Though TV continues to attract the majority of advertising dollars, internet advertising saw the biggest increase, with advertisers spending 12.1 per cent more in Q1 2012 than one year prior. During that time, ad spend overall increased 3.1 per cent globally. Online ad spend was a bright spot for the industry, with growth around the globe. Growth was particularly notable in Europe (12.1%), Latin America (31.8%) and the Middle East &amp; Africa (35.2%).

Ad spend most in Cyberspace 

Business Standard

The Indian financial markets will undergo a tectonic shift after being a comfortable quasi-monopoly for many years. For over a decade, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) held overwhelming market share in cash equity transactions and in equity derivatives. The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) was a distant second and the regional stock exchanges nowhere. This is set to change. The regulator has allowed the MCX Stock Exchange (MCX-SX) to offer equity and equity derivatives contracts.

Sebi's new challenge

It has now been a month since Pranab Mukherjee resigned as finance minister in order to become the ruling United Progressive Alliance&rsquo;s candidate for president. At the time, this newspaper had cautioned against over-reaction: it did not seem likely that Mr Mukherjee&rsquo;s departure would necessarily cause a sudden breakout of active reform all over North Block.

The end of euphoria

In the annual policy meet on April 17, the Reserve Bank of India surprised the market with a 50-basis point cut in the repo rate. However, in the next policy meeting on June 18, the central bank governor, D Subbarao, delivered a shocker by not only holding rates but also with his hawkish statement - that inflation was too high to cut rate.

A glass half full ... or half empty?

At the CAT training institute where I work, I am required to take weekend classes at the Vashi centre. On Sundays, from 3:30 to 5:30 p m, I address a class of 25, preparing students for the Verbal section of the Common Admission Test (CAT). Located 10 minutes away from the Vashi station, the centre is run by another coaching institute. We pay them rent for using their space on weekends.

Making sense of 'verbals'

The UPA government may insist it&rsquo;s not missing Pranab Mukherjee but the vacuum left by his departure for Rashtrapati Bhavan is evident to anyone perusing government websites. The list of Cabinet ministers has been removed not just from the prime minister&rsquo;s official website but also from the Cabinet Secretariat site.

The missing link

Apropos the report &ldquo;43% engineers in India can&rsquo;t write correct English,&rdquo; poor knowledge of the language applies equally to other professionals. Most of them burn the midnight oil polishing their technical skills without paying enough attention to language, despite its growing importance in today&rsquo;s corporate world. As a result, their understanding of the nuances of English is poor. Here is one example. An engineer received an enquiry from a lady officer in a company. He sent a reply that read: &ldquo;Dear Madam, With reference to your above please see my below&rdquo;. The gaffe was lost on him even after the context and nuance were explained.

Letters: Below the line

An advertisement in your paper from the ministry of rural development inviting expressions of interest for urban amenities in rural areas (July 27) raises issues of larger priorities. The selected private partner is required to provide amenities like water supply and sewerage, drainage, solid waste management, street lighting, &ldquo;economic activity&rdquo; and &ldquo;skill development&rdquo; in the panchayats. The private partner has also been given the option of &ldquo;add on revenue-sharing&rdquo; facilities, one of which is &ldquo;village-linked tourism&rdquo;. This is a bane and not a boon. How does this issue get priority over pressing concerns in villages, such as maternal care, safe deliveries and child malnutrition? This is not all. The finance minister periodically talks of the need for banks to extend financial inclusion to villages with populations of at least 2,000 people.

Letters: Priorities for rural India

Apropos the report &ldquo;Maran stocks slump on CBI crackdown fears&rdquo; (July 28), the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been abysmally slow in acting against the Marans. Since the 1990s, the Maran brothers have built their business empire at a most enviable rate courtesy their father/Union minister and grand-uncle-cum-chief minister. The Sun Group&rsquo;s business expansion was extremely rapid in the couple of years that Dayanidhi Maran was Union minister for IT. In fact, the tardy CBI investigation suggests that the Marans may have lost politically but their money power can reach any corner.

Letters: CBI too slow

Like many organised retail firms, the retail unit of a major business house is facing tough times. So tough, it seems, that its enthusiasm for media coverage has expanded exponentially. First, its PR firm called several reporters in each publication to zero in on the person in charge. Then the CEO himself called the person concerned soliciting coverage for the press conference he was about to hold.

Pressed for publicity

But not all initials in DRDO can be open to interpretation. For instance, K D Nayak&rsquo;s full designation is chief controller (R&amp;D-M&amp;M), DRDO. What does M&amp;M stand for? No one &mdash; not even other journalists covering the beat &mdash; knew, and Google didn&rsquo;t yield an answer either. Called for a clarification, another DRDO official considerately advised, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t bother. The abbreviations will confuse readers. Keep it to an understandable abbreviation. DRDO adds too many letters in front of names.

