1 Hewlett-Packard to split into two businesses
(Wendy Lee in San Francisco Chronicle) Hewlett-Packard, one of the Bay Area’s
oldest, most venerable tech firms, is splitting up. The Palo Alto company plans
to separate into two businesses — one that sells PCs and printers and another
that sells products such as data center hardware and services for corporations,
a person familiar with the matter, onfirmed. HP is expected to make a formal
announcement soon.
The move comes as legacy tech companies are being
forced to spin off segments of their businesses to better compete with global
rivals. HP is probably making a decision to simplify its operation and focus on
the aspects it does best, analysts said. “For a corporation to survive, it has
to constantly change, and if it doesn’t change, it becomes obsolete,” said Rob
Enderle with advisory services firm Enderle Group. “These firms are
restructuring in what is a new reality, a reality that didn’t exist a few years
ago.”
HP sells a wide range of products, from PCs to
servers. By being so broad in its focus, HP blocked itself from partnering with
other companies because they have so many competitors, Enderle said. Rivals to
HP include Cisco Systems and Lenovo. Other pressures facing the company include
higher demand for smartphones and lower demand for PCs. HP’s printer business
also has not been as profitable as in the past. The company declined to
comment.
By splitting into two companies, HP is essentially
moving half of its sales into a separate business. The company’s printing and
personal systems group, which includes sales of products such as PCs and
printers, generated roughly half of the company’s sales in fiscal 2013 at $55.9
billion. Last week, eBay said its electronics payments division PayPal would
become an independent company. In 2013, PayPal made $6.6 billion in sales. IBM
also has separated aspects of its business, selling its PC division and x86
server business to Lenovo.
2 German forecast cut to 1.5% (The Guardian) The IMF
will cut its estimates for German economic growth in 2014 and 2015 to about 1.5
% for each year because of the crises in Ukraine and the Middle East, the
weekly German magazine Der Spiegel has said. The IMF, which is due to publish
the forecasts on Tuesday, predicted in July that Europe’s largest economy would
expand by 1.9 % this year and by 1.7% next year.
Der Spiegel said the IMF would also call on the
German government to do more to boost public and private investment because
this would help to prop up growth in the short term and bring benefits for the
country in the medium term.
Europe’s largest economy had a strong start to the
year but shrank by 0.2 % in the second quarter and some economists have warned
of the risk that it was in recession between July and September, especially as
business and investor sentiment has weakened.
3 South Africans and life in kingdoms (Johannesburg
Times) More than 20 million South Africans live in areas that have kings or
traditional leaders, who are a link to their ancestors. But there is growing
disenchantment over their taxpayer-funded lifestyles and alleged abuses of
power. Traffic stops in Nongoma as South African Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini
passes through his bustling capital in a Mercedes-Benz. The 66-year-old is the
most influential among South Africa's 11 regional monarchs. Photographs of him,
clad in leopard skins, adorn local tourism offices.
While kings and chiefs are revered by some, there is
also growing discontent as they are seen as living well at taxpayers' expense,
and plans to reinforce their powers have been criticized. The country's 10
kings and one queen get an annual salary of 1.3 million rand ($116,000) each
from the state. In addition, Zwelithini gets more than 50 million rand from his
province for the upkeep of his seven palaces, six wives and 28 children.
Other monarchs, who come from less powerful
dynasties, get benefits such as vehicles or mobile phone allowances. Zwelithini,
a figurehead leader for South Africa's largest ethnic group of 11 million
people, presides over the annual opening of the provincial parliament.
Those in favour of the kings say their spending is
modest compared to that of European royalty. The state also pays the salaries
of 829 senior traditional leaders -often called chiefs in English - wielding
power over smaller groups, and, of 7,399 headmen or headwomen helping to run
one or several villages. More than 20 million of South Africa's population of
53 million live in areas that have kings or other traditional leaders.
Critics of traditional leaders also say some of them
were given their posts for collaborating with the 1948-94 Apartheid regime, and
that they stand for patriarchal values, allowing women to be represented by
male relatives in court or when acquiring land. President Jacob Zuma, a Zulu
traditionalist with four wives, has strongly backed traditional leadership.
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