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Donald Trump is acquitted in the second impeachment trial with a vote in the Senate of 53 in favor to 47 against. A two thirds majority is required to impeach a president. Senators Burr of North Carolina and Cassidy of Louisiana were Republicans who joined the expected ones to vote for impeachment- the Republicans Mitt Romney of Utah, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The Republican defense lawyer insisted that Trump's speech to his supporters was not an intention to incite them on the day of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 but an expression of his rights to free speech guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution First Amendment. He made the point that the prosecution lawyers had selectively focused attention on the words "fight like hell" and taken them out of the entire context in which they were made, ignoring key parts of Mr. Trump's speech. The defense argued that the president had already left office and this made an impeachment unconstitutional. Seventy five million voters voted for Mr. Trump and he cited this as the most number of votes won by a sitting president. President Biden is shifting his attention to the president's agenda and needs Republican support to pass key legislation including financial help to households, unemployed, and business to recover from the pandemic. The U.S. health effort behind the vaccination drive and seeing the struggle in Europe to access key medical supplies of vaccine is also leading to new efforts to move beyond the rhetoric to the hard work ahead with support of all parties. As part of this the trial once it reached the Senate was quickly resolved in about 5 days. The defense used only a small fraction of the time allotted with bipartisan effort to not let the trial drag on, bipartisan effort to putting some statements simply on the record and not calling witnesses.   ...

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The mismanagement of the economy under president Macri is leading to an economic crisis in the country. By embracing economic orthodoxy and slashing subsidies for fuel, electricity and transportation Mr. Macri who won the election 3 years ago has cause the prices of these basic goods to skyrocket. This has hurt the middle class and poor in Argentina. For most of this century Argentina has pursued populist policies, and in the last five decades periods of free market principle based economics were followed by severe crises, and subsequent restoration of populist policies to improve the economic conditions that had deteriorated.  The peso lost half of its value in 2018, leading to a IMF bailout of $57 billion. Inflation is at 50%, unemployment above 9%. To stem the fall in the peso the central bank increased interest rates to 60% stifling the economy and business. Under his predecessor Christine Kirchner the peso's value suffered and its currency reserves were low after fall in soyabean prices, yet the currency had not suffered the kind of decline that it has seen under Mr. Macri. The cutting of subsidies and the economic crisis has increased the number of poor to about a third of the population. Argentina now faces another of the repeated cycles of going from a populist Peronist administration to a free market orthodoxy supporting government, followed by an economic crisis and a shift back to Peronist populist administration policies. Part of the problem is that Argentina, and Brazil, and most of Latin America is still dependent on commodity exports, and the economy dependent on commodity prices. The manufacturing sector has not taken off as it has in Asian countries. This has led to repeated crises in times when the currency reserves declined and affected the currency, also leading to bouts of severe inflation.   ...

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The State Budget Crisis Task Force is co-chaired by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker and Richard Ravitch, a former lieutenant governor of New York. The Report of the Task Force says rising pension expenses and healthcare costs for public sector employees and Medicaid costs are severely reducing the ability of states in the U.S. to fund essential infrastructure improvements, education for low income students and other services. The report said there were six major threats to the fiscal situation of states- including Medicaid spending, underfunding of retirement, "budgetary gimmicks" to address the short term needs, and uncertain tax revenues. Ravitch told a news conderence: "It will be a hell of a lot more expensive to deal with theses problems in five or ten years than to deal with them now." The report focussed on California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Virginia and Texas. It was funded by the foundation of Blackstone Group co-founder Peter Peterson, and George Soros's Open Society Foundation....

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Viviane Reding, vice president of the European Commission, provides a five point proposal to strengthen the European Union and take the steps to a closer political union. She says the Maastricht Treaty does not provide the strong foundation the European Union needs and the steps are already underway to change this. The fiscal compact for financial discipline in the eurozone that all members of the eurozone agreed to is one such step. Other steps remain for a closer union and she suggests the time is now for an open debate inside the EU countries about what people want to see the EU become by 2020. As a timetable a treaty on political union could be ratified between 2016 and 2019, with it going into effect once two thirds of the countries have approved it with referendums. Countries would have the opton of political union or staying in a close form of association but not union.

