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We already know that Samsung is working on the third chapter of the Galaxy Tab series, and it looks like they will be unveiled it in the fall at IFA 2013 in Berlin. This would most likely be at an Unpacked 2013 Episode 2 event, which will obviously feature the unveiling of the Galaxy Note III. We expect to see a 10.1-inch variant along with another smaller variant, around 7 to 8-inches.

There is some bad news for original Galaxy Tab owners in that Samsung will no longer support those devices. As to the Galaxy Tab 2, support will end with the Android 4.2.2 update.

source: SamMobile

Come comment on this article: Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 to be unveiled at IFA 2013

Boston-based EverTrue, maker of an education fundraising platform, has closed on a $5.25 million Series A funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures. Other investors in the round include Boston Seed Capital, TechStars CEO David Cohen, Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn and Trunk Club CEO Brian Spaly. The money will go toward product development and team expansion in engineering, design, sales and marketing.

PRESS RELEASE
EverTrue, an education fundraising platform, today announced a $5.25 million Series A funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from existing investors Boston Seed Capital, TechStars CEO David Cohen, Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn and Trunk Club CEO Brian Spaly. Bain Capital Ventures joins a prestigious list of higher education leaders who have invested in EverTrue including Harvard Corporation Member Paul Finnegan, Brown University Trustee Sam Mencoff, Northwestern University Trustee Tim Sullivan, University of Pennsylvania Overseer Jim Perry, Georgetown Regent Brendan Carroll, former University of Chicago Trustee Ned Jannotta and Buckley School Trustee Thomas Lehrman.

The funds will be used for new product development and team expansion in engineering, design, sales and marketing.

Founded at Harvard Business School by Brent Grinna in 2010, EverTrue is a graduate of TechStars Boston and a winner of MassChallenge. The company’s first product is an alumni networking app built on top of LinkedIn’s API. This product was designed and developed in partnership with LinkedIn’s Higher Education team and is currently being used by over 100 prep schools and colleges in six countries better track and engage alumni and donors. EverTrue is building additional products that leverage data to support fundraising in the education sector and other non-profit verticals.

“Tracking alumni and donors is a key pain point experienced in education and other non-profit verticals” said Brent Grinna, EverTrue’s CEO and founder. “Without accurate data, it’s challenging for schools to support both career networking and effective fundraising.” Grinna, a first-generation college student, was inspired to start the business after helping lead his 5th reunion fundraising campaign for his alma mater, Brown University.

“EverTrue sits at the intersection of mobile, big data and enterprise SaaS” said Mike Krupka, Managing Director of Bain Capital Ventures. My partners and I have lived the challenges EverTrue is addressing through our schools and non-profits we’re involved with. We are very excited to partner with Brent and his team because consumerization of the enterprise has eluded the $300 billion non-profit sector.”

About EverTrue
EverTrue was founded at Harvard Business School in 2010 with a vision to reinvent education fundraising. EverTrue’s mobile platform was built from the ground up on LinkedIn’s API to support the needs of alumni relations and development professionals. EverTrue’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product lives in the cloud, providing non-profits with powerful tools without expensive software licenses, large investments in new hardware, or dedicated IT staffs. EverTrue is a graduate of TechStars Boston and was selected as a winner of MassChallenge.

About Bain Capital Ventures
Bain Capital Ventures is the venture arm within Bain Capital, which has approximately $66 billion of assets under management worldwide. The firm’s history of investing in early stage companies dates back to 1984 with over 125 venture investments since inception. Bain Capital Ventures manages $2.0 billion of assets, has over 70 active portfolio companies, and has offices in Boston, New York, and Palo Alto. The firm has helped steer many ideas to success by working in partnership with management teams, pairing talented and passionate entrepreneurs with industry experts, opening doors to customers, and collaborating on long-term strategies.

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We’re at risk of labouring this point, but there has been some more evidence that this year’s equity rally has not been spurred by a shift away from fixed income. The latest data from our corporate cousins at Lipper offer pretty definitive proof that there has been no Great Rotation, at least not from bonds to stocks.

Worldwide mutual fund flows numbers for February showed an overall move into equity funds of more than $22 billion, and a net flow to bond funds of about half that. Over 3 months it’s a similar story, with a net inflow to equities of about $84 billion while bond funds sit close behind at about $75 billion. Little wonder then that there is some evidence at least of movements out of money market funds.

In fact, maybe HSBC called it about right last week. In a note, their cross-asset strategists reckoned a pick-up in economic growth might support a ‘minor’ cyclical rotation into equities from bonds, but a longer-term structural shift between the two asset classes as part of a ‘Great Rotation’ was less likely.

You can play around with the full interactive graphic by clicking on the image below. If you have any problems, the link is here: http://r.reuters.com/ryk34t

There are a few caveats to note: these data don’t include private institutional mandates and are an extrapolation from publicly-available performance and assets-under-management figures. Also, for ease of use, it’s all in dollars; do your own maths as you go.

 

There are some other useful nuggets to pull from the data, not least the total failure to sustain the surge in U.S. equity inflows that hit the headlines in January. The three month numbers to end-Feb show net outflows to funds in Lipper’s U.S. equity category at more than $18 billion, while Global emerging markets funds boast the top net inflow, at close to $30 billion.

Looking at bond funds in February alone, the stand out stat looks like a move away from corporates. Euro-denominated corporate debt funds showed the largest net outflow for the month at $1.7 billion (it’s 1.4 billion in euros), but GBP corporates and global corporates are also in the top 10.

COMPETITION TIME: One last intriguing thing to note: Only four of Lipper’s equity sectors show a negative return over the three months to end-Feb. If you can guess all of them before opening up the interactive graphic, award yourself £10, redeemable at all branches of Jessops.

