There is a huge market for 2-3 star hotels in India and Rajiv Sahni partner at Ernst & Young feels that the slow down in the overall economy across the globe will increase the business for budget hotels. “More and more people would want to cut down on their accommodation cost and opt for budget hotels. Business won’t stop because of the downturn but there will be more cost cutting among corporates and therefore a higher demand for lower cost hotels,” he says. “The demand for mid-scale has definitely gone up. The growth in average rates has been higher than the drop in occupancy which indicates a positive trend,” says Siddharth Thakar executive director at HVS, a hospitality consultancy.

“We are already seeing it happening and it will only get better for us with time,” says Vilas Pawar CEO of Choice Hotels India. He has seen a positive shift towards the budget segment. “Business travel overall is still robust and happening but some corporate clients are trading down from 4-5-star hotels to three-star and budget category hotels,” explains Arup Sen executive director Cox & Kings.

To counter the slowdown, Ajay Bakaya executive director Sarovar Hotels feels that the smarter way for any hotels is to up its sales effort and rationalise big costs such as payroll, energy and food and beverage. “The downturn though will be felt less in our segment (mid-market) but it will be much more dramatic in the five-star segment,” he says. His hotels haven’t seen much of an impact, either way, yet. “One still hasn’t been able to gauge the full impact but, going forward, value proposition and location is bound to play a key role,” says Suresh Kumar president Fortune Park Hotels, a subsidiary of ITC, with presence in 41 cities.

The CEO of Lemon Tree, Patu Keswani agrees that there is a noticeable shift with people now seeking alternatives to five-star accommodation. “Corporates are cutting down on their discretionary expenses. So the ones who were earlier staying in a five-star are now open to staying in a four or even three-star hotels,” he adds. He expects this segment to see at least a 5-10% increase in revenue as compared to last year. Luxury and first-class hotels in continental Europe and the UK have started exhibiting declining occupancies caused by a slowdown in the world economy and curtailment of travel budgets. The budget segment has proved very resilient with occupancy levels actually increasing.

Business might be scaling new heights for this segment but where are the hotels? “There will be a shortage of room inventory in the budget and mid-market segment across the country,” says Mr Sahni. The next few years though will see a number of hotels coming up in this category. Mr Thakar says over 53,000 rooms will be added to the inventory of mid-market and budget hotels in India. “In the last 6 months we have signed up 21 new properties which will open over the next 2 years. This will add around 1,800 rooms to our portfolio,” said Mr Pawar.

The company is adding 540 rooms over the next 12 months in the NCR, to prepare for the Commonwealth Games. Ginger which at present has 14 properties is expecting to get to the figure of 30 hotels by 2010 (approximately 3,000 rooms). Sarovar has 25 hotels under construction, of which 15 will be up and running by 2010, adding about 1,500 rooms.

Source : Economictimes

Domestic air traffic experiences steep descent, and international passenger numbers stall as Indian air industry feels the impact of increasing state-controlled fuel costs. Passengers starting to enjoy speed and convenience of air travel are switching back to cheaper but slower public transport; witness the boom in rail travel.

Despite the bleakness of India’s aviation industry, private/corporate jet ownership is set to take off. Fuelled by increased international M&A activity, global business expansion and a new wave of rupee-rich multi-millionaires, Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation expect growth of 40% by 2011, long term, they expect 1,500 new corporate aircraft in India skies by 2020.

Although guaranteed to remain the preserve of the select few, the numbers stack up. Ankur Bhatia, Managing Director of Bird Air Group, a company selling and leasing aircraft to individuals and corporations states, “There are at least a million Indians who can afford to buy private jets right away.”

In a separate study, “Indian Aviation Sector, Competition, Consolidation, Efficiency”, Ernst & Young deduce that India currently makes up 12% of the worldwide business jet market. Projecting growth of 50% per year, they conclude, gridlocked cities and poor infrastructure will accelerate private jet and helicopter use and ownership.

Despite a lack of dedicated business-aircraft terminals (corporate flyers queue airside with general travellers) and high private flying costs – an hour of Indian flying time costs US$ 8,000, versus US$ 5,000 in the US and US$ 6,000 in the Gulf – private flying for big Indian business is now regarded as a legitimate business expense, improving productivity.

Supplementing the 30 + air charter companies already operating in India, steady growth and strong future potential leads to new business ideas. G.R Gopinath, founder of Air Deccan (now absorbed in to Kingfisher Airlines), India’s first budget airline, plans a Bangalore based, helicopter shuttle service. Motivated by inconvenience - Bangalore's new airport is a three-hour drive from Electronic City, the cities main business centre - for the equivalent of US$ 100 he will fly business travellers from airport arrivals to work.

Elsewhere, Hero Motors, better known for manufacturing motorcycles plan to launch an aviation business. And, following the success of Club One Air, Tata Group has signed up with Singapore’s BJets to create their own jet fractional owner scheme.

Looking to generate additional funds, Government has added duties on imports of airplanes and helicopters, although likely to raise prices by up to 20% this year, experts expect demand to stay high as Indian corporations get the taste for hassle free international travel.

On 8 June 793, the first Viking long-ships appeared off the coast of Britain - “ravages of heathen men” said the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, which had recently predicted some such cataclysm. The Vikings did a bit of raping and pillaging and pushed off home. The next year they were back, but were beaten off, retiring hurt with their leader dead, many drowned in a storm and others killed on landing.

Their technology, particularly in ship-building, was way ahead of its time, and improved rapidly to reflect the experience of the sailors and as an aid to the rough and tumble of their work. Not only were the ships able to face the roughest storms, but they had shallow draughts and were light enough to carry, both useful developments which were enhanced to cope with their raids. Nor were their victims an uncivilised and impoverished race – the visitors would hardly have bothered to keep coming back if they had not hoped to profit from it and, however attractive the ladies of the North-East, their charms hardly warranted a risky annual journey.