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The lack of trust in negotiations on the terms of spending cuts between Greece and EU ministers in February 2011. In difficult exchanges between German finance minister Schauble and Greece's finance minister Venizelos, Schauble criticized the Greek government for not beginning negotiations for reduction in the minimum wage. EU ministers at a meeting with Venizelos on Feb 10, 2012, showed a distrust of Greece's figures on austerity cuts and asked for an additional $428 million in cuts to make up for the refusal of Greece to cut supplemental pensions. In Greece five ministers in the Greek cabinet resigned in protest over the conditions set by the troika of the EC, ECB and the IMF, just as unions launched a 48 hour strike in Athens. Greece is in the fifth year of a recession with unemployment at over 20%, making sharp cuts more painful. A shrinking economy makes achieving budget defict targets even more difficult and worsening the debt situation.

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Global infrastructure needs are expected to go up by 20% to 2.1 trillion dollars annually for the next 10 years compared to the previous ten years, according to the Samsung Economic Research Institute. India's investment in infrastructure will double to 1 trillion dollars in 2012-2017. compared to the prior five year period. Toshiba hopes to increase sales by 20% to $38 billion for nuclear power generation and distribution equipment and railway equipment, by the year ending March 2013. This is 38% of total revenue for Toshiba. Hitachi has set a goal of a 46% increase in sales to $29 billion, or 20% of total revenue for Jan 2011- March 2016. The Japanese Government and a consortium of Japanese companies are working together on deals such as the deal signed with Vietnam in October 2010 for nuclear power. The International Nuclear Energy Development of Japan entity, includes 12 companies and the Japanese government. The consortium was critical to negotiating the Vietnam deal.

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Illinois uses a discount rate of about 8% for its pension liabilities. This makes them look smaller than they really are. The 8% represents expected return on assets. Illinois's five pension pllans assume returns ranging from 7% to 8.5%, yet their average 10 year returns ranged from 2.4% to 3.6%. The Netherlands uses a discount rate equal to government borrowing rates, which would be 4% for the U.S. And Dutch plans have to be fully funded or take steps to make up the difference. Illinois will have its plans 90% funded by fiscal 2045. Canada uses a government return adjusted for inflation and an additional premium, which is about 6%. The Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan for instance uses a discount rate of 5.4% and is about 85% funded. The Ontario plan's CEO, Jim Leech, says his fund would be 200% funded if it used the Illinois approach. Which raises the question is the Illinois approach realistic and isn't the best approach to be realistic about the finances.

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The WSJ's Ben Worthen interviews Meg Whitman, the new CEO of H-P. Whitman says she will execute strategy consistently and will provide a steady hand on the tiller. Some of the points she made were- it took a number of years for H-P to get to this situation, and it will take a number of years to get out of it. It takes about five years to get things to turn around, with gradual progress. Whitman says H-P is a hardware company, and could not become a software company even if it tried to. She has put her arms around the company's products, and H-P has people with deep knowledge of the company's products who she talks to. Her plan is to move faster into tablets with Windows 8. For the printer business growth is expected because H-P's estimate is that 200 billion incremental pages will be shifting from Heidelberg presses to Web printing, with a shift from analog to digital.

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Petrobras set a record for emerging market debt issues by exceeding the $7.5 billion bond sales by Venezuela in 2007 and earlier sales of $7 billion by Qatar and Russia, according to Dealogic. It made a $11 billion bond sale to investors in May 2013 with bonds maturing in 10 years priced for yield of 4.522%. Petrobras plans to spend $237 over five years for new deep water offshore fields in the Atlantic which require advanced technology and large investment. Petrobras bonds traded at about $1.10 on the dollar in May 2013, after reaching a high of $1.15 in 2012, according to MarketAxess BondTicker. Petrobras is one of the biggest emerging market bond issuers, and investors were becoming cautious because of the large issuance and government involvement in Petrobras. Yet with 10 year Treasurys yielding 1.922% investors looking for high yields placed $40 billion in orders in New York on May 13, 2013.

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The changes at Sony Pictures outlined in an interview with CEO, Michael Lynton. Sony Pictures will look for savings of $350 million. Motion Pictures showed declining revenues and revenue from TV shows increased in 2013. Sony Pictures will expand its TV shows business. Part of the expansion will be through buying and starting up new television channels in the growing markets of India and Brazil. In this interview Lynton points to the risks in seeing franchises in big budget movies before they become franchises and before the first movie in the series is successful. Smaller budget movies such as "The Conjuring," "We're the Millers," have been profitable for Sony Pictures, so he sees the tendency to focus on franchises alone as risky. Sony pioneered in producing for cable but did not see this as being a large revenue generator five years earlier. What changed Lynton says, is the increase in subscription video-on-demand services and growth in Netflix reaching new buyers.