 

Pursway Ltd., a big data marketing analytics company backed by Battery Ventures, has named Dave Ellenberger has been appointed chief executive officer. Pursway uses big data analytics and proprietary algorithms to help marketers improve the returns on their marketing spending. Ellenberger has worked as the CEO of multiple companies, including 170 Systems Inc. and DataSage Inc.

PRESS RELEASE
Pursway Ltd., an emerging leader in big data marketing analytics, announced today that Dave Ellenberger has been appointed Chief Executive Officer as the company moves into its next phase of growth. The Company helps leading marketers such as Sony, Orange and several of the world’s largest financial services companies to dramatically improve the ROI on their marketing spend. Pursway uses big data analytics and proprietary algorithms to identify the true purchase influencers in any consumer universe. Analyzing existing customer information as well as publicly available web data, Pursway assigns a “PIVO score”, which is much more accurate and reliable than metrics derived from social media or other means.

Mr. Ellenberger is a seasoned technology executive with more than 25 years of experience in the software industry, having served as the CEO in multiple growth stage companies. At 170 Systems, Inc., he grew revenues many fold via marquee customers such as Google, Starbucks, and Verizon, resulting in a successful acquisition by Kofax plc. At DataSage Inc., he led a successful expansion strategy that resulted in a $600M acquisition by Vignette, Inc.

“Pursway’s leadership team has conceived and built a unique capability and product that is being validated by some of the most respected marketers in the world today,” said Mr. Ellenberger. “Every brand marketer dreams of harnessing the power of big data to boost their word-of-mouth marketing, and that’s what we deliver. I look forward to working with the team to help many more customers realize those dreams.”

Pursway’s solutions enable leading global organizations in industries such as retail, financial services, hospitality and mobile communications to realize measurable 3-5x ROI improvements in key areas like customer acquisition, cross-selling, and churn prevention. The Company has been recognized by Word of Mouth analyst firm Keller Fay as “…one example that illustrates that there are scalable methods for recognizing real-life social networks, cracking the code for how influence really works, and allowing companies to identify and reach such people in large numbers” (How Influence Works, Admap, Dec 2012).

With this appointment, Elery Pfeffer, founder of the Company, will become Chief Science Officer. “This is an exciting time at Pursway, and we’re lucky to have found a great executive to help us build on the vision that my co-founders and I set out,” said Mr. Pfeffer. “The industry is abuzz with the idea that Chief Marketing Officers are on track to outspend Chief Information Officers in the years to come, and we’re confident we can help ensure those dollars are most effectively used.”

Pursway’s patent-pending technology uses big data analytics and proprietary algorithms to help companies identify which individuals within their customer base truly influence the purchase decisions of others. Just as a FICO score indicates an individual’s credit worthiness, Pursway’s PIVO score indicates the influence that individual has on others. Pursway provides different PIVO scores for different topics, reflecting the reality that an individual’s influence over others will vary for different products and services. Companies can use that knowledge to target, market to, and communicate with their high influencers to drive increased revenue.

About Pursway
Pursway empowers consumer-facing organizations to close the gap between how they market and how people buy. The Pursway patent-pending technology enables companies to identify, measure, and impact how opinion leaders shape their followers’ purchasing decisions. Using Pursway’s big data analytical solutions, leading global organizations in industries like retail, financial services, and wireless communications are realizing significant improvement in the ROI of customer acquisition, cross-sell, and churn prevention efforts.

The post Pursway Adds Dave Ellenberger as CEO appeared first on peHUB.

Victims of the dollar’s strength are piling up.

Total returns on emerging market local currency bonds dipped into the red for the first time this year, according to data from JPMorgan which compiles the flagship GBI-EM global diversified index of domestic emerging debt. While the EMBI Global index of sovereign dollar debt has already taken a hit the rise in U.S. yields, local bonds’ problems are down to how EM currencies are performing against the dollar.

JPMorgan points out that while bond returns in local currency terms, from carry and duration, are a decent 1 percent, that has been negated by the 1.3 percent loss on the currency side. With the dollar on the rampage of late  (it’s up almost 4 percent in 2013 against a grouping of major world currencies) that’s unsurprising. But a closer look at the data reveals that much of the loss is down to three underperforming markets — South Africa, Hungary and Poland. These have dragged down overall returns even though Asian and Latin American currencies have done quite well.

The graphic below shows South African local debt bringing up the bottom of the table, with the FX component of returns at around minus 9 percent  In rand terms however the return is still in positive territory, but only just. Hungary and Poland fare only slightly better.

Many bond positions are of course hedged. But as we wrote here yesterday  in an article on South Africa, escalating currency weakness can trigger exits from local bond markets.  And worryingly, JPMorgan notes that returns in local currency terms have plateaued at 1 percent over the past 10 days.

Darrell Riddle, senior director of product marketing for FalconStor Software., is a professional with more than 23 years of experience in the data protection industry. Darrell has an extensive understanding of both the technical and business aspects of marketing, product management and go-to-market strategies. Prior to joining FalconStor, Darrell worked at Symantec.

Most companies have lots of duplicate data. That’s a fact. Many companies are aware of it, but it falls in the category of cleaning out the garage or a spare room. You see the problem, but until you run completely out of space, it usually doesn’t get straightened up.

Many IT managers believe the software and/or hardware they purchased already deals with this kind of problem. The truth is, this may or may not be correct. In fact, enterprises are taking full advantage of how current technology can eliminate redundant data. In some cases, companies have not turned on features that help them with duplicate data (hereafter known as “deduplication” or “dedupe”), nor are they actively using deduplication as a key aspect of their data protection plans. The reluctance of IT administrators to embrace dedupe usually stems from their lack of knowledge of the potential benefits of deduplication or past experience with a less-than-robust solution.

