“CII, US-India Business Council announce healthcare initiative - Smash Hits.com” plus 4 more

CII, US-India Business Council announce healthcare initiative - Smash Hits.com
Md. gov to create commission on small business - WTVF
Bakers sales drop in Q3 - St. Louis Business Journal
ABB CEO to be Vice Chair of Business Roundtable's Sustainable Growth ... - Forbes
A growing PayPal could soon overshadow parent eBay - EDGE Boston

CII, US-India Business Council announce healthcare initiative - Smash Hits.com

Posted: 06 Nov 2009 03:55 AM PST

New Delhi, Nov 6 (IANS) The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the US-India Business Council (USIBC) Friday announced a joint partnership in the field of healthcare under the banner 'Coalition for Healthy India'.

Announcing the partnership here, CII director Chandrajit Banerjee said: 'CII and the US-India Business Council have long collaborated to support healthcare improvements in India. Today, we're proud to announce an exclusive partnership in the form of a joint CII-USIBC Healthcare Task Force.'

The basic aim of this partnership will be to encourage research and development that brings innovative new products to the masses.

'Our aim is to ensure that Indian patients have access to the latest and best treatments and cures,' Banerjee said on the sidelines of CII's sixth annual healthcare summit.

The prime focus for this coalition will be to involve various stakeholders to raise the standard of care, development of new treatments and cures, ensuring access and affordability, and getting medicines to patients here.

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Md. gov to create commission on small business - WTVF

Posted: 06 Nov 2009 08:05 AM PST

CAMBRIDGE, Md. (AP) - Gov. Martin O'Malley says he plans to create Maryland's first commission on small business.

It's one of a variety of plans to help small businesses the governor is outlining on Thursday night at a gathering of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce in Cambridge.

O'Malley also says the state will create one uniform loan application for any small businesses applying for state financing.

The governor also says the state will waive state administrative loan fees for small businesses.

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Bakers sales drop in Q3 - St. Louis Business Journal

Posted: 05 Nov 2009 06:12 AM PST

Bakers Footwear Group Inc. reported a drop in sales in third quarter sales.

For the 13 weeks ended Oct. 31, net sales were $39 million, down 5 percent from $41.1 million for the 13 weeks ended Nov. 1.

Comparable store sales, or stores open at least a year, decreased 5.1 percent in the third quarter, compared with a comparable store sales increase of 4.5 percent for the third quarter of fiscal 2008.

Boots remain strong sellers, which bodes well for fourth quarter business, said Chairman and Chief Executive Peter Edison.

Bakers Footwear Group Inc. (Nasdaq: BKRS) is a national, mall-based, specialty retailer of footwear and accessories for young women between the ages of 16 and 35. The company operates 240 stores nationwide.

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ABB CEO to be Vice Chair of Business Roundtable's Sustainable Growth ... - Forbes

Posted: 05 Nov 2009 10:22 AM PST

BusinessWire - Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies with nearly $6 trillion in annual revenues and more than 12 million employees, today announced that ABB Inc. USA CEO Enrique Santacana will serve as Vice Chair of the organization's Sustainable Growth Initiative.

Santacana will serve alongside Initiative Chair Michael G. Morris, Chairman, President and CEO of American Electric Power. Together with Morris, Santacana will help lead Business Roundtable's efforts to promote policies that can reduce carbon emissions and enhance U.S. energy security without undermining our nation's fragile economic recovery.

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"Business Roundtable was the first business organization to publicly commit to fighting climate change and maintains a well-deserved reputation as a leader on energy and environment issues," said Santacana. "I look forward to working with Mike Morris and our fellow members to steer our nation towards greater sustainable growth and energy independence."

"Enrique has more than three decades of experience working as a leader in the energy industry," said Morris. "We are fortunate to have a CEO with such deep experience and dedication to the balanced, long-term vision of our Sustainable Growth Initiative. I welcome Enrique as our Vice Chair and look forward to working with him to address the serious energy and climate challenges facing our nation and the world."

Business Roundtable is an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies with nearly $6 trillion in annual revenues and more than 12 million employees. Member companies comprise nearly a third of the total value of the U.S. stock markets and pay more than 60 percent of all corporate income taxes paid to the federal government. Annually, they return more than $167 billion in dividends to shareholders and the economy.