Some of the misunderstandings between the visitors and the locals could be put down to a vocabulary which sounded superficially familiar but which actually caused confusion. Other cultural differences may have led to the allegations of unseemly conduct by the visitors – then as now, a Newcastle lady standing outside a drinking house dressed in very little and saying she wanted a good time did not necessarily intend to imply an invitation to anything more than a fun party, but the scope for confusion on the part of the visitors is obvious.

The visits became a more or less annual event, each trip a reconnaissance for the next, until the Vikings began to stay and to intermingle with the locals.

We are seeing a new wave of US litigation support companies invading Britain. Others of their kind have been before and whilst none actually drowned or were killed, some retired hurt, mainly due to inadequate reconnaissance. Some of the early wave misunderstood the warmth of the welcome they received, and found that an invitation from a lawyer to “come up and see me sometime” did not necessarily lead to commercial relations.

I have been talking to a few of them recently, both those who have settled here already and those planning to do so. Like the Vikings, they bring some sophisticated technology solutions which improve year by year, as well as a vocabulary which, whilst more or less recognisable as English, contains pitfalls and ambiguities. This wave appreciates better than their predecessors that there is more to the linguistic and cultural differences than remembering not to say “attorney” or “discovery”.

The people I have been seeing have done their homework and are well aware that this is a very much smaller market than the one back home. This is not just because there are fewer of us. The British are less enthusiastic about litigation and we seem to create fewer documents per head, particularly e-mail.

There are terminological differences. Spoliation, early case assessment, defensibility, sanctions, meet and confer all have meaning to a greater or lesser extent in the UK, but only in a standard dictionary sense. In the US they are terms of art with precise meanings, and they drive a lot of the functions and processes behind the software and services which are on offer. These functions and processes are useful, essential even, in the UK, but the labels mean relatively little, and the unchanged import of US marketing materials can imply the answer to the question no-one asked.

American culture secretly admires a persistent salesman – he wants to get on, he is doing his best for his company, he wants to close the deal. All that closes here is the door if too much enthusiasm is shown. UK lawyers are fairly unforgiving of minor lapses – calling their firm a “company” or their court a “courthouse” is a turn-off. “Vendors” sell ice cream here, not professional services.

All that is before you look at the Civil Procedure Rules. If you compare the CPR side-by-side with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the apparent similarities are greater than the differences. You would take it for granted that the word “relevant” is a cornerstone of the definition of a disclosable document, but you would search in vain for it in the CPR definition. “Proportionate” is another word which, on examination, has different meanings in practice which do not appear from the text of the rules. It does not help much that many UK lawyers are similarly hazy about such things – or, indeed, that much of the haziness in our rules is entirely deliberate, and rightly so.

“What is the case law on that?” ask Americans, desperate to find something concrete to hang on to. We do not have any, we reply, adding that we do not even report most of the procedural decisions.

All the companies I have been speaking to are aware of these differences or, at least, are aware that there are differences. Clearwell, Stratify and KCura are amongst the suppliers with good products and growing customer bases in the US who are doing their homework. First Advantage did theirs before they came here a couple of years ago and came with sufficient work in hand to give themselves a long run-up to the local e-discovery market as well as a bought-in local presence. Attenex has been here for a long time, with big local support from the likes of Ernst & Young and KPMG, but the Attenex people I had lunch with were from product development and project management, not just marketing, and what they learn about how the software is to be used in this very different context is likely to inform development plans.

Like the Vikings, they are making more than one visit, and feeling their way, meeting with anyone thought to have a view which may inform their decision-making. What is in it for us, you might ask, for the litigation support managers, the consultants, and me, who are happy to meet these emissaries from afar? What does it mean to you, the putative end-user?

One benefit is that the US is the proving-ground for applications which we need here. A product which has withstood the fire of the constant challenges which US litigation, crime cases and regulatory investigations impose can be turned to our purposes. This year’s developments in US civil cases with their emphasis on the quality of search processes and the discipline which goes with it are bringing forward techniques which will adapt very well to the no less onerous task of picking out the documents which really matter by the narrower UK (and Australian) tests as to what is disclosable, and to the proportionality which defines that.

In a sense, we do not need more entrants into the UK market. We have an existing body of first-rate applications, most of them no less American and subject to the same testing ground as the newcomers here. That great God, “competition” can seem fairly illusory to would-be buyers of applications and services who can already choose between the companies whose logos you see here and the others already in the UK.

I do not think new arrivals will necessarily drive costs down – it is my view anyway that the expense of using applications like this is proportionate to what has to be achieved, given that the only alternative is rooms-full of expensive lawyers reviewing the material by eye. Their technology and their processes may be different in some respects, but not greatly so. It may be that some of the newcomers will find new and more interesting ways of describing what they do and why their services are a benefit. If so, that will benefit everyone.

What is really interesting, being even-handed between those who are here already and those who may come here, is that this wave of invaders offering litigation services coincides with the anticipated upturn in litigation which recession always brings – and, as I have said elsewhere, it takes recession, and not just hard times, for that to happen.

You can, if you like, stigmatise that interest by thinking of fat-cat litigation lawyers and their suppliers rubbing their hands at the profits to be made from the tribulations of others. That is not how I see it. Economic cycles are a fact of life – this is the third recession in my working life. Just as war, which most agree to have serious downsides, is the mother of invention, so recession is the parent to new business models and practices which stand commerce in good stead when the good times come again. The litigation work and regulatory investigations which will come from this debacle and its causes will be hotly fought for by litigation firms. It will impose stresses on a court system which has been neglected by Government for over a decade, and will flush out the weaknesses – and perhaps uncover hidden strengths – in the Civil Procedure Rules which have been in place over the same period.

