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Sale of Chinese internet giant Alibaba, which controls 80% of online commerce in China, gets off to flying start on New York stock exchange The biggest ever share sale in the US got off to a flying – if delayed – start on Friday as shares in Alibaba, the Chinese internet giant, started trading in the New York Stock Exchange at $92.70 – much higher than their initial $68 price. The sale of China’s biggest online retailer has triggered a frenzy among investors clamouring to buy into the the world’s fastest growing market and a new tech titan. Shares soared to $95 in early trading, more than 40% above the start price. Founded by Jack Ma, a former English teacher who started the site from his one-bedroom apartment in Hangzhou in 1998, Alibaba now controls 80% of online commerce in China. Jack Ma: how much is he worth? Alibaba’s share sale was expected to start at 10:30am but was delayed as officials worked there way through a huge number of orders from retail investors. Over 1...

Market fluctuation that has pervaded the equities market yesterday continued as the bears struggled to deplete market activities after a day’s gain in the local bourse following 0.11 per cent drop in both market performance indices. The key benchmark indices returned negative  to close in the red, as activities in the shares of Seplat Petroleum Development Company and Dangote Cement further dragged down the equity market. Trading activities on the floor of Exchange had the previous day closed in the green territory following positive sentiments of investors. Consequently, the All-Share Index dipped 46.04 basis points or 0.11 per cent to close at 40,683.45 as against 40,729.49 recorded the previous day while the market capitalisation of equities depreciated by N15 billion or 0.11 per cent as market sentiment remained negative. Meanwhile, a turnover of 273.4 million shares worth N2.7 billion in 4,188 deals was recorded in the day’s trading. Just as in the previous day , th...

Gold has fallen to its lowest level for eleven weeks, sliding as much as 1.7% in trading on Tuesday to a low of $1,264 per ounce. Strong US economic data -- especially manufacturing -- and the growing strength of the US dollar are the main reasons for gold's weakness, but there are also fears that the surge in physical gold demand from Chinese banks may fall, as the banks' use of gold leasing to circumvent restrictions on new loans could come under closer scrutiny. Chinese banks' gold holdings have risen by 55% to 1,445 tonnes over the last year, according to World Gold Council data -- that's more than the official gold reserves of Russia, Switzerland or China itself, according to the organisation. As a result, physical gold ETFs fell sharply on Tuesday, with the $33bn SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD.US) ETF trading down by 1.8% at $121.62 shortly after US markets opened, cutting its gains for the year to date to just 4.7%. Similarly, the London-listed, Gold Bulli...

Encouraging economic news pushed the Standard & Poor's 500 index past 2,000 Tuesday morning, a day after the index closed just short of the milestone number. The Dow Jones industrial average was also on track for its own record high. KEEPING SCORE: The S&P 500 rose six points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,004 as of 11:37 a.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 65 points, or 0.4 percent, to 17,142. That's four points above the record high close it reached on July 16. The Nasdaq composite gained 13 points, or 0.3 percent, to 4,571. CONFIDENT CONSUMER: The Conference Board said that its consumer confidence index rose this month to the highest point in nearly seven years. Strong job gains helped boost the index, which has been rising for four months. The optimism suggests that Americans will be more likely to spend in the months ahead, an important boost to the economy. THE QUOTE: "It tells you that the consumer is probably back in the game," said Jim R...

WASHINGTON - The U.S. announced on Thursday an additional $22 million in humanitarian assistance to refugees and people displaced by the violence in South Sudan. With the latest funding, the U.S. is providing more than $456 million this fiscal year to those affected by the crisis in South Sudan, which was plunged into violence in December when President Salva Kiir accused former Vice-President Riek Machar of attempting a coup. Thousands have died and more than 1.3 million people have fled their homes since the conflict erupted. The additional money is to be spent by international and nongovernmental organizations to provide access to clean water, food, health care, household items, job training, gender-based violence prevention and programs for child protection. Since the outbreak of the current crisis, more than 400,000 refugees have fled from South Sudan, the world's newest nation, seeking refuge in Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Sudan. Hundreds continue to flee each day and ...

Japan is taking steps to regulate bitcoin, and will introduce legislation to that effect soon, according to a report in the Nikkei Asian Review. But it won't be a currency, like yen or dollars — instead, bitcoins will be treated as a tradeable commodity like gold or oil. How Japan plans to enforce these regulations, no one knows for sure. After the largest bitcoin exchange, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, collapsed with potentially hundreds of millions of dollars unaccounted for, a Japanese lawmaker asked the government to make its position on the virtual currency clear. The cabinet is set to announce regulations soon; the Nikkei Asian review reports these will likely take the form of making revenue earned from bitcoin transactions and sales fall under the country's 8 percent "consumption tax," similar to the sales tax in the U.S. But given the largely anonymous nature of bitcoin commerce, how is the country to know whether a transaction is taxable — or even in Japan? T...