However, deduplication is a critical aspect of every backup environment that brings cost-savings and efficiency to the enterprise. Depending on which report you read, companies are faced with data growing at the rate of 50 percent to nearly doubling data annually. That impacts the entire data protection strategy. It also makes data slow and dopey like a koala bear. Backup windows aren’t being met, and there is no way that disaster recovery testing can take place. Think of this entire problem like picking up a squirt gun to put out a fire – it just won’t work.

Deduplication solutions are also valuable to disaster recovery (DR) efforts. Once the data is deduplicated, it is then transferred (or replicated) to the remote data center or offsite DR facility, ensuring that the most critical data is available at all times. Deduplication is crucial as it reduces storage and bandwidth costs, provides flexibility and data availability, and integrates with tape archival systems. Deduplication is a vital part of the future of data protection and needs to be integrated.

In this article, I will dispel six myths attached to deduplication, bring clarity to the technology and outline the cost savings and efficiencies enterprises can reap.

Myth 1: Deduplication methodology is a life sentence with no chance of parole. Most enterprise IT admins feel that if they purchased a specific deduplication solution, they are stuck with that method for life.

Reality: Flexibility is at the core of modern deduplication solutions, which allow firms to choose the deduplication methods that are the best fit for specific data sets. Many companies offer portable solutions, similar to being able to move electronic music from one device to the next. By doing this, IT can align its backup policies with business goals.

Myth 2: Each server is its own island and there are no boats. The myth is that each server is its own island with separate deduplication processes and none of the islands talk to each other.
Reality: As the Internet has expanded our ability to communicate globally, deduplication solutions have also gone global to eliminate any multiple copies of data. With global deduplication, each node within the backup system is deduplicated against all the data in the repository. Global deduplication spans multiple application sources, heterogeneous environments and storage protocols.

Myth 3: I don’t have the money to swap out or upgrade my hardware, and even if I did, I would spend it on something else. The perception is that deduplication servers need to be replaced when space on the server runs out. The system doesn’t allow for upgrades. To increase capacity, companies need to exchange the equipment and implement more servers and memory.
Reality: Scalability is key to all IT environments, as the rate of data is growing exponentially. IT administrators must be able to scale capacity to the backup target disk pool and build disk-to-disk-to-tape backup architectures around the deduplication system. Rather than a swap out replacement, deduplication repositories can scale as needed with cluster and storage expansions.

Myth 4: Deduplication slows down performance worse than my antivirus product. IT admins feel that the performance of their systems will slow down because there is too much work for the deduplication server to handle. This performance will hamper the entire backup environment and cause issues when data needs to be recovered quickly.
Reality: Deduplication can scale up to high speeds and has the ability to pull data into post processing to take the pressure off the backup window and increase the speed. In choosing a deduplication solution, IT administrators must consider how it will support the latest high-speed storage area networks (SANs). This is critical for achieving fast deduplication times. Those solutions with unique read-ahead technology provide fast data restore, even from deduplicated tapes.

Application catalog grows by more than 30,000 apps in seven weeks

Since launching BlackBerry 10 back on January 30th we’ve seen a lot of great momentum from our customers, our fan base and, of course, developers. The developer journey, however, goes far beyond the launch date. Because of the amazing dedication from our community, and global developer BlackBerry Jam series we were able to launch with over 70,000 apps. Today we’re happy to announce that in just seven weeks since launch that number has grown by 30,000. The application catalogue for BlackBerry 10 has reached 100,000, and there are an increasing number of top brands coming onboard as well.

Today, Amazon Kindle, OpenTable and The Wall Street Journal are available to BlackBerry 10 customers and in the coming weeks CNN, The Daily Show Headlines, eBay, eMusic, Maxim, MLB at Bat, MTV News, Pageonce, PGA, Rdio, Skype, Soundhound and Viber will be available for download or purchase.

And our BlackBerry World Wednesday series has already covered some of these amazing titles that are available right in the BlackBerry World storefront for BlackBerry 10: 8tracks, Angry Birds Star Wars, ATP World Tour Live, BBC Top Gear News, Bloomberg Anywhere, CBS Sports, Delta Air Lines, F1 2013 Timing App CP, Facebook, Foursquare, Jetpack Joyride, Keek, LinkedIn, Navita Translator, Need for Speed, NHL GameCenter, N.O.V.A. 3, The New York Times, PressReader, Slacker, Songza, Twitter, UFC, USA TODAY, Waze, WhatsApp, and Zara.

Here’s what Martyn Mallick, Vice President, Global Alliances at BlackBerry had to say of the announcement:

“The response to the BlackBerry 10 platform and applications has been outstanding. Customers are thrilled with the applications already available, and the catalog just keeps growing, now with more than 100,000 apps,” said Martyn Mallick, Vice President, Global Alliances at BlackBerry. “Top brands and application providers are joining us every day and are seeing the benefits of being early supporters of the new platform. We constantly hear from developers that the BlackBerry 10 tools are easy to build with and that we provide opportunities for app differentiation that they do not see on other platforms.”

Read the full press release here and if you haven’t checked out the BlackBerry World storefront for BlackBerry 10 – head over and see these great apps for yourself. Let us know what your favorite apps are in the comments.

Walk-in clinics are popping up in shopping malls and main streets across the United States and private equity is helping fund the expansion, Reuters reported Thursday. At least a dozen private equity firms have in the last few years plowed millions of dollars into urgent care clinics, which have become popular with people who do not have regular doctors or who like the convenience of their extended hours of operation. Several private equity executives told Reuters they are eager for more acquisitions in this sector because they expect profits to grow as healthcare reforms boost the number of Americans with health insurance by more than 30 million over the next decade.

(Reuters) – Walk-in clinics are popping up in shopping malls and main streets across the United States and private equity is helping fund the expansion.

At least a dozen private equity firms have in the last few years plowed millions of dollars into urgent care clinics, which have become popular with people who do not have regular doctors or who like the convenience of their extended hours of operation.

