[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]KT (Chairman and CEO Suk-Chae Lee, www.kt.com) announced a grand launch of “Genie K-pop”, the digital music and contents service based on smart phones, in 45 countries across 6 continents including the United States, France and India. This is the first time that a domestic smart phone-only music service was launched as a global service. “Genie”, established by KT in partnership with KMP Holdings (music distributor of 7 major Korean record labels including SM, YG, JYP, Media Line, Star Empire, Union CAN and Music Factory), made a grand entry to the global markets only 9 mo
[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]“The greatest trick the devil has ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist” -- The Usual Suspects But Draghi convinced the markets the OMT did exist in September without activating it. What ensued thereafter was a virtual easing, with peripheral bonds, equity indices and euro currency moving from strength to strength. Euro is powered up (highest daily percentage gain since September 7, 2012) after the ECB press conference revealed that none of the governing council members called for a rate cut at today‘s meeting, which added to the currency’s earlier gains t
[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]Lloyd George Management (LGM), a member of BMO Global Asset Management, has surpassed US$250 million in assets under management for its Frontier Markets equity strategy. Frontier Markets consist of countries with market-oriented economies in the early stages of economic development, reflecting many of the same characteristics of the original Global Emerging Markets - such as China and India - some 20 years ago. Since its launch in December 2011, LGM‘s Frontier Markets strategy composite has returned 42.9 percent (gross of all fees, in USD terms to December 31, 2012)(1), w
[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]City Index Asia, Singapore -- We started the New Year with the single biggest theme in Asia -- Japan. The post Abe election period has been marked by a steady market rally in the Nikkei and significant weakness in the Japanese Yen. After welcoming its new prime minister after a snap election in December, Japan is hoping it will finally hoist itself out of recession -- but the nation‘s ongoing territorial dispute with China over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea could drag out the country’s economic contraction. Bloomberg reports that Japanese car sales are struggl
[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]Tesco shares rallied close to 3% on Thursday after the world's third largest retailer reported its strongest sales growth for three years for the key December period. Tesco reported like for like sales growth of 1.8%, which was above the top end of market expectations of 1.55 and showed a good recovery from a sales decline of 0.5% in the third quarter. We should, however, remember that whilst the first segment of the fourth quarter has shown a marked bounce back, we must wait to see whether this sales strength can be continued into the tail end of the quarter and indeed t
[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]DirectTrack X (DTX), the next generation of the industry‘s pioneer affiliate tracking software, is now launched, live, and available for use. This release of DirectTrack X marks the most significant product launch in the company’s history and is the result of years of development and unprecedented collaboration between DirectTrack and its customers. “DirectTrack X embodies a new class of performance marketing software that revolutionizes the way networks, advertisers, and brands gather, analyze, and act upon the constant stream of big data,” said George Bordo, General Man
[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]Descartes Systems Group (Nasdaq:DSGX) (TSX:DSG), the global leader in uniting logistics-intensive businesses in commerce, announced that Radishbo-ya, a leading Japanese producer and distributor of fresh, organic vegetables to homes and supermarkets, has deployed Descartes Route Planner and Descartes Mobile for Android. Radishbo-ya is using the solution to improve its delivery capabilities and more efficiently capture customer information. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution was implemented, and is being hosted, by CTC, a Descartes ‘United By Design’ partner in Japan
[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]One Spear Entertainment announced the launch of ShaqDown today at the opening of the 2013 International CES, the world’s largest consumer electronics show. ShaqDown is a 2D, side scrolling beat ’em up game available on iOS and Android. The game was developed by award-winning game studio Hiptic Games. ShaqDown is set in a dystopian future where mankind has been mostly wiped out by a zombie outbreak. Years passed, and, just when the world thought the zombies had died out and mankind had won, the virus that caused the outbreak mutated and created a new form of evil -- the Mu
[By NBC-1TV H. JYook]Riva Financial Systems Limited today announced the global deployment of its Riva Transfer Agent (“Riva TA”) software solution across Franklin Templeton Investments' international transfer agency operations. “We are very pleased to announce that Franklin Templeton has successfully converted its international transfer agency operations to Riva's software, marking the culmination of a project that is unprecedented in terms of scale and complexity,” said Ghassan Hakim, CEO of Riva Financial Systems. The deployment of Riva TA marks the realization of Franklin Templeton's long-t
[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]The pound has held its ground in forex markets today (January 9th) as the UK's trade deficit is reported to have narrowed in November 2012. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 30-day period saw a slight shrinkage to 3.5 billion from October's 3.7 billion, as trade shifts away from the European Union (EU), with goods export volumes sliding compared to the previous year, while exports in the rest of the world increased. There was a deficit of 9.2 billion on products which was partially offset by an approximate surplus of 5.7 billion on services. In the thre