The result must be a search by practitioners to find surer ways of winning litigation work and by judges to find better ways of managing it. Handling electronic documents electronically seems a no-brainer from both perspectives. Whether there will be enough work to support all the suppliers remains to be seen – that will turn on their success, jointly and separately, at riding the wave of new work of all sizes and doing so profitably.

The vigourous Vikings turned up everywhere, eventually settling down and becoming integrated, not just in England but in Normandy and Sicily, in much the same way as US influence is all-pervasive today. After a while, the people of Newcastle-upon-Tyne discarded rape and pillage as lifestyle options and, strengthened by the innovation and technology which the Vikings brought, became the ship-building centre of the world. The Nordic lands, meanwhile, became best known for the Swedish Chef from the Muppets and for ABBA.

A better fate, I am sure, awaits America. The economic world, however, is turned upside down just now and there will be winners and losers from the shake-up. There is much about US civil procedure which we can reject, just as our forebears turned their backs on the rape and pillage which it sometimes appears to resemble. We can, however, hang on to the technology and couple it with our procedural rules. It seems unlikely that Britain will again be a centre of excellence in ship-building, but we could become once more the forum of choice for litigation.

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LOS ANGELES  -  Ernst & Young, one of the top four accounting firms in America, held a forum, Leading a New Conversation on Inclusiveness, at its downtown office last Thursday, that addressed the subject of diversity and inclusiveness. The forum was attended by more than 200 accounting and finance professionals.

"You have to work at diversity and work even harder at inclusiveness," declared Raymond Ybarra of Shimasaki Consulting Group, Inc., one of three speakers. "You can have many employees with lots of different nationalities, different educations, from different parts of the world, but the key thing is whoever that body of knowledge that you are tapping into, you need to break it down, what are you going to contribute? You have got to open the doors fi rst, allow them in, and make them feel like they are a part of this," Ybarra said.

"I think a lot of companies get caught up with statistics, like, ‘we have a good amount of women, good amount of disabled people.’ What is important is to listen to them and to empower them and to include them in the decision-making process," said Bridget Trumpet, Director of Internal Audit of Rentech. "If you are in business you have to be inclusive because the world is getting smaller due to globalization."

Raymond Ealy, vice president of business development of Quantummethod, who had worked with Bank of America for many years, said, "What I learned eventually was that even though there were cultural differences among the many different nationalities, what I found were certain idiosyncrasies, but at the end of the day, the common denominator is, they can’t balance their checkbooks." He said, "What he learned about the different cultures was that people did business the same way, and they have the same issues; you just have to be comfortable in those different environments."

"Everyone is the same," Ealy said. "But for some reasons, people have this vision that one group is better, more affl uent than the others; but when you get down on the ground and talk to people, or someone bounced a check to DWP, everybody reacts the same way."

"What we have to ask is, are they successful from an inclusiveness point of view?" contends Ybarra. "Are they actually working with people of all types, taking the barriers off, taking their blinders off?"

Are they looking at people on the same basis of what they can bring to the table." Ybarra said that in all the companies he had worked for — including Boeing and Hewlett-Packard — "they didn’t have any blinders. They were open. It made them smart; made them have a little of the ability to change rapidly."

The business environment is not going to be stagnant, according to Ybarra. "There are obstacles out there, everywhere. Bringing people in, no matter what they do, which level of comfort they are in. Flip open the doors wide open, your ears open, your eyes open and you listen. You can bring them in; you don’t have to have your boss bring them in. Companies hire you because they think that you can help them make more money," Ybarra suggested.

Ealy believes that inclusiveness comes more naturally to the minorities. "There is more willingness to embrace inclusiveness because the thought process is that you get to look behind you with great courtesy; that there are more opportunities now that you didn’t know about."

At Hewlett-Packard, where he was a consultant for 11 years, Ybarra said that everyone was expected to be equals. "It was pretty much a fl at organization. They didn’t have quotas on whom to hire, they just want the best and the brightest; they didn’t care what color you are, or if you are on a wheelchair. The ability to cut through the peripherals is so important today."

Ernst & Young, one of the top four accounting companies in the US, said in a statement that it "fosters a work environment that is open and inclusive of all, regardless of gender, race, nationality and sexual orientation." More than 50 per cent of those who attended were members of the International Society of Young Filipino Accountants (ISYFA). The forum was moderated by E & Y recruiters Tina McCoy and Katherine Markgraf.

(www.asianjournal.com)

I believe most of the panelist were graduates of Florida A&M University, School of Business and Industry (SBI) and it definitely showed. The young woman leading off most of the discussion, I think her name was Kaamilah, has to be one of the most professional, articulate, and poised women I have seen in my life and I know a lot of that has to do with the fine education she received in SBI.

So yeah if you plan on going into Business field and especially if you plan on going into accounting, finance, or auditing definitely check out these videos!

Tips Before You Graduate!

Interview Tips

Final Advice

I'm not even an accounting student or SBI student for that matter and I was able to learn a lot from the event. So this is definitely good advice for any student who hopes to land a job upon graudation. Thanks to Alpha Kappa Psi for hosting this event!

Ông Rob Morris, trưởng bộ phận Dịch vụ Điều tra gian lận và giải quyết tranh chấp của Ernst & Young khu vực châu Á Thái Bình Dương khẳng định: “Hai năm qua, tham nhũng ở Việt Nam khá cao”.