Several private equity executives told Reuters they are eager for more acquisitions in this sector because they expect profits to grow as healthcare reforms boost the number of Americans with health insurance by more than 30 million over the next decade.

“If you think about where healthcare is headed, urgent care is very clearly part of the solution, said Stan Blaylock, a former executive at drug store chain Walgreen Co, who left to invest in and head the urgent care chain Physicians Immediate Care.

The number of such clinics in the United States climbed almost 20 percent to 9,400 in the last four years, according to the Urgent Care Association of America. Almost 40 percent of clinics surveyed by the trade group expect to expand their facilities or add new clinics this year, up from 18 percent in 2010.

After poor management caused many walk-in health centers to close in the 1970s and 1980s, today’s clinics are much improved, thanks to investor money and customer demand. They are in more convenient locations, open earlier and close later, and offer online billing. Some also sell snacks and dispense medicine to boost profits.

“We borrow a lot from the restaurant industry,” said Zach Wooldridge, co-founder of Elm Creek Partners, a Dallas-based equity firm, which in 2011 bought a majority stake in Millennium Healthcare Management, an urgent care chain with clinics in Louisiana and Mississippi. “We have to be good, fast and kind to be successful.

Wooldridge declined to say how much Elm Creek paid for Millennium Healthcare. The firm – like others – plans to remain invested for several years, before selling the company or taking it public. He expected that his chain and others would generate EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) margins of about 20 percent when fully operational.

Private equity firms invested $4 billion in 2012 in health and medical services, which include urgent care, up from $3.5 billion in 2011, according to Thomson Reuters data.

One of the first in the recent wave of investments was in 2010, when venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and private equity firm General Atlantic bought MedExpress, the country’s No. 3 urgent care chain. They did not disclose the size of their investment.

In the same year, health insurer Humana Inc bought the largest U.S. walk-in chain, Concentra, with 330-clinics, for $805 million. And LLR Partners and health insurer WellPoint Inc invested last summer in 12th ranked Physicians Immediate Care, a chain of 20 urgent care clinics based in Chicago for an undisclosed sum.

INVESTOR INTEREST

Most urgent care chains are privately run and investing in them is not risk free. Too many clinics in close proximity can saturate a market, and low insurance reimbursements can cut into the bottom line.

Consumer advocates also say they worry investors will drive clinics to focus more on profits than on quality of care.

Private equity firms say they help clinics standardize procedures and consolidate overhead costs like billing. Scott Perricelli of LLR Partners said his firm also spends a lot of time helping clinics look for new branch locations and recruit doctors – two tasks physicians are usually too busy to tackle.

When Aaron Money, an executive at FFL, a San Francisco-based private equity firm, saw the potential in urgent care, he teamed up with physician Lee Resnick to start WellStreet, a chain of walk-in health clinics in Georgia. FFL owns 70 percent of the business.

WellStreet’s clientele are mostly privately insured, said Money, who expects business to grow as health reforms under the U.S. Affordable Care Act kick in.

“We thought it would be mostly people who would otherwise go to the emergency room. But it’s equal parts E.R. and primary care physician-type appointments,” he said.

Health industry experts say urgent care centers should keep their services simple to maximize profitability. They are better equipped to treat a kid with an ear infection, than a diabetes patient who needs ongoing, complex care, for instance.

The clinics could lose money if they spend time with patients or take on complicated health problems because insurance companies generally reimburse at a flat rate for each visit, said Franz Ritucci, president of the industry group American Academy of Urgent Care.

Mike Williams, who heads the Abaris Group, a consulting firm that advises urgent and ambulatory care clinics, said, “It’s not complex, critical-care medicine. It’s a low-tech, high-touch business.”

(Reporting By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian; Editing by Jilian Mincer, Tiffany Wu and Leslie Gevirtz)

The post Reuters – PE Firms Pouring Money into Walk-In Clinics, Urgent Care appeared first on peHUB.

Indochino, an online menswear company, has raised a $13 million Series B round. Highland Consumer Fund led the round, with participation from existing investors Madrona Venture Group, Acton Capital Partners, and Jeff Mallett, Indochino’s chairman and the former president and COO of Yahoo! Tom Stemberg of the Highland Consumer Fund will join the board.

PRESS RELEASE
Indochino, the leader in custom online menswear today announced it has raised $13 million in a series B round of financing led by the Highland Consumer Fund with participation by existing investors Madrona Venture Group, Acton Capital Partners, and Jeff Mallett , Indochino Chairman and former president and COO of Yahoo!. Indochino’s online custom menswear service brings together the speed of online shopping with the artistry of hand made clothing. By cutting out the usual middlemen, Indochino has built a simple, more efficient process that result in higher quality goods at a reasonable price. The Series B funding enables the company to continue to build a world class management and operations team and invest in marketing and product development. As part of the investment, Tom Stemberg of the Highland Consumer Fund will join the board.

“Most men need all the help they can get when shopping for their own wardrobe,” says Tom Stemberg, Managing General Partner of Highland Consumer Fund. “By providing higher quality custom menswear at a lower cost, Indochino has revolutionized the direct-to-consumer business and become a global presence in custom menswear.” Tom brings a wealth of experience to Indochino. He founded Staples and served as CEO for 16 years, overseeing both retail and ecommerce expansion and currently sits on the board of a broad set of retailers from lululemon athletica to PetSmart.

“Over the past several years we have seen incredible growth in the world of online to offline fashion,” said Kyle Vucko, CEO and co-founder, Indochino. “Consumers are accustomed to the convenience of online shopping, but want something more personal. This funding will help us expand our marketing programs and create new styles that keep our customers coming back again and again. We are excited to partner with the Highland Consumer Fund and leverage their deep experience in both online and offline retail.”

