BEIJING: Indian companies must learn to localize in China and try to be a little more creative in their operations in this country if they wish to correct the flaws in India’s trade basket. The advice came on Tuesday from Indian ambassador S.Jaishankar, who pointed out that commodities and raw materials comprised three-fourth of Indian exports to China leaving little room for manufactured goods and services. Speaking at an India-China Business Seminar in Chengdu, capital of province of Sichuan in southwestern China, Jaishankar said the bilateral trade between the two countries was set to reach $60 billion in 2010. The…

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Three leading CEOs told the Detroit Economic Club Monday that Michigan needs a top-to-bottom overhaul if it hopes to rank as a top 10 state economically.”To this day, the state is still not being realistic,” Tony Earley Jr., chairman and CEO of DTE Energy, told the audience at Cobo Center. John Rakolta Jr., chairman and CEO of the Walbridge construction firm, agreed.”All of the solutions are right there,” Rakolta said. “We just don’t have the willpower.”Earley, Rakolta and David Brandon, chairman and CEO of Domino’s Pizza Inc., were speaking on behalf of the Michigan Turnaround Plan, a set of proposals…

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“We already offer secured loans against property and we are the fourth-largest in that segment. We are now evaluating getting into the home loan business, though we have not taken a final decision yet,” Bajaj Finserv managing director Sanjiv Bajaj told ET. Two of the planned diversification moves are slated to take off next year. “We will start offering retail loans against shares next year and we are also entering the construction equipment financing business. FinServ may even look at commercial vehicles when sister company Bajaj Auto diversifies its portfolio,” Mr Bajaj said. Already, Bajaj FinServ has expanded into two…

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Bank of America pledged Monday to increase its lending to small and medium sized businesses by $5 billion next year. The announcement immediately followed a White House meeting at which President Obama pressured the nation’s biggest bailed-out banks to start reinvesting in the rest of the economy.”Bank of America is determined to do our part to help the economy grow next year and reduce unemployment by making every good loan we can make,” CEO Ken Lewis said in a statement.Lewis acknowledged the key role that small businesses play in creating jobs, calling them the “lifeblood” of…

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Efforts by the mobile-phone service provider to charge more for heavy data usage may alienate customers and stymie innovation and growth in the wireless Web AT&T giveth and AT&T taketh away. The wireless service provider that has mastered all-you-can-eat monthly service packages for its mobile-phone customers is having second thoughts. Concerned that some customers are consuming more than their share of data over wireless networks, the company plans to offer some subscribers “incentives” to “reduce or modify their usage” of bandwidth, AT&T Mobility.De la Vega, speaking at a conference in New York sponsored by investment bank UBSdidn’t specify the company’s…

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Volkswagen says it expects to post record sales again this year, but it has forecast that 2010 will be ‘extremely difficult’ as scrappage schemes worldwide are wound down. The biggest European car maker said sales of it nine brands – which include Audi, Seat and Skoda – came to 531,000 vehicles last month, an increase of 19.1% from November 2008. But deliveries were 4.7% lower than in October. In the 11 months from January to November, sales gained 2% from the same period last year to 5.85 million vehicles, which allowed VW to say it expected a ’slight rise in…

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There were conflicting signals on the health of the clean tech IPO market this week, as one leading Chinese renewable energy firm postponed its planned floatation and another pulled off an encouraging first day of trading. China Longyuan Power Group Corp, the largest wind farm developer in Asia, debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange yesterday and saw its share price climb 9.44 per cent on its first day of trading. The IPO was reportedly 235 times oversubscribed and the energy giant reportedly raised HK$17.14bn through the IPO, selling 2.1bn shares at the upper end of the expected price range.…

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To extend its foot print in Scottish fund and wealth management industry Cazenove Capital Management, the London-based privately owned, independent asset management house with GBP13 billion assets under management, has acquired Thornhill, an independent fund management company, reported the Financial Times.Thornhill, with GBP600m assets under management, has offices in Edinburgh and London. It had previously acquired the private client division of Martin Currie Investment Management in Edinburgh.Reportedly, Cazenove Capital, which has demerged from the broker of the same name five years ago intends to use the acquisition to foray into the Scottish fund and wealth management industry.Andrew Ross, CEO…

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