Công bố của Ernst & Young cho thấy, 96% doanh nghiệp Việt Nam được phỏng vấn từng có liên quan đến việc hối lộ hay tham nhũng trong vòng 2 năm trở lại đây. Tỷ lệ này gần gấp đôi mức trung bình của khu vực châu Á Thái Bình Dương (56%), gấp gần 4 lần mức trung bình toàn cầu (24%) và cao hơn rất nhiều lần so với một số nước trong khu vực được khảo sát như Singapore (7%), Malaysia (16%), Philippinné (17%), Trung Quốc (81%).

60% doanh nghiệp VN được phỏng vấn thừa nhận, từng bị yêu cầu đưa hối lộ để có được hoặc tiếp tục được nhận các hợp đồng kinh doanh. Ảnh minh họa.

60% doanh nghiệp Việt Nam được phỏng vấn cũng thừa nhận  từng bị yêu cầu đưa hối lộ để có được hoặc tiếp tục được nhận các hợp đồng kinh doanh. Tỷ lệ này ở Việt Nam ngang với Hàn Quốc và cao hơn so với mức 23% trung bình toàn cầu. Trong khi đó, có đến 48% doanh nghiệp Việt Nam cũng cho biết, từng bị mất hợp đồng vào tay đối thủ cạnh tranh chỉ vì không chịu đưa hối lộ.

Kết quả khảo sát của Ernst & Young cũng cho thấy, tỷ lệ doanh nghiệp tuân thủ quy định pháp luật ở Việt Nam rất thấp, chỉ 24% so với mức trung bình toàn cầu là 40% (Trung Quốc 35%, Hàn Quốc 60%, Singapore 85%).

Theo ông Rob Morris, vai trò của kiểm toán nội bộ trong phát hiện tham nhũng ở Việt Nam chưa được chú trọng. Chỉ chưa đầy 20% doanh nghiệp Việt Nam tuân thủ kiểm toán nội bộ, trong khi đây là hoạt động được các quốc gia khác rất coi trọng nhằm đo mức độ minh bạch tài chính.

Ngoài ra, có đến 88% doanh nghiệp Việt Nam không hề biết đến Luật chống tham nhũng nước ngoài (còn được gọi là FCPA - Luật chống tham nhũng của Mỹ). Đáng chú ý, đây được coi là chuẩn mực quốc tế cho khung pháp lý chống tham nhũng trên phạm vi toàn cầu.

Khảo sát gian lận trên toàn cầu lần thứ 10 (chu kỳ 2 năm) được Ernst & Young tiến hành tại 33 quốc gia năm 2008. Báo cáo tập trung vào hành vi tham nhũng và hối lộ, khả năng kiểm soát gian lận của các công ty. Để đưa ra kết quả khách quan nhất, Ersnt & Young tiến hành 1.186 cuộc phỏng vấn tới lãnh đạo cấp cao của nhiều doanh nghiệp tại mỗi quốc gia. Ở Việt Nam, Ernst & Young thực hiện 25 cuộc phỏng vấn.

• Lam Thanh

Almost 35% of developers define capital value of affordable housing in the range of INR 1-1.5 million, followed by another 35% developers defining value in the range of INR1.5-2.5 million. 70% respondents indicated an inclination to expand beyond the ‘obvious eight’ cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune and Ahmedabad). The report, released at FICCI’s International Real Estate Summit in Mumbai on September 10, 2008, underlines survey respondents’ belief that genuine end-users have ‘taken over’ from the investors and account for 80-90% of sales in their current projects.

Respondents expressed mixed reactions with regards to land valuations. Most of them seem to be reaching a consensus that land values are likely to see stability over the short to mid-term and may not witness any appreciation over next 12 months. In fact, in some of the cities, further price correction is expected due the changing economics. The present asset class focus for developers continues to be residential as stated by 70%-80% respondents, followed by commercial and retail.

It is worth a trip down to More London even if you are not favoured with an invitation from Ernst & Young. It lies on the South Bank, just west of Tower Bridge. I found it when I spent a night at the Hilton Tower Bridge earlier in the year - it is even better by night than by day. The river frontage is a wide space with seats and those fountains which bubble gently out of the ground and then shoot up your trouser leg when you get too close. Apart from E&Y's building, there is Boris's bee-hive shaped office, Norton Rose, and a Marks & Spencer food store to serve as a backdrop, with HMS Belfast, 30 St Mary Axe (aka the Gherkin) and the Tower of London in front of you. I saw a dinner party taking place on a platform hanging from a crane, with waiters wandering nonchalantly around 60 feet up.

The view gets even better when you get up E&Y's building, particularly at sunset, with a panorama from Westminster to the Tower. One probably should not choose a professional adviser on the strength of the view from its office, but it might be a tie-breaker when you come down to the last two choices.

The official excuse for the party was to welcome three new partners, Richard Indge, Maggie Stilwell and Jim McCurry and, so the invitation said, to celebrate the launch of E&Y's eDiscovery practice. That word "launch" somehow implies that Ernst & Young are new to this space, which obviously is far from the case, not least because I come across Sanjay Bhandari speaking about eDiscovery and the wider subject of corporate information management and document retention at most of the conferences which I attend.

It is right to say, though, that the rest of us waited with curious interest for several months after Sanjay's move from KPMG's Forensic team to see what Ernst & Young would do with the team which they were steadily accruing. Brian Stuart joined from Linklaters at the same time. Tyrone Edward was not the only one recruited from CRA International earlier this year, and they all seemed extremely busy whenever one came across them. Sanjay explained in a short speech. He had, he reminded us, been a litigation solicitor at Baker & McKenzie before moving into eDiscovery and information management. Coming to E&Y had given him the opportunity to build the team and the infrastructure which he would expect if he were the client. That takes time, not least because they were obviously working flat out for clients in parallel with developing the service and the equipment to back it.