Indochino is coming off of a successful year of building the company and expanding marketing operations. Earlier this year, ecommerce and customer experience executive, Sarah Velt Wallis joined Indochino as COO. Wallis most recently built the successful direct to consumer business at cosmetics retailer Bare Escentuals and has more than a decade of experience in creating successful consumer ecommerce businesses.

In tandem with the new financing, Indochino is opening a pop up Traveling Tailor store in the heart of Boston’s chic shopping area. Buyers are measured and styled in-person by Indochino’s fit-specialists and stylists to create their ideal look. The Boston shop is located near the corner of Newbury and Clarendon at 234 Clarendon Street, and will be open daily from March 22 nd through April 15 th. Please visit http://www.indochino.com/boston to book an appointment.

About Indochino
Indochino is the pioneer and global leader in online custom menswear, making fashion accessible for every man. Indochino lets any man regardless of size, budget or location measure customize and order a high fashion, made to order and affordable suit in as little as 10 minutes. Co-founded in 2007 by Kyle Vucko, CEO, and Heikal Gani, chief creative officer, Indochino offers an ever-changing assortment of both classic and fashion-forward suits, shirts, and outerwear- all with an unparalleled number of customization options. The company is headquartered in Vancouver , BC. To learn more about Indochino, visit www.indochino.com. To receive updates on Indochino’s latest collections and style services, join Indochino on Facebook at www.facebook.com/indochino or follow Indochino on Twitter at www.twitter.com/indochino.

About Highland Consumer Fund
The Highland Consumer Fund specializes in retail, services and consumer products investment opportunities in growth-focused companies with proven business models operating in attractive markets. The Fund brings together an investment team with extensive experience founding, growing, operating and investing in successful consumer companies. It also offers companies a unique value proposition through the hands-on guidance and active involvement of its consumer domain experts. The Highland Consumer Fund has invested in and worked to create such firms as City Sports, DavidsTea, J.McLaughlin, Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy and Pinkberry.

The post Indochino Inks $13M Series B appeared first on peHUB.

CVC Capital Partners and PT Multipolar Tbk narrowed the indicative price range on a share offering for Indonesian retailer PT Matahari Department Store, Reuters reported Thursday. CVC, through one of its subsidiaries, and Multipolar have changed the range to 10,650-10,950 rupiah per share, added the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. The previous range was 10,000-11,250 rupiah.

(Reuters) – CVC Capital Partners and PT Multipolar Tbk narrowed the indicative price range on a share offering for Indonesian retailer PT Matahari Department Store, sources with direct knowledge of the plans said on Thursday.

CVC, through one of its subsidiaries, and Multipolar have changed the range to 10,650-10,950 rupiah per share, added the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. The previous range was 10,000-11,250 rupiah.

The shareholders are offering 1.167 billion shares in Matahari.

CVC did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

At the narrower range, the selldown would be worth as much as 12.78 trillion rupiah ($1.31 billion). The final pricing will be determined after books are closed by Friday.

The post Reuters – CVC Controlled Matahari Narrows Range on Share Offering appeared first on peHUB.

The order book of notebook maker Moleskine‘s initial public offering was fully covered on Wednesday evening, three days after the share sale started, Reuters reported. There was “a lot of interest” from foreign investors, the source told Reuters on Thursday., without disclosing what price the book was covered at. The IPO, which ends on March 27, values Moleskine at up to 561 million with shares being offered for between 2.00 and 2.65 euros.

(Reuters) – The order book of notebook maker Moleskine’s initial public offering was fully covered on Wednesday evening, three days after the share sale started, a source close to the deal said.

There was “a lot of interest” from foreign investors, the source told Reuters on Thursday., without disclosing what price the book was covered at.

The IPO, which ends on March 27, values Moleskine at up to 561 million with shares being offered for between 2.00 and 2.65 euros. (Reporting By Paola Arosio, editing by Luca Trogni)

The post Reuters – Moleskine’s IPO Order Book Fully Covered appeared first on peHUB.

With all the multibillion-dollar college endowments out there, it’s hard to imagine that elite schools have fundraising troubles. But even though they may know how to convince many of their highest-net-worth alumni to mail in big checks every year, TechStars-backed Evertrue believes they’re still leaving plenty of financial and networking support on the table.

On Wednesday, the Boston-based company said it had raised $5.25 million from investors who apparently agree. Evertrue’s Series A round was led by Bain Capital Ventures and included existing investors like TechStars CEO David Cohen, Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn and Trunk Club CEO Brian Spaly. Since launching in 2010, the startup has raised $6.8 million.

Built on top of LinkedIn’s API, the company provides a Software-as-a-Service product that helps colleges and prep schools create mobile networking apps (on iOS and Android ) for their alumni. It combines career data and other information from LinkedIn with traditional databases managed by schools to help alums find others with similar personal and professional interests and schools find new benefactors.

At the top of the “donor pyramid,” Evertrue founder and president Brent Grinna said, there are a few, very wealthy individuals, and schools use CRM-style alumni tracking programs as well as traditional wining and dining to keep tabs on them. But, he added, further down the pyramid, there’s a wide band of untapped alumni who may have less money individually but comprise a big opportunity collectively.

“At the very, very top end, schools and nonprofits are doing great jobs,” said Grinna. “But in the middle of the pyramid, unless there are really significant donors, no one is doing [a similar] level of research.”

While at business school, he said, he helped plan his own alma mater’s five-year reunion and realized that even top schools like Brown used low-tech alumni-tracking methods (spreadsheets) and were sitting on reams of outdated information. That was when (partly inspired by a classmate who went on to work at LinkedIn) Grinna decided to launch Evertrue to blend LinkedIn data with whatever academic and other information colleges traditionally collect.

In addition to helping schools manage their alumni networks, the app is intended to help the alumni themselves take advantage of their networks. From the app, users can search for alums across multiple variables, including location, employer and college major. It also serves as app for organizing class reunions and other alumni events.