Hopes for South America's soybean production took another dent with downgrades from Informa and from Oil World, which elsewhere in the oilseeds complex cautioned over South East Asia palm oil output too. Informa, citing both a lower estimate for soybeans and weaker yield hopes, downgrades its forecast for Argentina's forthcoming soybean crop by 3m tonnes to 54m tonnes. That figure, representing an increase of nearly 5m tonnes year on year, is in line with the forecast from the US Department of Agriculture, if above an estimate last week of 53m tonnes from the Buenos Aires grains exchange. Informa also cut its forecast for the Brazilian soybean crop, by 900,000 tonne to 88.8m tonnes. 'Further deteriorated' That figure is below the 90.0m tonnes forecast by the USDA, whose data set global benchmarks, but and in line with an estimate from Brazilian industry association Abiove last week, although some other observers have far lower numbers, citing the weathers ext...

SYDNEY--Oil Search Ltd. (OSH.AU) said it would raise 1.22 billion Australian dollars (US$1.09 billion) to fund the purchase of stakes in two large natural gas discoveries in Papua New Guinea, boosting its bets on an impoverished country soon to join the ranks of global gas producers. Oil Search, Australia's fourth-largest listed oil producer, said it would buy a 22.8% stake in a license that includes the Elk and Antelope gas fields from closely held Pac LNG Group for US$900 million. The deal injects fresh momentum into the development of the two fields, which could potentially support a new gas-export facility in Papua New Guinea. To feed growing Asian demand, including from Japan and China, international investors are increasingly turning their attention to countries that previously played little part in energy markets. Papua New Guinea, better known for its jungles and tribal society, is due to start receiving a revenue windfall later this year, when Exxon Mobil Corp.'sU...

One of the biggest Bitcoin Exchanges, MtGox, has gone offline. The exchange has been hit by technical issues and recently halted all customer withdrawals of the digital currency after it spotted what it called "unusual activity". The move is a setback for backers of Bitcoin, who have been pushing for greater adoption of the currency. Meanwhile, six other major Bitcoin exchanges issued a joint statement distancing themselves from MtGox. "This tragic violation of the trust of users of MtGox was the result of one company's actions and does not reflect the resilience or value of Bitcoin and the digital currency industry," the exchanges, including Coinbase and BTC China, said in a statement. "As with any new industry, there are certain bad actors that need to be weeded out, and that is what we are seeing today. "We are confident, however, that strong Bitcoin companies, led by highly competent teams and backed by credible investors, will conti...

There are opportunities galore, but the yuan, or renminbi, remains a challenging currency in many ways. According to the global transaction services organisation Swift, the yuan was the eighth most used currency for payment in December and overtook the euro as the second most-used currency for trade finance in October. Not bad for a currency that is technically non-convertible, but it needs to become more easily tradable if the financial services sector is really to thrive – and there are growing signs of its internationalisation. Last week, the Xinhua news agency reported that the Shanghai branch of the People’s Bank of China had greenlit five third-party payment firms to process yuan- denominated cross-border payment in Shanghai’s free trade zone. The central bank requirements are that companies that have online payment service licences and are either incorporated in Shanghai or run subsidiaries in the free trade zone and can provide renminbi settlement for cross-border trad...

This interactive mystery is endearing, but there’s more story than gameplay The interactive mystery novel genre hasn’t been exactly embraced by Western gamers. Sure, there are exceptions such as Ace Attorney , but compared with the Japanese market, Europeans have not been won over. Danganronpa:  Trigger Happy Havoc is sparkly, colourful and weird, but not very interactive. You play an average teen who somehow gets enrolled in a prestigious boarding school for the gifted. But moments after entering the building, you and the other new students are imprisoned by a mysterious, malevolent being.  The other students include a promising baseball player, a psychic popstar and a shy young novelist. There are shades of Oldboy, The Shining and Alice in Wonderland , and puzzles to be solved a la Cluedo .  (There are minor mysteries about the environment as well as the overall story arc conundrum.) It’s a great, endearingly weird premise, but text-heavy and gameplay-light....

