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Ride-sharing service Uber Technologies Inc. said Thursday a new round of funding valued it at $41 billion, a bet by some of the world’s top investors the firm can sustain a breakneck global expansion pace despite fierce challenges from regulators and taxi companies.
The San Francisco-based company collected $1.2 billion that enables it to expand its workforce, lure new drivers, test a delivery service and subsidize prices in some of the 250 cities around the world where it operates. The closely held company has raised eight times as much as its closest ride-sharing rival, Lyft Inc.
The funding is a vote of confidence in Travis Kalanick, Uber’s co-founder and chief executive whose brash personality has courted controversy. A recent privacy scandal stirred by one of Mr. Kalanick’s deputies appeared not to faze investors focused on Uber’s business prospects.
Uber is now valued at $41.2 billion, easily the highest for any private startup now backed by venture capitalists, and above the market capitalizations of publicly traded companies including Delta Air Lines Inc., Charles Schwab Corp. , Salesforce.com Inc. and Kraft Foods Group Inc.
Now, the five-year-old company must prove it can turn a mobile app for hailing a ride into a significant and profitable global business. Its app, which lets people hail a car from professional or nonprofessional drivers with a few clicks and a credit card, has become a part of daily life in cities from Anchorage to Shenzhen, China.
Some of that cash will go into defending its services. Uber is in fierce fights with local regulators in many places where it operates. It has faced protests by taxi drivers, shutdowns and laws aimed at forcing ride-sharing services into compliance with safety measures and work rules governing taxi operators.
Uber also is exploring using its fleet of drivers to transport goods and services in addition to people. The company has tested deliveries of items including ice cream, flu shots and fresh meals and recently poached the head of Google Inc. ’s same-day delivery business.
The latest financing assumes that Uber’s rapid expansion overseas will overcome these hurdles and continue apace, said Bill Gurley, a partner at Uber venture investor Benchmark and a board member of the ride-sharing company.
“International expansion probably is the key theme of the fundraising,” said Mr. Gurley. “We feel remarkably good about where we stand in the domestic market and our real growth initiatives are focused internationally.”
Uber profits by keeping 20% of the fare paid on most rides on its service and gives the rest to its drivers, who work as independent contractors.
It made hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue last year and is growing sales at a clip of more than 40% a quarter, said a person familiar with the company’s operations. That is an increase from earlier this year, when Mr. Kalanick said revenue was doubling every six months.
By the end of next year, Uber expects to be operating at an about $2 billion net annual revenue rate, excluding driver pay, according to the person familiar with the company’s financials. Such growth is coming from a cookie-cutter global expansion, where the company moves quickly to open up shop, splash out incentives to sign up drivers and then hire lobbyists and lawyers to gird for legal challenges from taxi companies and regulators.
“They are doing exactly what they need to do to change the market,” said Dave Ashton, co-founder of SnapCar, another app-based car service in France that competes with Uber. “They don’t even make any effort to comply with what they think are bad laws.”
That plan doesn’t always work. Uber last week suspended operations in Nevada after a judge issued an injunction against the startup amid accusations that it competes unfairly with taxis because it doesn’t follow the same rules regarding drivers, insurance and more. Elsewhere, regulators in Brussels are readying new laws that would allow Uber and taxis to coexist, while a decision from a French court over the possible banning of Uber is due Dec. 12.
In Europe, Uber has been the focus of violent protests by taxi drivers and regulatory bans on a carpooling service it calls UberPop that was unveiled this year. UberPop, which uses drivers without professional taxi or chauffeur licenses, is banned in Brussels and facing court challenges in Berlin. In France, the national consumer-protection agency and the Paris prosecutor say the new service is illegal and are backing a suit against Uber in commercial court.
Uber’s response last month was to hold a news conference at its Paris office to declare that the firm would expand UberPop in Paris. In a presentation before giving televised interviews, executives said their goal is to have 70,000 drivers without professional licenses picking up fares across Paris in two years.
Uber executives say they are operating under outdated laws that they fully expect to change once lawmakers see the service’s popularity with constituents.
“If every time somebody wants to ban us, we just go along with that, we wouldn’t be in business,” said Mark MacGann, Uber’s main lobbyist in Europe and the former head of government affairs at NYSE Euronext in Brussels.
Uber’s strategy has been to get a foothold in a market in any way possible, whether it offers a way to hail traditional metered taxis, livery cabs or drivers without professional licenses through its ride-sharing services. The key is to get potential customers to download the app and then expand the range of services.
In London, the company has tried to recruit taxi drivers, but many drivers of London’s iconic black cabs refuse to work with a company they believe is breaking the law. Cabdrivers say the smartphone app that calculates fare based on time and distance is tantamount to a taximeter, which is only allowed to be used by the more expensive black cabs.
Any delay into a city costs Uber potential market share. Uber hasn’t successfully cracked the Dublin market, for example, where the London-based competitor Hailo Network Ltd. is widespread.
Authorities in Berlin and Hamburg banned the service. In response, Uber lowered the fares drastically in an attempt to appease passengers. But the low fares make it unattractive for drivers to offer their services. In recent weeks, Uber cars have been unavailable in the city.
Mr. Kalanick said in a blog post on Thursday that the Asia Pacific region is a priority for the company’s international growth. It recently opened in Vietnam and Singapore, joined with a rental-car firm in Jakarta and plans to add rickshaws in India.
But the company also faces increased scrutiny in Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore, where regulators are examining the service’s legality. On Monday, Thailand’s transport minister, Prajin Juntong, said the government would ask Uber to cease its operations there because it uses private cars that lack fare meters, among other issues.
Uber hopes to recruit prominent investors in India, Latin America and the Middle East as it raises $600 million, with the goal of fostering powerful new allies who could help the company clear obstacles to growth, according to people familiar with its goals.
Uber is also seeking to rebuild its public image in the wake of controversial comments made last month by one of its executives, who suggested in a private dinner that the company should do opposition research on journalists critical of its business. The incident sparked concerns about Uber employees’ access to its customers personal data, and Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.) called on the company to explain what data privacy policies it has in place.
“We also need to invest in internal growth and change,” Mr. Kalanick said in the blog post. “Acknowledging mistakes and learning from them are the first steps.”
Uber’s latest valuation is double the amount set by investors just six months ago and is nearly 12 times last year’s total. The company didn’t disclose which investors participated in the funding.
No other private tech startups are valued anywhere near Uber. Four companies currently have $10 billion valuations—home-rental site Airbnb Inc., software company Dropbox Inc., mobile-messaging service Snapchat Inc. and Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Inc.—though those valuations could climb quickly with a newly announced funding round. Various reports have said Xiaomi is raising funding at a valuation above $40 billion.
Uber has now raised more than $2.7 billion from a wide range of investors, including mutual-fund managers Fidelity Investments and Wellington Management; venture-capital firms Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Menlo Ventures; and private-equity firm TPG Growth.
—Chase Gummer, Newley Purnell and Friedrich Geiger contributed to this article.
Authored by Douglas MacMillan at email@example.com
Original article found here.
Most people know about Amazon’s ambitions to sell you everything from books and movies and smartphones to power tools and auto parts.
Less understood outside the technology industry is just how aggressively the company is also trying to become an important technology provider to other organizations, its aspirations just as big as those of Microsoft, IBM and Google.
Amazon Web Services already provides so-called cloud computing services at low prices for customers including the Central Intelligence Agency and Netflix. At a conference here last week for the web-services unit, company officials explained that Amazon was now trying to get more tech dollars from business customers by also offering services and processes that make it a competitor to traditional suppliers of business technology like Oracle.
Offering more capabilities to customers is a big deal for Amazon. A report last month by the Synergy Research Group said Amazon’s web-services unit has about a 27 percent share of the worldwide market for cloud infrastructure services. Microsoft is second with about a 10 percent share.
But there are indications that a pricing war and more focus from competitors could dig into Amazon’s lead. There are even concerns that the unit’s revenue growth has stalled in recent quarters.
What makes Amazon unique in the fight to own the computing cloud is what it’s not — a traditional tech company with a long history of providing products and services to business customers. Finding a way to deliver services over the Internet that behave like databases and other traditional software products will be critical to keeping its lead because older tech companies like Microsoft are already capable of doing it.
Amazon Web Services is banking on help from its customers to make its ambitions work. “Ninety percent of our development is deep, sophisticated corporate users telling us what to build next,” said Adam Selipsky, the unit’s vice president for products.
On Wednesday, the unit announced that in 2014 it had released 442 new products for its global network of computers and software, a 60 percent rise from all of 2013. It later raised that number to 449, including faster ways to write and publish software.
The lower number “was so this morning,” said James Hamilton, the enthusiastic executive who oversees the development of A.W.S. “This is a different world,” said Mr. Hamilton, a veteran of decades in companies like IBM and Microsoft before he joined the unit in 2008. “The speed is unbelievably different. We don’t slow down as we get bigger.”
But the unit could face challenges in its efforts. It has already had to deal with embarrassing system failures and changed its policies to suit national governments. Moreover, its parent company, Amazon, has returned less in profits in its 17-year life as a public company than cloud competitors like Google and Microsoft earn in a single quarter. If Wall Street grows tired of Amazon’s continued losses, it could also pinch A.W.S.
Amazon is not the only big tech company trying to lure businesses to the cloud. Microsoft, Google and IBM are all trying to get business customers to rent their cloud services rather than buy software, servers and networking gear.
Just a few years ago, public clouds like Amazon’s were considered experimental turf for tech start-ups. Today, companies like Johnson & Johnson, Intuit and General Electric are among the unit’s customers. In the past year, A.W.S. says, the amount of data it stores has grown 137 percent. It sells twice as much of its basic computing as a year ago.
And analysts believe the pace is picking up across the handful of big tech companies providing cloud services. “Two years ago, public clouds were maybe 2 percent of all computing workloads,” said Lydia Leong, a senior analyst at Gartner. “Now they are more than 10 percent. By 2018, it will be more than 50 percent.”
In addition to parading mainstream companies across the stage at its conference, Amazon released a type of database aimed straight at the core business of Oracle, the world’s largest database company. Oracle declined to comment on Amazon Web Services.
Johnson & Johnson announced from the stage that it would install 25,000 cloud-connected A.W.S. computers that offer a range of standard software, like Microsoft’s Office suite.
Mr. Selipsky said J&J had helped Amazon shape its desktop product, which was initially announced a year ago. Although A.W.S. is known mostly for selling basic computing services, he said that future products would include sophisticated software around managing user behavior, software for compliance in regulated industries like finance and migration of existing software running on corporate computers to the cloud.
By running the customers’ software within their own data centers and listening closely to their needs, cloud companies learn more quickly about customer behavior, figuring out which incremental improvement they can immediately deploy across their networks. And then they can turn around and give those customers exactly what they want.
At least, that’s what the cloud tech companies like to argue.
“The cloud is cheaper, but that isn’t really what is driving companies into it,” said Greg De
Michillie, the director of Google’s cloud business for corporations. “They want to be more experimental, faster, data driven. This is part of a larger change inside companies.”
Authored by Quentin Hardy via nighttime.com.
Ever since the debut of the iPad nearly five years ago, pundits have been talking about the possibility of a post-PC professional existence. But I’m actually living it; I haven’t touched a personal computer in six months and I’m more productive than ever.
If you could peek over my shoulder at the device I’m writing this column on, you might call me a liar. By all appearances, my notebook computer, with its 13-inch screen, trackpad and keyboard, is a PC.
And yet Gartner, the most influential company charged with determining what is and is not a personal computer, has declared that my Samsung ElectronicsChromebook 2 isn’t a PC. Gartner doesn’t include sales of Chromebooks in its quarterly tally of how many PCs are sold.
“We define a PC as a device which is capable for both content consumption and creation, regardless of form factor,” says Mikako Kitagawa, Gartner’s lead PC analyst.
I guess I’m not a content creator.
Chromebooks, in case you haven’t touched one—and market research indicates that you haven’t—are Google ’s answer to Windows and Mac computers. Gadget reviewers who use Chromebooks only when they are paid to often describe them as more limited than a typical PC. But people who use Chromebooks regularly are more likely to observe that they can do pretty much everything that the average PC user needs.
To be fair to Gartner, many Chromebooks, including my own, have the same innards as smartphones so, at least on paper, they seem underpowered. Samsung’s Chromebook 2 has the same processor, amount of memory and even number of screen pixels as Samsung’s flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S5. The only reason the Chromebook 2 works as a PC is that Google’s Chrome operating system is incredibly lightweight—smaller and less taxing on hardware.
I don’t mean to shill for Chromebooks. It’s just that Google is in the vanguard of creating PCs that function like smartphones: light, portable, always on, always connected and relying on the cloud to do their heavy lifting. It’s pretty obvious that in the not too distant future, Apple and Microsoft are going to free their fans from the PC in the same way.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has said that he does 80% of his work on an iPad. I bet it would be 100% if the iPad possessed the characteristics that allow you to create content rather than just consume it: true multitasking and fast switching between applications, plus a bigger screen. But there’s evidence that a larger, so-called iPad Pro is coming. And I bet that Apple eventually will give us a version of its mobile operating system that makes iPads true replacements for notebooks, even those made by Apple.
Then there’s Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3, which is a full PC in tablet form, one of the many two-in-one notebooks that PC makers have been rolling out lately. From the processing power these hybrid devices pack to their snap-on keyboards, they are clearly designed to get real work done.
Yet were I a Surface Pro user, I still wouldn’t be using a PC, according to IDC, Gartner’s leading competitor for tallying how many PCs are sold each year. But Gartner does consider the Surface Pro a PC. According to Jay Chou, IDC’s senior analyst in charge of tracking PCs, the firm doesn’t consider anything with a detachable keyboard a PC. His firm does consider Chromebooks to be PCs, even though the Surface Pro 3 is far more powerful than most Chromebooks.
That Gartner and IDC can’t even agree on the definition of a PC speaks volumes about the strange times in which we live. Is a smartphone stretched into the shape of a laptop a PC? No, says Gartner. What about a PC crammed into the shape of a tablet? Nope, counters IDC.
These delineations are ridiculous from the perspective of the end user. That’s because most of us are entertaining ourselves and getting work done in the one place absolutely all of these devices can access—the cloud.
I store and edit all my photos in the cloud, which also is where all my media are streamed from. Unless you’re editing video, building 3-D models, playing elaborate games or dependent on legacy Windows applications that your company hasn’t moved to the cloud, you don’t strictly need a PC anymore.
At this point in history, booting up a full-fledged PC operating system to write an email is like using a nuclear sub to go on a weekend fishing trip. And a good Chromebook can be had for $300. Personally, I’d rather spend my technology budget on the one thing I truly can’t do without—my smartphone. Surveys indicate that in this respect, I’m typical of every generation to follow the baby boomers.
In short, I’m done with PCs—at least as they are conventionally defined. And I think the majority of long-suffering PC users would be too if they weren’t so accustomed to thinking of computers in the same way they have for decades. Building new technology is easy compared with changing the habits of those who use it.
—Follow Christopher Mims on Twitter @Mims and write to him at firstname.lastname@example.org.
With each corporate cloud computing proposition, including those from the likes of Google, whose Oregon data center is seen here, there appears to be an increasing trend toward offering more flexible applications driven by software.Credit Connie Zhou/Google
Cloud computing isn’t merely changing the way much of the technology business works. Now it is changing itself, and putting even more computing power in more places.
On Monday, Microsoft, which operates one of the biggest so-called “public clouds,” or large and flexible computing systems available for remote rental, announced several changes to its data storage and processing services that will make them more powerful.
Microsoft also announced a partnership with Dell to sell a kind of “cloud in a box,” or hardware and software that created a mini-version of Microsoft’s cloud, called Azure, inside a company.
The idea is that a company could work with its own version of Azure, then easily move up to the giant version Microsoft has to handle big workloads. Hewlett-Packard may be after something similar with its effort to create a private-public cloud business based on the HP cloud, which uses a kind of open source software.
What all of this means is that cloud computing, which makes it easier to tie more things to computers and more easily manage software, is starting to appear in even more forms and types. Within each corporate proposition, including Google and Amazon, as well as Microsoft, HP and others, there appears to be an increasing trend toward offering more flexibility. Generally it’s done by abstracting what were functions of specialized hardware into more easily altered software.
Microsoft’s announcements this week came after the news last week that it would offer Windows Server technology on Docker, a fast-moving open source project (and start-up company of the same name) that takes cloud-type software abstractions even farther. Docker’s so-called “containers,” which were previously available on the Linux operating system, make it possible to build, deploy and update a software application anywhere in the world.
Adding to this confusing paradise of computing power, flexibility, and global software deployment, on Wednesday a company called Bracket Computingannounced that it had a technology that makes it possible to run high-performance corporate computing systems across several public clouds at the same time.
While it now works only with different geographic locations inside the global cloud of Amazon Web Services, Bracket hopes eventually to enable companies to securely manage their computing across several public clouds at once. This kind of brokering, if successful, could mean further competition among the public clouds, either on price or service.
People who had worked with the Bracket System were impressed. “Even just with A.W.S., this is powerful,” said Frank Palase, senior vice president of strategy at DirectTV. “Abstracting over several cloud providers would mean we could have high levels of performance with no fear of outages,” since one system could be brought up if another failed.
It’s also possible that Bracket’s Computing Cell could hold containers, like Docker, inside its system.
For all the new terminology and hand-waving around these developments, at least one thing is clear: The cheap and easy cloud is also catching up in areas like reliability and management ease, where it has been criticized. Like all big computing trends, it has started rough, but it appears to be stabilizing and getting bigger.
Authored by Quentin Hardy via nytimes.com.


