Business and Economy

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HP acquires LeftHand networks for $360 million

HP has acquired LeftHand Networks Inc., a storage virtualization and iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions company for $360 million in cash. LeftHand Networks’ solutions enable midsize companies and remote offices or branches of large corporations to easily and cost-effectively protect critical business data
Founded in 1999, LeftHand Networks is privately held and headquartered in Boulder, [...]

October 5th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Update-4 : House passes bailout plan, Bush signs the bill

Update:
10/03/08 - 4
The House has ok’d the revised bailout bill with a 263-171 vote. President Bush acted quickly and signed the bill providing his approval. The bill will provide money for banks to keep their payroll expenses going and allow them to lend money to each other. What it won’t fix is easy credit for [...]

October 3rd, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued
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It’s Wachovia now, Citi acquires banking assets

Wachovia is the next big bank to fall and it’s banking assets have been acquired by Citi. Under the terms of the agreement, Citi will pay Wachovia approximately $2.16 billion in stock and assume Wachovia’s senior and subordinated debt, totaling approximately $53 billion. This will create a U.S. retail bank with 9.8% U.S. market deposit [...]

September 29th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Google increases search market share in August

Google is one of the most popular web destination among internet users. The company continues to grow it’s online search market share and currently holds top spot. According to comScore’s August search engine rankings, Google increased it market share by 1.1% at the expense of Yahoo and Microsoft, which were down by 0.9 and 0.6 [...]

September 21st, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Online advertising hit by wall street crisis

The financial meltdown is having a big impact on online image based advertising revenues. According to a study by the Neilsen group, financial services companies are hurting and cutting down on ad spending.
Compares to the first 2 quarters of 2007, financial services companies have spent 27% less in the first two quarters in 2008, a [...]

September 21st, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Bush administration proposes a $700 billion, tax payer funded, bail out

The Bush administration is trying to fix the recent financial meltdown by proposing a mammoth treasury bailout of unprecedented magnitude - $700 billion to buy bad assets using tax payer dollars.

The proposal has been submitted by the White house to lawmakers today, in a desperate attempt to address sliding investor confidence on the stability of [...]

September 20th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Biggest bank bail out in decades

The fed is working on, what amounts to the biggest bail out for banks in over a decade. With AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Washington Mutual all falling prey to their own practices and a panic stricken economy, the fed and treasury have come together with separate measures to help struggling banks.
The Treasury [...]

September 19th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Sandisk tight lipped but Samsung sings

Sandisk issued a statement yesterday about rumors that Samsung may be acquiding the flash memory maker. It’s business as usual it seems
“SanDisk periodically has conversations with multiple parties, including Samsung, regarding a variety of potential business opportunities. We evaluate all of these opportunities, but maintain a policy of not commenting on market rumors or speculation.”
However, [...]

September 17th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued
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HP announces massive layoffs as EDS acquisition completes

As HP integrates it’s acquisition of EDS, the company has announced restructuring of it’s combined workforce. HP will shed approximately 7.5 percent! of it’s employees or about 24600 heads. About half of the reductions will occur in the United States. HP says it will provide employees affected by this restructuring program with severance packages, counseling [...]

September 16th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Market Meltdown: Jim Cramer looses it in a financial armageddon prophecy!

Well! See Jim Cramer go nuts over the state of the financial markets. This is before Bear Sterns goes under and all the mayhem breaks loose on wall street. You got to appreciate his passion.

Sphere: Related Content

September 16th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued
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Best Buy acquires Napster, what?

Best Buy, the consumer technology retailer, has purchased Napster, a pioneer in digital music entertainment. Napster agreed to be acquired at $2.65 per share in cash for a purchase price of approximately $121 million.
This is good for Napster but where does it fit in within Best Buy?  Maybe Best Buy can offer Napster music solutions [...]

September 15th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Update: Dow slips below 11000, Lehman Brothers files for Bankruptcy protection, Merrill bought by BOA

Update: The Dow Jones is down 500 points and closed below 11,000 erasing about $700 billion in shareholder wealth.
In a shocking turn of events over the weekend, financial firm Lehman brothers has filed for federal bankruptcy protection. The news comes within days of Lehman assuring Wall Street and investors of its survival, and putting itself [...]