Android and iOS made up for 95.7% of worldwide smartphone shipments in 2013Android and iOS smartphone shipments grew 6.1% year-over-year in 2013, making up for 93.8% of all smartphone shipments in the year, according to IDC's latest figures. Q4 2013 numbers saw the two dominate platforms increase even further to account for 95.7% off all smartphones shipped, 4 percentage points higher than the same time the previous year. As we previously saw when IDC reported that smartphone shipments hit the 1 billion mark, Samsung dominated shipments followed by Motorola and Huawei once again pushing Android shipment growth well ahead of iOS. Although Apple's mobile platform continued its positive trend, it experienced the lowest shipment growth at 6.7% for the quarter and 12.9% for the year. Due in large part to Nokia, Windows Phone on the other hand posted the largest shipment increases, 46.7% on the quarter and 90.9% for the year. As you might have imagined, BlackBerry continued...

At a time when emerging-market countries from Turkey to South Africa are trying to arrest a plunge in their currencies, Colombia is encouraging the fall of its peso. The nation is sticking with its two-year-old policy of buying dollars to beef up its international reserves, which are low compared with those of some of its neighbors. That decision accelerated a slide spurred by the Fed’s decision to scale back monetary stimulus, which had provided cheap money that investors spent on securities around the world. The dollar purchases have so weakened the peso that foreign investors in Colombia’s local currency bonds have been hit with the deepest losses in Latin America’s sovereign bond market. The peso has dropped 5 percent this year, touching a four-year low of 2,061.13 vs. the dollar on Feb. 6. To prevent an inflationary breakout from higher import prices, other developing countries are raising interest rates and selling dollars to strengthen their currencies. But Colombian pol...

Though Windows 8′s operating system market share can safely be categorized as anemic, especially when compared with how popular Windows 7 and Windows XP continue to be, that doesn’t mean that Microsoft hasn’t sold many copies of its polarizing, tile-based OS. In fact, according to Microsoft Executive Vice President of Marketing Tami Reller (via ZDNet), the firm has sold over 200 million Windows 8 licenses since the operating system was released on October 26, 2012.  “Windows 8 has surpassed 200 million licenses sold, and we continue to see momentum,” a Microsoft spokesperson told ZDNet. “… Windows is a central part of life for more than 1.5 billion people around the world, and we are looking forward to the future. While 200 million sales of anything is impressive, it’s well behind the pace of Windows 7. It took Microsoft 15 months to sell 200 million Windows 8 licenses. Meanwhile, in just 12 months, Microsoft was able to move 240 million licenses of Windows 7, the popular...

land-based Joseph Dobson & Sons has expanded and created eight job roles with support from NatWest. The brand supplies products to most major supermarkets including Morrisons, Asda, Tesco and Sainsburys, a number of wholesalers and independent retailers, as well as running its own shop in Southgate, Elland.  The company needed extra space for manufacturing and packing and turned to NatWest for additional funding towards a new warehouse.  Michael Hall, relationship director at NatWesv in Huddersfield, (who supported the business for over 150 years) helped secure a commercial mortgage under the Government’s Funding for Lending Scheme.  Joseph Dobson & Sons was able to invest in the 8,700 sq ft premises on Exley Lane, around the corner from their existing premises in Northgate. The new site incorporates a state-of-the-art, purpose-built Mint Imperial manufacturing and packing facility which will speed the processes up and in turn, boost productivity. O...

Anheuser-Busch InBev, the country’s largest brewer, has agreed to buy the Blue Point Brewing Company in a move that could help it capitalize on the popularity of craft beer. The deal, announced on Wednesday, would bring a Long Island beer company with a devoted following into a family of brands that includes Budweiser, Stella Artois, Beck’s and – as of last year – Corona. Blue Point, which calls itself “Long Island’s oldest and most award-winning brewery,” is known for its creativity and independent spirit. Terms of the deal between Blue Point and the United States arm of Anheuser-Busch InBev were not disclosed. It is expected to close in the second quarter. For Anheuser-Busch InBev, the deal is the latest move to expand its reach. Last month, it agreed to repurchase Oriental Brewery, a South Korean brewer, nearly five years after it sold the company to the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. And last year, Anheuser-Busch InBev completed a merger with Grupo Modelo o...

The analysis of fraud trends during 2013 by CIFAS - the UK's Fraud Prevention Service reveals a surprising mix of apparently good and equally alarming news about fraud. ID fraudOn the plus side, fraud went down in 2013 by 11 per cent from the levels recorded in 2012 – the first year-on-year drop since 2010 – but fraud remains at a much higher rate than in pre-recessionary times. Explaining the decrease CIFAS says that the 11 per cent decrease in fraud levels is proof of the positive preventative impact of counter fraud measures such as data sharing. Richard Hurley, CIFAS communications manager, noted: “The decrease in fraud comes on the back of The Audit Commission’s Protecting the Public Purse 2013 which also reported a reduction in the number of frauds, and is good news for those who participate in the collective effort to prevent fraud. “On the other hand, the fraud has not necessarily ceased to exist. Much comment has been made over the past year by senior police a...