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Articles in May, 2009 issue of Business Today

• Back to basics ; Slowdown is a time to refrain from the adventurous and return to the safe, tried and tested. Here's a walk through what's once again in flavour and what's gone out the window.
  by Anand Adhikari
• Gems not desired ; The annual performance report by the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council shows that the second half of the year saw a decline of 18.88 per cent in export earnings.
• How fit are you? Find out! ; In order to help you find out where you stand accurately, Men's Health experts have put together the following test which will assess your baseline fitness based on five fundamentals.
  by Jamal Shaikh
• Noted ; Appointed: Naina Lal Kidwai, who was until now the CEO of HSBC in India, as the country head and chairperson of all HSBC Group companies in India.
• Goodwill risk for Indian companies ; As various company boards meet to finish their audited accounts, three items are definitely going to be on their agenda apart from the financial results: foreign exchange losses, derivatives losses and impairment of as
  by Virendra Kumar Verma
• To be precise ; In any competitive environment, there will be some who excel and some who do not. There will always be winners and losers. It is not a reflection of how they (employees who have been asked to leave on the basis of their performance) will d
• Fan loyalty measured ; A study by Dentsu Sports, a division of Dentsu, says there are four factors that help people decide team loyalties: Human factor (HF), Perceived Energy (PE), Performance and Engagement.
• Tracking youth behaviour ; They're smitten by the Internet and mobile phones. But young Indians also read newspapers and play cricket, finds a study.
  by Shamni Pande
• Numbers of note ; $744,000(Rs 3.72 cr): Money donated by producers of Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire for providing education, health, water and sanitation needs, besides protection of the kids living in a central Mumbai slum
• 70 per cent below target ; The power ministry has missed its capacity addition targets for the second year in a row.
  by K.R. Balasubramanyam
• India Inc. gears up for new accounting standards ; Most Indian firms are confident of meeting the 2011 IFRS deadline, though some problems remain, finds an Ernst & Young survey.
  by Puja Mehra
• Widgets on your TV? ; Adobe has devised a system by which you can check out your favourite online content while watching TV.
  by Kushan Mitra
• The end of rate cuts? ; The RBI has announced another round of rate cuts but banks are not following suit in bringing down lending rates.
  by Rachna M. Koppikar
• '800 GW Power Capacity by 2032' ; Philippe Guillemot, Chairman and CEO of Areva, T&D, a global power transmission and distribution giant, spoke to BT's Rahul Sachitanand.
  by Rahul Sachitanand
• FDI's steady march ; While global giants such as China have seen a drop in FDI, foreign firms continue to plough money into India.
  by Anand Adhikari
• Instant tip ; The fortnight's burning question. Will we see a further slashing of interest rates by the RBI in the short term?
  by Manu Kaushik
• Campus interview? No Thanks! ; A downturn augurs well for start-ups, and a number of engineering and B-school graduates are grabbing this opportunity.
  by N. Madhavan
• Greenhorn entrepreneurs ; Stifled by a lack of growth and frozen hikes, many youngsters have turned entrepreneurs. While talent and real estate are going cheap, funding is scarce and gun-shy investors are taking longer to firm up their plans. Will these g
  by Rahul Sachitanand
• India cheerleader ; Renault's first employee in the country is going it alone after learning most of the tricks of the trade.
• Follow the leader ; Ravi Sharma to MNCs: Hold my hand and I will show you the way to do business.
• Relationship manager ; Mitra sees a business opportunity in improving interpersonal relationships at organisations.
• Healing touch ; Deepak Ghaisas sees a future and a business model in personalised medicine.
• A break with the future? ; Partho Dasgupta flags off his own vehicle to ride on media opportunities in the consumption sector.
• Feeling at home ; Come upturn or downturn, Arpit Agarwal will keep rolling, looking for new opportunities and challenges.
• Yesterday's CEO today's entrepreneur ; The slowdown was just the kick-start that most of these dyed-in-the- wool corporate honchos needed to fulfill their dream of starting up on their own.
  by Anand Adhikari
• Politically correct ; If there is one politician who can sell good economics as good politics, it is P. Chidambaram. N. Madhavan visits his constituency, Sivaganga, to test the hypothesis.
  by N. Madhavan
• ICICI's first among equals ; It's a demonstration of an institution's bench strength that within days of two of their top honchos putting in their papers, their replacements were announced: Especially when the outgoers have nursed the businesses since inc
  by Anand Adhikari; E. Kumar Sharma; Nitya Varadarajan; Rahul Sachitanand
• Cut, cut, cut! ; Producers & distributors want half of ticket sales at multiplexes. No go, no show! say the plexes.
  by Shamni Pande; Anusha Subramanian
• Wanted: Legal Eagles ; The Legal Process Outsourcing industry offers a new career opportunity, with substantial pay packets.
