Does it make sense to have a celebrity advertise your product? That was the question that dominated the minds of the select audience at the launch of the Businessworld Marketing Whitebook 2011-2012 in Delhi, on 25 February 2011. Needless to say, such a topic led to a charged panel discussion and provided the perfect backdrop to the book launch. It was this aspect of engagement that D.D. Purkayastha, managing director and CEO of the ABP group, highlighted in his welcome address. "Businessworld offers a platform for topical debates for marketers," he said, stressing the need for greater customer engagement in today's digitised scenario. Then came the panel discussion. The theme was ‘Celebrity Endorsements: Is it Smart or Lazy Marketing?' The panellists were Wasim Basir, director, integrated marketing communications, Coca-Cola India; Latika Khaneja, CEO, Collage Sports Management; Josy Paul, chairman and national creative director, BBDO; and L.K. Gupta, chief marketing officer of LG Electronics India. Suhel Seth, managing partner of Counselage India, moderated the discussion. Seth opened the discussion with cricket. He asked Khaneja, who represents cricket celebrities, how it feels to capitalise on someone else's success and, more importantly, what happens when these cricketers stop scoring? And whether celebrity advertising was nothing more than lazy marketing. Khaneja's response was equally witty. "How lazy marketers operate has nothing to do with me being lazy," she said. "We tell them (the companies) the pros and cons of using a particular celebrity. The companies choose and if they feel a celebrity fits their brand, they go for it. We can only hope that the cricketers keep on scoring. And the commission I get is as much as I can negotiate — there is no rocket science here!" Her grouse: the business of celebrity management in India is very limited to Bollywood and cricket. "People from other sports wonder what wrong they did that they are unable to get the kind of acclaim or exposure that cricket gets," she said. Talking about suitability of celebrities, Seth asked if Sachin Tendulkar will be able to sell an LED. LG Electronics' Gupta replied that "I think Airtel's use of celebrities like Madhavan and Vidya Balan and even Shreyas Talpade actually make a good statement about the brand." He said celebrity use in India is over-valued. In television advertising, celebrity is a tool to attract attention and to convey something about the imagery of the product. "I really don't understand what the brouhaha is all about. There are only a handful of celebrities who command Rs 5 crore or Rs 10 crore. I agree with Latika that there will be many others who wonder why they are sought after and many among them have personality. And personality is what a product needs." BBDO's Paul was clear on why he used celebrities. For advertisers, celebrities are like a fluorescent marker that highlights your idea, highlights the aura of your product. They create a terrific opportunity to produce a multiplier effect. Their usage turns our idea into news and then this news gets talked about. And the trick is to turn your idea into a talking point. "Like, for instance, P&G saying in a campaign that women are against the lazy stubble of men. Now that turns the spotlight on our ideas and become news. So, we use celebrities selfishly, I think. We use them to start conversations." Of course, there are products such as iPhone that don't need celebrities, Paul pointed out. "They themselves are news. But if you don't have such a product, use celebrities to trade in conversation and news." Coca-Cola's Basir focused on the right match between product and celebrity. If you watch cricket on television, he said, you can actually see which brand is just using a celebrity and which one is promoting its brand. "At one stage, we had taken a script to a well-known Bollywood celebrity. He said ‘But this script is just about selling Coke'. And that's the last conversation that we had with him," Basir revealed. "Yes, we are advertising Coke, but we are looking to hook the stature of the celebrity to our product. We are looking to create aspirational value."You see that when we went with Aamir Khan who has done our campaign for over five years now. And when there is any controversy, he stands up and talks and people listen — because people believe in him. I would, however, agree with Josy (Paul) that most of the celebrity use is just like using a fluorescent highlighter." Basir came down sharply on ‘seamless' use of celebrities. "There is a fish market out there — there are celebrities endorsing light bulb to switches — that is completely unnecessary." Marketers, he warned, should guard against one person endorsing 20 products. "At least with Aamir we know that he will do only five a year, and thus retain his exclusivity and make him believable," said Basir.Perhaps, it is the paucity of celebrities that leads to over-use. Said Gupta: "Let's face it. There is only one Sachin in a century. The other celebrities who are looking at their 15 minutes of fame are not going to be too choosy about the brands they endorse. They know their brand value will last two to five years, and they are going to try and make the most of it." But the advertiser too has to bear some part of the responsibility. "The brand itself has to understand why and at what point should one use a celebrity. I would use a celebrity in a highly cluttered category and want the product to shine through and grab the consumers' attention," said Gupta. Khaneja agreed: "Marketers seem to be unable to grasp the brand fit properly. For example, the case of Shah Rukh Khan endorsing Hyundai is, in my