September 15th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued
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Zetta, cloud storage company, raises $10 mil

Zetta, a provider of cloud storage solutions for enterprises, today announced that it has closed a $10.68 million Series A financing round led by venture capital firms Sigma Partners and Foundation Capital. Zetta plans [...]

September 14th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Government takes control over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

Treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. issued a statement today along with Jim Lockhart, Director of the new independent regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) on providing Treasury and FHFA protection to the two government sponsored enterprise’s (GSE): Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
The announcement today is a contract between the Department of [...]

September 7th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Redhat grows virtualization portfolio: acquires Qumranet for $107 mil

Redhat has acquired Qumranet for approximately $107 million in cash.Qumranet’s claim to fame has been the KVM module, an open source project for Linux kernel based virtualization using technologies embedded in processors from Intel and AMD.
Redhat has shown a keen interest in building its own virtulization portfolio to entrench itself deeper in customer environments ( [...]

September 4th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

XBOX 360 for $200

Microsoft is cutting the price of its gaming console XBOX 360 yet again. Beginning on Friday, the XBOX 360 Arcade version would sell for $200 making it $50 cheaper than rival Nintendo Wii. Microsoft had dropped prices in July as well.
The XBOX 360 Arcade has been selling for $280. An XBOX 360 with 60 GB [...]

September 3rd, 2008 | supa | Comments | Continued

FDIC: rough quarter for banks, 27 more banks join problem list

FDIC today released data on commercial banks insured by them. Net Earnings for these commercial entities fell to $5 billion, a decline of $31.8 billion (86.5 percent) from the $36.8 billion that the industry earned in the second quarter of 2007. The latest earnings were the lowest for the industry since the fourth quarter of [...]

August 26th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Broad declines in home prices continue

Decline in home prices continued for the first half of 2008 as S&P reported data through June 2008 for its S&P Case-Shiller 1 Home Price Index, a measure of U.S. housing market. Home price declines have prevailed throughout 2007 and the trend continues in 2008.
The decline in the index remained in double digits. With a [...]

August 26th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Existing home sales and foreclosures rise in July

The National Association of Realtors has release Existing-home sales numbers for July. The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® Existing-Home Sales Series is the premier measurement of the residential real estate market. On or about the 25th of each month, NAR releases statistics on sales and prices of existing single-family homes for the nation and the four [...]

August 26th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Losing at Home Turf: 360 beats PS3 in Japan

Sony’s PlayStation 3 game console has had the home turf advantage in Japan. XBOX 360 sales there have been in low numbers. But it changed in the week ending August 10. Microsoft’s XBOX 360 sold 24,962 units in the week of Aug. 4 to 10, according to data from Media Create, beating Sony’s PlayStation 3 [...]

August 16th, 2008 | supa | Comments | Continued
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Mobile TV chip company SIANO raises $17 Mil Series C

With the consumer market now starting to open up to color LCD devices, SIANO aims to add a digital TV function to all color LCD’s. SIANO is a mobile silion company stablished in June, 2004 and develops highly integrated silicon receivers for the mobile digital TV (MDTV) market.
“We are witnessing massive embedding of our products [...]

August 16th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

nVidia revenue, profits fall, announces share repurchase

nVidia reported earnings for Q2 FY09 and its revenues fell from $935.3 million to $892.7 million in the same quarter a year ago: a decrease of 5%. However, revenues for the six months ended July 27, 2008 increased to $2.05 billion compared to $1.78 billion for the six months ended July 29, 2007, an increase [...]

August 14th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Update: Disappointing IPO for Rackspace, down 10% on open

Rackspace Hosting Inc. saw its shares fall on its first day of trading Friday morning following an initial public offering that priced at the low end of the company’s expectations. The company operates the Mosso Cloud Computing Infrastructure.
The debut was a disappointment for the first venture-backed company to brave the IPO waters in nearly five [...]

August 8th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued
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Rackspace IPO prices at lower end of the price range

UPDATE: Rackspace Hosting falls on IPO debut
Rackspace Hosting Inc. (NYSE: RAX), the company behind the Mosso cloud computing platform, today announced the initial public offering of 15,000,000 shares of its common stock at a price of $12.50 per share at the lower end of the expected price range of $12 - $16 a share. The [...]

August 7th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Exxon: Produce less, Profit More

ExxonMobile - the world famous US-based integrated energy giant made $11.68 billion in 2nd quarter of 2008, a 14% increase compared to the same quarter in 2007. This is the highest profit ever made by any corporation in the world, Ever! However, I also noticed US oil demand dropped 3% in 2008’s first 6 months [...]

