Archive for the ‘INTERNATIONAL’ Category

Profiles in Business: Li Ka-shing

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Li Ka-shing is an 81-year old wealthy business tycoon from Hong Kong who is considered to be one of the most powerful people in Asia. He is the 16th richest person in the world, the richest person in Hong Kong, and the richest among people of East Asian roots in the world. He had an estimated net worth of about $16.2 billion as of 2008. He holds the position of Chairman of Hutchison Whampoa Limited (HWL) and Cheung Kong Holdings.

Li Ka-shing has established himself as the largest operator of container terminals, as well as being the largest retailer of health and beauty products in the world. His personal portfolio extends to being one of the major suppliers of electricity in Hong Kong and a successful real estate developer.

Li Ka-shing has achieved honors from different international publications. Asia Week named him as “Asia’s Most Powerful Man” in 2001, while Forbes Magazine honored him as a recipient of the first ever Malcolm S. Forbes Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. He has also received other recognition and awards such as the Grand Bauhinia Medal, position of Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and a recognized Commander of the Légion d’honneur. His peers in the corporate world often call him “Superman” for his excellence in leadership and success in businesses. His portfolio of businesses involve a variety of industries in Hong Kong, including retail, real estate, electricity, telecommunications, shipping, and the Internet. His Cheung Kong Group’s assets reached $82.9 billion by the end of 2009 after operating in 55 countries while employing around 260,000 people worldwide.

Along with these lifetime achievements, no one can deny the generosity he has shown to others. He is a great philanthropist and has called a foundation he has established his “third son.” He pledged to give out one-third of his accumulated wealth to charity and other philanthropic endeavors across the world.

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Lakshmi Mittal – Leader in the Steel Industry

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

The UK-based Indian Industrialist Lakshmi Niwas Mittal was born on June 15, 1950. Hailing from the Churu district of Rajasthan, India, Lakshmi Mittal now maintains his residence in Kensington, London. The billionaire industrialist is the renowned founder of the Mittal Steel Company.

In addition to being a steel baron, Lakshmi Mittal also serves as a non-executive director of EADS, Goldman Sachs, and ICICI Bank. His personal wealth of US$19.3 billion has made him the richest man in UK and the 8th richest person in the world as of 2009.

He received his Bachelor of Commerce degree from St. Xavier’s College in Calcutta. A few years after his graduation, Lakshmi Mittal married Usha Mittal, who soon gave him a son and daughter. He started his 30 year-experience in the steel industry by working in the family’s steelmaking business in India. Eventually, in 1976, he successfully built his own company, Mittal Steel, formerly known as the LNM Group. Since then, Lakshmi Mittal slowly developed his business until it became an international steel producer with operations scattered in 14 countries.

By pioneering the use of DRI (or Direct Reduced Iron) as an alternative for steelmaking, Lakshmi Mittal led the global industry’s consolidation process. With profits of more than $22 billion and shipments of 42.1 million tons of steel, Mittal Steel stands as the largest steelmaker worldwide.

In 1996, Lakshmi Mittal was hailed by New Steel as “Steelmaker of the Year”. Due to his outstanding vision, leadership, entrepreneurship, and success in the international steel development arena, he became the recipient of the “Willy Korf Steel Vision Award” from the Paine Weber’s World Steel Dynamics and the American Metal Market in 1998. In addition to these honors, Lakshmi Mittal was also hailed by Fortune Magazine as the “European Businessman of the Year” in 2004.

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Carlos Slim

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Carlos Slim Helu, or Carlos Slim, was born on January 28, 1940 in Mexico City, Mexico. Descending from Lebanese-Mexican roots, Carlos Slim is a philanthropist, engineer, and businessman with a primary focus on the burgeoning telecommunications industry. He dominates over the telecommunications industry within Mexico as well as for the greater part of Latin America. He controls Telcel, Telefonos de Mexico, as well as the America Movil companies. Having an estimated net worth of US$35 billion, he currently ranks as the third wealthiest person in the world competing amongst Lawrence Ellison, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

Carlos Slim completed his engineering studies at the prestigious Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. In 1967, he married Soumaya Domit, who gave him six children. The couple was married for 32 years until Soumaya’s death in 1999.