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Jackie's Journal July 6, 20116 Jul, 2011 By: Jackie Jones
Global Infomercial Services (GIS) announces that is has acquired all international distribution rights to TorsoBall.
Direct Brands announces the launch of a consumer Blu-ray Disc Club that allows members to purchase up to two catalog moves a month for $5.99 each.
Undertone announces the launch of dynamic targeting and creative capabilities, which enable advertisers to target and modify ad campaigns based on changing conditions including weather, stock market fluctuations, fuel prices and more.
Hipcricket, a mobile marketing and advertising company, announces that Ramar Communications has extended its contract with Hipcricket to provide an expanding number of mobile marketing programs.
Lou Severine is named head of global sales at ADTECH.
Pitney Bowes announces the start of its Connect for Cause program, which enables its Connect+ customers to raise awareness for national nonprofit organizations through
Hydra, a provider of software-as-a-service marketing technology, announces the launch of the One platform, which enables digital marketers to monitor, report and participate in the conversation that customers are having about their brand online in social networks or on search engines.
American Express announces that card members can now pay for Facebook ads using Membership Rewards points, one of the first times a company has connected a rewards program to advertising spending.
VerticalResponse Inc. earns a Stevie Award for Support Team of the Year at the Ninth Annual American Business Awards.
Adap.tv and the Action Sports Group (ASG)/Grind Networks announce a partnership designed to help build and grow ASG/Grind's vast network of premium online properties.
Daktronics Inc. announces that its digital billboard shipments have more than doubled in the past year.
Augme Technologies Inc. announces that it has launched its AD LIFE v4.0 software-as-a-service (“SaaS”) mobile marketing software platform.

