Mittal now sets sights on India, China
London: Mittal Steel, the world's largest steel company which recently merged with Arcelor in a 25.6 billion euro ($32.54 billion) deal is now looking at further acquisitions in emerging markets such as China and India, according to its chairman Lakshmi Mittal.

"At this point, we will focus on China and India," Mittal said in an interview on Friday, when asked about the group's future acquisition strategy.

Despite the size of Arcelor Mittal, the group will control just 10 percent of the global steel market but it will be about three times the size of its nearest rival, Japan's Nippon Steel.

Mittal expects his group to benefit from China's policy to consolidate its mammoth steel industry, where companies such as Baoshan Iron and Steel dominate.

"We definitely want to increase our presence in China and... we think that being the largest steel company in the world... we should participate in that consolidation," he said.
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Google looks at Net shopping
Search engine company Google Inc has introduced Google Checkout, a service that will allow users to make purchases from online stores using payment and shipping information they keep on file with Google.

According to Eric E Schmidt, the chief executive of the company, the aim is to make it easier and faster for people to buy products advertised on Google — thus attracting more advertisers. For consumers, this service referred to as an online wallet, is not new.

Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo have offered similar wallets, which proved not too popular. While the PayPal service of eBay has attracted widespread use, it offers additional features like the ability to transfer money from checking accounts. Google's offer is however a little different. The company will waive some or all of the transaction fees for companies that buy advertising from it. That may give the service a leg up on competitors like PayPal and several smaller companies that help online merchants accept credit cards.

Google is charging retailers 20 cents plus 2 percent of the purchase price to process card transactions, which is less than most businesses pay for credit card processing. Banking industry executives say that credit card processors typically pay MasterCard and Visa a fee of 30 cents and 1.95 per cent for every purchase, so Google will be subsidising many transactions.

Additionally, for every $1 a company spends on search advertising, Google will waive the fees on $10 worth of purchases. Factoring in the 2 per cent fee, that represents a rebate of at least 20 per cent of advertising spending.
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