As college tuition rises and students find it more challenging to find jobs, more companies are trying to bring LinkedIn-like social networks to college students. CollegeFeed, launched in beta this week, gives college students a social platform for connecting with employers, and AfterCollege, a more than decade-old company, last summer added a new social layer to give students a LinkedIn of their own.

So far, more than 100 colleges and prep schools have signed on as EverTrue customers. But with the new funding, Grinna said the company plans to focus on product development and built out its team to scale its user base.

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Mohammed Abdullah fixed his tie, took a deep breath, and walked into the room. This was his second interview, and he wanted to make it a good one. Across from him were two gentlemen, much older than he was, dressed very formally and sitting at a long wooden table. They motioned for Mohammed to take a seat, which he did, and they began peppering him with questions: Did he have any problems finding the office? How was the commute? Did he know this neighborhood? Was he from around here?

Mohammed knew these small talk questions were coming, but he still felt uncomfortable answering them. In Saudi Arabia, where Mohammed was born and raised, you are trained to act in a very respectful, deferential, even humble manner in a professional setting — especially when interviewing for a job and when speaking with someone much more senior than you.

You are expected to show this deference by listening carefully to what your elders have to say and by not saying too much yourself. If someone is senior to you — especially if they are much senior to you, as these particular gentlemen were — you let them start the conversation. Your role is to be polite, listen, reflect upon their words, and demonstrate through your actions that you are the type of employee that they are looking for: that you have good judgment, are able to follow the local cultural rules, and know that it takes time to build and invest in relationships.

Unfortunately for Mohammed, he now needed to be effective in New York, not Riyadh. And he wasn’t quite ready. His small talk was awkward, his handshake was weak, and he had trouble contributing to a casual, lighthearted chat.

We all make cultural mistakes when adapting our behavior in foreign settings. In Mohammed’s case, it was an employment interview, but cultural faux pas can happen anywhere — when delivering feedback, participating at a meeting, making small talk with colleagues, or even returning home from a long time abroad. What can you do when you need to perform now, but realize cultural mistakes are inevitable?

The first and most important thing you can do is work hard to influence how people will make sense of your cultural mistakes. For example, do they see them as evidence that you don’t care enough to learn about their culture or as evidence that you’re trying but haven’t fully mastered the rules? There’s clearly a big difference between the two, and it should be fairly obvious which one you’re trying to avoid! You want people to see your mistakes as honest mistakes, committed by someone who is trying to understand their culture.

How can you do that? By working hard to show genuine interest in their culture. This needs to be authentic, not superficial. Let’s say you’re in India and happen to be interested in fashion, sports, food, or whatever it may be. Use that existing, authentic interest of yours to start building an authentic connection with your colleagues based on shared interests. Then, when you do commit that cultural mistake, it won’t be judged so harshly because they already know you — and see you as someone who cares about their culture.

In doing so, your goal is to create what we might call a “swift” sense of trust. Be curious, interested, and respectful of their culture. Use your own personal style to bond with your new colleagues. The trick here, of course, is that the very way one creates trust differs across cultures. So, at the top of your to-do list, next to “learning the new cultural rules,” should be learning how to establish interpersonal trust in the local setting. This is something well worth taking the time to learn. If you do it well, it can really pay dividends.

Finally, find a cultural mentor. Knowledgeable guides to another culture are worth their weight in gold. In the case of cultural mistakes, they can help coach you ahead of time so you are less likely to commit them in situations that really count. Find someone you trust with expertise in the local setting and someone who empathizes with the challenges that you face.

You probably have a strategy for learning how to behave appropriately in a new culture. But do you have a forgiveness strategy? If not, you ought to develop one.

The MetroPCS-T-Mobile USA merger has cleared its final regulatory hurdle, leaving just MetroPCS shareholder approval standing in the way of completion.

That final piece of regulatory approval came from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which, according to a statement, told the two operators on Wednesday that “there are no unresolved national security concerns with respect to the transaction and that [the committee] has therefore concluded its review”.

The merger has already sailed through other regulatory pitstops, first the Justice Department then the FCC (without the commission even seeing the need to hold a vote). Some institutional MetroPCS shareholders oppose the deal, however, so it’s still not a sure thing – we will see the final outcome after a MetroPCS board meeting on 12 April.

If the merger goes ahead, Deutsche Telekom will hold a 74 percent stake in the combined company. It is therefore unsurprising that incoming Deutsche Telekom CEO Timotheus Höttges would become chairman of the board, as MetroPCS revealed on Tuesday.

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The U.S. Supreme Court this week stepped into the middle of an ongoing war between content producers and their customers. In a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled that books printed and purchased abroad could be legally imported into the U.S. and resold at higher prices without the permission of the publisher. (The decision, Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, can be found here.)

The case involved Supap Kirtsaeng, a Thai graduate student. To help support his education, Kirtsaeng had family members buy English-language editions of textbooks at Thai bookstores, where prices were much cheaper, and ship them to him at Cornell. He then resold them on eBay, repaid his family, and used the difference to help pay his expenses.

Wiley, a leading textbook publisher, sued him for copyright infringement, citing a provision of U.S. law that gives copyright holders “exclusive rights” to “distribute copies…by sale or other transfer of ownership.” Two lower courts agreed with Wiley, and fined Kirtsaeng $600,000 under the “statutory damages” provision. (As here, statutory damages often far exceed the actual profit of the infringer.)

To many, this might seem an unjust result. After all, Kirtsaeng’s family paid retail price for the books. What right did the publisher have to control what he did with his property?

To understand Wiley’s argument, it’s important to know why Wiley (or in this case a wholly owned Asian subsidiary) was producing and selling the same books for different prices in different parts of the world in the first place.