We were shown a mock-up of the review room. Visitors do not get to see the real thing - all the staff in this department are security-cleared E&Y employees and there are no contract workers. Examples of data sources were laid out on a table, from ordinary-looking hard drives to strange and unidentifiable things; it would be salutary for a litigation lawyer or his client to see what a diverse range of equipment might hold data. We were also shown the purpose-built server bunker, twin rows of cages with twinkling lights, fans like a Boeing taking off and, rumour had it, three Cray Supercomputers lurking somewhere. Two days' supply of diesel is kept to fuel the generator.

On begins to see why Sanjay Bhandari keeps referring to "boys with toys" though, to be fair, he does so to point up the importance of exactly the opposite, the thinking and the process to which the computing power is servant.

The client end of all this processing and storage power was illustrated by two of Ernst & Young's technology partners, Attenex and Autonomy showing, respectively, Attenex Patterns and Autonomy Zantaz Introspect. I watched as highlights of each of them were demonstrated to a lawyer. It doesn't take more than a few moments to convey the searching power and flexibility of applications like this and there is business to be won in this new post-Lehman world by those who can show would-be clients - and there will be more of them now - that they have at least a grasp of the power and efficiencies of technology.

I don't know whether it is the fall-out anticipated from Lehman Brothers' fall which is to blame, but my desk was overflowing when I got back, rather late, to my office. I sent E&Y's Tyrone Edward an e-mail at about 2:30am and discovered in the morning that his reply had come in - from the office - some time after I drew stumps at 4.00am. It might be that the party went on through the night. The e-mail suggested otherwise, however, and it looked as if Ernst & Young had seen their last guests off and got straight back to work.

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Although its "petrie dish" clustering visualisation is familiar - those purple bubbles on a black background in a green ring - I had never actually had the opportunity to see Attenex demonstrated, nor got to know any Attenex people. Chance remedied both these omissions last week - indeed, I began to feel I could go nowhere without bumping into someone from Attenex, like Donald Sutherland's nemesis in Don't Look Now but without the red coat.

I met Strategic Account Manager Vipin Duggal briefly at the IQPC conference in London in May, and we planned to link up. That was overtaken by FTI's acquisition of Attenex shortly afterwards, and it was not until last week that I met him again, at the Legal Week Litigation Forum. Also there was Kathryn Hardie, Senior Managing Director, Global Channel Software Sales, FTI Technology. The following day, although I was unaware of this at the time, they saw me from the window of Starbucks near Smithfield - so much for the anonymity of the big city - and ten minutes later we found ourselves at adjacent tables at a restaurant, where I was lunching with Aaref Hilaly and Andy Byrne of Clearwell.

A few hours later, at the party given by Ernst & Young's Forensic Technology and Discovery Services, there they were again, and here I had an opportunity to see Attenex Patterns Document Mapper, Attenex's concept review platform. The idea is easier to understand when seen rather than described, but the function on display was the clustering tool. Ideally, you have ditched the junk - the duplicates and the patently irrelevant - by the time you get to this bit, using Attenex Patterns Workbench. What you see in Document Mapper are clusters representing documents which have been grouped together in islands of varying density because of some degree of commonality between them derived from the nouns, noun phrases or concepts. Words around the edge identify some of the terms which underlie the application's decision to group them together, and some elements of the individual documents can be seen. You can zoom in or out and pick on specific documents, which can be sampled with a view to making a block decision about the cluster.

Although it would be easier to understand if the subject-matter was a collection with which you are familiar, the power of this kind of conceptual clustering lies in the fact that you do not need to know much, if anything, about the document population to start drawing conclusions about parts of it.

My assumption was that you need some pretty big volumes both for the clustering algorithms to operate over properly and to warrant this kind of fire-power. I gather, though, that the majority of e-discovery cases for which Attenex is used involve under 25 gigabytes.

You might like to look at the Lovells case study which describes how 35 gigabytes - 2 million pages - of e-mail data was reduced to manageable proportions within a $1 million budget and a three month deadline. The case study describes how the 2 million documents were refined down to 11,000 thought worthy of review, and describes in some detail how the clustering technology was used.

The result, in that case, was put into Ringtail which, like Attenex, is part of FTI Consulting's stable - as I noted in my post about the acquisition, buying Attenex put FTI Consulting in a position to claim the full spread of the EDRM stages. Attenex and Ringtail had been working together before the acquisition to develop connectors which allow seamless transfer of data between the two products. It is worth bearing in mind, though, that the use of a particular processing tool does not commit you to any specific review application. You do not have to be a Ringtail user to make use of Attenex.

Attenex reaches its market via Service Provider Partners like Ernst & Young's Forensic Technology and Discovery Services and KPMG Forensic Technology Services.

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The former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, was the chairman and, in the event, the giver of the keynote speech in the absence of Lord Goldsmith who had been billed to deliver it. The quality which made Falconer one of the few likeable members of Blair’s government was a nice line in self-deprecation. When he was a young barrister, he said, much of his work consisted of Peter Goldsmith’s returns; he was glad to see that nothing had changed.

Lehman Brothers had collapsed two days earlier, and the overnight news was that the US Government had bailed out AIG. Lord Falconer emphasised how the week’s events had changed the map for litigators. A year of the credit crunch had had little impact on the levels of commercial litigation, but that was because the large institutions – Bear Sterns and Northern Rock - had not been allowed to go under. A rash of insolvencies must follow the failure of a player the size of Lehmans and the consequential litigation will cover three main areas:

• What are the liabilities? Once the accountants and administrators turn their spotlights into every corner, arguments must inevitably surface as to the extent of the obligations owed to others.
• What happens to the assets? Lehmans may have near-record liabilities, but it also had very large assets, and there will be fierce arguments as to how they are to be divided up.
• Who is to blame? The administrators will seek out targets to take or share responsibility for the failure and the individual elements which led to it. The failure of BBCI, Barings and the Maxwell companies all led to significant litigation.