domain: news


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February 14, 2023
By Sharan Kaur Phillora
The Centre Pompidou, a major modern art museum in France, aims to showcase NFTs from some prominent digital artists this summer in its upcoming permanent exhibition.
Here’s what we know:
According to an announcement on Feb. 10, the art museum is preparing to showcase a collection of non-fungible tokens created by 13 digital artists worldwide. The exhibit will specifically include some popular NFTs from blue-chip collections like CryptoPunk #110 and Autoglyph #25, both of which have been donated to the Centre Pompidou.
“The Center Pompidou acquires a set of works dealing with the relationship between blockchain and artistic creation, including its first NFTs!” according to a rough translation of the museum’s tweet. “18 projects by 13 French and international artists are included in the collection.”
The exhibition will mark the first time the Centre Pompidou has accepted NFTs into its collection, which houses masterpieces by such groundbreaking artists as Vassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, and Frida Kahlo, among others. Centre Pompidou is the largest modern art museum in Europe.
“Seeing CryptoPunk #110 displayed in the Centre Pompidou, arguably the world’s most prestigious contemporary art museum, is a great moment for the Web3 and NFT ecosystem, and we’re honored to help drive this cultural conversation,” Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano said in a statement.
But it remains unclear what function, exactly, CryptoPunk #110 will play in Pompidou’s exhibition.
“With this new acquisition, it is less a question of taking an interest in the pop culture phenomenon of ‘collectibles’ (these collections of images sold as NFTs, such as the Bored Apes or the CryptoPunks), than of exploring the boldest uses of this technology,” the museum said in its announcement of its upcoming NFT-focused exhibition.
About the author
Sharan Kaur Phillora’s thirst for knowledge has led her to study many different subjects, including NFTs and Blockchain technology – two emerging technologies that will change how we interact with each other in the future. When she isn’t exploring a new idea or concept, she enjoys reading literary masterpieces.


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The typical small-business owner has more than enough to do just to stay afloat in a lackluster economy. Launching a social-media marketing campaign might seem like an unrealistic commitment of time, energy and expense.
But developing an active presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and other sites can pay off big time for companies that do it right and recognize the emerging opportunities.
“It’s really about rolling up your sleeves and developing those relationships,” author Erik Qualman told a small-business crowd at a recent breakfast talk sponsored by Chase in Phoenix. Social-media channels put relationship building on “steroids.”
Qualman, author of the Amazon best-seller “Socialnomics,” conceded that ramping up in the social-media world isn’t easy. It takes ingenuity and imagination, and it will subject you to failures along the way. Also, it will require you to pay constant attention to what others are saying about your message.
“This takes time and it takes effort, just like developing relationships offline takes time and takes effort,” he said during the Sept. 11 event. “It’s less about technology and more about relationships.”
But social media is here to stay, and it only will grow in importance as a marketing avenue and as a factor that can shape a company’s reputation, for better or worse. Social-media comments and reviews are so critical because they reflect the power of personal ratings and referrals. Word-of-mouth commentaries, especially from friends and acquaintances, are viewed as highly credible — much more so than advertising.
“Now, someone else can do the selling for us,” Qualman said.
That has always been the case, but the difference now is that social-media channels can transmit those comments and critiques around the globe in seconds. Typical mobile users, he said, have their phones within reach 14 hours a day, on average. The era of relative anonymity, privacy and seclusion is ending. Any business, product or person can face instant, pervasive scrutiny, which raises the potential for both opportunity and risk.
As an example, Qualman showed the audience a video critical of United Airlines that went viral. It was created by a musician who complained that the airline broke his prized guitar during a flight and wouldn’t reimburse him for it.
As another example, he showed a humorous video produced on behalf of Wheat Thins that showed a crate of the crackers being delivered out of the blue to the home of a woman who had innocently tweeted, “I’m out of Wheat Thins; my life is officially over.”
Businesses can’t afford to remain oblivious to social media or to the things that can put them suddenly in the spotlight, Qualman said. One implication is that customer service will become more critical as people become more connected, and businesses will need to respond quickly to what’s said and written about them.
“In time, everything will be rated,” he said. “Every product and service will be rated, and people will be rated.”
Reach the reporter at email@example.com or 602-444-8616.


