Lord of the Links

This BW article describes how Google's utter disregard for "business-type" behaviour is not liked by many VC's but at the same time, its unprecedented success at the stock market (at a M.cap of $120bn and PE of 70 odd) makes all VCs and I-banks scurry around it for deals. Google has spawned a new generations of start-ups in the Silicon Valley, whose only aim is to create some great technology and sell it to Google.

At the same time, the article says how Google must use its current M&A currency for some big-ticket acquisitions (AOL?) and not atrophy it by keeping it for too long and letting it diminish, to make sure its numero uno position in the Internet world remains unchallenged!

AMD made great inroads into Intel's marketshare in 2005 and it wants to repeat its success in 2006. AMD executives want to take its share price, which at $27 is at a 4 year high, even further up.

AMD plans to follow a three pronged strategy:
1. Try to ensnare Intel's biggest customer - Dell. Dell which currently only sells Intel chips on its website, has recently shown signs of considering selling AMD chips as well.
2. Try to push its Opteron chip into the high-end server market.
3. Try to push its Turion chip into the Laptop market. Intel Pentium M based on its Centrino technology has been the biggest driver for Intel in the past couple of years with laptops becoming the device of choice for corporate executives as well as consumers. And Intel has ridden this wave on account of its Centrino brand. AMD has come out with Turion this year which is promising but still only occupies a small corner of the market.

A deal to buy Texas Genco for $5.8bn by NRG Energy of NJ has all the analysts agape because Texas Genco was bought by a cartel of 4 private equity investors last year for about $900mn. This could very well go down in history as the sharpest profit ever made in a private equity deal.

The deal is a result of the deregulation of the energy markets in Texas which fixes energy costs (even those from coal) to the cost of energy from natural gas sources. A lot of NGOs are perturbed because this is greatly shooting up energy prices.

This NYT article describes how Google defied the erstwhile conventional wisdom and went for small, unobstrusive text ads instead of the large banner variety that decorated the other search companies. Its strategy was supported by a huge mass of small advertizers who have shaped Google today into a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

This Rediff.com article chalks out the life of Lalit Suri, who has built himself a huge hotel business in the last two decades. Originally a automative man, he helped his family to diversify into the hotel business and stuck on.

Even though some people may claim that he built his first hotel due to his leverate with the Gandhi-Nehru family, he maintains that it took a protracted legal battle to get the property. He has been one of the premier beneficiaries of the ITDC disinvestment and now has 7 properties all over the country. He has bought more properties including the Great Eastern Hotel in Kolkata, and is also looking at a luxury hotel in Dubai.

Life is tough for John Swainson, who took over Computer Associates (and now plans to brand itself plain simple CA) last November. Even though he has been able to improve CA's performance, and unscrew the innovation tap. However, investors and customers are still not fully convinced and he might require much more work than he initially anticipated.

An obit of Peter F. Drucker in Businessweek. Salient featues:
* Drucker was born to extremely wealthy and socially influential parents in Austria. Shifted to US in 1930s.
* His big break came when he studied the GM corporation.
* His ideas have formed the foundation of management as a science.
* Instead of trying to be a bookish person like most other academics, he interfaced really well with industry via consultancy projects.
* Towards the end of his 95 year old life, his intellectual capabiliites started waning and his influence in management was called into question

IBM has decided to outsource the designing of some components of its Power Architecture chips to HCL Technologies. This shows the acceptance of the maturity of the Indian chip design industry by the big players, which has over 125 companies including the captive units of Intel, Texas Instruments and a host of private players. However, the absense of chip manufacture facilities could prove to be a hindrance in the long term.

The article describes the fierce rivalry between Adi and Rudolf Dasslers, brothers who founded the twin giants Adidas and Puma.

It described how both of them competed with each other over getting athletes to wear their shoes, and how the empire was split during the 2nd world war.