. The firm rode Tokyo's rampant bull market of the 1980s to become the world's largest securities company by capital, with more than $10 billion in 1986, exceeding the combined capital at the time of Merrill Lynch & Co., Salomon Brothers and Shearson Lehman. After the equity bubble burst, however, underwriting business dried up, and Nomura's profits and share price tumbled. ―The lost decade, the moniker given to Japan's stagnant, debt-plagued economy in the 1990s, applied qually well to the country's biggest brokerage.



Watanabe, however, believes Nomura has no choice but to go international and reduce its reliance on the slow-growth Japanese economy if it wants to thrive. He sums up his approach with the motto ―Create change, be world-class, and act with speed. In some respects, Watanabe is an unlikely change agent. He joined Nomura as a trainee in 1975 after getting a B.A. in economics from Kobe University. He distinguished himself in the 1980s as a senior executive in domestic retail sales, the core of the firm, and won promotion to general manager of international planning and administration. He never served overseas, though.



Far from being insular, Watanabe has repeatedly sought to shake up the status quo. After being promoted to the board of Nomura Securities Co., the group's main operating arm, in 1998, he successfully pushed to split off asset management into a separate unit and list Nomura's shares on the New York Stock Exchange. Later, as head of domestic retail and deputy president of Nomura Securities, Watanabe was the driver behind Nomura's $1.2 billion acquisition of Instinet, a New York–based agency brokerage whose Chi-X unit operates leading alternative exchanges in the U.S., Europe and Asia.



Shortly after taking over as CEO, Watanabe gathered the firm's top executives at a picturesque Karuizawa resort in the mountains of Nagano prefecture in August 2008, a month before Lehman's collapse. He told his team that Nomura needed to move aggressively to bring in international talent and that the best way to do that was through an acquisition rather than an organic approach. "When we were presented with the Lehman opportunity, we immediately knew that it would give us an opportunity to create change as well as change ourselves," he tells II.



The contrast between Nomura's hierarchical Japanese culture, which emphasizes loyalty and seniority, and Lehman's brash American culture, which encourages risk-taking with big rewards, is especially stark. Consider the compensation gap. Although Nomura declines to comment on pay levels, a senior Tokyo recruiter says the head of a trading desk at Nomura could expect to earn as much as ¥65 million a year, including a base salary of ¥15 million and a bonus of as much as ¥50 million. A comparable person at Lehman would typically make as much as ¥350 million, including a salary of ¥50 million and a bonus of as much as ¥300 million.



To retain talent, Nomura guaranteed to pay ex-Lehman employees bonuses equivalent to what they received in 2007, the peak of the bull market. The bonuses for the more than 8,000 former Lehman staffers averaged $190,000 a piece, 70 percent of which was paid in March and the remaining 30 percent due to be paid this month. Ninety-five percent of the Lehman employees who were offered jobs at Nomura accepted. The key question is whether those bankers will depart once final bonus payments are made. Already Jasjit Bhattal, the former CEO of Lehman's Asian operations who was made chairman of Nomura Asia, announced in August that he would leave at the end of the year.



The revival of industry fortunes this year and an increase in poaching are likely to lead to more defections, but many former Lehman staffers say they are happy. "There's a lot of gratitude among ex-Lehman people to be given an opportunity to work at Nomura," says Paul Schulte, Nomura's Hong Kong–based Asian equity strategist, who held a similar post at Lehman. "Many feel, Let's work as hard as we always worked.' It's too early to know, but there is a sense the Japanese senior managers are giving us a great deal of freedom to run each operation."



Paul Norris, head of European equity research, is also upbeat. "Lehman built a large operation over 15 years in Europe, and we were proud of what we accomplished," he says. "When our American parent swept $8 billion out of Europe and put us into receivership the next morning, we were bitter and disappointed. Nomura has given us the opportunity to [rebuild]. It is very exciting."