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Brands in Motion 2018 Global Study
WE COMMUNICATIONS’ BRANDS IN MOTION 2018 GLOBAL STUDY: ESCALATING CONSUMER EXPECTATIONS PUSH BRANDS TO DELIVER ON INNOVATION, ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY AND FUNCTIONALITY
97 percent of global consumers demand ethical use of technology
NEW YORK, LONDON, HONG KONG — Sept. 12, 2018 — WE Communications today released results from its Brands in Motion 2018 global study. The data revealed that consumers worldwide continue to demand innovation — but now, in response to increasing technology-based fears, they’re attaching strong new stipulations to these expectations, chief among them the requirement that brands use technology ethically and responsibly.
“We are seeing some compelling year-over-year shifts in customer attitudes,” said Melissa Waggener Zorkin, CEO of WE Communications. “Consumers continue to have high expectations for brands to use innovative technologies, but most are afraid of how those same technologies might disrupt their lives. These fears are causing consumers to demand greater accountability from brands."
The study, conducted across eight global markets, examined both rational and emotional drivers that motivate customer choices within today’s environment — to decipher brand movement relative to geography, industry and key stakeholders. Three key themes emerged:
Consumers hold brands accountable to use technology ethically
Across the board, consumers indicated they continue to have high expectations for brands to use technology to drive innovation: nearly 50 percent of Brands in Motion 2018 global study respondents believe technology will either help do more things in less time or create greater sustainability. However, this year’s study also exposed a new precondition to consumer expectations: 97 percent said they now place responsibility squarely on brands to use technology ethically while continuing to drive customer-centric innovation.
Consumers have been shaken by recent technology scandals and are anxious about the promises of unprecedented innovation. Eighty-four percent fear their personal data is not secure, 67 percent dread being a pedestrian in a world of self-driving cars and 54 percent worry artificial intelligence will take their jobs away. In fact, 94 percent said that if brands can’t use technology ethically, then governments should step in. Consumers are giving brands an ultimatum: Self-regulate or be regulated.
Movement on the matrix: consumers want brands to show, not tell
From 2017 to 2018, average global scores of brand motion were up 16 percent for rational drivers and 14 percent for emotional drivers, showing that consumers' need for reason is outpacing their need to feel emotionally connected to a brand. In short, consumers are insisting brands deliver proof over promise.
When mapping these changing perceptions using WE’s Brands in Motion diagnostic tool — the Motion Matrix — the study revealed a notable uptick across every market but one, indicating customer expectations continue to grow at an exponential rate and it’s harder for brands to wow and delight consumers both emotionally and rationally.
Categories were not immune to these shifts. Computing devices, which previously had the highest consumer admiration, fell dramatically. In contrast, smart home — the category that seems like it would have the most to lose in conversations about tech disruption, data privacy and security — is ascendant. Despite 63 percent of respondents saying they were afraid their phone was listening to them, and 84 percent fearing their personal data wasn’t secure, smart home made huge year-over-year gains in 4 of the 6 markets in which it was surveyed.
Collectively the data signals that although the tech halo is strong, consumer anxiety over disruptive technologies and reactions to technology misuse may be stronger. These fears could continue to be a negative influence on tech-heavy categories unless they start to anticipate and get ahead of consumers’ ethical expectations.
Global environmental forces drive increasingly polarized perceptions of brands
With the prevailing societal backdrop of trade tensions, political unrest and technology angst, consumers are raising expectations for greater rationality and responsibility in their relationships with brands. Not only are people expecting more from brands than ever before, they are also more binary in their reactions to brands and categories.
The study found that in 2018, brands and categories are primarily clustered in two quadrants of the Motion Matrix — mover and defender — and the higher average scores mean it’s harder than last year to be a mover. This shift indicates that consumers around the globe are reserving their greatest love and appreciation for a smaller number of brands, and that they have strong convictions — one way or the other — about both sectors and brands. As a result, the issue of brand value has become very stark and polarized, making it harder for competitors of a beloved brand to draw their share of consumer affection.
“Consumer sentiment isn’t surprising if you look at the current global environment — from Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, current struggles with content moderation and the GDPR, to the competing promise and apprehension attached to technologies like AI, blockchain and autonomous vehicles,” said Alan VanderMolen, WE’s president of international. “Brands have become the middle man, keeping the peace between lightning-speed innovation on one side and thoughtful ethics and regulation on the other. Consumers have now upped the ante and expect them to do more to drive stability in progress.”
“The Brands in Motion 2018 global survey data and corresponding insights present brands with a tremendous opportunity,” said Kass Sells, president of North America, WE. “With awareness of how customer perceptions, attitudes and demands have changed year over year, they better understand the forces of motion, their corresponding impact, and where they can capitalize to better reach their most important stakeholders.”
About the Motion Matrix
WE Communications developed a matrix to help brands understand and manage their motion against the larger environmental factors in play. The Motion Matrix maps the changing perceptions of industries and brands based on average emotional and rational motion driver scores, separating them into four quadrants:
- Providers have low emotional and high rational scores, making engagement largely transactional. Customers want these brands or categories, but don’t feel emotionally attached to them.
- Defenders are marked by both low emotional and low rational scores. Brands here are often on the precipice of change.
- Movers reflect both high emotional and high rational scores, indicating customers want and need these brands or category products and have high expectations around innovation.
- Agitators show high emotional and low rational scores, indicating that customers love these brands and categories, but may not see the long-lasting benefit.
WE’s Motion Matrix gives a lens through which to view motion not only at the brand and category level, but at the geographic level as well. The study revealed comparable consumer mindsets in the eight markets surveyed, with emerging markets and Singapore viewing brands and categories more optimistically, and the U.K. becoming even more pessimistic as Brexit looms. This awareness gives brands much stronger guidance on how to pivot their marketing and communications efforts to account for the prevailing mood of each market.
About Brands in Motion
WE partnered with YouGov to field the second iteration of its Brands in Motion survey among more than 25,000 consumers and B2B decision-makers across eight global markets: Australia, China, Germany, India, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom and United States. It looked across eight categories and 90 brands, also capturing key demographic data. The industry categories included automotive, computing devices, finance and banking, food and beverage, health and wellness, prescription health, smart home, and tech B2B.
For more information visit https://www.we-worldwide.com/brands-in-motion.
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Tetra Pak has launched a new low-energy processing line for JNSD products, claiming that the solution enhances the efficiency of beverage processing in a sustainable manner. Read more
Swedish packaging and processing company Tetra Pak has set itself the goal of reaching net zero emissions across the entire value chain by 2050. Read more
FoodBev spoke with Fredrik Johansson, manager of separators at Tetra Pak, about the latest trends affecting separation. Read more
Tetra Pak has acquired asset management company Gaussian, as it aims to enhance its productivity-focused services for food and beverage clients. Read more
Tetra Pak has appointed Jeff Fielkow, the former vice-president of sustainability for the company's Asia Pacific unit, as the new CEO and president of its US and Canada division. Read more
Tetra Pak is aiming to enhance its Smart Solutions Platform through a collaboration with Hexagon’s PPM division, the engineering software provider. Read more
Müller has committed to removing all plastic straws from its products by 2020 as it continues efforts to reduce its plastic use. Read more
Tetra Pak, in collaboration with its supplier Braskem, has become the first company in the food and beverage industry to offer packaging made with responsibly sourced plant-based p... Read more
Chinese dairy company Yili has formed a series of strategic partnerships with 13 international companies, marking the establishment of the dairy industry’s first sustainable intern... Read more
Lassonde has launched Oasis juice cartons with paper straws as part of a market test aimed at introducing a replacement solution for plastic straws. Read more
© FoodBev Media Ltd 2020
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Food distributor Sysco (SYY) agreed to buy Brakes Group for $3.1 billion, including Brakes' $2.3 billion debt, significantly expanding Sysco's global footprint. But shares fell sharply as investors questioned the timing, price and lack of synergies.
The acquisition from private equity firm Bain Capital bolsters Sysco’s current presence in the U.K. and Ireland, also enabling it to expand further into Europe, including Brakes' operations in France, Sweden, Spain and other European countries.
Sysco tried and failed last year to buy US Foods, a privately held food distributor with $19 billion a year in sales. Sysco announced it was ending its bid for that company after a U.S. District Court granted the Federal Trade Commission's request to block the planned $3.5 billion buyout in late June.
Analysts on the call discussing the deal wondered if this was a good time for a deal, noting that Sysco was paying 12 times EBITDA (adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization). Unlike the US Foods deal, Sysco isn't expecting major synergies from the Brakes deal.
Sysco shares sank 4.9% to 42.79 in the stock market today after falling to 42.05 intraday. That briefly undercut a recent 42.13 buyout point, but closed above that key level. Sysco shot up 8.4% on Feb. 1 on its Q4 earnings report, breaking out of a consolidation.
The combination would create a food distribution giant with about $55 billion annual sales and operations in North and South America, as well as Europe. Sysco sees the acquisition as being immediately accretive to earnings once the deal closes, which is expected around mid-2016.
London-based Brakes employs about 15,000 and distributes fresh, refrigerated and frozen-food products, as well as non-food products and supplies to more than 50,000 customers throughout Europe.
"We expect to retain key members of Brakes Group’s talented leadership team," Sysco CEO Bill DeLaney said in a written statement, "and to experience little distraction from integration, given the minimal overlap of the businesses."


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Tag: digital banking
Despite the huge growth in smartphone adoption and increasing demand for digital banking, majority of countries here on the continent remain heavily dependent on cash. Suzan Kereere, Visa’s Head of Global Merchant Client Group joins CBNC Africa for more.
African Bank has officially thrown its hat into South Africa's growing and competitive digital banking sector. Their new product, MyWORLD, is set to offer the cheapest rates for transactional accounting across South Africa. Joining CNBC Africa for more is Basani Maluleke, CEO of African Bank.