• Golden opportunity ; Gold has become an attractive option for investors over the short to medium term. Several new and innovative schemes for investing in the yellow metal have been launched recently.
  by Nitya Varadarajan
• Pantaloon's Gambit ; The restructuring of Pantaloon Retail is being seen as a well- planned move to get FDI to fund expansion of its retail business.
  by Virendra Verma
• The monsoon stimulus ; Forecast of a near-normal monsoon has raised hopes that India's agricultural growth might stay on track and prevent the GDP from slipping under six per cent.
  by Rishi Joshi
• Family first ; Aggressive posturing by Bharat Hotels and its top honcho is seeing it go places both in India and overseas.
  by Tejeesh N.S. Behl
• Male surge in female bastion ; Hit by pay cuts and job losses, more and more men are queuing up to join the direct selling industry. What's the big draw?
  by Dhiman Chattopadhyay
• Why did the top tier stay away? ; Satyam's apparent low valuation wasn't exciting enough to attract the top tier of IT services Indian and global towards a risk- riddled acquisition.
  by Rahul Sachitanand
• Going out on a limb ; Tech Mahindra grabs a cost-effective opportunity to diversify its business model, but it now has to integrate an unknown animal in what's going to be Indian IT services' toughest year ever.
  by E. Kumar Sharma
• Surviving the apocalypse ; Declining growth is forcing IT services majors to stop hiring freshers. Where do the wannabe techies go?
  by Saumya Bhattacharya
• Darkest before dawn? ; The bearish sentiment in the IT sector which a section of analysts feels is overdone may actually be a good opportunity to pick select stocks on the cheap, for the long term.
  by Virendra Verma
• Hope on the distant horizon ; If Indian IT services gets its act together, it could grow by six times by 2020. That's a big if.
  by Kushan Mitra
• Indian IT's darkest hour ; For the first time since the dotcom bust, infotech majors face the prospect of decline in revenues and profits. What does this mean for the future of IT services, tech jobs and tech stocks?
  by Rahul Sachitanand
• Beats of success ; Four young musicians from Bangalore are helping companies improve the team spirit of their employees and heighten productivity by organising 'drum circles'. And they are making a cool profit as well, finds out K.R. Balasubramanyam.
  by K.R. Balasubramanyam
• The top tier voices its different fears ; Top honchos respond to the darkest hour of the Indian information technology industry.
• Searching for growth ; Stagnant car sales and a bleak economic climate have dampened but not derailed foreign automakers' plans of investing in new plants and products in India.
  by Clifford Alvares
• The change agent ; In her 28 years at ICICI Group, Shikha Sharma has earned the reputation of the woman with the Midas touch, making a success of every division she has started.
  by Anand Adhikari
• Why your workout isn't working ; Pick a weight that you can handle safely for the prescribed repetitions and watch your timings four second negative with an explosive positive (push.)
  by Jamal Shaikh
• Night before another day ; Chrysler, the fabled US carmaker, has many firsts to its credit. Will it survive its second brush with death?
  by Somnath Dasgupta
• Beauty secrets ; Bucking the crippling slowdown, the beauty services industry is growing at 25 per cent annually. How is it happening?
  by Rahul Sachitanand
• IT sector comeback not before Jan 2010: Shanto Ghosh ; The Indian IT industry can only think of bouncing back once contracts come up for renegotiations in early 2010, Shanto Ghosh, Principal Economist at audit firm Deloitte, tells K.R Balasubramanyam.
  by K.R Balasubramanyam
• To be precise ; I think that virtually everybody associated with the financial world contributed to it. Some of it stemmed from greed, some from stupidity, some from people saying the other guy was doing it
• India gets the 'Cat' ; Jaguar's Leaping Cat hood ornament is one of the automotive world's most recognised symbols and two years after buying into Jaguar-Land Rover, Tata Motors is bringing the cats into India.
  by Kushan Mitra
• Noted ; Garnered: Over 2.03 lakh bookings by Tata Nano, deliveries of which will begin in July. At Rs 95,000 per car booked for the base model, plus the 6.1 lakh booking forms sold at Rs 300 each, Tata Motors has garnered around Rs 2,500 crore from the la
• Taxing Times for BPO Industry ; Obama's tax plans could give the outsourcing industry a fresh headache.
  by Rahul Sachitanand
• Numbers of note ; #1: Google's rank in the fourth annual BrandZ top 100 most valuable global brands. The Internet search engine giant is worth $100 billion, way ahead of Microsoft, which occupies the second spot with a value of $76.2 billion
• Study tells advertisers how to maximise profit ; Choosing the best advertising spots in a stadium or the right time to telecast a sporting event is no easy game. A TAM Sports study shows possible ways to ensure best returns on investments.