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BMW lags Mercedes in return on sales its 6% vs Mercedes 8%. And it faces higher costs in meeting new EU emissions standards.Mercedes is doing a lot better now that it has gotten rid of the Chrysler distraction. One way is to develop new hybrid and other fuel economy and lower emissions technology in alliance with Daimler. Its developing a new hybrid engine with Daimler and GM of which a model was shown at the Frankfurt Auto Show. Improving profitability to have an 8%-10% return on sales by 2012 is the goal of BMW and it hopes to achieve this with a plan to create costs savings of 6 billion euros in a five yer plan announced by CEO Reithofer. in September 2007. This will mean thousands of layoffs and will mean that it will affect those with temporary contracts first and will include some buyouts also. BMW sales are growing and could reach 1.8 million by 2012.

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The alliance between the PRD on the left and the PAN party on the right in Mexico on an anti-corruption platform creates a third option in Mexico after the PRI under president Nieto, and the party of Lopez Obrador. Obrador and the candidate of the PAN/PRD Ricardo Anaya, 38 years, now are level in polls with 32 percent support and the PRI candidate Antonio Meade at 25%. The Nieto administration is tainted with several corruption scandals and about 75% of Mexicans want a change in government, in a Reforma poll. Obrador contested for the PRD in 2006 in a close election, and in 2012 formed his own party. If successful this would be the first time three parties form together to form a coalition government in Mexico, with the Citizens Party joining the PRD/PAN coalition. This is similar to the way in which the left and the right are getting together to topple the old politicians with new younger faces in other countries- including in France, and in Italy in upcoming elections with the left and the right represented in the En Marche movement in France, and in the Five Star Movement in Italy. In Germany a left -right coalition is being put together with the CDU and the Social Democrats coming together on social issues. After state elections in 2016 the opposition winning 3 governorships from ruling PRI, and the election in the state of Mexico where a divided field made it possible for the ruling PRI to hold onto power even after losing 1 million votes, both the PRD and the PAN parties realized the need to come together on an anti-corruption platform. Corruption and rejection of the old politicians bringing in a younger generation into politics is a major issue in many countries. ...

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The personality based governance under Carlos Ghosn is seen as a problem now that Mr. Ghosn is in a jail cell in Tokyo and under investigation by Japanese prosecutors. Mr. Ghosn faces charges that he under reported his deferred pay over a five year period to 2011.  The Economist magazine points out the other problems that might have led to to the authorites being informed about the failure of Nissan to make the internal audits. This relates to the activities  of Mr. Ghosn to arrange a possible takeover by Renault through a merger. Nissan owns only 15% non voting stake in Renault, and Renault by comparison owns a 43.4% ownership in Nissan. The French government has a 15% stake in Renault and efforts were made by Mr. Macron, as Economy minister, to secure double voting rights for long term shareholders such as the French government. This leaves the Japanese government and Nissan reluctant to see the move to Renault's takeover. The French government left with suspicions on the reasons for Mr. Ghosn's removal now less likely to cede control over the joint venture. The jet setting high flying ways of executives such as Mr. Ghosn with the company's identity being defined by their activities are also coming under much criticism. The CEO of Chrysler Mr. Marchionne was gravely ill at 66 following a decade of deal making, with chain smoking, leading to a severe illness. Renault under Ghosn rescued Nissan in 1999, Fiat under Marchionne rescued Chrysler in 2009 with U.S. government help. The Economist magazine points out the Nissan alliance with Renault is now tarnished by another high flying executive.   ...

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The story of a company and its founder in Seattle who realized that $40,000 a year is not much to make a decent living in Seattle- that people had to work 2 jobs. In the process hurting the productivity at the company, with employees putting in less of the kind of energy and motivated work that helps companies grow. The founder decides to cut back on his own expenses and extravagant lifestyle to make sure his employees are paid a decent wage. He did the math and decided on $70,000 Five years later sales of the company have doubled. It is a payments company and the payments processed at Gravity doubled from $3.8 billion a year to $10.2 billion. The number employees have doubled. For employee productivity it mattered that they were not doing 2 jobs and worrying about credit card debt. Now 70% of employees have paid off debt. The amount of money they put into pension funds has doubled. And instead of 1% about 10% own their own homes. This suggests the old culture was bad for the economy as well as employees. More housing demand, more homes built, more cars sold, more money for pension funds to manage, all translate into a better performing economy and economic growth. Simply stated the old culture has put an artificial ceiling on economic growth and worse set a low bar fro productivity in companies. Healthier employees who could spend the time doing second jobs doing exercize instead and staying fit would also bring down the money spent on healthcare.  Ultimately it us about good common sense, and honest thinking about what works and does not work. The old culture simply fails good common sense. ...