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Homeschooling is here to stay and the time has come for policymakers to acknowledge that fact. After years of increasing at a rate of about 3 percent a year, the number of parents choosing to homeschool their children has spiked, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the portion of children being homeschooled doubled from 5.4 percent during the 2019-20 school year to 11 percent in 2020-21. Among Black families, homeschooling jumped nearly five-fold during that time, from 3.3 percent to 16.1 percent.
U.S. retail sales increased in September, beating expectations amid growing inflation and supply chain disruptions, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Friday.
Retail sales increased 0.7% in September, beating experts’ estimates of 0.2%, according to the Census Bureau report. The number rose 0.8%, excluding auto sales, beating the 0.5% forecast.
Sales were up 13.9% compared to September 2020, and they increased 15.6% compared to September 2020, excluding auto sales, according to the Census Bureau.
Retail sales unexpectedly increased last month despite continued challenges facing the economy as it recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.
Sales ticked up 0.7% in August relative to July and totaled $618.7 billion, according to a Census Bureau report published Thursday. E-commerce, furniture, general merchandise, building materials and energy purchases drove last month’s sales increase.
Dow Jones economists had expected sales to decline 0.8%, CNBC reported. In July retail sales posted a sharp 1.8% decline as coronavirus cases surged, the Census report said Thursday.
Online shopping prices have rapidly increased since the start of the pandemic as consumers rely more on e-commerce, according to an industry report.
While e-commerce prices trended downward between 2015-2019 as online shopping grew in popularity, the sector has seen unprecedented increases over the last year, the report published by Adobe Digital Insights on Wednesday found. At the same time, consumers are spending more purchasing goods and food online than ever before.
Amazon is planning to open department stores where consumers can purchase a variety of goods like clothing and electronics, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The planned expansion of Amazon brick-and-mortar stores is the online retail giant’s latest attempt to disrupt the industry, according to a WSJ report Thursday. The Seattle-based company has recently expanded its brick-and-mortar grocery store footprint, opening 17 Amazon Fresh stores nationwide, and is developing at least 20 more, Bloomberg reported.
Faced with ongoing state lockdowns and changing school restrictions last year, frustrated parents increasingly pulled their children out of public schools nationwide and found other educational options for their children, one of which was home-schooling.
According to a new U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey, a substantial increase in the number of parents who chose to home-school occurred in 2020 compared to 2019. The survey is the first data source to offer both a national and state-level look at the impact of COVID-19 on homeschooling rates, the report states.
Using a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. households, the survey found that home-schooling was notably higher than national benchmarks. It was conducted in phases to assess parental choices over different periods of the school year.


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The Dutch independent telco Tele2 is introducing high speed internet over VDSL in order to better compete with the Docsis 3.0 offers from cable companies Ziggo and UPC.
Called Tele2 Fiberspeed, the VDSL technoloy is now available to around 200,000 households on the Tele2 network (homes passed); at the end of next year the potential reach should be around 1 million homes.
Currently, Tele2 has some 400,000 customers, many of whom also take the IPTV service.
Tele2 VDSL will offer broadband access with speeds up to 60 Mbps. The new offer is in response to the 60Mbps and higher speeds currently being provided by most cable operators in the country.
Günther Vogelpoel, director consumer products Tele2, said to local press the new offer is “to counter the continous ADSL bashing by the cablers. Our technology still offers a lot of possibilities.”


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German owners hit harder than most by container shipping slump
GERMAN shipowners are among those most affected by the continuing slump of container shipping markets because they control the world’s largest fleet of boxships, writes Patrick Hagen .
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The Deal) -- Belgium's UCB is putting Kremers Urban Pharmaceuticals back on the auction block after the collapse of the agreed $1.53 billion sale of the Princeton, N.J.-based generics business to Advent International and Avista Capital...
Weeks after Belgium's UCB announced that it would sell its U.S. generic drug business for $1.53 billion, the company is calling off the sale in light of regulatory pushback over one of the unit's products.
Belgian drugmaker UCB SA announced an agreement Friday, Nov. 7, to sell Princeton, N.J.-based generics maker Kremers Urban Pharmaceuticals Inc. to buyout shops Advent International Corp. and Avista Capital Partners for $1.53 billion.
IMS Health (NYSE: IMS) today announced that it has entered into an innovative collaboration with UCB to help deliver greater business insights and improved operations, leveraging IMS Health's Nexxus™ Commercial Application Suite and the IMS...
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text: Burberry made big plans around its promotional campaign celebrating the upcoming Chinese New Year. The project was handled by Ethan James Green, photographer with a successful track-record in the fashion industry: he has already curated photoshoots for Fendi and AlexanderMcQueen, for example. Moreover, Burberry, to capture the attention of Chinese consumers, hired Zhao Whei and Zhou Dongyu, movie stars that are well known and recognizable. The campaign was published on January 3rd, and was made of family portraits useful for showcasing clothing and accessories of the new collection. That is how the brand readied itself for the new season of which February 5th, Chinese New Year that follows the lunar calendar, is a part of. Too bad though, that Chinese users of social networks didn’t like the serious faces and poses of the models that participated. If Burberry was trying to celebrate the festivity and family union that this moment represents in China, they didn’t succeed. Social networkers, in fact, commented that the pictures give the impression that “these people are planning to kill their grandmother and then fight over the inheritance”, one comment on Weibo said. Other feedbacks vary from “it looks like a scene from a horror movie”, to “it is horrifying and it’s giving me goosebumps”. The feeling of these comments is summarized by Jing Daily: “For some of the critics of this campaign, which is meant to celebrate a heart-felt festivity of the People’s Republic, is another wrong and ‘in-bad-taste’ example of a western brand that isn’t able to hit the spot with its communication campaigns in China”. The reference made by the Beijing-based news source is to the recent and dramatic fall of Dolce & Gabbana. There are no signs that Burberry may find itself with the same problems as D&G, with shows cancelled last-minute by the authorities and police outside of the brand’s boutiques. But, considering that even the smallest incidents can hurt the feelings of the Chinese public (Balenciaga knows it well), Burberry’s promotional campaign didn’t start off with the right foot.


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Hyundai has a handful of new products for the Indian market. The South Korean carmaker recently introduced the much-awaited new-generation Creta, which will be soon followed by the Verna and Tucson facelifts. Besides this, the company will also foray into MPV space and expand its electric vehicle lineup in the country.
Speaking to Autocar on the sideline of the Creta launch event, Seon Seob Kim, the MD and CEO of Hyundai Motor India, has revealed that the company is considering an affordable electric vehicle for India. It will be a Made-in-India, Made-for-India product that might also be exported to overseas.
The new Hyundai EV will be a subcompact SUV that will hit Indian roads in the next two years. Currently, the carmaker is in the talks with potential supplier partners. Designed from ground-up, the new electric SUV will be based on a flexible platform. The new architecture will be compatible to electric and hybrid powertrains along with the conventional fossil fuel. Read – 2020 Hyundai Creta Prices, Specs, Features
The carmaker says that its focus is on real world driving range. The new Hyundai EV will deliver a range between 200km – 300km. It would be quite early to comment on its pricing. Though, it will be positioned against the Tata Nexon EV that has been priced from Rs 13.99 lakh to Rs 15.99 lakh (ex-showroom).
The Hyundai Kona is the first electric vehicle from the South Korean carmaker in India. The electric SUV has been doing really well for the company. Hyundai managed to sell over 300 units of the Kona EV SUV within 8 months of its launch.
At present, it’s available in two variants – Premium and Premium dual-tone – priced at Rs 23.71 lakh and Rs 23.9 lakh respectively. All prices are ex-showroom.
More details on new Hyundai EV are likely to be revealed in near future. Stay tuned to IndiaCarNews.