  by Anusha Subramanian
• The new kindle ; What is it? This is the new Deluxe edition of Amazon's e-book reader, the Kindle.
  by Kushan Mitra
• Riding High on Tamiflu ; Indian pharma companies say they are geared to meet the global demand for the antidote to H1N1 infection.
  by E. Kumar Sharma
• Instant tip ; The fortnight's burning question. Do the Q4 results indicate that the downturn is over?
  by Manu Kaushik
• Targeting tax havens ; While efforts to rein in tax havens may not affect investment into India, this is an opportunity for policy reforms.
  by Suman Layak
• Beating the street ; Despite the challenging business environment, a clutch of companies posted stellar results in the earnings season. BT handpicks 10 outperformers on Dalal Street.
  by Rishi Joshi
• Two at the top ; STAR Plus can no longer claim to be the undisputed leader in the Hindi general entertainment space.
  by Anusha Subramanian
• India's biggest newsmakers ; The sixth BT-cirrus study reveals which CEOs, companies and groups got the best press in 2008-2009.
• The brand that refused to die ; Thums up is possibly India's most resilient iconic brand. While legions of companies pump large sums of money into their brands in the hope that they attain icon status, Thums Up has done so with minimal fanfare. After bein
  by Shamni Pande
• The fizz is back ; Coca-Cola India is regaining market share and is gaining mindshare too. It is making profits on a turnover that's estimated to be over Rs 4,000 crore. Its tale is a heady mix of strategy, tenacity and luck, reports Shamni Pande.
  by Shamni Pande
• Bucking the dwnturn ; India Inc. shows resilience to post better-than-expected results in the March quarter. It could be an indication of an incipient economic recovery.
  by Virendra Verma
• The BlackBerry killer? ; How good is the new Nokia E75? Well, to begin with here's a sample: all the text on this page was written and then e-mailed from the phone!
  by Kushan Mitra
• Room for the third exchange ; The new kid on the trading block that's set to launch an equity and derivates platform is from Financial Technologies, which currently has in its stable India's largest commodity futures exchange, the Multi-Commodity Exchange
  by Rachna M. Koppikar
• Ready, aim, hire! ; There are companies in many sectors that are bucking the overall hiring trend. These are financially-strong companies that want to be more competitive in the market. Upping the hiring momentum, these companies discover a slowdown is a
  by Saumya Bhattacharya; E. Kumar Sharma; N. Madhavan
• Mercury rising ; April, May and June are make-or-break months for a few categories and sales trends indicate that these products have overcome the slowdown blues.
  by Shamni Pande
• The Kampani conundrum ; Independent directors have to pull up their socks, but if they don't, should they be thrown in jail?
  by Suman Layak
• The F word that's laid India Inc low ; The time-bomb of foreign currency-denominated debt has been ticking for some time now and some of India's best-known companies are at the doorstep of a default.
  by K.R. Balasubramanyam
• Affordable, but at what cost? ; Real estate developers are offering homes within reach of the middle class wallet. But buyers may still feel shortchanged as home sizes get smaller and locations leave a lot to be desired.
  by Tejeesh N.S. Behl
• A house for Rs 3 lakh now ; While affordability is the new mantra, some developers are going even lower houses at less than a million bucks.
  by Tejeesh N.S. Behl; Anusha Subramanian
• Disney's India Walt(z) ; Taking small but sure steps, Disney is pursuing its long-term plan to become the most sought-after family entertainment brand in India.
  by Anusha Subramanian
• On solid road ; IRB Infrastructure's focus on the toll road business is keeping its cash registers ringing.
  by Virendra Verma
• World's biggest newsmakers ; For the first time, Business Today along with CARMA International present an extensive study of the world's hottest and most writtenabout CEOs of 2008-09.
• Flawed genius, super captain ; It's not just results Warne's team, the Rajasthan Royals, won the first edition of the IPL and looks a sure-fire contender for the second that speak in Warne's favour.
  by Anusha Subramanian
• Beyond Full HD ; There is more to intelligent TV buying than knowing the difference between a plasma and an LCD or telling Full HD from HD Ready.
• 'We are taking our India lessons outside' ; Simon Beresford-Wylie, Chief Executive Officer of the world's second- largest mobile equipment vendor, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), is a veteran of the Indian telecom market.
  by Kushan Mitra
• 'I want to see an Indian car designed by Indians at Maruti' ; Shinzo Nakanishi, Managing Director, Maruti Suzuki India (MSIL), has been an employee of Suzuki Motor Company for the past 25 years.
  by Kushan Mitra