Thinking out loud

Introduction Workday is the leader in enterprise-class, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions for managing global businesses, combining a lower cost of ownership with an innovative approach to business applications. Founded by PeopleSoft veterans Aneel Bhusri and  Dave Duffield , Workday delivers unified Human Capital Management , Payroll , and Financial Management solutions designed for today's organizations and the way people work. Delivered in the cloud leveraging a modern technology platform, Workday offers a fresh alternative to legacy ERP. More than 280 customers, spanning medium-sized organizations to Fortune 500 businesses, have selected Workday. Workday was started in 2005 by Aneel Bhusri and Dave Duffield.  Based on an interview with Aneel Bhusri, CEO of Workday, he suggested that Workday could be an even larger enterprise than their prior baby – PeopleSoft.  The difference is that Workday, unlike PeopleSoft, is based off of cloud computing. ...

For those who are worried about the volatility in the market here is some info that might help you. India, or should I say Asia looks towards US data to value their own market(s). US on the other hand is looking at data that is coming from Europe, which does not look optimistic to say the least. Now that we are clear on the cause and effect relationship from different parts of the world, its apt for you to know how traders are putting their own biases on market valuations. The most important aspect for any investor is to look at the bottom line of the specific company that they are investing into. The way you would do that is to see who is in the management of the firm, and their past performance; who are their customers and where those customers are located on a global scale; how are those customers performing in their respective nations/regions. You can obviously dive deeper into your own analysis based on your requirements - I have only mentioned some pointers. Now, what som...

Also known as Participatory Notes, P-notes by their nature are opaque to Indian regulatory bodies. This was an investment instrument which was favored by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) due to this very nature. There was a lot less scrutiny on where the funds were coming from and who the real investor was. P-notes are a cousin of exchange traded funds (ETFs) which also do not make it easy for regulators to know who is invested into it and what the source of funds are. The brokerage houses did not need to know much details on the source of funds. It was also used by high networth individuals (HNIs) who were evading taxes in their home countries such as US, Canada, UK and the like. Most of the institutions that were issuing these securities are registered in tax havens. The large players in this trade include Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, CLSA, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch. So what happened, why are these P-notes starting to hit the Indian markets you ask? The answer is that now t...

There seems to be a lot of finger pointing at those who are perceived to have let us down, especially those of us who are financial professionals. Most recently Goldman Sachs was on the hot seat where there was a lot of finger pointing by the Obama administration towards the so called "greedy bankers". It seems that the people on main street are following the news and media in forming their own beliefs without actually understanding what's at the heart of the issue. The media has failed to pick up on a few missing links, and the investment banking professionals have not bothered talking about it. Its imperative to know about the missing links to understand what went wrong and who or what led to the financial crisis. It seems that every Tom, Dick and Harry has gotten a license to talk down the large corporations while holding their own esteems high up in cloud 9. Whenever there is a systemic failure, it is given that there is more than one factor at play, which unfortunat...

For the past few days, western media has been bombarding the issue of Indian stocks being over valued. They sometimes even go as far as suggesting that the emerging nations are just as poor at they were back in the day when the term BRIC was coined by Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs. Its hard to understand the logic of such suggestions by he large media houses. The very suggestion that India is exactly at the same level of poverty as it was earlier in the decade could not be much farther from the truth. From the skyline of large metropolitan cities of India to the tech-savy villagers who are now connected to the world of commodities' trading speaks volumes about the development in India. India's growth unlike some other parts of the world is to a greater degree organic. Therefore, its not artificial growth. For example, China's growth in 2009 was to a large extent artificial because most of the cash in the economy was injected by the government of China to keep the oth...

A win win situation: Essentially there is no negative side to the global financial crisisfor India. One of India's largest expense is energy - oil, naturalgas. 70% of its energy is being imported. With the financialcrisis, these commodities that India is always in a dire need of, are trading at 26% of their original prices. That's a savings of 74% putting a significantly lower pressure on the Current Accountof India for FY09. Inflation, another huge factor that was putting pressure on the economically weaker Indians is now decreasing at a fast pace. The current inflation has dropped from a range of 7%-8% to 2%-3%. India'sproductivity is still increasing, jobs are being created in most sectors adding to the GDP figures. The reason for that is simple, India has a good mix of state owned corporations and priviately owned corporations which are competing with each other in the domestic market. An example of this is State Bank of India, which as the name suggests is a state owne...