If anything, Nomura employees grumble that the firm is favoring ex-Lehmanites for jobs, especially in Europe, where it took on 2,650 staff from the failed U.S. investment bank. (Nomura also absorbed 5,500 former Lehman employees in Asia, including 2,900 workers and information technology specialists in Mumbai, India.) Top executives dismiss any suggestion of favoritism but acknowledge that they aim to use the integration to instill a global, performance-based culture at Nomura.



"The new boss of a unit must be the [person] who can do it," says Hiromasa Yamazaki, the Tokyo-based deputy chief executive officer of global markets, who oversaw the acquisition of Lehman's Asia unit. "Japanese or non-Japanese doesn't matter, ex-Nomura or ex-Lehman doesn't matter." Watanabe has appointed four non-Japanese executives to the 15-member board of senior managing directors, the executive committee that runs the company. They are Sadeq Sayeed, head of Europe, a Pakistan-born banker who joined Nomura in 2000 after a decade at Credit Suisse First Boston; David Farrant, global head of human resources, who joined Nomura in 1991 from Ford Motor Co.; David Benson, Nomura's former European COO who rejoined the firm as global chief risk officer in October 2008 after a one-year stint at Man Group; and Paul Spanswick, the co-chief administrative officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, a ten-year Nomura veteran who previously worked in a variety of finance and risk management roles at UBS and Citigroup. Benson, Farrant and Spanswick are British.



After the Lehman deal, Watanabe also dispatched some of his top executives overseas, a major departure for a firm in which divisional bosses have traditionally been rooted at corporate headquarters in Tokyo. The global head of investment banking, Hiromi Yamaji, moved to London, and the global head of equities, Naoki Matsuba, shifted to New York.



"Unless you have a very strong operation in Europe or the U.S., you can't be competitive enough," Yamaji says in an interview in his office on the 30th floor of the old Lehman building in London's Canary Wharf financial district. "Many large U.S. or European investment banks are globalized. Many are offering products and services to Japanese clients. Integrating the Lehman operations and building a truly global firm won't be easy, though," Yamaji acknowledges. "What is a challenge is to manage thousands of new bankers, traders and staff," he explains. "The challenge is creating a new Nomura."



Some industry observers say they are impressed with the steps Nomura has taken so far, even if it is too early to judge the success of the Lehman deal. They have been successful in securing a large body of Lehman professionals in Europe and Asia. That's quite a bold move, says David Hatt, president of Deutsche Bank Japan.



"This deal will mean very big, fundamental changes to Nomura, as it involves bringing on thousands of non-Japanese onto the staff," says Kenneth Courtis, a veteran Japan-watcher and former vice chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia. "The Nomura people are fully aware of this challenge and are prepared. They aren't going into this blindly."



Watanabe's global vision is clear. Whether he can make it a reality remains to be seen, but so far there have been some encouraging signs.



In Asia, the addition of bankers from Lehman have helped Nomura win advisory mandates on ten deals worth a total of more than $12 billion since December. The firm was sole adviser to Chinese oil giant Sinopec Corp. on its $1.9 billion takeover of Tanganyika Oil in December. It also acted as lead adviser to Japan's Kirin Holdings in its $1.2 billion acquisition of the Philippines' San Miguel Brewery in February and Kirin's concurrent sale of a 19.9 percent stake in the brewer's parent company, San Miguel Corp., to Q-Tech Alliance for $831 million. Unfortunately, the biggest deal was one that got away: Nomura was lead adviser on Aluminum Corp. of China's $19.5 billion bid for a strategic stake in Rio Tinto Group before the Australian mining giant's shareholders rejected that offer in June.



"In banking we absolutely hit the ground running here at Nomura," says Glenn Schiffman, the Hong Kong–based head of investment banking for Asia, ex-Japan. Schiffman was an 18-year Lehman veteran who was the lead negotiator for Lehman employees during the Nomura takeover talks. Nomura ranked eighth in Asia-Pacific M&A this year as of early September, advising on 97 deals worth a total of $33.3 billion; in 2007, the last full year before the Lehman deal, the firm was in 17th place. In Asia-Pacific equities, Nomura rose to No. 3, working on $13.2 billion of issues, up from eighth place in 2007.