August 6th, 2008 | supa | Comments | Continued

Friendster gets $20 million and Google Exec

Big day for Friendster! First, the social networking site announced a $20 million funding from new investor IDG  Ventures. Then Richard Kimber, former Google regional managing director of South Asia, announced he is joining Friendster as its new CEO and a member of Friendster’s board of directors.
“Friendster is growing at an enormous rate in Asia [...]

August 5th, 2008 | supa | Comments | Continued
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Fed keeps interest rates unchanged, market’s rally

The Federal Open Market Committee decided today to keep its target for the federal funds rate at 2 percent. According to the press release, Economic activity expanded in the second quarter, partly reflecting growth in consumer spending and exports. However, the committee echoed concerns over a softening labor market.
The unemployment rate for July rose to [...]

August 5th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

iTunes leader in music but Amazon upsets Target

According to the latest MusicWatch consumer surveys from The NPD Group, a leading market research company, the five leading music retailers in the U.S. for the first half of 2008 (January through June, based on purchases of CDs and a-la-carte digital music downloads) ranked as follows:

iTunes
Wal-Mart (Walmart, Walmart.com, Walmart Music Downloads)
Best Buy (Best Buy, Bestbuy.com, [...]

August 5th, 2008 | supa | Comments | Continued
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GumGum raises $1.2 million series A

Image analytics company GumGum has raised $1.2 million in series A from First Round Capital and Crosscut ventures. Howard Morgan and Brian Garrett will join the companies board of directors.
GumGum is a licensing and distribution platform for online content. It tries to give publishers a better deal for their online content e.g. images. Unlike the [...]

August 4th, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Jerry’s sweet victory, what next for Yahoo?

After a tumultous 6 months, it is sweet victory for Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo! Inc. In the annual meeting of stockholders held on 1st of Augist, Yahoo stockholders re-elected all of Yahoo!’s nominees to the Board of Directors.
Roy Bostock, Chairman of Yahoo!, said, “We now look forward to executing on our strategy and continuing [...]

August 3rd, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued
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Ngmoco gets money from Kliener’s iFund

Game publisher Ngmoco Inc. has raised an undisclosed Series A round from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Maples Investments as it readies to release new games on Apple’s App Store, where iPhone users shop for new features.
CEO Neil Young is a former executive from Electronic Arts, where he oversaw the development of several hit [...]

August 2nd, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued
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Amazon acquires AbeBooks

Amazon.com, Inc. today announced that, subject to closing conditions, it has reached an agreement to acquire AbeBooks. AbeBooks is an online marketplace for books, with over 110 million primarily used, rare and out-of-print books listed for sale by thousands of independent booksellers from around the world.
“As a leader in rare and hard-to-find books, AbeBooks brings [...]

August 1st, 2008 | admin | Comments | Continued
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SQL chip company raises $20 mil Series B

Kickfire™, Inc. has announced that it has closed a $20 million Series B financing. Pinnacle Ventures led the round and Series A investors Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, and The Mayfield Fund reinvested. The capital will be used to build out the sales, marketing and customer operations infrastructure to bring the Kickfire appliance to market.
Kickfire delivers [...]

July 31st, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

Bush signs $300 billion Housing and Economic Recovery Act

President Bush has signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act after the US House of Representatives had passed the plan on 07/23. It provides aid to homeowners facing foreclosure and protects the country’s two largest mortgage finance companies from collapse.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guarantee almost half the country’s $12 trillion in home [...]

July 31st, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued

[Updated] Banks borrowed record $17.45b per day from Fed

As the credit crisis continues to affect economy, banks have been relying more and more on Federal Reserve for funds. According to the data release by Fed on Thursday, banks borrowed at the rate of $17.45 billion per day in the latest week, a record figure surpassing last week of record borrowing at the rate [...]

July 31st, 2008 | supa | Comments | Continued
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So how profitable is Exxon? $11.6 billion for Q2

So how profitable are oil companies. In Exxon’s context that reported earnings today, that’s $11.6 billion in earnings for the second quarter. Profits rose 14 percent from a year ago, as crude oil and natural gas prices continued their climb.
The Irving, Texas-based oil company posted earnings of $2.22 a share, on revenue of $138 billion. [...]

July 31st, 2008 | rp | Comments | Continued