Nor will the arguments be confined to the major banks and other financial institutions – the knock-on effects will spread into smaller players and into businesses and individuals whose nexus with international finance is at second or third hand.

Other factors, Lord Falconer said, are changing the litigation market. The strengthening of the US dollar against the Pound is making US law firms more competitive in the London market – no great regrets from Charlie Falconer on this subject since he is now Senior Counsel for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in London. There is an increasing foreign element, notably from Russia, whose businesses appreciate the fairness and even-handedness of the British Courts.

On the procedural side, he said, the big trial era has gone. This is largely a budgeting matter, the costs regime proving ineffective to bring down the expense. We can expect more court-driven case management and a need for applied technology, he added. This is the aspect which most obviously affects the usual readership of this site and is one I will come back to separately.

The expense is driving new approaches to funding litigation, including what is effectively a new market in third party funders. There was to be a session on this later, and one on making sure that London retained its place as the centre of dispute resolution. A wider aspect of third party funding derived from the forthcoming right of law firms to seek external investment, which must inevitably change the face of the legal market.

Whilst today’s downturn would create litigation work to fill the gap left by M&A, property and other more positive business, any long-term view of litigation must take account of the fact that there is relatively little new business being done at present. In the mid- to long term, Lord Falconer said, that was an inevitable feature of the economic cycle. The firms best-placed to meet this will be those who can anticipate and adjust to the foreseeable trends in work.

This was a good piece of scene-setting, encompassing all the ensuing sessions. It is hard to see any good coming from an economic downturn of the kind we are engulfed in, but there are potential benefits beyond the short-term profits of those whose businesses thrive in recession. I started work in litigation in 1980, so this is the third serious downturn in my working life. Each of the others (1981-82 and 1991-92) has prompted not just more litigation work but a reappraisal of the way litigation business is conducted. The analogy with the after-effects of a forest fire or other natural cause of devastation – new growth forced on by the loss of the former habitat – takes the form of a review of the processes and the skills needed to compete, and indeed to cope with, the new work.

The decade since the launch of the Civil Procedure Rules has seen a serious downturn in litigation work. This is explained in part by the fact that businesses have concentrated instead on winning new work and opening new markets in the long period of world-wide growth for which Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, would like to claim all the credit. The litigation slump derived as much, however, from the disproportionate expense of legal proceedings. There are arguments – well rehearsed at the conference – to the effect that the CPR itself is in part to blame for the increased costs, and particularly the front-end costs. These include exorbitantly high court fees, a good example of the way in which this government's greed for short-term income strangles longer-term prosperity, in this case the flow of invisible exports of services for those who, on all other grounds, would bring their legal business to London - my observation, I hasten to add, not Lord Falconer's.

There is little room for argument, however, that the massively increased volume of documents, and particularly electronic documents, has been a major contributor to the expense of litigation. To some extent, that is simply an inevitable concomitant of doing business in an age of easy and rapid communication. To a great extent, however, the expense has been unnecessary. Lawyers, so quick to grasp technology’s ability to create more information, have been slow to see technology’s potential to clean up after itself. Litigation technology has been narrowing the gap, with search and filtering technology gaining on the volumes which business creates.

The problem is not just a slowness to grasp technology. Whatever the defects in the CPR (and there are some who call for a root-and-branch overhaul of the entire system), it gives much more power to judges and practitioners to reduce the costs of document-handling than is thought. If no other benefit comes from the time ahead so ably summarised by Lord Falconer, competition between solicitors for the expected new work, and the pressure on the courts which will result from that work, must be a powerful stimulus to both courts and practitioners to look more seriously at what the existing rules offer as weapons to combat cost and delay, and at the technology available to help.

I will write separately about the conference sessions themselves.

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The report has divided non-genuine buyers between speculators and long term investors. The report defines a speculator as one who would sell the real estate within 18 months after purchase while long term investors tend to sell their property after three to five years. While the speculative buying at present is estimated to account for five per cent of total sales, the buying by long term investors, who have been found to be active in premium segment, currently account for about 15 per cent of the sales.

This will be triggered by the unlocking of land value to finance the cost of infrastructure development through cross-subsidisation of projects and collection of betterment charges, says the Ficci-Ernst & Young (E&Y) report Indian Real Estate—Shifting Gears, released on Wednesday at the Ficci International Real Estate Summit 2008. Deepak Parekh, chairman HDFC, Pranay Vakil, chairman Knight Frank, Ganesh Raj, partner & leader real estate practice E&Y and Amit Mitra, secretary general Ficci released the report.

According to Raj from E&Y, Indian real estate sector has evinced interest from international funding agencies and has seen an ever-increasing pool of domestic industry players, despite the market volatility in the past year.

This report is an attempt to bring forth views and common beliefs of industry stakeholders, while making an attempt to mitigate their concerns. We believe that these varied perspectives will assist the government, industry, developers and investors/bankers in defining the future course of the sector.”

The report identifies certain key drivers of projects issues such as shortage of land parcels due to considerable commercial development in cities. This results in the development of cities away from the central business districts, thereby increasing the pressure on the existing transport and connectivity infrastructure. Also, the commercial development of vacant land parcels of the government can enable them to generate capital values (upfront lease, appreciation in equity value invested through land value.

The government can make available large land parcels in prime areas because of the existing sparse construction (lower utilisation of permissible FSI and non-usage of land parcels by sick PSUs.

Speaking at the inauguration of FICCI International Real Estate Summit 2008, Deepak Parekh, Chairman, HDFC, said that for real estate developers, “identifying genuine demand is critical and one should not be swayed by the herd mentality.”