From 1996 to 1998, Carlos Slim served as the president of the Latin-American Committee of the New York Stock Exchange Administration Council. He was also a president of the Mexican Association of Brokerage Houses and vice president of the Mexican Stock Exchange.

Carlos Slim was also responsible for building Grupo Carso, a large Mexican financial-industrial conglomerate. Twenty eight years after its inception, Carlos Slim became the business’ Honorary Lifetime Chairman. The firm owns a variety of companies including the electronic retail chain CompUSA. In addition, he is also the chairman of the Grupo Financiero Inbursa.

For his active involvement and significant influence in the telecommunications industry, Carlos Slim became the recipient of Mexico’s Chamber of Commerce’s Entrepreneurial Merit Medal of Honor. In addition to this, the Belgian government also awarded him the Leopold II Commander Meda award. In 2003, he was hailed as CEO of the year by Latin Trade magazine and a year later, he received the title CEO of the decade from the same publication.

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Swiss privacy agency to sue Google over Street View

Friday, November 13th, 2009

A privacy agency in Switzerland said it plans to sue Google over its Street View feature.

Street View allows users to see street-level pictures online. The application has been criticized by other European countries because it could expose private or embarrassing things about people’s lives, according to an Associated Press article.

The Swiss agency said it wants Google to ensure that all license plates, faces and private streets are blurred. It also wants at least one-week notice of when Google will be in the area taking photographs and when it will be available online.

“In the Street View service, which has been online since mid August 2009, numerous faces and vehicle number plates are not made sufficiently unrecognizable from the point of view of data protection, especially where the persons concerned are shown in sensitive locations, e.g. outside hospitals, prisons or schools,” said Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, Hanspeter Thür in a news release.

The commission maintains that previous advance information from Google has been incomplete.

“Google announced that it would primarily be filming urban centres, but then put comprehensive images of numerous towns and cities on the Internet,” said Thür. “In outlying districts, where there are far fewer people on the streets, the simple blurring of faces is no longer sufficient to conceal identities. This is primarily due to the website’s zoom function, which enables the Street View user to isolate and enlarge images of individuals on the screen.”

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Sean King: Taiwan, China close to financial agreement

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Taiwan officials said yesterday they are preparing to sign a memorandum of agreement on financial supervision with Taiwan, according to an article on cctv.com.

“We are ready to sign the memorandum with Taiwan,” said Yang Yi, a spokesperson for the State Taiwan Affairs Council. “As to the location, time and form of the signing, the Chinese mainland will have no problem.”

Sean King, vice president of Park Strategies, discussed the disconnection between the Taiwan and China economic relationship with CNBC’s Martin Soong and Emily Chan on Oct. 1.

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Sean King, who is leading the public policy firms’ push into Asia, said it is hard for him, or anyone, to predict what the communist leaders in China are thinking. King is heading Park Strategies’ newly opened office in Taipei, Taiwan.

Sean King said Taiwan is interested in getting back on the “world stage,” and hope to do so by striking free-trade agreements with China.

China and Taiwan have already established deals to expand tourism and transportation links.

Sean King referenced a recent poll that showed 60 percent of Taiwanese support a free-trade agreement with China.

“They all support the economic openings but for them, that’s where it stops,” King said. “For the Chinese leaders, that’s where it starts and that’s where the disconnect happens. They are really talking different languages past each other.”

After the Financial Service memorandum is settled, negotiations are expected to begin in December on the Economic Cooperation and Framework Agreement. That would form a free-trade agreement area.

“Like it or not, the fact is that the world’s supply chain and economy goes through southeastern China today,” King said. “So, if you’re not there you are missing out on the world. That’s why Taiwan wants this.”

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