Making the cut

Everyone knows IP stands for Intellectual Property in common parlance and, no doubt, the premier Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) probably owns scads of it. But for K D Nayak, chief controller (R&amp;D), DRDO, the initials sometimes stand for something quite different. As he admitted at a conference, he sometimes tells his staff in jest that IP in DRDO stands for &ldquo;infrastructural problems&rdquo; or &ldquo;internal politics&rdquo;. No doubt many government-run outfits would agree with him.

DRDO's 'IP'

The sharp drop in profits, 23 per cent, for Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL) in the first quarter of 2012-13 &mdash; combined with the lockout at its Manesar plant &mdash; has focused attention on India&rsquo;s auto sector. Is it struggling? As Table 1 shows, it has seen something of a slight slowdown since March this year &mdash; mainly reflecting weakness in the domestic market since exports are still a small proportion of its output.

StatsGuru: 30-July-2012

Assam is not new to sectarian strife, but &ndash; going by the happenings of the last 10 days &ndash; few lessons have been learnt on how to prevent violence from feeding on itself and escalating. Migration from Bangladesh has long been one of the central emotive issues in Assam, and by the early 1980s, violence on an unprecedented scale engulfed the state. In that conflict, the protagonists were the Assamese and Bengali-speaking Muslims; the opponents in the next phase of strife were the Assamese and the Bodos &mdash; plains tribals, and the people originally indigenous to Assam. The Bodos waged a two-decade long movement for autonomy that culminated in the creation of the Bodoland Territorial Council in 2002, which encompassed four districts. The latest conflict is between the Bodos and Bengali-speaking Muslims &mdash; and, again, questions are being raised and allegations are being made about illegal migration from what is now Bangladesh.

Assam boils over again

Hindustan Unilever&rsquo;s stock hit a record high last week after the company, India&rsquo;s largest in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) category, announced its results for the quarter ended June 30. Its sales were up 20 per cent, driven by higher volumes as well as better prices. Dabur, the biggest home-grown player in the sector, reported an increase of 21.37 per cent in sales, and Nestle, the country&rsquo;s largest food company, said its sales were up 12.8 per cent. The latter two companies, too, said it was because of better volumes and higher prices. Indeed, the last two quarters have been a dream run for the FMCG sector. Demand was buoyant, and all price increases were absorbed by customers. As a result, pricing power had returned to the FMCG companies. There was no evidence of down-trading, a situation in which consumers opt for lower-priced brands.

Strategies for survival

Every four years, as the Indian contingent heads to the latest venue of the summer Olympics, the media is awash with tremulous speculation. It&rsquo;s a familiar narrative. India&rsquo;s contingent is always better trained and the government has spent larger sums of money on it than ever before. Ergo, India should come away with more medals than before.

Poor economics and golds

National Democratic Alliance convener Sharad Yadav is quite pleased with President Pranab Mukherjee. Soon after the counting of votes for the Presidential election started and it became clear that it was going to be an easy victory for Mukherjee, the senior Congress leader called to thank Yadav around 4 pm for Janata Dal (United)&rsquo;s support. Within an hour of the first call, when the returning officer formally announced that Mukherjee had comfortably won around 69 per cent votes, Mukherjee again called Yadav to thank him and his party for the support.

President's pleasantries

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance&rsquo;s (NDA&rsquo;s) nominee for Vice-President, Jaswant Singh, is talking to leaders of different political parties for their support in the upcoming election, which has become a crucial battle between the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the Opposition. When Singh called Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for a good time to meet him, Kumar offered to personally come to Delhi and see him. Kumar said Singh should not trouble himself by planning a visit to Patna.

Good time and travel

Much to the Congress party&rsquo;s embarrassment, the Delhi High Court on the basis of the DNA results declared veteran Congress leader and former Uttarakhand chief minister, N D Tiwari, as the biological father of Rohit Shekhar. The internet world was abuzz with Tiwari jokes and cheeky one-liners on the &lsquo;virility&rsquo; of the Congress leader reflecting that of the party and the like. As reporters bombarded the Congress headquarters for the party&rsquo;s response to the news, a spokesperson kept a straight face and mumbled about it being a &lsquo;personal&rsquo; matter that the party would not comment on.

Private matter 

Facebook Inc has lost about $34 billion in market value since its May initial public offering, as the operator of the world&rsquo;s largest social-networking service fails to assuage concerns about how it can make more money from almost a billion users. Facebook&rsquo;s stock dropped 12 per cent on Friday, its biggest one-day loss on record, after its first quarterly earnings report as a public company.

Business Standard

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