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President Macron of France puts forward the basic building blocks for an agreement to reduce tensions with Iran. In a speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations he says that there should be negotiations between Iran, its regional neighbors, the U.S. , European countries and China. The Obama period nuclear deal of 2015 failed because of a lack of a comprehensive settlement and including Iran's neighbors in the region. Macron pointed out that the U.S. approach under president Trump of "maximum pressure" with tighter economic sanctions has produced a response from Iran of maximum pressure on its neighbors, including the attack on Saudi oil facilities with drones that took out half of the Saudi oil supplies. Macron put forward five issues for negpotiations to focus on: certaity that Iran never acquires nuclear weapons, solution to the Yemen civil war, a regional security plan that addresses other conflicts, ensuring security of maritime navigation especially in Straits of Hormuz, lifting of economic sanctions. He pointed out that "today we have a risk of serious conflict based on miscalculation and disproportionate responses." Mr. Trump even alluded to this when he told reporters after the dismissal of John Bolton as National Security Adviser, saying Bolton made Trump look like a voice of moderation. A lot depends on who are the advisers and whether moderation is exercised on all sides.  Macron, Merkel and Britain's prime minister Johnson met with Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN meetings to encourage dialogue. Countries likely to be severely affected by oil shutoff through the Straits of Hormuz are Japan, South Korea, India and China, and are quietly pushing for an easing of tensions.  ...

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Comedian and politician Beppe Grillo, from Genoa, who leads the Five Star Movement party. This party has increased its support from 4% in 2011 to about 18% in recent opinion polls. Grillo is a moderate liberal who has benefitted from the unpopularity of austerity measures taken by prime minister Mario Monti and the rapidly declining support for Berlusconi's People of Freedom party after recent coruption scandals. He has opposed traditional politics of established parties since 2005 when he pulled together people over social media and the internet. Support for political parties in Italy is rapidly fragmenting with Berlusconi's party dropping to 17% in polls and no party having significant support. In this situation business leaders support a continuation of the Mario Monti government beyond the April elections if no party gets a mandate from voters. Grillo says his movement is similiar to other movements that oppose the euro and austerity measures such as the Marie Le Pen movement in France. It is against this background that the Social Democrats in Germany have united behind Peer Steinbruck, a former finance minister, who has the best chance against Merkel in 2013 elections for chancellor in Germany. Most of the difficult and necessary actions that Merkel and the German public have supported are already taken- the changes in labor laws in Italy, France's 2013 budget that targets 3% deficit in 2013, efforts of Italy, France and Spain to improve competitiveness- and capital markets continue to provide vigilance in this direction, creating a situation where Merkel may have exhausted her effectiveness. This creates an opening for a change in policy in the eurozone that offers more German flexibility on stabilizing the eurozone and supporting the embattled governments of Monti in Italy and Rajoy in Spain facing popular protest and not enjoying the kind of support Monti says France has from Germany....