Business Roundtable companies give more than $7 billion a year in combined charitable contributions, representing nearly 60 percent of total corporate giving. They are technology innovation leaders, with more than $111 billion in annual research and development spending -- nearly half of all total private R&D spending in the U.S.

Please visit us at www.businessroundtable.org, check us out on Facebook and LinkedIn, and follow us on Twitter.

SOURCE: Business Roundtable

Business Roundtable Kirk Monroe, 202-496-3269

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A growing PayPal could soon overshadow parent eBay - EDGE Boston

Posted: 06 Nov 2009 07:22 AM PST

SAN FRANCISCO - Most people know eBay Inc. for its online marketplace, where deals abound on everything from gadgets to antique furniture. But soon, eBay's biggest business will likely be PayPal, the online payments service that has been growing steadily even as the economy has stumbled.

EBay has spent much of the past two years trying to improve its faltering marketplace business, hoping to increase buyers' trust and clean up the look of its Web site. In the meantime, PayPal has thrived as more consumers and merchants use it to send money online.

Its growth is expected to continue in spite of competition from Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc., which have services that online retailers sometimes offer alongside PayPal.

PayPal bills itself as a shopper's online wallet. Users set up accounts and link them to bank accounts and credit cards, making it easy to transfer cash into the account. Then users can make payments through PayPal using either their cash balances or the underlying credit card. PayPal users can also send cash to someone based on as little information as an e-mail address or cell phone number.

But unlike what happens with a credit or debit card online, PayPal doesn't share your financial information with merchants. That brings peace of mind to people who might otherwise worry about shopping at a site they've never heard of.

PayPal, which began in 1998 as a way for people to beam cash from one Palm Pilot to another, was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002 and has been a steady performer. The service charges fees for certain transactions, and in the most recent quarter it reported $688 million in revenue, a 15 percent jump from last year. As of the end of September, 78 million people had active PayPal accounts, up from 65 million a year ago.

To try to maintain its advantage, this week PayPal opened its system to third-party developers, which will mean PayPal can be built in to all sorts of applications. For instance, an iPhone app could let consumers order a pizza and pay for it with PayPal.

PayPal has kept its big lead in online payments largely because people find it convenient, and because it's hard to build a competing system. Shoppers and merchants both need to be using an online payment system for it to have any value. And every state and country has its own rules for e-commerce. PayPal has managed to navigate these waters - it accepts payment in 24 currencies - and analysts don't yet see Checkout By Amazon or Google Checkout as much of a threat.

John Donahoe, eBay's CEO, has said he expects PayPal to surpass the marketplaces business in revenue simply because PayPal targets all of e-commerce while eBay is one of many online sales sites.

"PayPal can go well beyond that in the next three to five years," he said in an interview this week.

The company projects PayPal's revenue will be between $4 billion and $5 billion in 2011. EBay's forecast for the marketplaces business, which includes the main eBay.com Web site and other sites such as Shopping.com, calls for $5 billion to $7 billion in revenue that year.

Donahoe also thinks PayPal can eventually make more money than the marketplaces business, even though PayPal's profit margins are lower.

PayPal's opportunities figure to expand with its new move to open its platform to outside software developers. The process took two years, said PayPal's president, Scott Thompson, largely because of the need to deal with banking regulations while keeping up the company's fraud protections. But from here the open platform should incur few costs for PayPal, Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Shawn Milne said.

More than 1,000 entrepreneurs have been testing the system, known as PayPal X. Among them is Michael Ivey, the founder and CEO of Twitpay, a startup that lets people send money over short-messaging site Twitter.

When Twitpay started last year it used Amazon's payments service to transfer funds. PayPal's huge user base clinched the decision to make the change, he said.

Further growth - be it on cell phones or the Web - will have restrictions, though. While PayPal boasts that more 3 million online retailers accept it for transactions (not counting merchants on eBay who accept PayPal), many vendors offer it alongside services from Google, Amazon and others, to give shoppers as many choices as possible. As PayPal shows up on more Web sites, these rivals could, too.

And because of PayPal's size, any hiccups can have big ramifications. In August, a series of breakdowns made the service unable to process any transactions worldwide for several hours.

But Thompson is confident. He credits the fact that the service saves people time by making it easier to shop online. "The world needs what we do," he said.

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Business

Friday, November 6, 2009