1 Twitter files for IPO (San Francisco Chronicle) Twitter just made it official – the San Francisco micro blogging service has filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. Naturally, the company announced the news in a tweet broadcast to the world on the company’s official Twitter account: We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.
But the IPO filing, a move speculated about for several weeks, means that it will hardly be business as usual for the seven 7-year-old company, which has 200 million monthly active users. One provision allows companies with less than $1 billion in revenue in its last fiscal year to avoid submitting public IPO documents.
Twitter could be the most anticipated and hyped IPO since Facebook in May 2012. Twitter also has had more than a year to study the IPO of Facebook, which saw its stock price wallow far below the initial $38 per share price until only recently. Twitter was valued last month at about $10.5 billion by GSV Capital Corp., one of its investors, up 5 percent from a May estimate. Facebook, which raised $16 billion last year, has a market value of about $109 billion.
Research firm eMarketer has projected that Twitter will generate $582.8 million in ad revenue worldwide this year, an increase from $288.3 million in 2012. Twitter is expected to generate $1.33 billion by 2015.Twitter, which has 1,500 employees, moved into its new headquarters in the Mid-Market area in 2012.
2 India’s declining education standards (BBC) Media in
India are worried over the falling standards of higher education in the country
after a study revealed that no Indian university is in the list of the world's
top 200 institutions. The Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings
ranked 800 universities from 76 countries on the basis of four criteria -
research, teaching, employability and internationalisation. Even the elite
Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), which are counted among the country's
finest universities, could only manage a ranking of 222, the Hindustan Times
reports.
The ratings are
"an unpleasant surprise" to those who think that Indian higher
education is world-class, the paper says in an editorial, adding that
"there's little doubt that the absence of truly exemplary institutions of
learning is terrible news for a country that aspires to be a world
leader". The Indian Express says that the government "has failed to
act upon the infirmities in Indian institutions, in upgrading their curriculum,
producing and recruiting the needed faculty, and regulating admissions - and
allowing them enough autonomy to do so".
Bidders have to put down a deposit of 50,000 yuan for each plane, except the J160C which needs a deposit of just 2,000 yuan. The buyers will need to obtain a certificate of airworthiness for their craft from China's Civil Aviation Administration.
China's robust economic growth in recent years has seen the rise of a large number of millionaires in the country. That has seen the private jet market take off and some aircraft manufacturers have predicted that the country is likely to become one of the biggest markets for the industry in coming years.
4 The big fat Indian wedding – non-stop (Neeta Lal in Khaleej Times) The big fat Indian wedding just got fatter. As if 10 million Indian couples tying the knot every year aren’t enough, a 24-hour television channel – Shagun TV – will now beam non-stop nuptials to a goggle-eyed Indian audience that ostensibly never tires of marriages!
India’s obsession with marriages is well-known. It has spawned a multi-billion dollar industry, fattening the wallet of everyone from wedding planners to jewelers to caterers and astrologers. The country’s first round-the-clock wedding entertainment channel hopes to cash in on this segment valued at an estimated $38 billion a year and growing 30 per cent annually.
Shagun’s target audience are millions of Indians: singles and newlyweds aged 22 to 32 which make up nearly 60 per cent of the country’s demographic, as well as family members who facilitate the nuptials. Small wonder couples are already shelling out between $11,000 and $19,000 to flaunt their multi-day wedding festivities on the channel — with the price depending on how many nights of the celebration they want aired.
Research has revealed that the two major issues vexing Indian families are: their sons’ education and their daughters’ weddings. So Indian TV, hitherto dominated by soap operas and squabbling daughters and mothers-in-laws — will now help viewers find spouses as well. For this purpose, Shagun TV’s bedecked anchors host programmes in front of a set painted to resemble a wedding backdrop. A presenter profiles a series of young men in search of a bride as their pictures pop up on screen, with a message urging interested families to contact the channel if they approve of the photo. Apparently, the channel is inundated with such photos each week.
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