Volkswagen vs. Porsche: A profitable family feud

The takeover war between Volkswagen and Porsche is playing out almost like a Shakespearean Drama. At the heart are two of Germany’s most well known and yet most reclusive industrial families — the Porsches and the Piechs, who incidentally belong to the same family line.

It began with Ferdinand Porsche, the German engineering genius who constructed the first Volkswagen, known at first as the KdF car, and then later as the VW Beetle. Porsche had several children, but two would come to define the family rift we are all now seeing.

Ferry Porsche would go on to manage the Porsche Engineer Bureau and oversee the construction of Porsche’s first own sports car, while Louise Porsche went on to marry Anton Piech and keep a high stake in the then fledgling Volkswagen Auto Company.

Fast forward to today and the main players are cousins Wolfgang Porsche, Ferry’ son, who heads the supervisory board of Porsche SE, and Ferdinand Piech, Louise’s son, who is at the helm of the Volkswagen board. Both men are involved in both companies, but Piech has been busy building the VW Empire while Wolfgang Porsche oversaw the rise of the tiny sports car maker to one of the most efficient car manufacturers in the world.

Then came Wendelin Wiediking, CEO of Porsche, who had the idea of attempting a hostile takeover. The tiny Porsche would try to take a majority stake in Volkswagen, the largest car company in Europe. Just to put this in perspective, Volkswagen turns out more vehicles a week than Porsche does in a whole year.

The deal failed and Porsche was left with massive debt of more than $10 billion, and now is when Ferdinand Piech saw his chance.

Piech gathered his friends in German politics and applied pressure on his cousin Wolfgang Porsche. After a long battle, Wolfgang conceded defeat. Porsche will probably merge with VW, thus losing much of its famed independence.

There is however some consolation in all this for Wolfgang Porsche. While he lost his top manager Wendelin Wiedeking and has allowed his company to fall into the fangs of Volkswagen, under the new management structure the Porsche and Piech families would hold more than 50 per cent of Volkswagen AG — and thus become more powerful and richer than ever before. Making this possibly one of the most profitable family feuds of all time.

Stock Brokers - everything you need to know

The field of marketing and stock trading can be best dealt with using the services and information coming from Stock Brokers. Stock Brokers are the people who have a concrete and well defined knowledge on how to handle the different problems involved in trading stocks. Basically, the market is a very complicated place since economic changes around the world easily affect any local economic situation.

Depending on the commodity being traded, there are a variety of Stock Brokers who can extend a specialized strategic decision. Many companies rely on the services of these brokers to help their business transactions to be in line with the correct market direction since. This is because the best chance of gaining an upper hand in the market is to use the latest knowledge in making decisions. Not many people can do this since it takes experience and a solid understanding of the possibilities of all the moves taken. The hiring of a freelance stock broker is ideal for these cases since free trading in a company does not require them to hold on permanently to a stock. Once they have traded the respective stock, they can let go of the broker involved.

Basically, Stock Brokers can be considered the base of the company's trading operations since they are both the front liners and men behind the scenes in analyzing every aspect of the transaction. The stock broker has a lot of responsibilities that make them deeply embedded in the trading aspect of the business world. Many companies are able to develop their own style of trading based on the advice and style of the Stock Brokers under their employment.

There are many strategies depending on the situation. One of the most highly sought after strategies is the dual direction method of trading, which has been used only by the most successful brokers since it takes precision and accuracy when dealing with the different factors involved. The dual direction trading can only be made effective if the trader would have the ability to know where the market would be going. This is because the commodities in hand would either be sold or traded for the better one, which would earn interest. By knowing which commodity would be successful or not, the stock broker should investigate whether the market would go up or down and move at the exact moment the trade would earn interest.

The job of Stock Brokers is very hard since intellect and instinct would go hand-in-hand in the market in order to be successful. The trick can be attributed to the balancing capability of the person to weight the effects and implications of his decision. Once every avenue has been exhausted, the Stock Brokers would then be able to find the best way provided they have the right timing in everything. That is why it takes years and years of training, studying and exposure to the market before the Stock Brokers can truly be initiated in doing the major business interactions and processes of their company.

For more information about finding the Best Stock Brokers, visit http://www.your-broker-guide.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeff_C_Daniels

Government to spend 40000 crores to boost Indian IT.

Be it the rising rupee or recession in the west everything effects Indian IT. If recession has affected the IT spends and subsequently the project pipeline, rising rupee has eaten away the profits. That only proved to be a temporary thing. As there is hope on both accounts.

Orders globally are coming along though in tranches of $25 million to $30 million. TCS signed a 5-year deal with Volkswagen. It also have a contract with ABB. Wipro on the other hand signed a $34 million con2tract with Sunoco.

But the biggest driver for Indian IT is not the contracts from the west but from India itself. Indian government is set to spend 40000 crore rupees on various government digitization projects. The Unique ID project is just the start. Even that project is set to balloon into multiple IT projects.

Infosys has $1bn orders in pipeline. All of them from various government and eGovernance projects. TCS, Wipro and HCL are not far behind. After all it is 40000 crore rupees and someone has to get it. In all probability the entire top 5 will get a piece. The top 5 includes Tech Mahindra + Mahindra Satyam (once merged the combination will be the 4th largest in terms of market capitalization leaving HCL behind).

What exactly will the Indian government spend 40000 crores on?

1. A national database of maintaining health records of patients.

2. Modernization of India post using IT

3. Telemedicine digitization (worth more than 5000 crores)

4. Automating and integrating municipal councils across the country

5. Indian railways is set to spend $2bn to become more efficient and customer friendly.

40000 crores is a big amount and I expect that amount to be spent in the next 5 years. Only problem Indian IT faces is IBM. It already is the top vendor for Indian companies in IT with more than 10% market share. Indian IT companies have to try really hard to eat some of IBM’s lunch.

All these efforts are aimed at increasing transparency and reduce leakage (read corruption). How are we going to track the leakage in these projects is the big question.