The acquisition has even given Nomura a boost at home in Japan, where the firm's share of trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange has risen from 7 percent in September 2008 to 8 percent in recent months, according to data from the Japan Securities Dealers Association. "Nomura was very strong with long-only investors, whereas Lehman was very strong with hedge fund–oriented, high-trading investors," Watanabe says. "The combination of the two has allowed us to capture more market share."



In Europe, Nomura has quickly rebuilt much of Lehman's equity market presence under the leadership of Rachid Bouzouba, who was also one of the key Lehman negotiators on the takeover. Bouzouba has kept the overwhelming bulk of his 750-strong team of traders, salespeople and analysts intact and says the group has managed to retain most of its clients through the transition. He is aiming to generate secondary equity trading revenues of $1 billion in the year ending next March 31. "We are back to probably 2004 in terms of the size of the market, and at that time we were making less than $1 billion," he says. Longer term, the firm aims to become the No. 1 player in global equities by 2011. "That is achievable under Nomura," he says.



Bouzouba, 39, a Moroccan national and naturalized Frenchman who began his career at Société Générale and Crédit Lyonnais in Paris before joining Lehman in 2003, says talk of a culture clash at Nomura is overblown. "I grew up in Morocco, I went to France to work and I am very open to cultures," he says. Bouzouba says he was constantly second-guessed by "guys in New York" at Lehman but has been given a free hand by his new bosses in Tokyo. "In fact, I have more autonomy at Nomura than I did at Lehman."



Bouzouba has been focusing on shoring up the firm's equity research to drive growth. Lehman ranked sixth in Institutional Investor's All-Europe Research Team in 2008, but the team, now as part of Nomura, slipped two places, to eighth, in this year's ranking. In May, the firm recruited 15 analysts from rival firms, including Alastair Syme from Bank of America–Merrill Lynch, who was part of the first-ranked team in oil and gas in this year's II survey; Marc Van't Sant from Citigroup, whose team ranked No. 2 in business and employment services; and Mark McVicar from Dresdner Kleinwort, whose team came in third place in transport. European research head Norris, a 19-year Lehman veteran, says the recruits have boosted his team to 126 analysts covering 540 companies. "Our pitch is the opportunity to build the business and be part of a transformation," he says.



The U.S. represents an even bigger challenge for Nomura. The firm has never succeeded in establishing a serious long-term presence there, despite having pioneered the commercial-mortgage-backed securities market in the 1990s. Watanabe and his team have begun to fill the gap, though. The firm has hired some 300 people so far this year to build up its equity and fixed-income teams, raising its overall U.S. head count to about 900. The recruits include Ciaran O'Kelly, former global head of equities at Bank of America Corp., who joined as head of U.S. equities in July. Also that month, Nomura buttressed its fixed-income ambitions by winning Federal Reserve Board approval to become a primary dealer in U.S. Treasuries.



Still, the U.S. remains a clear No. 3 behind Asia and Europe among Watanabe's priorities. "The emerging markets have been less affected than developed markets by the crisis," Watanabe says. "Asia, and especially China, is looking good, with low leverage thanks to smaller borrowings, not to mention the substantial scale of the fiscal stimulus measures announced by China. The environment for financial institutions will also shift from one concentrated on the U.S. to a truly multipolar one as Asia increasingly grows in importance."



The CEO believes his newly enlarged Nomura should be capable of generating consistent pretax profits of ¥500 billion a year, compared with about ¥300 billion previously, when it wasn't racking up big losses.



Analysts say he may not have much time to deliver. "He has to show results in a few years' time, or his head is on the block," says Terrie Lloyd, president of Japan Inc. Holdings, a Tokyo-based consulting firm that specializes in M&A advisory. "You can't take losses like what he took this year."