According to the Ernst & Young (E&Y)-FICCI report, ‘Indian Real Estate — shifting gears,’ which was released at the summit, the concept of affordable housing has gained momentum for most players to capitalise on a volume-driven business and cater to the pent-up demand and ready market. Innovative marketing strategies, smaller-sized units and new technologies that aim at reducing construction costs are being featured as part of the low-cost housing development strategy.

In view of the high rate of vacancy (20 per cent) across 40 million sq. ft. of operational malls in the top eight cities of India, abandoned mall plans are scrambling to be converted into office space, while certain cities are already seeing an oversupply of commercial space, especially in the light of the slowdown in the IT and BPO sectors.

The HDFC Chairman said developers need to realise that their absurdly high margins cannot sustain. Developers also need to guard against the dangers of excessive borrowing, Mr. Parekh said.

For the future, there will be the need to create innovative financial instruments that could support financially distressed developers to tide over the crisis. For capital raising, while the IPO market may take time to recover, there is sufficient interest from foreign investors to participate in the Indian real estate market through the private equity and FDI route, he said.

On a positive note, Mr. Parekh said that in the first quarter (April-June 2008) about 20 per cent of the FDI inflows were in housing and real estate. The long-term prospects of the commercial real estate market continued to remain positive owing to the growing opportunities in sectors such as healthcare, hospitality, logistics and education. The residential housing market would also continue to show robust growth given the strong demand, favourable demographics, increasing urbanisation and rising disposable incomes

Today I watched my first episode of Ask Aida and I have to say that it is quite good.  It is well conceived.  The flow, the information, everything works well.  And Aida is just adorable.  She really knows how to use her unique brand of sexy/cute to enhance the show.  She also knows her stuff.

Mollenkamp studied Hospitality Management at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, worked at Ernst & Young in Hotel and Restaurant Consulting, and ultimately ventured to Paris to attend culinary school at the legendary Le Cordon Bleu.  More important to her culinary prowess than her trials in the halls of academia, Aida was raised by an Italian-American mother and a French stepmother.  In early 2005 she joined the staff at CHOW.com where she works as an editor, appears in instructional videos, runs the test kitchen, is a lead food stylist, develops recipes, and writes articles.

The most disappointing thing to me about the show was its erie similarity to one of my own show ideas; apparently I'm not nearly as clever as I thought.  Then again, maybe I am; I'm just not as well connected as the person who created Ask Aida.  There, that should sate the old ego for a while.

Mollenkamp is assisted by the show's resident nerd - I mean tech guru, Noah Starr.  Starr is humorous and his demeanor acts as both Man Friday and Snidely Whiplash to Aida.  He is as an actor, writer, teacher and foodie.  His TV credits include Late Night with Conan O'Brien, E!, AMC, MSNBC, and MTV.  Apparently he is drawn to acronyms.  Noah has also written for Disney, Paramount Pictures, McSweeney's and World Wrestling Entertainment.  World Wrestling Entertainment?  I might need to rethink that nerd moniker.

I enjoy the fact that Aida prepares more than one meal or variation on the episode's theme.  That is twice the recipes, twice the inspiration.  Rarely do I duplicate a recipe from TV but usually I am inluenced by them so the prospect of getting two for the price of one intrigues me.  Aside from the bonus recipes and geeky-coolness of the show I appreciate the amount of education that is built in.  They seemelessly teach without beating you over the head with it.  This is a one of the best food shows on TV.

Ask Aida airs on Saturdays at 12:30 PM ET.  If you have questions or would like to be on the show watch the promo below:

The qualitative survey, conducted by Ernst & Young across six prominent cities comprising NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata and Bangalore, forms a part of the FICCI–Ernst & Young Real Estate Report.

The survey highlights a vast section of respondents who demonstrated their keenness in foraying into the affordable housing, subject to certain enabling factors like government support, basic infrastructure support and low cost of land.

Almost 35% of developers define capital value of affordable housing in the range of Rs1-1.5 million, followed by another 35% developers defining value in the range of Rs1.5-2.5 million. 70% respondents indicatedan inclination to expand beyond the ‘obvious eight’ cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune and Ahmedabad). They opine that this diversification is an effective hedge against market fluctuations in the obvious eight cities.

Respondents across most cities are feeling the pinch of rising manpower and material costs; however the availability of quality manpower is topmost concern for the developers. Respondents were uniform in their opinion that delays in approval and clearances are the biggest regulatory challenge for them. 80% developers indicated the need for an apex regulatory body for the real estate sector. The need to have an apex organization to facilitate a single-window clearance and ensure active representation of developers’ interest is being strongly felt.

The report emphasized that in the near future, the formation of products that originate from the convergence of Infrastructure, Real estate and Government (IRG) could possibly be the biggest and most stable growth models in coming years.

The report underscores tremendous synergies originating in Healthcare infrastructure, Logistics & warehousing and affordable housing asset classes.

These formats hold significant growth potential in the Indian real estate sector. The Healthcare infrastructure market continued to showcase a strong growth in the year 2007-08 and the sector has created collaborative opportunities for real-estate players.

Hospital buildings generate longer leases and low turnover; hence this is increasingly turning out to be a more stable asset class. In line with the above trend, established healthcare clusters are projected to show real-estate creation till 2011-12.

While the traditional formats would continue dominance, specialty products like health cities (integrated townships focused on health) and specialty clinics (targeted at the urban upper and middle class) would emerge.

Tier II and III cities remain a part of the expansion plans of almost all healthcare corporates. The immediate driver here would be the five-year tax break as per the latest federal budget. This would encourage the creation of 100-150 bedded hospitals across the country.

