The last time Bill Gates played an active role at Microsoft, as chief software architect, he witnessed the company muffing its earliest efforts to become a major player in search, smartphones and tablet computers.
In the six years since then, he has watched as the technology industry changed without him. The personal computer era that Microsoft so ably dominated during and after Mr. Gates’s heyday as Microsoft’s chief executive has started to fade away. Now, the focus is on social media and mobile devices that run in large part on cloud computing.
And what technologies has Mr. Gates, who turned to philanthropy, been most vocal about during all that change? Things like self-contained toilets and vaccines.
“I am a little obsessed with fertilizer,” reads the first sentence of a column he wrote for a recent issue of Wired, the technology magazine.
Satya Nadella is Microsoft Corp.'s new CEO. But he ascends as co-founder Bill Gates returns to a more central role at a company struggling to catch up in mobile and other fast-moving technologies. Mr. Gates is giving up the chairman's role to become technical adviser to Mr. Nadella, the 22-year Microsoft veteran who was named…
Tags: gates, microsoft, bill, role, chief, executive, company, technologies, mobile
Why is America’s largest cable TV company buying its biggest rival for $44 billion? Well, not to oversimplify things, but that’s easy to explain: http://qz.com/176837/one-sentence-and-six-charts-explain-why-comcast-is-buying-time-warner-cable/
Yes, Twitter has a growth problem. But more than that, the company has another headache: Getting people to stick around after signing up. According to people close to the company, Twitter has seen more than one billion registrations to its service over the past seven and a half years. Stack…
With the simple flick of its finger, Angry Birds was the launchpad for the multi-billion pound mobile games industry we see today, but while many see it as a an overnight success story for Finnish startup Rovio, the truth is somewhat different. Speaking to IBTimes UK at Rovio's colourful headquarters…
Tags: company, mobile, time, smartphones, media, industry, years
Let’s start with the premise that Twitch, the video-game watching network, is the next ESPN – you know, the jewel in Disney’s crown that, by itself, is worth $50.8 billion. Like ESPN, Twitch is about live competition, and, like ESPN, Twitch does exceptionally well in the highly desirable young male demographic.1 Obviously…
Amid continued debate over whether or not Sochi is prepared to host the 2014 Olympics (here are 15 alarming signs that Russia might not be ready) reporters from around the world are starting to check into local hotels — to their apparent grief. Some journalists arriving in Sochi are describing appalling conditions in the housing there, where only six of nine media hotels are ready for guests. Hotels are still under construction. Water, if it’s running, isn’t drinkable. One German photographer told the AP over the weekend that his hotel still had stray dogs and construction workers wandering in and out of rooms.
What the two men in this photograph are doing is now illegal in Russia. Amidst an alarming—and frequently violent— government crackdown, being out, or simply supporting gays and lesbians, can now get you thrown in jail, beaten up, or worse. On the eve of the Sochi Olympics, Jeff Sharlet embeds…
U.S. bank JP Morgan said on Thursday it would process a payment from Russia's embassy in Kazakhstan to Russian insurance agency Sogaz after blocking it earlier this week over Ukraine-related U.S. sanctions. "Following consultation with our regulators, we are processing this transaction," the bank said in a statement. http://www.reuters.com/
When it comes to explaining Russia’s Ukrainian adventurism, the West has attempted to hide behind a wall of myths and hope its problems will just go away. There are all sorts of reasons to be stunned and perplexed today. Stunned by the reintroduction of the fears and phobias of the…
The German government says Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted a proposal by Chancellor Angela Merkel for a fact-finding mission and a "contact group" on Ukraine that could be led by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Government spokesman Georg Streiter said the proposal came in a telephone conversation…
Mario Draghi’s habit of springing surprises means that few can say what he’ll do when European Central Bank officials decide on monetary policy today.
Inflation at a four-year low and volatile market rates speak for further action by the Governing Council, even after it cut official rates to record lows in November. At the same time, signs of economic improvement and the central bank’s prediction that price gains will gradually return to target suggest the ECB president may prefer to hold fire. That’s the call by 62 of the 66 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, while 4 predict a cut in the benchmark rate to 0.1 percent from 0.25 percent.
None of my tickers are showing much action today. Yen crosses are down modestly but nothing compared to the volatility we’ve seen over the past few days. The euro tried the upside a few times today and will close out the day with some small gains but tomorrow the ECB…
Mario Draghi has set the bar high for the European Central Bank’s next meeting Thursday. The bank president’s warning about reduced inflation expectations, made in a speech on Aug. 22, fanned hopes that the ECB may announce additional stimulus measures to boost economic growth and prices. A report Friday showing…
Tags: ecb, bank, draghi, inflation, record, rates, lows, target, four-year, president
Runners have target times, golfers judge themselves by their swing, while Mario Draghi watches a technical measure of inflation expectations used by financial markets. Just one problem: it suggests the European Central Bank president is not achieving his objective – and that markets’ fears of eurozone deflation are mounting. Since…
Tags: inflation, draghi, investors, central, ecb, rate, time, mario, target, european
Though ECB cut was covered by the Press in great details but only a few analyzed the results of such measure. Only independent writer/economists talked about the potential losers and winners of the situation. In this article featured in The Telegraph , an economic writer talks about critiques the actions of…
Tags: rates, ecb, action, rate, cut, economic, bank, central
Press conference following the meeting of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank on 4 September 2014 at its premises in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, starting at 2:30 p.m. CET: Introductory statement by Mario Draghi, President of the ECB. Question and answer session. Registered journalists pose questions to Mario Draghi, President…
Tags: ecb, mario, draghi, president, central, bank, european, council, governing
Satya Nadella is Microsoft Corp.’s new CEO. But he ascends as co-founder Bill Gates returns to a more central role at a company struggling to catch up in mobile and other fast-moving technologies.