Natsumu Tsujino, a financial sector analyst at JPMorgan Securities Japan Co. in Tokyo, who has a "neutral" rating on Nomura's stock, says Watanabe's gamble will ultimately depend on the health of financial markets. "His assumption is that further valuation losses [on Nomura's investments] will be zero," she says. "If his assumption holds true, he can make this company profitable by the end of this year." That would be a welcome start. But Watanabe must deliver much more to quiet the skeptics and prove that the daring Lehman purchase was the right move. The Zen practitioner will need all of his powers of concentration to succeed.



(Source: Institutional Investor, Oct 2009)

New American Tourister Commercial !

Antara Banerjee - Asst Director !

"The good, the Bad and the Beautiful"

(Oil on Canvas, Sanat Satyan, 2009)

New Zen Estilo Commercial !!

Antara Banerjee - Asst Director !!

"Aaj Kal Zindagi" from Wake up Sid !

aaj kal zindagi
mujhse hai keh rahi
tu jo meri maane to chal deewane
sapnon ki rahoon mein tu
saari khusboon ko
saari roshni ko lele
in bahoon mein tu

ab hai tu jahaan
din raat saare naye hai
arzoo jawaan
jazbaat saare naye hai
naye rastein hai tere vaaste
to rahe kyun panahoon mein tu

tere liye
nayi hai zameen naya aasmaan
likh de hawaaon mein
koi nayi dastaan
tere liye
nayi hai zameen naya aasmaan

likh de hawaaon mein
koi nayi dastaan
zindagi ne
dastak di to dastak di to
dil ki sab khidkiyaan khul gayi
haan khul gayi

hotoon pe jo hotoon pe jo
jami thi wo
saari khamoshiyaan ghul gayi
haan ghul gayi
kitne lamhoon ne
mujhko ho jaise hairaan kiya
kitni batoon ne
dil ko aake hai choo liya

chahatein kayi
hai dil mein ab jagmagaye
rahatein kayi
hai mujhse kehne ko aayi
pehchaan saari muskaane
saari bhar le nigaahon mein tu
tere liye

nayi hai zameen naya aasmaan
likh de hawaaon mein
koi nayi dastaan
tere liye
nayi hai zameen naya aasmaan
likh de hawaaon mein
koi nayi dastaan

G8 moments...can't the media get better things to do?

(Source: Some tabloids which are NOT interested in real issues discussed at G8, but 'oogling eyes' !)

This is like getting a Delhi Times picture in the Wall Street Journal !!

"Gravedigger" by Dave Matthews Band

Cyrus Jones 1810 to 1913
Made his great granchildren believe
You could live to a hundred and three
A hundred and three is forever when you're just a little kid
So Cyrus Jones lived forever

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Gravedigger

Muriel Stonewall
1903 to 1954
She lost both of her babies in the second great war
Now you should never have to watch
Your only children lowered in the ground
I mean you should never have to bury your own babies

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Gravedigger

Ring around the rosey
Pocket full of posey
Ashes to ashes
We all fall down

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Gravedigger

Little Mikey Carson 67 to 75
He rode his
Bike like the devil until the day he died
When he grows up he wants to be Mr. Vertigo on the flying trapeze
Ohhh, 1940 to 1992

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain

Gravedigger
When you dig my grave
Could you make it shallow
So that I can feel the rain
Feel the rain
I can feel the rain
Gravedigger

Gravedigger

India's Survival Kit !?

(Source: IBN)

Ever thought we would see such car prices...no, its not a recession in India and these are not slashed prices !

"QE" to the rescue....

Quantitative easing: the modern way to print money or a therapy of last resort?

Desperately ill patients are willing to try drugs that have not been shown to be either effective or safe. Even dodgy medicines look better than the alternative. As countries’ financial systems remain immobile in the face of standard monetary policy treatment, more are turning to “quantitative easing” as a therapy of last resort. The US Federal Reserve is already trying it out. The Bank of England is likely to follow. The European Central Bank probably won’t, because it isn't sure the politicians would back it.

