Massive farm loan waiver scheme criticised

HYDERABAD: Raghuram Rajan, Chairman of Committee on Financial Sector Reforms, has described the massive loan waiver scheme of the Union Government as a disaster “as it will spoil the credit culture in the country.”

Delivering a special address at the Indian Banking Conference organised by the Indian School of Business (ISB) here on Friday, Mr. Rajan said: “After 15 years of getting away from the problem, the Government has vitiated it again.” Quoting extensively from the committee’s report, Mr. Rajan said that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) should focus more on inflation rather than worry about exchange rates. The Planning Commission was working on a unique national ID number for people with biometric identification. This would facilitate banks to tag on the details of any borrower to the national ID so that the credit history of the customer would become collateral for future borrowings.

Read More

Timothy J. Cartwright Nominated to Open Finance Network Board of

Open Finance Network is a financial services and software firm headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. OFN’s software platform serves the independent registered investment advisors (RIAs) marketplace which caters to the financial planning and investment needs of affluent clients. Commonly called wealth managers, these advisors use OFN’s fully integrated suite of software modules to optimize their front and back office operations and participate in one of the lowest cost structures in the securities industry.Cartwright has over 16 years of experience in strategic consulting, business transactions and financial services. Before starting Compass Advisory Group, which provides investment banking services primarily in mergers and acquisitions, Cartwright served as a director of Falls River Group, a boutique mid-market investment bank.

Read More

Financial Planner of the Year 2008

The Financial Planner of the Year Award is the highest accolade a professional financial planner advisor can obtain.

Jointly sponsored by the Financial Planning Institute of Southern Africa and Personal Finance magazine, the adjudication process starts with the completion of an application form which includes a sample case study submitted by the applicant.

Pictured above are: Arno Burger, John Campbell and Spalding Fourie

The case study was prepared by Mr Marius Botha. This was a particularly difficult and complex case study and carried 45% of the total marks. The case study was marked by five independent adjudicators who mark them individually without any collaboration.

They are all experts at a specialist level within the profession.

Read More

The United Kingdom’s Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Uses

L, the leading provider of policy-based retention and disposition management software for the enterprise, today announced that the United Kingdom’s Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has implemented its records management solution to more effectively regulate UK surveyors firms. Autonomy Meridio’s records management solution is a critical component of RICS’ new case management solution that makes the information related to the investigation and handling of cases brought against surveyor’s firms more transparent and consistent. RICS estimates that the new system can save more than GBP250000/annum in manual processing and analysis costs. Meridio partner, Kainos, was the Systems Integrator, for the project.

RICS is the leading organisation of its kind in the world for professionals in property, land, construction and related environmental issues.

Read More

PCCW’s former finance director guilty of fraud

PCCW’s former group finance director Lam Sing-keung has been convicted at the District Court of conspiracy to defraud the company of over $430,000 in accounting service fees. 

Lam, 48, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to defraud today. Deputy Judge Josiah Lam adjourned the case until June 21 for sentencing. The defendant was granted $50,000 cash bail and ordered to surrender all travel documents and not to leave Hong Kong.

The court heard that between January 1 and 17, 2005, Lam conspired with another person to defraud PCCW by falsely representing in a debit note that Baker Tilly Hong Kong had rendered accounting services for various PCCW entities on the Mainland in 2004 at the agreed fee for the services rendered, amounting to $432,000.

Read More

Chidambaram launches housing loan scheme for SHG

Karaikudi (TN) (PTI): Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Saturday launched “Housing Micro Finance Initiative” for mofussil and rural public under which Self Help Group members could avail housing loan. The scheme would be useful for those who have land. Money to build houses would be given as loan and no margin money would be required to be deposited, he said. He said SHGs and NGOs had been selected for the scheme as it was noticed that SHG women members were prompt in repaying the loans and ninety nine per cent of the loan given to them had been repaid. National Housing Bank would give refinance to Repco Bank which would in turn give the credit to SHGs or NGO members through its foundation for micro credit. He appreciated the pace of development achieved by Repco bank, which was mainly created for the benefits of repatriates from Burma, Sri Lanka and other countries.

Read More

Audit: WHA improperly spent funds

In the matter of copying machines, the inspector general said the WHA entered into leasing contracts totaling $85,200 in 2006, while “our analysis of the lease showed that the purchase of copiers would have been less costly than the leases.” The inspector general determined the WHA could have saved more than $13,000 had it purchased copiers instead of leasing them.”HUD had no assurance that the Authority’s procurement process was fair, equitable, and resulted in obtaining the best quality and/or priced services,” the report concluded.l The WHA was incapable of justifying its reimbursement rate for travel expenses of $175 per day, charged to federal programs. The report called the rate “arbitrary” and said some board members incorrectly interpreted the requirements for submitting travel expense vouchers.

Read More

Integrated Forms, Simplfied Consolidation

The Haniel Group uses the business consolidation functionality of the SAP Strategic Enterprise Management application to consolidate its financial data according to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The accounting regulations require comprehensive explanations in the form of supplemental text. Until now, that supplemental text could not be integrated into standard SAP software. A partner add-on provided the needed help.

.

Read More

HSBC boosts leveraged finance team

HSBC has appointed another senior leveraged finance banker from rival Deutsche Bank to join its team as head of European loan sales and trading, in the latest high-profile hire the UK-listed bank has made to its global leveraged and acquisition finance business. .

Read More

Adaptive Planning builds social networking into budgeting tools

Soward says that Adaptive Planning is focused on bringing “collaborative financial managment, budgeting and planning” to companies between those two camps in the $10m-$500m turnover bracket. The application is a browser-based, on demand program, paid on an annual subscription basis and is beginning to percolate through European organisations such as the online HR and recruitment company Stepstone.

“The problem we’re trying to solve is where customers have been doing budgeting and planning in spreadsheets. As they grow into multiple units and change business models, that application doesn’t scale too well,” he said.

“No one is really satisfied when it’s in Excel. Our customers want to be extremely collaborative and capture information and compare against actuals very rapidly in a way that synchronises across the organisation.

Read More