opinion, a brand misfit because how many people will believe that he drives a Hyundai?" She liked Aamir Khan's association with Coke "simply because he is a talented actor and it is a good way of Indianising an international product". Another brand fit she liked is the Koffee With Karan. "It is upmarket and aspirational, and then it is translated into being all about coffee, and then coffee being about Nescafe. It all blends quite well together." Next she chose an international example: Lancome and Julia Roberts. "Women like cosmetics and everyone likes Julia. She is pretty and people want to look like her. So Lancome and Julia Roberts are a great fit," she said. And bad examples? Irrelevant usage of celebrities in real estate ads. "They just use the cricketers standing next to their property. It is obvious that the cricketing celebrity does not live there. So it is a bad use of celebrities." Are there any risks involved in using a celebrity for advertising your product? Yes. The risk lies both to the product and to the celebrity, Khaneja said. The obvious risk is that if celebrities don't deliver or they don't behave appropriately, it can reflect on your brand. On the other hand, if the brand does not use the celebrity in a relevant sense, he will lose ground on the image that he is trying to project. Seth summed up saying that while celebrity usage seems inevitable, one must be wary of too much familiarity breeding contempt. The panel discussion among the leading stars of the advertising world was followed by the launch of the Businessworld Marketing Whitebook 2011-2012 by D.D. Purkayastha. In his closing remarks, Pavan Varshnei, president, English magazines, ABP Group, said the Whitebook has been the Holy Grail for marketers and this year, too, "we hope the book will be widely used by marketing professionals". The presenting sponsor of the event was Seagram's Blenders Pride. The principal associate sponsor was Tata Photon. Bloomberg UTV was the television partner and exchange4media.com was the online partner. (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 21-03-2011)
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Employees across India are upbeat about the first long weekend of 2011 starting this Friday, 12 August as 55 per cent of the employees in the national capital have applied for four to five casual leaves to extend their holiday up to next week -planning an 8 to 10 day long itinerary- a recently concluded survey by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) reports. Corporate offices in Delhi-NCR have received the maximum number of casual leave applications ASSOCHAM interacted with human resources and administration departments in 400 corporate offices in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and Pune to gauge the mood of the corporate workforce towards the first long weekend this monsoon. Their survey also features representatives of leading travel portals, travel agencies, and hoteliers. As per their records, the maximum number of bookings have been made for trips to traditional picturesque destinations such as Jaipur, Mount Abu (Rajasthan), Landsdowne, Mussoorie, Nainital (Uttarakhand) and Goa. Tour operators are offering exciting new packages for couples and corporate houses to cash in on the newly developed concept of monsoon tourism. About 15 lakh travellers are likely to make a voyage to these renowned destinations, ASSOCHAM's analysis reveals, based on the feedback received from tour operators and hoteliers these traditional tourist hot spots around these cities. "Long weekends are very rare these days and corporate employees see this is as a perfect getaway opportunity as there are several public holidays this month," says D.S. Rawat, Secretary General of ASSOCHAM. Around 40 per cent of corporate employees in Mumbai have applied for a minimum of four days leave. Mahabaleshwar, Khandala, Lonavala and Matheran are some of the leading tourist hot spots for Mumbaikars as tour operators have received the maximum bookings in these areas. The corporate workforce in Ahmedabad closely followed their counterparts in Mumbai as 35 per cent of offices have received casual leave applications from their employees. The majority of travel agents in the city have received bookings for Mount Abu. Offices in Bengaluru have received casual leave applications from 25 per cent of their employees and majority of tour operators in the city have sold monsoon tour packages for Coorg, the survey highlights. Religious tourism is also on a high among travellers this season and the footfall at destinations such as Vaishno Devi (Jammu &Kashmir), Khatu Shayam, Udaipur (Rajasthan), Ashtvinayak (Maharashtra) and Char Dham (Uttarakhand) is most likely to quadruple this weekend since15 to 20 per cent of the overall bookings account for spiritual tourism destinations, the responses from tour operators indicate. Hoteliers in these locations have increased the room rates by around 150 to 200 per cent and are reporting a healthy occupancy, even though traditionally it is a lean season. In addition, food and beverage costs are also running upwards by 35 to 40 per cent.Those with hefty pockets are off to international holiday destinations which include Thailand, Mauritius, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai. According to tour operators almost 25 per cent of the overall bookings for trips to these places account for leisure holidays. The ASSOCHAM survey also finds that various companies have enabled work from home facilities for their employees so that they can celebrate their festivals and complete their tasks as per their convenience, without worrying much about the deadlines.
