India Investors Sess LATAM as a 'Land of Plenty' Source: WallStreetJournal Trade between China and Latin America has been a symbol of strengthening ties between developing economies, but India, too, is now looking to increase its footprint in the region.
More and more Indian companies are looking to do business in Latin America as they seek exposure to growing markets. The ties are also manifesting themselves on a policy level with trade agreements between India and South American countries picking up. Like those of its Asian neighbor, Indian companies are seeing Latin America as a more secure investment destination, thanks to broadly stable government and economic policies. These markets are also increasingly becoming a potential lifeline as India deals with food shortages and droughts. Indian companies have invested around $9 billion in Latin America during the last several years, according to Viswanathan, and “that number is just going to keep on growing.”
The next step in this trend is the agribusiness side, market watchers say. CEO Interview: Softtek's Trevino Speaks Openly About Leadership ... Trevino on outsourcing in the Americas: "It's not just about convenience for clients, it's about using that proximity to work much more productively for them.
" Blanca Treviño is President and CEO of Softtek, an IT and BPO solutions provider headquartered in Monterrey, Mexico. Sonda Expands Presence in Brazil with $38 million Acquisition ... Source: Bloomberg Sonda SA, Chile’s largest IT provider, agreed to pay 66 million reais ($37.8 million) for Brazilian information technology company Telsinc, the Santiago- based company wrote in a regulatory filing dated April 24.
Telsinc, was founded in 1994 and provides communications, virtualization and security services, and has business agreements with companies such as Cisco Systems Inc. and VMware Inc. It had revenue of 108 million reais last year, Sonda wrote. “Given the company’s calling for inorganic growth and record of profitable acquisitions, we consider it good news for Sonda and expect to see a positive reaction in the stock price,” BCI Corredor de Bolsa SA wrote in a note today. Sonda plans to buy three or more companies this year in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia for a total of about $200 million, Santiago-based newspaper Diario Financiero reported on April 23, citing the company’s chairman, Andres Navarro.
Hungry Investors Spark Coming Nearshore M&A Wave: Softtek Goes Shopping ... By Dennis Barker It’s a crazy time to make predictions, but this one should hold up: There will be an uptick in company-buying-company activity in the nearshore during the remainder of the year.
After a slowdown in dealmaking in the past two years, mergers and acquisitions will be on the rise as corporations go hunting for ways to grow—but not just grow anywhere. “There’s no doubt there will be a lot more activity, and a lot of it in Latin America, because everyone wants a nearshore component to their offshore strategy,” Ben Boissevain, managing partner at Agile Equity, told us. Agile is an investment banking firm that advises on mergers and acquisitions and has represented companies buying into Latin American and the U.S.
“The recovery will be bumpy, but people still want that nearshore component, especially to serve people who speak Spanish. US scientists 'hack' India electronic voting machines. 18 May 2010Last updated at 18:02 By Julian Siddle Science reporter, BBC News India's voting machines are considered to be among the most tamperproof Scientists at a US university say they have developed a technique to hack into Indian electronic voting machines.
After connecting a home-made device to a machine, University of Michigan researchers were able to change results by sending text messages from a mobile. Indian election officials say their machines are foolproof, and that it would be very difficult even to get hold of a machine to tamper with it. India uses about 1.4m electronic voting machines in each general election. 'Dishonest totals' A video posted on the internet by the researchers at the University of Michigan purportedly shows them connecting a home-made electronic device to one of the voting machines used in India.
EU seeks trade breakthrough with Latin America. The EU is to seek to revive stalled trade talks with Latin America at a summit in Madrid.
France and some other EU member states fear that a deal with South America's Mercosur trade bloc could hurt their farmers at a time of economic hardship. A senior EU official said many EU and Mercosur products - industrial and agricultural - were so similar that there were big competition issues. Argentina is an especially difficult market for EU farmers, he told the BBC. The Mercosur group embraces Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Their negotiations with the EU were suspended in 2004. Despite these difficulties, the EU is Latin America's second biggest trading partner and the biggest investor in the region. In 2000-2009 the EU's exports to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) grew from 59bn euro (£50bn; $73bn) to 66bn, while imports grew from 54bn to 74bn, official EU data shows. Market opportunities EU-LAC summits take place every two years. Notable absentees.
Japan PM Naoto Kan warns of 'collapse' under debt pile. 11 June 2010Last updated at 14:36 New premier Naoto Kan warned that Japan must change or face "collapse" Japan is at "risk of collapse" under its huge debt mountain, the country's new prime minister has said.
Naoto Kan, in his first major speech since taking over, said Japan needed a financial restructuring to avert a Greece-style crisis. "Our country's outstanding public debt is huge... our public finances have become the worst of any developed country," he said. After years of borrowing, Japan's debt is twice its gross domestic product. Continue reading the main story Analysis Roland Buerk BBC News, Tokyo Pessimists have long warned that rising debt and a falling population mean Japan is headed for a point of no return. For 20 years the government has been borrowing to spend, hoping to revive the stagnant economy, amassing the biggest debt-to-GDP ratio in the industrialised world. The Japanese themselves have been buying those bonds at low interest rates.
No Greece Cheap borrowing.