Feb 11
BRUSSELS — Networking company Cisco said Wednesday that it is challenging Microsofts $8.5 billion takeover of Skype at the European Unions top court to ensure Microsoft wont block other video conferencing services.
Microsoft completed the deal in October shortly after the European Commission, the EUs competition regulator, cleared the takeover. Microsoft Corp. hopes that owning Skype will allow it to better compete with other tech giants including Apple Inc. o
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Tags: Skype, Skype Merger
Feb 08
Ratings agency Fitch has warned it could cut the AA credit rating of Australia’s big banks largely as a result of their heavy reliance on overseas borrowing to help fund their lending books.
Standard & Poor’s cut the big four banks, and their New Zealand subsidiaries, to AA-from AA in November.
At the time, New Zealand banks shugged off the S&P rating downgrade, saying it did not reflect a change in their individual financial strength.
Yesterday, Fitch said it was pushing ahead with a review of the sector, placing the Australian banks on an alert known as rating watch negative.
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Tags: Banks, Ratings Agency
Jan 19
To address his promise of relieving costly mandates on local municipalities, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has assembled a Mandate Relief Council, which will hold its first meeting tomorrow.
Made up mostly of the governor’s appointees, Sen. Jack Martins, R-Mineola, is the sole Long Islander on the 11-member council.
Martins was one of two appointments made by Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, R-Rockville Centre, as temporary president of the senate.
Related stories
- Martins to sit on NY Mandate Relief Council
- Duffy touts $140M in relief for Long Island
- NY group seeks local government mandate relief
Cuomo created the council to address the rising costs facing local governments including pension costs and increasing Medicaid costs. T
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Tags: Council, Mandate Relief, Mandate Relief Council, Relief Council
Jan 13
Photo: Virginia Star
WHAT if Jamie Dimon is right? What if the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase is not just blowing smoke when he complains that the country – and, indeed, the world – has imposed so many new rules on the banking industry, some of them overlapping, others seeming to contradict each other, yet others whose sole purpose seems to be to weigh down the industry, that they threaten to do as much harm as good.
Last summer, Dimon confronted Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, at a conference and asked him: ”Has anyone bothered to study the cumulative effect of these things?” Just last week, during JPMorgan’s earnings call with analysts, Dimon complained that Europe’s ”regulatory policy, government policy, central bank policy – it’s not co-ordinated.
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Jan 09
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Alabama defense took no chances in the rematch.
When Jordan Jefferson dropped back to pass, he was swept under by a tide of crimson. When the LSU quarterback took off running, he mustve felt like Alabama had a few extra players on the field.
Courtney Upshaw, Donta Hightower and Co. sure made it seem that way.
With a smothering display of old-school football, the No. 2
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Tags: Beats No, Lsu
Jan 01
COMPETITION: A Nano car sits in traffic on a crowded street after being driven out of a showroom in Mumbai.
To kick sales of its ultra-low-cost Nano into higher gear, Tata Motors needs a lot more buyers like Vijay Govind Pisal, a sugar cane farmer in Ozarde in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.
Unable to afford a big vehicle to haul crops and fertilizer and unwilling to justify paying two or three times the price for a higher-end car given his limited usage, Pisal was sold on the Nano’s cost, fuel efficiency and extended warranty.
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Tags: Car, Car Struggles