With a view to spur investments from India in the East African region in areas such as ICT, textiles and tourism, East African Community (EAC), an economic body comprising representatives of East African countries of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Burundi met members of India Inc on Wednesday.

“We need to see more and more private investment in areas such as ICT (information, communication and technology), roads, textile, cotton production and tourism among others, Juma V. Mwapachu (ambassador), secretary general, EAC, told an interactive session organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

The East African countries, which are rich in natural resources, jointly boast of a market of more than 160 million people. The EAC, which is regarded as one of the pillars of the African economic community, urged the captains of Indian industry to explore investment opportunities in the region.

Commenting on the growing mobile telephony market in the region, Mwapachu stated “Our mobile telephony is growing but we want to reach out to the rural areas and here India can help us in capacity building.“

According to him, Indian companies should also take advantage of the vast natural resources in the East Africa region and effectively utilise them for their growth. “We are deficient in energy and we have vast unexplored areas which I am sure will reap great benefits“.

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A former Microsoft senior manager with deep ties to the Seattle startup industry has created a social networking startup called LiveMocha.

Shirish Nadkarni, who spent 12 years at Microsoft before founding the mobile e-mail messaging startup TeamOn in 1999, said the month-old startup will launch this summer.

"We are not trying to be a social network just for the sake of it," Nadkarni said. "It is a specific market that has really not embraced the Internet in any major way, certainly not social networking Web 2.0 concepts. We believe by applying those concepts, we can really transform the market."

Nadkarni didn’t want to disclose LiveMocha’s niche, though he said it will be a consumer service that initially targets "the younger demographic."

Social networking may be one of the most overused buzzwords of the new Internet era. But the concept — using the Internet to share information and connect people of like-minded interests — is rapidly catching hold as millions of people set up profiles on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr and other sites. read more…

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The World Bank’s global bond fund for emerging local market currencies may be established with a corpus of $5 billion. The fund, which is expected to roll out this year, will have contributions from forex reserves of 25 emerging economies and funds from private institutional investors.

The bank will establish procedures for selecting the fund manager, who will raise funds and invest them in local currency bonds of emerging markets. The US-based PIMCO is being looked at as a prospective fund manager along with Oppenheimer, Alliance Bernstein, Deutsche, JP Morgan and Fidelity.

“The fund will have an initial corpus of $5 billion with a major part of it coming from the $2 trillion of forex reserves of emerging markets across the globe. Private institutional investors, too will be encouraged to invest in the fund,” World Bank regional vice-president (South Asia) Praful Patel told ET.

The idea of the global bond fund, to be structured on the lines of the Asia bond fund, is to utilise the excess Forex reserves of emerging and other markets to integrate and strengthen financial markets across emerging countries. Put simply, the corpus of the fund, to be contributed by countries across the globe (forex reserves) will be used to invest in long-term bonds issued by emerging markets in local currency.

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Fidelity Investments, America’s largest mutual funds manager, said Friday its profit fell 11 percent in 2006 because of advertising costs and higher employment in places such as India and Tunisia.

Net income of US$1.18 billion (euro900 million) was down US$147.5 million (euro112.43 million) from 2005, the privately held company said in its annual report.

"Growth stocks, in which many Fidelity funds had a large exposure, performed poorly," Chairman and CEO Edward C. Johnson III said in the report. "This pulled down several funds, including Contrafund and Magellan, our two largest domestic equity portfolios."

The company continued to grow in India and launched new operations in the North African nation of Tunisia.

In the United States, Fidelity opened a new regional center in Florida and announced future expansions in Rhode Island, North Carolina and near Cincinnati.

Fidelity’s 2006 revenue rose 16 percent to US$12.8 billion (euro9.76 billion) — a new high — from US$11.1 billion (euro8.46 billion) in 2005.

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The World Bank’s global bond fund for emerging local market currencies may be established with a corpus of $5 billion. The fund, which is expected to roll out this year, will have contributions from forex reserves of 25 emerging economies and funds from private institutional investors.

The bank will establish procedures for selecting the fund manager, who will raise funds and invest them in local currency bonds of emerging markets.

The US-based PIMCO, with the largest emerging market debt portfolio of $35 billion, is being looked at as a prospective fund manager along with Oppenheimer, Alliance Bernstein, Deutsche, JP Morgan and Fidelity, among others.

“The fund will have an initial corpus of $5 billion with a major part of it coming from the $2 trillion of forex reserves of emerging markets across the globe. Private institutional investors, too will be encouraged to invest in the fund,” World Bank regional vice-president (South Asia) Praful Patel told ET.

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Three top global asset management and investment banks – American International Group (AIG), JP Morgan Asset Management and Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Securities today announced their India strategy, vying for a place in the second fastest growing economy in the world. 
 
AIG today said it received regulatory approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to begin its asset management and mutual fund business in the country. With the regulatory nod, AIG, the world’s biggest insurer, would have presence in the country’s insurance, consumer finance, real estate development, aircraft leasing and asset management businesses. 
 
“We are pleased to receive the asset management approval from the Sebi. Our vision is to create a world-class asset manager in India that combines AIG Global Investment Group’s global expertise with our local experience gained over the years. This reaffirms AIG’s commitment and participation in the fast growing Indian economy. AIG plans to be a significant and responsible player in each of these businesses in India,” Sunil Mehta, country head and chief executive, India, AIG, said. 

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