IBM rolls out database for smaller firms
Palo Alto: IBM on Thursday began shipping a new database product for mid-sized businesses, as part of its ongoing battle with rivals Oracle and Microsoft. Paul Rivot, IBM's worldwide director of databases, said the company's new DB2 UDB Express product is built around its core database and adds features such as self-tuning and automatic installation that make it less expensive and easier to use. Pricing for the database software -- currently available for the Linux and Windows operating systems and aimed at companies with 100 to 1,000 employees -- starts at $499.
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Court cooks Martha Stewart's goose
New York: Martha Stewart, who turned a small catering outfit into a multimillion-dollar media and home-decorating business, was charged on Wednesday with lying to authorities investigating her sale of stock in a biotech company run by a friend. In a nine-count criminal indictment, the government charged that Stewart and her former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, interfered with the investigation into the suspicious timing of her ImClone Systems stock sale. Stewart, a one-time model and stockbroker, sold nearly 4,000 shares the day before ImClone delivered bad news that caused its stock to plummet. Stewart and Bacanovic, who was a broker with Merrill Ly nch conspired to “fabricate and attempt to deceive investigators with a fictitious explanation for her sale,” the 41-page indictment said. “This criminal case is about lying — lying to the FBI, lying to the SEC and lying to investors. That is conduct that will not be tolerated by anyone,” US attorney James Comey said at a news conference.
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Former DuCoa head accused of price fixing
Washington: A federal grand jury indicted the former president of an Illinois company, as part of its long-running investigation into price-fixing in the vitamin business, the US justice department said. The indictment, handed up in Dallas charges Daniel Rose, the former president of DuCoa, of participating in a conspiracy to fix prices, rig bids and allocate customers in the US market for vitamin B4 between August ’97 and September ’98, the department said. Mr Rose was not available for comment. DuCoa is a US manufacturer of animal health and nutrition products.
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India to open business centre in London: Envoy
London: To give new impetus to the burgeoning Indo-British trade, India is opening a business centre in London by the end of this month, Indian High Commissioner to UK, Ronen Sen announced here on Wednesday night. Stating that there was tremendous scope for stepping up bilateral trade, the High Commissioner said, "we are setting up a business centre and it will be operational by the end of this month." The Indo-Britain bilateral trade crossed 5 billion pounds this year and is expected to double in the next four years. Sen was chief guest at the inaugural dinner of the Conservative Parliamentary Friends of India which was attended by Baroness Shreela Flather, leading NRI businessmen, S P Hinduja and G P Hinduja, chairman and president respectively of the Hinduja Group, Crispin Blunt MP and several leading British and NRI industrialists. Reeling out facts about the rapid growth achieved by India in various fields, Sen said despite the global economic downtrend India had registered an annual growth rate of 5.8 per cent in 2002 and emerged as the world's fastest growing democracy. "People are fairly optimistic that this year the growth rate will be 6 per cent or more and exports will go up by more than 20 per cent." Referring to British telecom workers' threat to go on strike in protest against more British companies opening call centres in India, Sen said Indian IT companies were opening call centres in Britain and one of them had opened a call centre in Belfast providing jobs to 800 people.
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WorldCom boss says fraud was limited: Report
New York: The fraud committed by telco WorldCom was crude and limited to fewer than 100 employees who have since left the company, chairman and chief executive officer Michael Capellas told the Wall Street Journal.Large amounts of cash in round numbers were shifted around the books of the telecommunications company, which is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Capellas was quoted as saying in Thursday's edition of the newspaper. Such fraud should have been spotted by the company's former auditors, Capellas told the newspaper. Capellas made the comments after reviewing parts of one of two reports to be issued on Monday describing WorldCom's fraud, the Journal reported. WorldCom, which is changing its name back to MCI, filed for bankruptcy in July under the weight of $41 billion in debt and an accounting scandal that is expected to top $11 billion. Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for former WorldCom auditor Arthur Andersen, disputed the comments made by Capellas.
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Ericsson keeps 2003 global network sales forecast
Atlanta: Sweden's Ericsson still sees sales of wireless network equipment falling more than 10 percent in the global industry this year, a company executive said on Wednesday. Ericsson still expects mobile infrastructure sales "to be down more than 10 percent (in 2003). That still stands," said Mikael Stromquist, executive vice president of strategic planning and marketing for the company.Stromquist spoke to Reuters in an interview at the Supercomm telecommunications conference here. Along with its peers, the world's largest maker of wireless gear has been hit by three years of rapidly falling demand for mobile networks as operators cut capital spending and focused on their balance sheets amid a weak global economy. Ericsson has been posting losses for 10 straight quarters and announced plans to cut its employees to 47,000 in 2004 from 107,000 at the start of 2001.
Lars Nilsson, the director of business strategy, told Reuters the company continues to expect to return to profits this year.
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