The practice goes under the unfortunate name “price discrimination,” which makes it sound much more insidious than it is. The economic theory is that when different markets have different price sensitivities, producers must adjust their prices to optimize profits. For example, I just paid $3.00 for an energy bar at the airport, which would have cost about $2.00 at my local grocery store. My willingness to pay the higher price reflects both the convenience to me of getting the bar at the last minute, as well as the fact that the retailer’s costs at the airport are likely higher. Both are also factors in the price differences between Thailand and Ithaca.

Consumers in Thailand, on average, have less to spend on books and other media than Americans. But since books have low marginal cost (printing and distribution) relative to fixed costs (research, writing, and editing), Wiley can profitably sell its textbooks there at lower prices. In theory, this means more people can have access to the content — the ultimate goal of copyright law. If Wiley charged U.S. prices in Thailand, fewer books would be sold.

Regional strategies, in which products are made available at different times or different prices, are a time-honored feature of the publishing ecosystem. At least until recently. Price discrimination is increasingly difficult to enforce. That’s because price discrimination only works when markets can be kept separate. But for many goods, including books, markets are increasingly global.

Consumers also have a wealth of new information sources on price, quality, and location of goods, much of it provided by other consumers and all of it available on whatever device they happen to be holding. Paul F. Nunes and I, in our recent HBR article, refer to this phenomenon as “near-perfect market information.” Near-perfect market information lowers what Ronald Coase famously called “transaction costs,” which in this example means that price, time, and location-based arbitrage is nearly impossible to maintain, even when it is employed in part to promote social welfare.

Dr. Kirtsaeng’s defense rested on an exception to the “exclusive right” noted above, a special rule that makes clear — or maybe not so clear — that consumers can resell copies that they own, even for works whose contents are still subject to copyright. The exception is known as the “first sale doctrine,” one of several consumer protections built into the copyright laws of most countries. Originally a judge-made principle, “first sale” was codified in a 1909 revision of U.S. copyright law.

Against “first sale,” Wiley’s argument hinged on a strained reading of another section of the copyright law, which prohibits importation “of a work acquired outside the United States” without the copyright holder’s authorization.

A 1998 Supreme Court decision had made clear that first sale took precedence over that provision for goods manufactured in the U.S., sold abroad, and then imported back to the U.S. But the Court left open the question of whether the same reasoning applied to goods manufactured abroad.

Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the majority in Kirtsaeng, rejected Wiley’s argument, holding that first sale trumped the importation ban, even for foreign-made copies.

Kirtsaeng, for better or worse, may put an end to geographically-based differential pricing for books. But it’s also important for what it says about digital content, especially when that content is embedded in physical products. The majority was notably concerned about the implications of Wiley’s argument in a time when nearly every product bought and sold on world markets has embedded within it some piece of copyrighted software or packaging. That’s because software, like books, is protected by copyright. (I’ll pick up this argument in a separate post.)

If Wiley was correct that the importation ban took precedent over first sale, an unintended “parade of horribles” might quickly ensue. Resale markets for appliances, consumer electronics, and smartphone markets would suddenly be at the mercy of possibly unknown copyright holders. Wiley’s interpretation, Breyer wrote, “would prevent the resale of, say, a car, without the permission of the holder of each piece of copyrighted automobile software….Without that permission a foreign car owner could not sell his or her used car.”

And that, of course, would spark a revolution.

Users of Google’s (GOOG) various free services were again reminded to watch their backs recently as the company announced it would shutter the world’s most popular RSS reader, Google Reader. While any Google service could theoretically be shuttered at any time, fans of homemade videos can likely rest easy for the time being, because it has become increasingly obvious that YouTube is one of the better investments Google made in recent years: the company announced late Wednesday that YouTube has now surpassed 1 billion monthly users. The News comes just 10 months after YouTube topped 800 million monthly viewers last May.

Those who hoped that Oracle would break its streak by posting server revenue gains last quarter, have to keep on hoping.

Revenue for Oracle’s “exa boxes” fell again, 23 percent year over year to $671 million from $869 million. Revenue on hardware systems support was  also down — 6 percent — from the year ago quarter.

As GigaOM has reported, Oracle has yet to hit on a winning formula for its highly engineered boxes although the company and its proponents maintain that the company makes good profit on each box it sells. It’s just that the revenue it makes on these high end boxes does not make up for revenue it had made on lower end “commodity” servers in the past.

On the earnings call Wednesday night, Oracle chairman Larry Ellison said the company plans to launch its next SPARC-based servers next week.

Said Ellison:

“Our new T5 servers have up to eight processors, and are more than twice as fast as the T4 systems that they replace. Even more important is our new M5 server, which has up to 32 processors and runs its Oracle Database over 10 times faster than the similarly priced old M9000 server it replaces. With the delivery of the M5 server next week, Oracle will finish upgrading every server in the SPARC product line dating from the time we acquired Sun.

He also said that Oracle’s delivery of lower-end boxes last year dinged average selling price.

“… we announced some lower-end Exadata systems, in our engineered space, and new customers have been beginning with the smaller systems, now that they’re available, eighth rack rather than quarter racks. And that’s somewhat lowered our ASP…” Ellison said.

Seeking Alpha has the full earnings call transcript.

Oracle’s server revenue was off 18 percent year over year in the previous quarter.

Overall, Oracle results came in below consensus expectations on license revenue and earnings per share, according to Nomura Securities analyst Rick Sherlund. “After robust 17% reported license and subscription revenues growth in Q2, this was down 2% y/y in Q3 (or down about 6% organic, constant currency), below the Street’s growth estimate of 8% y/y,” Sherlund wrote in a research note, adding: “The long anticipated hardware turnaround remains elusive.”

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Twenty percent of cars in the U.S. and Western Europe will by 2017 be app-capable, according to analysts at Juniper Research. That figure refers to the total installed base of consumer cars on the road, not just new cars — the vast majority of which will be sold with such capabilities by that point.

