Dr M Khalid's global village blog

As a management trainee in the project finance division in 1981, he made the entire leasing office of the financial institution paperless by working on an 8-bit machine with 20 MB of storage running on an 8086 processor. It was here that he first had hands-on experience on how technology can be used to increase efficiency and cut down costs. K V Kamath's 44-year-long association (with a break of eight years when he worked with the Asian Development Bank) with the ICICI group is set to end shortly, with ICICI Bank appointing his successor on Tuesday. Kamath, 67, had joined ICICI Bank (then just ICICI, a financial institution) in 1971 as a management trainee. At an age when most are content with non-executive assignments, Kamath is taking up an executive role as the first head of the Shanghai-based New Development Bank the BRICS group of emerging market economies is setting up. He was the managing director and chief executive officer (CEO) for 13 years till 2009 (first at ICICI and t...

Focus 1.  Unplug .  Put your phone on airplane mode or Do Not Disturb  (or use an Android app like  Shush ) . Black out background browser tabs and notifications with an extension like  StayFocusd , and mute your email with  Inbox Pause  for Gmail. 2.  Tidy up .  Did you know that the average worker spends  76 hours every year  looking for lost stuff?  Cleaning up your work area  lets  your mind focus.  3.  Write distractions down .  Free up some brain space by taking note of every reminder and distraction that pops in your head. It'll silence that nagging "I'm forgetting something…" feeling and let you focus on the task at hand.  4.  Read/watch later .   Use  Pocket   or the  Wrike Chrome extension   to save interesting  links  and videos that would ordinarily trigger a marathon link surfing session. 5.  Take a hike .  Periodic breaks...

Hailey Fort at work. (Source: Facebook/ Hailey's harvest page) Written by  Ananya Das  | New Delhi |  Updated: June 8, 2015 10:34 pm “I learned that being homeless can be dangerous because you don’t know if people are going to hurt you. There shouldn’t be that many homeless people. This summer I hope to make a small mobile sleeping shelter that would keep the owner safe and dry.” No, these are not the words of any politician. But come from a 9-year-old girl named Hailey Fort, of Washington, United States of America, who has taken upon herself the responsibility of giving homeless people mobile shelters. It all started when she was 5 years old. At that tender age, it broke Hailey’s heart to see a homeless man and went ahead to help him. Ever since, that’s what Hailey’s been doing – helping the homeless with her mom. And that’s not all, she even grows food and provides toiletries for them. Billy Ray was the first person she donated food to from her ga...

As a common misconception, we believe, taking loan for a property is sure to enable us buy a genuine property free of litigations as the bank would verify all the legal credentials of the property. We need to think again on that.   Non-performing asset ratio  for a bank shows those loans which are not giving returns to the bank. They comprise a variety of loans including housing loans. A better approach for selection of a bank for housing loan will be to select a bank which has a low  Non-performing asset ratio. A comparison of banks in this regard is given below. Non-performing asset ratio:  The net NPA to loans (advances) ratio is used as a measure of the overall quality of the bank's loan book. An NPA are those assets for which interest is overdue for more than 90 days (or 3 months). Net NPAs are calculated by reducing cumulative balance of provisions outstanding at a period end from gross NPAs. Higher ratio reflects rising bad quality of loans.  Source Data: Equitymaster resear...

What is the controversy around  Maggi ? What have tests shown? A officer of the UP Food Safety and Drug Administration ( http://fda.up.nic.in/ )based in Barabanki,Uttar Pradesh, ordered tests on a dozen samples of Nestle's Maggi instant noodles at the state laboratory in Gorakhpur, and repeat tests at the Central Food Laboratory in Kolkata, a referral lab. The Gorakhpur lab tested for monosodium glutamate (MSG) to check Nestle's claim that Maggi had none. Both tests found MSG; in addition, the Kolkata lab found "very high quantities" of lead — 17.2 parts per million — according to UP authorities. Must read:   Nestle's Maggi noodles faces heat across India, fails tests in Delhi Based on the findings, UP FDA filed a complaint in a Barabanki court. On Monday, Food Minister  Ram Vilas Paswan  directed the statutory regulator, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), to conduct nationwide tests on Maggi. Consumer Affairs Additional Secretary G Gurucharan ...

As she nears 100, Irene Bergman has some advice for enjoying a long career on Wall Street: Don't do anything stupid. Consider investment returns, the financial adviser at Stralem & Co. said in an interview at her New York apartment, where, surrounded by paintings from Dutch masters, she telephones her clients. While many investors nowadays obsess over quick profits, it's best to wait at least three years, or better yet, many more, before evaluating holdings. But don't be afraid of revising your thesis, she said. If thorough research favors a portfolio shift, have courage and make changes. "The longer you're in the business, the more pessimistic you get," Bergman said in her soft voice, noting she currently thinks shares are too expensive. Still, "I'm able to get bullish, because when I look at a stock, I can imagine where it was 40 years ago." As one of the oldest working professionals in an industry run by men half her age, Bergman offers a ...

IELTS stands for International English Language Testing System. As the name implies it is basically an English test for testing the proficiency of the language in an individual.  Training for IELTS can be taken to pass the IELTS exam or to develop good english language skills. I am giving the training institute addresses for Hyderabad. The test system is jointly managed by the British Council,IDP education ltd and University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations and more than 1 million candidates are taking the exam all over the world. The test has two versions : 1. Academic 2. General training Academic  version is for people who plan to continue their higher education by enrolling in universities in countries like US,UK,Australia,Canada,New Zealand etc.The academic institutions in these countries consider the IELTS score as a criteria for the admission process. General training is mostly for immigration purposes in countries like Australia,New Zealand,Canada etc. It may ...