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Just before the general elections of Feb 24-25 in Italy, the centre left PD party of Luigi Bersani sees its 12 point lead over the coalition of Silvio Berlusconi go down to 6 points. Former EU commissioner and prime minister in 2012, Mario Monti, has 14 points. The maverick Five Star Movement of comedian Beppe Grillo has the support of younger voters looking for a break from the past in Italian politics with 15 points. Italy's election rules automatically gives the coalition with the largest number of votes a 55% majority in the lower house of parliament. In the Senate a similiar rule gives a majority on a regional basis. For the eurozone the best outcome is for a Bersani win. Bersani looks to the Monti coaliton, which has the support of Italy's business community, for credibility and backing. The Economist provides an insight into how Italy lost competitiveness and income per capita stagnated in Italy in the last two decades. The dynamism of the sixties and seventies is missing, Italy's infrastructure is old and needs to be modernized, the productivity growth is negligible, and application of new technologies for productivity in many sectors is lagging. Political mismanagement under Berlusconi and other administrations before him has led to an entrenched stagnation and Italy badly needs to get out of this. Italy and Portugal are the only two countries with a lower per capita real income in 2013 compared to 1999, when the euro was launched. Unit labor costs have risen, and productivity has declined in the last two decades leading to lost competitiveness. The inability to resort to devaluations, and the lagging application of technology in many sectors, has increased the lack of competitiveness, with the economy becoming dependent on higher public spending, higher public debt. The result is higher unemployment at 11% and youth unemployment at 36%, infrastructure that is old and badly needs modernizing. Foreign investment is small, and the cost of doing business higher, including electricity rates 50% higher than the European average, R&D spending low, all of which need to be reversed for Italy to grow. But there is hope. The Economist cites an OECD report that shows the Monti government's reforms in regulatory, labor-markets, product-markets, can generate 4 points of GDP growth in the next decade. An IMF report of Jan 2013 looks at proposed reforms in energy, transport, professional services, judicial system and public services and more labor-market improvements, with the larger impact when done in combination, could add 5.7% to GDP growth in 5 years, and 10.7% in 10 years. Adding changes to taxation and shifting public spending towards investment for growth increases the figure to 21.9%....

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The VW emissions scandal lingers on five years after the rigging of of millions of diesel vehicles to cheat emissions tests. Now former CEO Martin Winterkorn is ordered to face trial on charges of defrauding customers. It is interesting to note how it all started was a grandiose ambition set by Winterkorn according to this report in the WSJ, to make VW the largest auto company in the world ahead of Toyota and General Motors and push sales of diesel vehicles in the U.S. with "clean diesel vehicles." At this time of pandemic it is appropriate to note that the world has changed since 1946 when the wages of top managers were 2 times that of a Caterpillar company worker, and reached level of 400 times a worker for some executives of companies before the pandemic.  Even in supposedly egalitarian countries where worker representatives are on boards such as Germany, the wages had pushed way upwards to about 170 times the salary of the average worker at VW in 2015 when the emissions crisis erupted. This VW episode shows that the grandiose ambitions of executives were another part of the problem before the pandemic. Today the VW disaster has led to a completely opposite result. Diesel is not taking over the U.S. it is now the now the no go in Germany, as diesel vehicles are being phased out. Instead Germany's auto industry is now making large investments in the electric car industry. Significantly chancellor Merkel and the CDU no longer see the automobile industry in Germany as having some kind of special status and the shift to electric is being made with the planned loss of jobs and a restructuring to replace lost jobs with other jobs over 10 years. And the SPD has called for a legal ratio of the average ratio of a company's top managers  in relation to a workers wage at the same company. The pandemic has put things in perspective on a number of fronts, from wage relationships, health, healthcare and wellbeing, healthy lifestyles, mental health, making clear that health and a commonsense idea of fairness, good infrastructure, and sensible wage relations all go together in this world that the creator made. ...

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Investing strategy that is in contrast to PIMCO's Gross and El-Erian view that we are entering aperiod which is the "new normal"- aperiod of diminished expectations with stocks playing a smaller role. This means that investors hold as little as 30% in stocks. Barry Ritholtz, CEO of Fusion IQ, a quantitative research firm says he sees this recession as similiar to the 1973-74 recession and sees growth picking up by 2013, or 5 years into this one. Ritholtz thinks its wise to have larger investmetns in fixed income and similar investments, but also to have exposure to stocks in growth areas of the world. Robert Arnott of Research Afiliates, aresearch and analytics firm, suggests a mix of five even baskets: Us stocks paying healthy dividends, stocks and bonds from mature foreign economies, stocks and bonds from emerging markets, stocks and bonds built around oil and commodities to hedge against inflation, and 20% in bonds. including Treasury inflation-protected securities. Such aweighting would increase stocks as apercentage of the portfolio to 50%....

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Portugal's finance minister Vitor Gaspar says all taxpayers will pay an additional tax of about 4% on annual income in 2013. The tax brackets will go down from eight to five raising average tax rates. Other measures include a "solidarity tax" on top earners of 2.5%. These tax increases will raise about 2 billion euros. Public workers will forego one paycheck, and there will be a new tax on financial transactions. Portugal's plan is to lower the budget deficit to 4.5% in 2013 from a deficit of 5% in 2012. The economy will contract by 3% in 2012 and 1% in 2013, with unemployment going up to 16.4% in 2013, according to government projections. Gaspar says "the tax rises will divide the effort equitably among the Portuguese population." Earlier tax proposals for raising worker payroll taxes and reducing employer contributions in a questionable effort to promote growth were discarded. This happened after they were seen as a transfer from workers to business and depressing consumer spending resulting in wide scale protests, with opposition also coming from the business community....