Quantitative easing is the modern way to print money. The central bank doesn’t actually have to use a four-colour press to spew out crisp notes. There are more sophisticated ways to boost a nation’s money supply. But ultimately the impact is not very different from dropping dollar bills from a helicopter as Ben Bernanke once described this policy before he became the Federal Reserve’s chairman.

So what exactly is quantitative easing, what disease is it supposed to cure, how is it supposed to work and what are the possible side-effects?


The theory

Quantitative easing is a method of boosting the money supply. Its aim is to get money flowing around an economy when the normal process of cutting interest rates isn’t working – most obviously when interest rates are so low that it’s impossible to cut them further.

In such a situation, it may still be possible to increase the “quantity” of money. The way to do this is for the central bank to buy assets in exchange for money. In theory, any assets can be bought from anybody. In practice, the focus of quantitative easing is on buying securities (like government debt, mortgage-backed securities or even equities) from banks.

Where, one might ask, does the central bank get the money to buy all these securities? The answer is that it just waves a magic wand and creates it. It doesn’t even need to turn on the printing presses. It simply increases the size of banks’ accounts at the central bank. These accounts held by ordinary banks at the central bank go by the name of “reserves”. All banks have to hold some reserves at the central bank. But when there is quantitative easing, they build up “excess reserves”.

If banks swap their securities for reserves, the size of their own balance sheets shrinks just as the central bank’s balance sheet expands. Assuming they want to keep their own balance sheets static – admittedly a big assumption in the current climate – they will then start lending to end-borrowers and so start putting more liquidity into the economy.

To some extent, central banks have been engaging in quantitative easing for the past year. The Fed, for example, has had a range of programmes and ad hoc initiatives that have resulted in it acquiring securities from the banking system and more recently from the US government. The Fed may not have justified these under the rubric of quantitative easing. But its balance sheet has certainly mushroomed: it is up 18-fold in the past 4 months to $820bn.

Does it work?

Such quantitative easing certainly hasn’t yet done the trick so far in this recession. Credit conditions have continued to tighten in the US. Things, of course, could have been even worse if there hadn’t been any easing. Equally, although an 18-fold increase in the reserves on the Fed’s balance sheet sounds impressive, it is still below 6pc of GDP. It may therefore only be once quantitative easing properly gets going that the benefits will flow through.

Similarly, history isn’t much use in judging the therapy’s effectiveness. There has been only one significant trial - in Japan between 2001 and 2006. Excess reserves held by banks at the Bank of Japan rose from Y5 trillion to Y35 trillion, roughly 6pc of GDP.

Scholars cannot agree whether the technique worked. On the positive side, Japanese GDP didn’t shrink. On the negative side, GDP growth was moderate and not sustained after quantitative easing ended. Also, the experiment coincided with a big programme of government spending, so no one can tell whether it was the unusual monetary policy or the intense fiscal policy that kept the wolf from the door.

Almost no one would argue that Japanese quantitative easing was an unqualified success. But some economists think the Japanese were too slow and too half-hearted in applying the therapy. What’s more, the Japanese record isn’t necessarily all that meaningful for the US and the UK. Quantitative easing may work better – or worse – in a country like Japan with a cultural preference for savings and a huge trade surplus than in lands where borrow-and-spend have been the rule for years.

Unintended side-effects

Even if quantitative easing isn’t necessarily effective, it would certainly be worth a try if it carried no danger. But its safety is far from certain. It could theoretically lead to the debauchment of a nation’s currency and inflation.

Again history doesn’t provide much of a guide. Japan hasn’t suffered any bad side-effects – inflation is low and the yen is strong. However, in some more extreme examples of old-fashioned money printing, the results were disastrous. Witness the assignats of the French Revolution, Confederate dollars in the Civil War, Reichsmarks in Germany after World War I, Russian roubles after the fall of communism and the current hyper-inflation in Zimbabwe.

The US and UK are, of course, in a far healthier state than revolutionary France or the Weimar Republic. So there isn’t a danger of such alarming consequences. But central banks might lack the will to engage in “quantitative tightening” when the economy starts to pick up.