In a new report on automotive telematics, Juniper suggested the emergence of the connected car ecosystem would follow from the success of standards such as the Car Connectivity Consortium’s MirrorLink, which aims to help smartphone apps and in-dash displays talk to each other, and also from consumer demand.

“Demand is growing as consumers are used to the smartphone/app combination out of the car and are beginning to want it in the in-car environment,” Juniper analyst Anthony Cox told me. “What is driving this, though, is the fact that it has become easier to do through standards such as MirrorLink and therefore is reaching critical mass very fast.

“Getting the in-vehicle entertainment system right can be the difference between the sale of a $15,000-$20,000 car or not, therefore if others are doing it a vehicle manufacturer cannot risk getting left behind… The cost of including this feature will be very low, and the benefits extremely high.”

While connectivity has many potential uses in the vehicle, Juniper says infotainment will be the big driver – first through smartphone-tethering, then in-car systems. That said, the analyst house also noted a negative factor that could come into play: a slowing-down of the rate at which people are actually buying new cars in the developed economies.

One interesting point in the report was that of the big data opportunities that come up when you stick connectivity into a car. This could mean extra revenue for both telematics companies and the car manufacturers themselves, Cox suggested:

“While direct revenue from services is the most evident direct benefit from telematics, there are other benefits which may be equally important, such as the value which resides in the data that is generated from telematics installed in the vehicle.

“Indeed, there is increasing interest in seeking to develop a revenue stream derived from analytics of the data accrued from the myriad electronic interactions within telematics-enabled vehicles. Furthermore, if the datasets that are collected within the vehicle are then combined with related datasets from partners, the combined data becomes far more powerful — and valuable — from a predictive analytics perspective.”

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CYPRUS BRINKMANSHIP/BERNANKE IN LONDON/BRICS SUMMIT/MARCH CONSUMER SENTIMENT IN EUROPE/JAPAN INFLATION-JOBS-PRODUCTION/US-UK Q4 GDP REVISIONS

Cyprus has hogged the headlines since Friday, with bank closures now extended to a full week as they try to sort out a very messy bailout – made worse by domestic policy missteps over taxing bank deposits. As with Italy’s elections, the saga certainly challenges any market assumption that the euro crisis had abated for good and it’s also loaded with a series of potential precedents – not least the biggest taboo of them all, a euro exit. This is where the politics, brinkmanship and smoke-filled-rooms come in.  Yet as Cyprus is so small and its banks in such a peculiar setup – given the scale of Russian and other foreign depositors – the euro group, ECB and IMF appear determined not to be pressured into a bailout above the already gigantic 60 percent of GDP.

And, as with Greece last year, they will likely stand firm and leave any decision to exit up to the Cypriots themselves. You can’t rule out that they may choose to go and regional risks rise somewhat as a result. But if the islanders are genuinely worried about a 6-10% tax on deposits, they may also think long and hard about the chance those deposits would be redenominated into a heavily devalued Cypriot pound. Just ask the Argentinians what that feels like. A deposit haircut may seem a like a half-decent deal by comparison if some other mix of Russian loans, pension raids or securitised future gas revenues doesn’t stack up.

So, the small scale of Cyprus, a lack of direct systemic banking or sovereign debt linkages and the likelihood of some sort of political deal eventually emerging have all served to limit the fallout from the drama on world markets – rightly or wrongly.   World equities have been knocked back a bit, but remain up 5.75% year-to-date. The VIX popped higher, but remains super-low under 13%. Italian stocks are back to where they were on Friday afternoon, while the more telling Italian and Spanish 10-yr bond yields have even nudged lower. A successful Spanish government bond auction on Thursday, where yields across all maturities fell from the previous auctions in February, showed just how limited any Cyprus contagion has been so far at least.

So, unjustifiably complacent? Perhaps – there are certainly lots of bogeymen in this story. But let’s be clear about the “shock factor”. Back on Jan 1, the year kicked off with several “known knowns” ahead that everybody already knew would be messy – the US fiscal cliff, the Italian elections and the Cyprus bailout. And they all proved exactly that – messy. But few investors anywhere could claim to have not been braced for these. To be sure, all could blow up into something worse still, but none yet amounts to an investment ‘game changer’. Radars are up, however, and funds polled by BoAMerrill reckon the euro crisis has moved back to the top of their list of tail risks for the first time since August. We shall see if they continue to hold their nerve as the first quarter closes next week. More worrying for investors in Europe has been the continued funk in business sentiment in March and the Cyprus ructions won’t have helped that much since. Patience in waiting for some broad-based European economic recovery may be more limited than the seeming tolerance of  noisy Cyprus bailout. 

EVENTS/REPORTS TO WATCH NEXT WEEK:

Bernanke speaks in London Mon

African Union finance ministers meet in Abidjan Mon

Italy March consumer confidence Mon

Arab Summit in Doha Tues

France March consumer confidence Tues

US March consumer confidence/Feb durables and new home sales Tues

US 2-yr Treasury auction Tues

BRICS summit in Durban Weds

EZ March biz/consumer confidence Weds

Swiss KOF leading indicator Weds

Italy Jan industrial orders/retail sales Weds

France/UK Q4 GDP revisions Weds

Italian govt bond auction Weds

US Feb pending homes sales Weds

US 5-yr Treasury auction Weds

Taiwan/Czech rate decisions Thurs

German March jobless Thurs

Italy March biz confidence Thurs

EZ Feb credit/M3 data Thurs

US Q4 GDP revision/March Chicago PMI Thurs

US 7-yr Treasury auction Thurs

Japan Feb CPI, Tokyo March CPI, Feb jobless, industrial production, household spending Fri

French Feb consumer spending/PPI Fri

Italy March CPI Fri

US Feb personal income/spending Fri