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SAN ANGELO, Texas - Businesses got ready, got set and went to the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce's race car-themed, 19th annual Business Expo.
Checkered flags, table clothes and paraphernalia filled the floor of the Wells Fargo Pavilion at the San Angelo fairgrounds, where 100 booths of businesses displayed brochures, turned on TV monitors and gave out freebies to promote their work.
"An event that brings people face to face is still good for business people," said Phil Neighbors, president of the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce.
Neighbors said that reports showed attendance was up from last year and that the booths had more technology.
One such technologically oriented booth had a computer monitor display a company website: www.ranchwire.com, a business that tries to get ranchers, whether for hunting or livestock, promoted online.
"It's a new company started earlier this year," said Kyle Roach, RanchWire president.
Roach said his business aims to help others during the recession.
Being a new business, he said setting up the booth was a shot in the dark. Barbed wire surrounding a sign at the top of his booth added a touch of realism.
"I'm learning a lot," Roach said. "I'm making a lot of contacts to get the word out."
Networking is a staple of the expo, said Mary Liz Brooks, sales director for Baptist Retirement Community.
She held a handful of other people's business cards as she explained her business to a visitor at the same time.
"We do this every year," Brooks said. "It's great exposure. It's unique. It's amazing to know about new businesses."
From booth to booth, some smiled and waved at passers-by, and others talked with booth visitors.
The business representatives explained their trade with hand gestures and animated facial expressions, in the zone of a sales pitch.
One business vendor said she had 394 people come by.
"It's an amazing experience for newcomers," said Hope Flores, a woman whose family had moved from Iowa.
She said she had come just to learn about the various businesses in town.
Another staple has been the freebies.
"Free stuff is awesome," said Rosie Ramirez, personal finance officer for Qualtrust Credit Union. She was dressed in a racing suit, with co-workers around her as announcers and pit crew.
She said her crew had won the award for creative display in keeping with the theme two times in the past.
Ramirez said her booth was giving away free bottles of sparkling wine to those they see wearing tags from their stand.
"We've been able to talk to a lot of people," Ramirez said.
Another business gave out free massages and medical gel. It had gone through two boxes of the medical gel.
Elsewhere in the pavilion, away from the noise on the booth floor, a silent auction was in progress, with gift cards, food items, hotel stays and other services waiting for a bid.
"We have a lot of business people telling us it's a good marketing event for them," Neighbors said.
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More than 10 years since the first bitcoin transaction in January 2009, and almost two years since a speculative spike pushed the price per bitcoin to almost $20,000, cryptocurrencies are moving beyond cypherpunks and anti-government culture into the world of governments and traditional institutions. The transition is impossible to ignore. While some governments, central banks and financial companies see cryptocurrencies as a threat, others want to harness the advantages they offer. And some governments see cryptocurrencies as a way to save their own struggling economies.
To understand whether nonsovereign currencies can serve as a default currency and what threat they pose to governments or how beneficial they might become, it's useful to examine some of the most interesting geopolitical and corporate use cases available.
The media outlets that specialize in cryptocurrency magnify, at least momentarily, the importance of any news concerning blockchain and bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital currencies. The problem is, the rest of the world often has trouble understanding what's what or is confused about what developments in that realm mean.
That's what happened in May when U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman of California urged his colleagues to "nip bitcoin in the bud." Sherman pointed out that "an awful lot of our international power comes from the fact that the U.S. dollar is the standard unit of international finance and transactions. It is the announced purpose of the supporters of cryptocurrency to take that power away from us, to put us in a position where the most significant sanctions we have against Iran, for example, would become irrelevant. So, whether it is to disempower our foreign policy, our tax collection enforcement or traditional law enforcement, the advantage of crypto over sovereign currency is solely to aid in the disempowerment of the United States and the rule of law."
The cryptocurrency community reacted to Sherman's remarks swiftly, generally equating them to the opinion of the whole of the U.S. government. Investor, influencer and podcaster Anthony Pompliano reminded readers of his Off the Chain blog that Sherman wasn't as ignorant of nonsovereign currencies as some of their defenders were claiming and instead "knows exactly what is happening. He sees the increased probability that we are moving to a world where nonsovereign currencies are the default, and it sounds like he is scared." But what Sherman doesn't understand, Pompliano wrote, is "the improbability of being able to ban ownership of these decentralized digital currencies. The laws could be created but they would be nearly impossible to enforce." Groups on Telegram, the instant-messaging platform of choice for most blockchain companies and for discussions related to cryptocurrencies, vigorously debated whether U.S. officials had declared cryptocurrencies an existential threat to the United States' global financial dominance or not.
The mainstream media reacted more modestly — when it reacted at all. Bloomberg, The New York Times and The Washington Post, for example, did not report about Sherman's statement. To try to say why would be nothing more than a guess. The position of the U.S. dollar in the global economy remains solid. But by imposing sanctions on Russia, Venezuela and Iran, and by deepening its trade war with China, the United States has motivated those countries and others to attempt to find a substitute for the dollar.
Other recent cryptocurrency news couldn't be ignored. Widespread attention greeted Facebook's announcement in June that it will launch a proprietary cryptocurrency, Libra, in 2020. Libra will be a so-called stablecoin, a digital asset backed by a basket of international currencies, such as the dollar, euro and yen. Facebook has formed the Libra Association to oversee the cryptocurrency's development and governance. The Libra Association will be based in Geneva, Switzerland, and will be run as an independent, not-for-profit organization with more than two dozen founding partners, including Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, eBay, Uber, Lyft, Spotify, Vodafone and Coinbase.
By imposing sanctions on Russia, Venezuela and Iran, and by deepening its trade war with China, the United States has motivated those countries and others to attempt to find a substitute for the dollar.
Opinions vary. Despite Facebook's privacy failures and monopoly superpower, the cryptocurrency community sees Libra's potential to drive global acceptance of nonsovereign currencies. Meanwhile, Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder who has been critical of the company's recent decisions, worried in a Financial Times op-ed that a currency like Libra "could threaten the ability of emerging market governments to control their monetary supply, the local means of exchange, and, in some cases, their ability to impose capital controls." Lawmakers and central bankers are wary, too. U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, chairwoman of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, asked Facebook to stop Libra's development until it can clarify questions about potential privacy violations concerning consumer data. Numerous questions during a U.S. Senate Banking Committee hearing on July 16 centered on whether Facebook can be trusted to run its own cryptocurrency. Central bankers in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia agreed with their U.S. counterparts that Libra must answer many regulatory questions to ensure it will not jeopardize financial systems or be used to launder money.
News about Facebook's plans has played out well for bitcoin so far. Bitcoin's value remains volatile, but as a decentralized currency beyond the control of governments or corporations, bitcoin suggests new options for countries tired of the dollar's dominance. Growing geopolitical instability will increase the desire for a decentralized currency infrastructure no matter what the United States wants or whether Facebook succeeds with Libra.
Russian authorities have given mixed signals about cryptocurrencies. On the one hand, for example, there have been reports that Russia is exploring the creation of a gold-backed cryptocurrency; on the other, there have been statements by Elina Sidorenko, chairwoman of the State Duma's cryptocurrency group, that "the Russian Federation is simply not ready to combine its traditional financial system with cryptocurrencies. And to say that this idea can be implemented in Russia for at least the next 30 years is unlikely." Russian officials have also leveled the usual accusations about money laundering, tax evasion and supporting terrorism against the use of bitcoin and other digital currencies.
During his annual televised "Direct Line" with the public in June, President Vladimir Putin was asked if Russia would have its own cryptocurrency. "Russia cannot have its own cryptocurrency by definition — just as any other country cannot have its own cryptocurrency," Putin said. "Because if we are talking about cryptocurrency, this is something that goes beyond national borders." He added that the government treats issues like mining cryptocurrency "very carefully," even if they aren't yet regulated, and said that "the central bank believes that cryptocurrency cannot be a means of payment, settlements, cannot be a means of accumulation, and they are not secured in any way." But Putin also said the Russian government was carefully analyzing this "phenomenon" to understand how it can participate and use it.
The rate of adoption of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is rather low in Russia, and a year of official bearish sentiment toward them combined with the country's economic struggles has decreased Russian interest in cryptocurrencies. But interest in using blockchain and digital assets can increase when a country is undergoing a social-economic ordeal. Such is the case with Zimbabwe.
Many Zimbabweans are tech-savvy despite the country's poor technological development, and many have embraced bitcoin. The country's hyperinflation is one factor behind that trend. The government abandoned its national currency after a trillion-Zimbabwean dollar note was introduced in 2009, allowing the use of foreign money, including the U.S. dollar, euro and South African rand. (Zimbabwe reintroduced the Zimbabwean dollar this year and enacted other fiscal changes that have reinforced interest in bitcoin.) This decision, in turn, created other problems such as shortages of foreign cash. To address that problem, the government tightly controlled the amount of U.S. dollars available for withdrawal. So, Zimbabweans started to look for ways to control their money without government restrictions. For many, bitcoin, delivered by Zimbabwe's cryptocurrency exchange Golix, was the answer.
With an inflation rate above 50 percent, a falling peso and tumbling markets, Argentines (at least those in the tech industry) have shown an increased interest in bitcoin and other digital currencies. So has the government. In March, Deputy Finance Minister Felix Martin Soto said the Argentine government should use cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology to reduce the country's demand for U.S. dollars and encourage global investment. (Half of Argentina's population doesn't have bank accounts and prefers to keep savings in dollars.) President Mauricio Macri has met with cryptocurrency investor and advocate Tim Draper, who argues that Argentina could disrupt the devaluation of the peso and other economic problems by embracing blockchain and legalizing bitcoin. The Argentine government has co-invested in blockchain projects and promoted the use of bitcoin to sell exports. (In February, for example, Argentina sold pesticides and fumigation products to Paraguay, settling the transaction using bitcoin.) Though the cryptocurrency may be volatile, it's less volatile than the Argentine peso and other South American sovereign currencies, which makes it an attractive alternative.
Venezuela is the first country to introduce its own cryptocurrency, El Petro. Venezuela's traditional currency, the bolivar, has become practically worthless as the country's economy has spiraled downward. But economic despair can encourage bitcoin adoption and Venezuelans, motivated by the country's strict capital controls, instability and financial insecurity, have turned to cryptocurrencies, which are more stable than the hyperinflated bolivar and can be fully owned.
Petro, supposedly backed by Venezuelan oil assets, also should be more stable than the bolivar and help Venezuela weather U.S. sanctions and its economic crisis. So far, it hasn't worked out as promised. Experts criticize Petro for lacking transparency and global exposure, and for it being fully centralized with all control in the government's hands. For instance, whether or not Venezuelan oil actually backs it remains an unknown. U.S. officials have warned that Petro is a "scam" perpetrated by President Nicolas Maduro's government to undermine democracy in Venezuela. There is little evidence of Petro's actual use. As Reuters reported last year, it's not traded on any major cryptocurrency exchange and apparently, no shops accept it. Meanwhile, bitcoin usage continues to grow in Venezuela.
Real progress with a decentralized sovereign cryptocurrency — and a positive and promising use case — is being made in the Marshall Islands. Last year, the Pacific nation announced its plan to create an independently governed digital currency called the Sovereign (SOV). In June, the government said it has established a not-for-profit organization to develop and manage the SOV, which will circulate alongside the U.S. dollar, the currency currently in use in the Marshall Islands. A decentralized, government-supported cryptocurrency designed with transparency and security can become an important point of adoption. Success in the Marshall Islands might prove that cryptocurrencies can substitute for the U.S. dollar.
When government control over currency is too tight, disaster can follow. A famous example of this occurred on Sept. 16, 1992, when George Soros and other speculators took advantage of an overregulated British pound to short the currency. The pound collapsed, and the United Kingdom was forced to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which was designed to stabilize European currencies. Meanwhile, "breaking" the Bank of England reportedly earned Soros more than $1 billion in a single day. For a contemporary example, consider Venezuela. Its government's tight control over the economy has fostered inflation so intense that Venezuelans become poorer every minute. The International Monetary Fund projected that Venezuela's inflation rate could reach 10 million percent by the end of the year.
Cryptocurrencies don't need to be non-sovereign, with their benefits limited to individuals. Countries can benefit, too.
Instability and uncertainty stir distrust in government. And for many who feel excluded from a central financial system, who lack economic opportunity or have no banking account (more than 1.7 billion adults remain unbanked worldwide), or resent third parties chewing into their profits, a currency that doesn't depend on a government or authoritative leader, and which allows anonymity, simplifies transactions and minimizes third-party interference, is appealing.
Government concerns about cryptocurrencies are understandable. They are a new form of money not limited by national borders or controlled by central banks. They conjure visions of individual control over earnings, investments and transactions free of government interference. But they don't need to be nonsovereign, with benefits limited to just individuals. Countries can benefit, too. For small countries like the Marshall Islands, Malta or Estonia, establishing a proprietary sovereign cryptocurrency or adopting bitcoin as the main currency can be a means of attracting innovative companies and entrepreneurs, which in turn can boost economic and technological development.
Still, in their early stages of development and acceptance, cryptocurrencies hold tremendous potential as an alternative to traditional banking. It seems inevitable they will only gradually strengthen that position.