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Meg Whitman, H-P CEO, repeated her statements that a recovery was four or five years away. She sees little sales growth till 2015 and predicts losses. H-P's share price fell by 13% on Oct. 3, 2012. Whitman said in an interview that H-P has failed to invest in research and development. She was critical of lack of R&D investment under Mark Hurd. But says many of the problems go back to when Carly Fiorina was CEO in 2005 and made the acquisition of Compaq. The acquisition approach has worked poorly for H-P, with lack of R&D within H-P. H-P's financial position also worsened with the $10 billion paid by Leo Apotheker, Hurd's successor, for Autonomy Corp. Internal software systems disconnected costs from revenue, so that in 2011 field selling costs increased by $1 billion even as revenue decreased by $5 billion. A series of management changes made things worse through poor decisions, inconsistency and lack of focus, all of which will take years to correct.

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The bubble in Canada's real estate market reached its peak in 2011-2012. The average price of a home in Vancouver reached a high of C$815,252 in April 2011, before declining to C$721,958 in Sept. 2012, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association, Average prices nationwide in Canada were at C$372,544. Prices are being pushed up by buyers from China. Canada is taking steps to restrain the bubble by changing immigration rules. The immigration minister temporarily froze the Federal Skilled Worker Program and the Immigrant Investor Program. Under the latter program citizenship was given in five years to qualified immigrants investing over C$800,000 in Canada. Other measures include cutting the mortgage amortization to 25 years from 30 years, and reducing the amount of home equity Canadians can borrow against from 85% to 80%. Home sales in Vancouver declined 33% in Sept 2012 over prior year and listings increased 14%. The moves are modest because real estate agents see it as a pause in the bidding wars that were taking place, and the market remains overinflated....

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The FBI talked to Steve Job's friends, neighbors, family, former business associates and Jobs in a background investigation in 1991. Jobs was being considered for an appointment in the President George H.W. Bush administration and this was part of the background check. He is described as not having a good start in high school- as his GPA at Homestead High School in Cupertino, California was 2.65. He is said to have used marijuana and LSD in college. This was the period when Jobs was running NeXT, and five years before Apple acquired NeXT and Jobs returned to Apple. The account affirms the description in Walter Isaacson's book of a person who was driven and could have rough edges in his human dealings. The FBI background check account has this to say-"several individuals questioned Job's honesty stating that Mr Jobs will twist the truth and distort reality in order to achieve his goals." In his personal life Jobs is described as neglecting a daughter born out of wedlock with a high school girlfriend....

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WSJ's Ben Worthen interviews Leo Apotheker of Hewlett-Packard. He talks about the resignation of four board members and the addition of five new board members, by citing a joke in the Swedish parliament in the sixties. In that joke one member of parliament says the best way to move driving on the left to driving on the right was to do it gradually. That is Apotheker's way of saying why it couldn't be done gradually. He says he doesn't let the propaganda about him by Oracle CEO Ellison bother him. What matters to employees is seeing him and talking to him, and he has gone on a round the world listening tour. He will focus on profitable growth, and he sees his industry in a technology transformation with the words "cloud" and "connectivity, that will change H-P. He sees the potential to do more in overseas markets, something his background from Europe helps him understand better. He would like to fill gaps in H-P's software capabilities and speed up bringing new products.

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The western pharmaceutical companies see the potential for a big increase in sales in developing countries with better pricing to reach a larger number of people. Earlier this year Glaxo said it planned to reduce prices to two thirds of the levels in western countries, and charge 25% of prices in western nations to people in the 50 poorest countries. As a result Glaxo now forecasts a 10% increase in sales in 2010 in the Asia-Pacific area, after a 9% increase in 2009. The overall impact on public health will however be limited as even with this price reduction these medicines will benefit a fraction of the people. Today the combined pharmaceutical sales in Asia, Africa and Australia are $90.8 billon. According to IMS seventeen economies including China, India, Russia and Brazil will see pharma spending grow by $90 billion in a five year period 2009-2014. Of this China's demand will grow by $40 billion in this IMS Report on "phamemerging" economies. The upshot: phamemerging will account for 20% of global sales by 2013, up from 16% in 2008....