Tuesday, April 7, 2015

World Bank welcomes new China bank; Mulling a breakup of India's national railway; Facebook's new office is one big room

1 World Bank welcomes new China bank (The Guardian) The World Bank plans to work together with the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to fight poverty and fund infrastructure projects, the World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, has said.

Worried about China’s growing diplomatic clout, the US has been urging countries to think twice about joining the AIIB, arguing that its projects may not adequately safeguard the environment and people. But more than 50 countries including Britain, France and Germany have rushed to join China’s initiative, a $50bn multilateral infrastructure bank that will provide project loans to countries across Asia and plans to begin operations at the end of the year.

Kim said, “With the right environment, labour and procurement standards, the AIIB and the New Development Bank, established by the Brics countries, have the potential to become great new forces in the economic development of poor countries and emerging markets.” Kim said he planned to meet Chinese officials next week during the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to discuss collaboration.

The Brics developing nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – are also working on a development institution, though they have run into disagreements over funding and management. The US has not joined the AIIB but has said it supports co-financing projects with it and existing institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to ensure appropriate safeguards are followed.


3 Mulling a breakup of India's national railway (Justin Rowlatt on BBC) India’s rail network has more than 9,000 locomotives - 43 of which are still steam-powered. This vast fleet pulls almost half a million wagons and more than 60,000 passenger coaches over 115,000 or so kilometres (70,000 miles) of track. The railways operate more than 12,000 trains, carrying some 23 million passengers daily.

This vast public enterprise is virtually a state within a state. It runs schools, hospitals, police forces and building companies and employs a total of 1.3 million people, making it the seventh biggest employer in the world. But it could soon be broken up.

However, hugely controversial proposals to restructure the country's railways slipped through last week with barely a ripple. They came from a committee exploring options for reform of Indian Railways, the state-owned enterprise that runs the country's train network, and borrow heavily from the British experience of railway privatisation.

The committee's interim report is unambiguous: Indian Railways needs a bracing injection of competition. It says the network should be opened up so private companies can run passenger and freight services in competition with the state. It argues the track should be separated from the train operation business, just it was in Britain.

India's biggest railway union has attacked the report, claiming it is an attempt to privatise the railways. They can’t be blamed for being anxious about privatisation. There may be no intention to sell them now, but new stand-alone businesses would be ripe for a future sell-off.


3 Facebook’s new office is one big room (Julie Balise in San Francisco Chronicle) Facebook’s new building is taking the open concept office to a new level. Called MPK 20, the 430,000-plus square foot building is made of one large, open room. The goal was to “create the perfect engineering space for our teams to work together,” according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

“To do this, we designed the largest open floor plan in the world — a single room that fits thousands of people,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. “There are lots of small spaces where people can work together, and it’s easy for people to move around and collaborate with anyone here.”

MPK 20 has a 9-acre green roof with a half-mile walking loop and more than 400 trees, according to sources familiar with the building. The trees and plants are native to California, making them a possible home for local and native birds. The roof also provides insulation, which may cut heating and cooling costs for the company. The parking lot is underneath the building.

Gehry Partners designed MPK 20, which will be able to hold about 2,800 employees. Facebook employees are still moving in to the building.

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