Affordable housing, recently, has attracted attention from prominent developers and private equity players primarily with the investment rationale of early mover advantage, volume-driven profitability, priority sector status accorded by government, subsidized land costs.

The key success factors for affordable housing as an asset class would be Infrastructure support, use of alternate materials and low cost techniques and mechanisms, subsidized land costs, faster approvals from the government.

1. Rigid chain of command
2. Staff receive very specialized training that is somewhat but rarely ~totally~ relevant outside the firm/operation
3. Rigid pay structure and staff hierarchy
4. Intense performance review process
5. There is no such thing as a successful "nine-to-fiver"
6. You rarely get to go home when YOU want to
7. Its hard to plan nights at the theatre - work always interferes
8. Clients/(countries) you are investigating/(invading) get agitated when you show up/(stay too long) and ask too many questions
9. Clients/(countries) you are investigating/(invading) get agitated when you ask too many questions which makes you wish you were armed/(glad you are armed). 
10. For just about everything you do on the job, there is a right way (your firm's/your outfit) and a wrong way to do it (the other firms' on the block/the Navy/Army/whoever you aren't).
11. Defined methods of advancement
12. Relative job security since you are not easily replaced
13. You are surrounded by bad haircuts
14. Staff have questionable fashion sense when out of 'uniform'
15. There is a strong pro-organization culture in place which makes it difficult to leave.  You work so much that much of your social network involves your co-workers.
16. Holding out the carrot of one day making partner/(general) is not nearly as effective on your junior staff/(non-coms or junior officers) as it once was.

This is not to say that I don't have a good deal of respect for either entity.  They each have important roles to fill in society.  I just never saw the similarities between the two before.....

Interesting, Ernst and Young was recently forced to pay overtime to its administrative staff (where they were performing professional work)- but not its actual professional staff....

http://steeplemedia.com/blogs/krupo/archive/2008/04/28/three-of-canada-s-big-four-ca-firms-to-pay-overtime.aspx

I suspect others may have a few suggestions for the list.

The Northerngardener (an ex-road warrior)

(Copyright 2008 by the Northerngardener.  Go ahead and link to me, just don’t copy me. )

I received my copy of the "Beyond Borders - Global Biotechnology report 2008" today from Ernst & Young. If you haven't got your copy go here to request a free hard copy. Furthermore they have a couple of other biotech publications in their online library free to download (LINK).

Points worth noting from the reports press release are the three predicted changes for the industry:

1. Reinventing Big Pharma - can only cut costs and make deals for so long
2. The rise of personalized medicine (PWC has a whole separate report on this trend) - a new ingredient in competitive advantage
3. Globalization - exploit emerging markets , produce products for local markets

While your in a downloading mood, you may also want to check out the array of PWC reports as well. Click here.

"We believe this is India's moment," declares Keystone Chief Economist William T Wilson.

Even under Keystone's projections, India wouldn't match China's current hypergrowth rates for at least another 15 years. And even by 2050, China's economy would be bigger measured in US dollars. But longer term, Keystone contends India will be in a stronger position. It projects that China's average annual growth will peak at 8.8 per cent over the next five years, and then gradually trend downward to under 7 per cent in the '20s and around 4% by the '40s.

Investments

Many signs point to big increases in investment in India, Wilson says. In fact, he estimates investment in India could reach 35% of GDP within a decade, which would enable it to match China's 9% plus growth. One reason is that the savings rate in India rose from 23.5% of GDP in 2001 to 28.1% in 2004. And because of its growing workforce and the decline in family size, India's savings rate should continue to rise to a projected 37% in 20 years. Since investment is highly correlated to domestic savings, that should translate into higher investment and economic growth.

However, India is planning to open up many long-protected sectors that have great allure to foreign investors and that could draw huge inflows of money. They include telecom, where Indian demand now is growing even faster than China's, commercial real estate, and department stores. Although some of the reforms have stalled recently due to domestic political opposition, Wilson believes the government will prevail.

"If you look at the institutional changes and the number of industries that have liberalized over the past five years, the pace has been phenomenal, he says. Wilson predicts India's real estate sector will draw a huge influx of money from foreign hedge funds, and liberalization of retail will be 'the real big bang' for the economy.

Entrepreneurship

They generally have done a good job of taking advantage of new opportunities offered by liberalization since the early 1990s. But the more dynamic companies in India are smaller ones that are led by new generations of entrepreneurs who take greater risks or are more connected to the global economy. These new companies also have more creative managers, argues Debashis Ghosh, another Keystone partner who worked at Ernst & Young.

Keystone focuses on researching mid-sized Indian companies with $10 million to $100 million in annual sales. "The bigger companies are still led by old school types who used to depend on access to government and got huge when there was nobody else in the game. "Because they had scale, foreigners had to deal with them," says Ghosh. "Now, though, the top talent from the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management are flowing into the mid-sized sector. That is like getting a management team of all Wharton and Massachusetts Institute of Technology grads."

Productivity

India has averaged respectable productivity growth of 2.5% a year over the past two decades.

But that can grow sharply, thanks to liberalization of many industries, a literacy rate that has risen from 18% in 1951 to 65% now, and India's rising openness to foreign trade, which has jumped from 15% of GDP in 1991 to 26% now. Manufacturing Surge China dwarfs India as a manufacturing power, especially for export.

And it will be a long time before India, with its inadequate infrastructure and components supply base, will be a serious export rival. But in recent years, India's domestic manufacturing industry has been growing strongly.

What's more, a number of Indian companies are especially strong in high-end manufacturing, such as auto parts, power generators, and medical equipment that requires a lot of engineering.

But when you look at the fundamental drivers growth in the workforce, fixed investment, and productivity -- over the long run the prospect looks a lot more plausible.