In theory, reversing the policy should be quite easy. The central bank could just sell the excess assets on its balance sheet, sucking money out of the system. In practice, the political pressure to keep the party going might be too hard to resist.

This is particularly so because, in order to engage in quantitative easing in the first place, some central banks may well need the permission of their governments. The more they work in cahoots with politicians, the more their independence will come under threat. Already, Alastair Darling, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, has made it clear that the government – not the Bank of England – will play an active role if quantitative easing proves necessary.

It is therefore essential that both central banks and finance ministers commit themselves to reverse quantitative easing when the good times return - before they go wild and open the spigots. Quantitative easing is risky. It needs to be practised safely.

(Source: Telegraph UK)


(Wiki explains Quantitative Easing in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing )

(...another explaination is available in http://debtonation.org/2009/03/quantitative-easing-qe-made-easy/ )

Obama at "The Tonight Show"

MTR Train Route Map, Hong Kong

(Source: www.mtr.com.hk)

Visitor's Gallery to Wedding Pictures

Album 1 (Facebook Link) -

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=81271&id=521206253&l=54579

Album 2 (Facebook Link) -

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=81272&id=521206253&l=083d8

Visitor's Gallery

Facebook Album Links to Samui & Bangkok Vacation, Feb 2009

Visitor's Gallery to Samui and Bangkok Vacation 1 -

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=80220&id=521206253&l=03d15

Visitor's Gallery to Samui and Bangkok Vacation 2 -

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=80224&id=521206253&l=63b46

Visitor's Gallery to Samui and Bangkok Vacation 3 -

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=80228&id=521206253&l=b36ee

All Employee Get Together at Renaissance, Powai !

(Source: Ahana's cam)

Watch out for Vineet !!!

HC 09 - with Swati !

I have no clue when this pic was taken...
...but thanks to the Nimki for the snap !!

(Source: Nimki Gupta)

The beginning of a new END ??

Nomura May Sell Units to Raise Cash After Fourth Straight Loss

Nomura Holdings Inc. said it may sell businesses to raise capital and will cut executive pay after posting a fourth straight quarterly deficit on trading losses and costs to acquire parts of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Japan’s largest brokerage will divide itself into “core” and “non-core” operations and may sell some units, Chief Financial Officer Masafumi Nakada said at a press briefing in Tokyo. Nomura today reported a record 342.9 billion yen ($3.8 billion) deficit in the fiscal third quarter.

The company posted a trading loss of 134.5 billion yen, compared with a 65.1 billion yen profit a year earlier, as the MSCI World Index dropped 22 percent. Chief Executive Officer Kenichi Watanabe has flagged costs of $2 billion to take over Lehman’s Asian and European units and has said he isn’t sure when the purchase will start generating earnings.

“Major factors behind the group’s trading losses were the failures of hedging and arbitrage strategies,” Standard & Poor’s said in a statement cutting its rating on Nomura one grade to BBB+. “The rising costs associated with the acquisition of the business units of Lehman Brothers also pose additional risks.”

Nomura will eliminate executives’ annual bonuses and cut their monthly pay as much as 30 percent as it aims to reduce costs by 10 percent in the fiscal year starting April 1, Nakada said. He said details for a capital-raising plan have not yet been decided.

The company’s four straight quarterly losses compare with five at New York-based Citigroup Inc. and six for Merrill Lynch & Co., the Wall Street firm acquired by Bank of America Corp. in a deal that’s sparked anger from investors.

Revenue Evaporates

Revenue plunged 99 percent to 2.7 billion yen in the three months ended Dec. 31 from a year earlier. Brokerage commissions declined 29 percent to 73.4 billion yen as investors shunned the stock market, causing the average daily value of shares traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange to drop 33 percent from a year earlier.

“We posted a big net loss because of unprecedented turmoil in the third quarter,” CEO Watanabe said in a statement. “But our financial base is still strong and we can see synergies in cross-border mergers and acquisitions from merging with Lehman.”