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For example, the market for national security payloads and NASA missions (James Webb is a notable exception, bartered between NASA and ESA) are typically closed to Arianespace. — Eric Berger, Ars Technica, "As the SpaceX steamroller surges, European rocket industry vows to resist," 20 July 2018 Friends told the British press that Rowley would often search dumpsters for items to barter or sell. — William Booth, Anchorage Daily News, "Woman exposed to nerve agent in southern England dies; police launch murder investigation," 9 July 2018 Anyone who unlawfully captures or kills a big game animal and then sells or barters the animal is guilty of a felony. — Dustin Gardiner, azcentral, "10 Arizona laws that actually exist: Private armies, food-wasting ban, windshield repairs," 27 June 2018 This early depiction suggests that although chocolate was being bartered at this point, it may not have been traded as a form of currency, Baron says. — Joshua Rapp Learn, Science | AAAS, "The Maya civilization used chocolate as money," 27 June 2018 To generate publicity, the cash is handed out at ceremonies held in the weekly roadside markets where villagers gather to barter meager fish hauls for goods like plastic buckets or quart bottles of gasoline. — New York Times, "Nearly Eradicated in Humans, the Guinea Worm Finds New Victims: Dogs," 18 June 2018 Prize is not transferable or redeemable for cash and may not be sold, bartered or auctioned. — Union-tribune Rewards, sandiegouniontribune.com, "Enter to Win Two Tickets to San Diego Legion's Inaugural Rugby Season as well as a gift certificate to Hundred Proof!," 11 May 2018 Others report punishment for having hoarded, rationed or bartered for menstrual products. — refinery29.com, "Meghan Markle Has Championed Menstrual Equity — Here's Why You Should Too," 21 May 2018 As the city bartered for water with local farmers and hustled to build desalination plants, its residents simply started using less water. — Ryan Lenora Brown, The Christian Science Monitor, "Squeezing more out of taps: How Cape Town cut consumption in half," 30 Apr. 2018
Whether or not one agrees with such broad claims, it’s worth noting that monetary debt, a byproduct of currency, has regularly been used to by some groups to manipulate others. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, suggested that the government encourage Native Americans to purchase goods on credit so they’d fall into debt and be forced to sell their lands. Today, black neighborhoods are disproportionately plagued by debt-collection lawsuits. Even after taking income into account, debt collection suits are twice as common in black neighborhoods as in white ones. $34 million was seized from residents of St. Louis’ mostly black neighborhoods in suits filed between 2008 and 2012, much of which was seized from debtors’ paychecks. In Jennings, a St. Louis suburb, there was one suit for every four residents during those years.
Other countries, though, do not have the reporting requirement that the U.S. does concerning proceeds from barter transactions, but taxation is handled the same way as a cash transaction. If one barters for a profit, one pays the appropriate tax; if one generates a loss in the transaction, they have a loss. Bartering for business is also taxed accordingly as business income or business expense. Many barter exchanges require that one register as a business.
Mortgage & Finance Businesses for SaleDessert Businesses for SaleCar Detailing Businesses for SaleFitness & Wellness Businesses for SaleCoffee Shop, Bakery & Dessert Businesses for SaleBreakfast Restaurants for SaleBars, Pubs & Nightclubs for SaleDelivery Businesses for SaleConstruction & Landscaping Businesses for SaleElectronic Repair Shops for Sale
On the positive side, there are great advantages to bartering. As mentioned earlier, you do not need money to barter. Another advantage is that there is flexibility in bartering. For instance, related products can be traded such as portable tablets in exchange for laptops. Or, items that are completely different can be traded such as lawn mowers for televisions. Homes can now be exchanged when people are traveling, which can save both parties money. For instance, if your parents have friends in another state and they need somewhere to stay while on a family vacation, their friends may trade their home for a week or so in exchange for your parents allowing them to use your home.


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Havana, September 1 (RHC)-- Meliá Cuba is the first foreign chain that started its operations in the Caribbean Island. After 30 years of successful hotel management, the prestigious Spanish chain continues to strengthen its presence in the main tourist destinations, both heritage and vacation.
The chain´s Public Relations Director, Maite Artieda Barroso, says that with its current campaign, entitled The Soul of Cuba, the traveler will have the opportunity to tour the island from east to west by the hand of Meliá.
Melia Cuba´s hotels in Havana are also joining the activities for the 500th anniversary of Villa de San Cristóbal, promoting the island not only as a sun and beach destination, but also as a place where its heritage, the charisma of its people and the security of the country are important.
The communications specialist said that the Chain´s new projects on the island include on the opening of the Meliá Trinidad hotel, which will be a reference point for the mice segment in the Sancti Spiritus province, and added that in the next two years it will work on the rebranding of hotels in Cienfuegos and Camagüey.
For his part, the director of the Canadian Blue Diamond Resorts hotel chain, Miguel Garcia Nunez stressed that with only eight years of service on the island, the chain currently has 22 hotel facilities with more than 8,700 rooms that place it as the second largest hotel chain of foreign management in Cuba.
He also announced that the presentation of the hotel Starfish Cayo Guillermo will be made public soon and before the end of the year the fitting out of a Pearl house that is part of the previous ones of the hotel Starfish Cuatro Palmas will be finished.
Referring to one of the chain's most ambitious projects, the Gran Memories Esmeralda hotel, he indicated that it is a futuristic, modernist purpose, with all the state-of-the-art technology used in the construction of hotels in Cuba, and he predicted, "it will establish guidelines in terms of quality and will return to the so-called vertical constructions".


