Bloomberg steps up privacy reforms August 21, 2013 Bloomberg has made further changes to its data policies following an external review into how its journalists were accessing client log-in activity on the company's trading data terminals (release). While the review by law firm Hogan Lovells and regulatory compliance firm Promontory Financial Group found that the news agency already had appropriate client data policies [...]
Buffett boosts stake in General Motors, reduces interest in Kraft August 15, 2013 Billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway made some significant changes to its stake in key companies in the second quarter of the year, the company has announced (release). Berkshire said its pre-tax earnings increased by nearly 50 per cent to $4.6bn from $3.2bn in the same period the year before. The US conglomerate revealed it [...]
Goldman suggests Obama may reduce tax on repatriation of corporate cash stockpiles July 31, 2013 Goldman Sachs have suggested that Obama's new tax scheme could signal support for the low-tax repatriation of foreign profits. The bank's comment team has listed 50 S&P500 companies with as much as $1.8 trillion (£1.2 trillion) invested overseas in 2012. Here's the list of the companies with the most assets overseas, by Goldman's reckoning: General [...]
US tech giants Microsoft and Google both miss estimates July 18, 2013 TECH behemoths Google and Microsoft disappointed investors with their quarterly earnings last night, sending boths stocks down five per cent in after-hours trading. Google fell short of Wall Street’s forecasts as weakening prices for the company’s adverts and mounting losses from its recent acquisition Motorola weighed on earnings. The world’s biggest search engine said net [...]
Artificial Intelligence will destroy jobs – but technological pessimism is wrong September 4, 2013 DEVELOPMENTS in Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be among the most exciting advances of this century. No longer the preserve of science fiction, from driving our cars to managing our health, the products of AI research are already quietly revolutionising our world. But warning bells are ringing. John Maynard Keynes coined the term “technological unemployment” to [...]
Intel and IBM fail to impress October 16, 2012 IBM and Intel last night got the US tech earnings season off to a gloomy start, with the former missing revenue forecasts and the latter spooking investors with a downbeat forecast. IBM reported a five per cent drop in quarterly revenues to $24.7bn, compared to forecasts of $25.4bn, but repeated its outlook for the year. [...]
Geeks and hackers are transforming healthcare and saving our economy July 23, 2013 THE future of healthcare is taking shape. But it’s not being invented in drug company labs or planned by the NHS. Amateurs, obsessives and hackers are leading the charge. It’s a movement that will help us live longer – and could save the economy. It’s all happening through a combination of new gadgets, the power [...]
The business built to help customers outsource their chores September 15, 2013 Annabel Palmer meets Raj Singh, co-founder of the online marketplace Sooqini, who shunned job security for a career as an entrepreneur ACCORDING to Raj Singh, founder of online marketplace Sooqini, we are now living in a “gig economy”. His theory, albeit paraphrased from Michael Lewis’s The New New Thing, goes that people no longer want [...]
IBM lines up Saudi telco work August 5, 2012 IBM has inked a $280m (£179m) deal with Saudi telecoms group Etihad Etisalat to handle its IT operations, the telco said yesterday. The five year contract is a boon for IBM, which two weeks ago posted a three per cent fall in revenues to $25.78bn but at the time assured investors that it had work [...]
IBM pays $1.3bn cash to acquire HR software manager Kenexa August 27, 2012 IBM yesterday agreed a cash deal to acquire Kenexa, the human resource software manager, marking its entry into the sector. The deal will see the computing behemoth pay $46 per share, valuing the smaller firm at $1.3bn (£823m), and comes after recent forays into the HR management market from other tech giants. Kenexa reported a [...]