Watanabe, who joined Nomura in 1975 and became CEO in April 2008, didn’t attend the press briefing.

Nomura fell 59 percent in Tokyo trading during the past 12 months and climbed 4.9 percent today to close at 639 yen before the latest financial results were reported.

Labor Costs Surge

“Nomura’s heavy losses leave no doubt that the global financial crisis has caught up with Japan,” said Neil Katkov, head of Asia research at Celent LLC in Tokyo. “Similar bad news can be expected from other Japanese securities firms, large and small.”

The firm, which agreed to take over about 8,000 employees from Lehman, said labor costs in the third quarter surged 73 percent. The company said last month it would fire as many as 1,000 employees in London, including former Lehman employees.

It also is eliminating more than 100 positions in Asia and cutting at least 100 jobs in Tokyo, mainly among former Lehman employees, two people familiar with the situation said Dec. 9.

Nomura will also cut its full-year dividend to 25.5 yen per share, from 34 yen a year earlier.

The company has previously announced it will raise about $6 billion of capital after about $4.4 billion of losses and writedowns tied to the global credit crisis.

Nomura booked a 32.3 billion yen loss linked to Bernard Madoff’s investment funds and lost 43.1 billion yen on Icelandic bank bonds. It booked a loss from its stake in New York-based Fortress Investment Group LLC of 62.3 billion yen.

(Source: Bloomberg)

Oh Kunal...Oh Kunal !

Many a times, you walk down the aisle,
And come across a guy, who loves to go another mile;
Sitting there, thinking...what next to do,
"Keep lying down or wear my shoe?!"

He keeps a never-ending love for things we dont understand,
For Heroes, Gadgets, Dedication...and not a single Contraband;
Every evening, he knows what he is going to eat,
"Is it going to be meat or is it going to be meat?"

With a 'pulsating' prowl, he ventures to the nearest shop,
Wondering...Chicken Makhani, Chicken Tikka Masala or Chicken Chop;
Then he decides....to say that divine word,
"Oh, let me just have some roti and some curd!

It is seldom that you see him talk like this,
He asks,"Is it this or is it bliss?"
Then, there is the next moment when you know he is right,
"I GIVE IN...I GIVE UP THE FIGHT!"

It's only 10 bucks more,
It's protein after all,
There is only health,
Of course, there is no fall!

Looking calmly at his conscience going into the sand,
He puts down the menu...and raises his hand,
The words do not understand why theyn sound so funny,
"Do Butter Roti & Ek Chickan Makhani!"

Oh Kunal, Oh Kunal,
Our great pal,
Resist the tempation..
Just for yourself...Sirf ek saal !

Just the name...Now, going to be mine !!

The Opel Antara is a mid-size crossover SUV produced in South Korea by GM Daewoo, but sold under the Opel brand. Launched in 2007, the Antara is based on the GM Theta platform which shares its underpinnings and powertrains with the Daewoo Winstorm. However, it has a different exterior and interior design, along with different exterior dimensions. In the United Kingdom, the car is sold as the Vauxhall Antara. In Australia and New Zealand the car is known as the Holden Captiva MaXX, and in North America as the Saturn Vue. In the Middle East, the vehicle is sold as the GMC Terrain, and as the Chevrolet Captiva in Mexico, India and Brazil.

Also called
Chevrolet Captiva
Daewoo Winstorm MaXX
GMC Terrain
Holden Captiva MaXX
Saturn Vue
Vauxhall Antara

The Antara was first previewed by the three-door Opel Antara GTC ("Gran Turismo Crossover") concept car, presented at the 2005 Frankfurt Motor Show. The Antara GTC is based on the five-seater Chevrolet T2X concept. A similar two-door concept was later displayed at the New York International Auto Show as the Saturn PreVue. The production Antara, is however a longer four-door seven-seater vehicle very similar to the Chevrolet S3X and its derivative Winstorm.

(Source: Wiki)