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Gucci Mane’s new Delantic clothing line is set to launch today.
The line, which is named for Gucci’s middle name, “stands for independence, as a business, as an aspiration, as a culture.” The line is reportedly a “passion project” for Gucci and longtime friend/300 Entertainment co-founder Todd Moscowitz. Theory’s Austin Rosen and Minya Oh (Miss Info) are also partners in the label, according to Revolt TV.
Gucci is nothing if not busy. In addition to his Mr. Davis album, which is set to release this fall, he’s getting married, just released a memoir and has more big plans for 2018– including dropping a mixtape “every other day.”
You can sign-up for more info about the line at the Delantic site here.


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CanniMed Therapeutics (TSX: CMED) priced its initial public offering at $12, selling 5mm shares through a syndicate led by AltaCorp Capital to raise $60mm. The underwriters, which also included Canaccord Genuity, Clarus Securities, Mackie Research Capital and Haywood Securities, may exercise an option to purchase an additional 750K shares within 30 days of the closing, which is expected to be December 29th. The deal was priced at the high-end of the $10-12 range provided earlier this month, and it was increased by 10% from the initial 4.545mm shares. The IPO, which follows the recent RTO of Emblem earlier this month, marks the 11th publicly-traded Canadian licensed producer, with several other LPs expected to begin trading within the next few months.
Based in Saskatoon, CanniMed Therapeutics represents the recent combination of CanniMed and Prairie Plant Systems. The company is also developing a cannabis production facility in Michigan. Following the IPO, but not including the over-allotment option, the company has 19.843mm shares outstanding, giving it a market capitalization of approximately $240mm at the IPO price of $12. CanniMed intends to use the proceeds as follows: Approximately $21.0 million to fund the expansion of production at our Saskatoon, Saskatchewan facilities, approximately $8.0 million to fund the development of an additional cannabis oils manufacturing facility and related equipment, approximately $5.0 million to fund the purchase of additional equipment, approximately $6.0 million to fund the expansion of SubTerra facility in White Pine, Michigan, approximately $3.0 million to fund further clinical trial and the balance to be allocated to working capital and general corporate purposes.
The Saskatoon facility, currently with 97K sq. ft. of production space, has the ability to produce 7mm grams per year. For the first nine months of the fiscal year ending 10/31/16, the company generated sales of $6.635mm on a pro forma basis, selling 548K grams of dried cannabis at an average price per gram of $8.33 and 655K ml of cannabis oils at an average price of $2.50 per ml. Total revenue during the period grew 54% from year-ago levels for the first three quarters of FY15.
Unlike the vast majority of LPs, with the exception of Aphria, which has a 15% stake in an Arizona medical cannabis cultivation operation, CanniMed has interests in the United States. The company’s wholly owned subsidiary, SubTerra, has applied to Michigan for a cannabis production license and will be applying to the DEA for a license to supply medical cannabis to third parties for clinical research purposes. It expects that the country will move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule II, a change that would allow it to have a first-mover advantage in providing pharmaceutical-grade medical cannabis.


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The gaming industry may have emerged as one of the major winners during the coronavirus pandemic, however, the good run may not be over just yet.
The holiday quarter generally brings higher demand for video games and consoles and hence, it might be a good time for investors to consider taking a look at some gaming stocks for the month of December.
The first one to look into in December is Take Two Interactive, which is one of the world’s biggest game developers and is particularly known for such blockbuster games as Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, and NBA 2K among others. However, it’s Grand Theft Auto or GTA which remains its biggest product and since its release in 2012, it has clocked sales of 155 million units.
Thus making it the highest selling game of the decade. The release of GTA Online World has also come as a major boost for the company. The online factor in the business is also worth noting. The recurrent customer spending rate since 2017 has gone up at a compounded annual rate of as much as 37% and hit $2.3 billion in the fiscal year of 2021, which ended in March. The stock could be well placed to continue to generate gains in the coming years.
Electronic Arts, popularly known as EA, is the undisputed leader of the sports-based video game market. The release of new versions of games every year and the continued growth in the online market have ensured that the revenues have continued to tick along.
More importantly, it is necessary for investors to keep in mind that the company enjoys near-monopolistic control when it comes to certain games and that is another reason why the stock may prove attractive for some investors. The company projected operating cash flow to the tune of $1.95 billion in the fiscal year that will end in March 2022. The price to operating cash flow ratio of 18.5 seems quite attractive as well.
Last but not the least, it is another gaming giant, Nintendo that could be added to the watch lists by investors at this point. The company is unique in the industry since it not only makes its own hardware but its gaming titles can only be played in that hardware. The Nintendo Switch has garnered sales of as much as 93 million since it was launched back in 2017.
Since there may be worries about the continued popularity of Nintendo Switch, the company has also created Nintendo Switch Online and has already garnered a user base of 32 million. In the next fiscal year, the company has projected operating profits of $4.56 billion.


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BEIJING – Large amounts of confidential internal documents and materials of major Japanese companies from the past two years are currently available for viewing at China’s Baidu Library document-sharing website, sources said.
Shanghai-based lawyer Yusuke Wakebe, who is investigating the issue, said Wednesday the leaked information includes the technical data of a major manufacturer prior to a patent application and an advertising firm’s proposal on a client project. Many of the uploaded documents were marked “For Internal Use Only” or “Classified.”
Jiji Press found internal documents leaked to Baidu Library from leading companies, including Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., Toshiba Corp., Hitachi Ltd. and Sony Corp.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said it plans to gather information on the leaks, acknowledging there have been complaints from industries.
The Japan External Trade Organization, which has already started a full investigation, called on domestic companies doing business in China to impose strict controls on internal data.
Documents from Toyota included an organization chart for the automaker’s headquarters as well as the complaint-processing manual of its Chinese joint venture. Materials marked for internal use only were leaked from China-based affiliates of Sony and Hitachi, while what are believed to be internal contracts involving Canon Inc. also have been posted on the website.
Users of Baidu Library receive points for uploading documents and can use them to download other papers and materials from the site. Anyone can browse the site’s materials, whether they have points or not.
Wakebe, the Shanghai lawyer, and Japanese firms whose documents were leaked said most of the data seem to have been uploaded by Chinese employees at joint venture affiliates or their customers to acquire points.
“Once the internal data of a company are disclosed on the Internet, the business’ information management ability is questioned and its credibility will be hurt, whatever the confidentiality level of the information,” Wakebe said.
Sony’s Chinese subsidiary said it has asked Baidu to delete documents from the site on a case-by-case basis, and Hitachi’s said it has been regularly monitoring the site and requesting the removal of its materials. Toyota’s affiliate in China declined comment, as did a Canon spokesman in Tokyo.
An MHI official said the firm believes a document containing its corporate name was fabricated, as it appears to be a contract regarding another company’s product.


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Two Modesto women were arrested early Wednesday morning, June 1 after they were caught attempting to steal clothing from the Green Education Foundation outdoor clothing donation receptacle in the 1500 block of Mitchell Road.
The in-progress burglary was reported to Ceres Police at 2:53 a.m. by a security company which is hired to remotely monitor the area. The firm reported seeing a woman climb inside the container and another female standing outside.
As Officer Kiashira Ruiz arrived the visible woman began to walk off. Coleen Jenson, 46, of Modesto, said she was waiting for a ride and said nobody was with her. Officer Ruiz asked her about the person inside the container and admitted it was her friend Allison Fennell, 34, of Modesto. When the metal container was opened Fennell was detained.
Both women later admitted they were trying to steal clothing by getting Fennell inside where she became trapped. Fennell was able to pass several items to Jenson through one of the slots. Evidence of the theft were bags outside the container which included purloined kids clothing, female shirts, a bra and several pair of shoes totaling about $100.
Both were arrested for felony burglary and conspiracy to commit burglary and booked into the Public Safety Center.