Mr. Gates is giving up the chairman’s role to become technical adviser to Mr. Nadella, the 22-year Microsoft veteran who was named Tuesday to succeed Steve Ballmer as its third chief executive. Mr. Gates said he would devote up to a third of his time—which is now largely devoted to philanthropic activities—to help Mr. Nadella craft Microsoft’s product strategy.
Why is America’s largest cable TV company buying its biggest rival for $44 billion? Well, not to oversimplify things, but that’s easy to explain: http://qz.com/176837/one-sentence-and-six-charts-explain-why-comcast-is-buying-time-warner-cable/
“If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old” ― Peter F. Drucker A strategy is a plan of action to achieve a major aim and future result. It requires commitment because making change is difficult. To describe what’s involved, Peter Drucker said: “Strategic planning is the continuous…
Five months ago, the student town of Manipal went abuzz when they realized that one of their own was the leading contender in the race for the top job at Microsoft Corp. For the next five months, it looked like their prayers would easily lead to fruition. But late last…
Yes, Twitter has a growth problem. But more than that, the company has another headache: Getting people to stick around after signing up. According to people close to the company, Twitter has seen more than one billion registrations to its service over the past seven and a half years. Stack…
The plunge in emerging markets is taking a bite out of the performance of funds managed by some of the biggest names on Wall Street, including BlackRock, Brevan Howard and T. Rowe Price.
Some mutual funds are already down 10 percent so far this year, thanks to declining stocks and currencies. And that drop has intensified selling pressure as investors rush to pull more money out.
“It has been a disappointing beginning of the year,” said Will Landers, a BlackRock equity portfolio manager with close to $4 billion in assets under management. The BlackRock Latin America Fund is off 10 percent this year.
One reason for global market weakness is investors’ fears that emerging market economies may be heading for a broad crisis, sparked by higher U.S. interest rates and slowing growth in China. Much of the analysis in the last few days has focused on why these nations are less exposed to…
Emerging-market equities and exchange rates are again under severe downward pressure, but are the underlying economies really as fragile as global traders seem to fear? The short answer, for a few, is probably “yes,” but for most, “not just yet.” Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/kenneth-rogoff-looks-beneath-the-turmoil-roiling-emerging-economies--equity-and-currency-markets
Swedish-American heiress Cristina Stenbeck's bet on the red-hot e-commerce business has caught the eye of investors, although doubters question the future of her Kinnevik group in a sector where new players emerge almost every day. Shares in Kinnevik, which Stenbeck inherited at 24 on the sudden death of her father…
China’s benchmark money-market rate is set for the biggest weekly drop since December as demand for cash eased after banks met quarter-end capital requirements. The seven-day repurchase rate, a gauge of funding availability in the banking system, tumbled 124 basis points, or 1.24 percentage points, to 2.98 percent as of…
Benjamin Lawsky, New York’s financial services superintendent, has opened an investigation into manipulation of the currency markets by large banks and is requesting documents from more than a dozen institutions, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The source said Lawsky has asked for documents from Barclays BARCR.UL, Credit Suisse (MLPN.P), Deutsche Bank DBKGN.DE, Goldman Sachs (GS.N), Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LLOY.L), RBS (RBS.L), Societe Generale (SOGN.PA) and Standard Chartered.
Deutsche Bank has fired three currency traders in New York as regulators worldwide ramp up their investigations into potential manipulation of the $5-trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, according to a person briefed on the matter. The three employees include the head of Deutsche Bank’s emerging markets foreign exchange trading desk in…
Tags: deutsche, york, bank, matter, currency, markets, trading, source, manipulation
Currency traders are having their worst start to a year since 2010 as a dearth of trends in major foreign-exchange markets crushes their investment strategies. Deutsche Bank AG’s Currency Returns Index has dropped 0.3 percent since Dec. 31, dragged down by momentum trading, where investors looks for consistent moves in…
Software AG today unveiled the latest addition to its Apama market surveillance solution with alerts to identify FX (foreign exchange) market manipulation and benchmark fixing. Developed in partnership with tier one banks, these new alerts provide compliance and market monitoring personnel with in-depth monitoring of FX trading, to identify benchmark…
In less than three weeks, the most important election of the year will take place in Switzerland, and you haven’t heard of it. While the U.S. focuses on the recent Republican victory, the financial markets are facing an earth-shaking event on November 30th. This Swiss election seeks to challenge the…