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When Hero and Honda agreed to part ways after 27 years of partnership, questions were raised whether Hero could survive on its own. Though Hero has absolutely no R&D of its own, it still is confident about pulling it off."We will double our sales numbers in 5 years," says Pawan Munjal, MD of the newly unveiled Hero Moto Corp (HMC). He says he is aggressively seeking out partners for technical collaborations and is going to make Hero a global and self reliant corporation. "We were earlier limited in international markets because of the nature of our tie up," says Munjal. HMC has plans to take the number of units sold per year from 5.4 million to 10 million units and will export 10 per cent of the revenues. Currently exports are only 1.5 per cent of the turnover. There are huge tasks ahead of HMC. This week, it flew in 1,200 dealers to London asking them to keep faith in the Hero family. The company has 4,500 dealerships and will add 500 more this year. It is adding two new plants and a parts centre in Rajasthan. The first plant will come up in South India (location undisclosed) with a capacity to manufacture 750,000 units. This plant will take the total production capacity of the group to 7 million units a year. The Munjals announced that they will be spending more than Rs 4,500 crore to remain number one in the Indian market.But the threat from Honda remains as it still supplies technology to the Hero Group till about 2014. What's more, Honda has already touched the 1.5-million sales mark after just 6 years of operations. It took Hero Honda 27 years to become a large brand, but analysts believe that Honda could in the long run upset Hero by poaching technical staff and dealerships.Closing in is Bajaj which is making inroads in the 100cc segments and with scooterettes, the company sold more than 2 milllion vehicles. Both Honda and Bajaj experienced 35 per cent growth in 2010-11, while Hero grew by only 17 per cent. These numbers have bearing in the long run, if Hero does not close its technical tie ups with firms that can give them great design and engines then its good will with the dealers will be lost. It needs to find great products like the Splendour (which sold more than 1 million units at one point) by itself. "Competition cannot catch us and we are investing in global benchmarks," says Pawan Munjal. Hero has 200 design engineers and is betting on its global technical centre of excellence which is being set up over the next 5 years.Hero had bought out Honda's 50 per cent stake for $851 million ($751 million was raised through debt) routed through an SPV. This debt incidence will not affect HMC's stock performance, but the lack of its own identity could mar its second coming in the short run.
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By now it's happened in many parts of our troubled world. People have communicated using technology, whether it be messengers on smartphones or social networking sites, and then gathered in crowds to act on their thoughts and emotions -- sometimes for the good, and sometimes with devastating results. But hey, there were no BlackBerry phones in 1848, and the French Revolution still happened and th e kings and queens still lost their heads.Today, as riots in London spread to other cities, the preoccupation of authorities and so much of the media seems to be with how Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry "triggered off" the anarchy. You mean nobody used land lines? And what about the modes of transport that we think of as progress? Didn't they play a facilitative role?Give them a reason and crowds will find a way to gather. "This proves that social networking sites have a downside," says one publication. Frankly, all this proves is that human beings have a downside! Human beings in power have a downside when they neglect smouldering discontent. Parents have a downside when they bring up children to think it's acceptable to steal and vandalize first for a laugh. People have a downside when they believe it's okay to do anything as long as their greed is satisfied. It's hard times that caused the riots. And alienation. Also possibly the way police forces behave with young people. I saw someone on television describing the riots as the voice of the unheard. It could also be that it's just outright criminal activity. Perhaps it's a whole set of reasons to blame. Not BlackBerry, for heaven's sake.As the world innovates and creates easier and easier ways of doing things, invariably it becomes a victim of its own progress. Thats' the price we pay for the species we are. How else do we even have guns?With the arson and looting spiraling out of control, there's talk of taking military action. There's also attempts to get at the young people who have been posting the shockingly informatory messages with their call to criminal action - and so they should. But get the same time it would do well to realize that technology will always be used for good - and for bad. It's time to address the real issues.Mala Bhargava is a personal technology writer and media professional. Contact her at mala@pobox.com and @malabhargava on Twitter
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According to a recent industry report from Google, the auto vertical has grown tremendously in the last two years in terms of searches and is growing faster than key vertical areas such as travel, consumer electronics and finance. Out of 100 million internet users in the country today, in 2009-10, 49 per cent of all auto related queries on Google were on vehicle shopping.Drawing examples from the report, Rajan Anandan, vice president and MD of Google India, said the online search trend for automobiles indicates the need for the marketers to be where the consumers are. For example, Ford India recently launched its new Fiesta sedan through live streaming of the event on social networking site Facebook, along with putting Fiesta contest winners' test drive videos online. "Fiesta promotion videos got 1,177,074 impressions on facebook and 81,254 twitters in the course of two weeks," says Nigel Wark, executive director of marketing, sales and service at Ford India said. The new Fiesta was launched on 14 July."We have seen over 150 per cent growth in revenues from the auto sector in 2010 and we expect the share of auto advertising spends on digital to grow significantly in the next few years," says Anandan.The report also cites that entry and mid-segment cars in the price range of (Rs 2 lakh to Rs 6 lakh) were the most searched. Diesel cars, which are big in demand, registered triple-digit growth in 2010. Search queries for diesel cars grew by 52 per cent in April to May 2011 while petrol prices were hiked by Rs 5 per litre. SUVs were the second-most searched car category, followed by luxury cars, which is the fastest growing car category. Search queries for bikes saw a more than 96 per cent increase in query volumes in 2010.The report on consumer search behaviour in the automobile sector has taken Google Search data from January 2010 to May 2011 and states that, "the auto vertical witnessed tremendous growth in online searches registering 84 per cent growth in 2010 over 2009 on Google Search.According to the report, the trend continues to show fast paced growth this year with the auto category showing a growth of 72 per cent in the first six months of 2011 over last year.The research also found that Indians are more research oriented for auto related purchases, with 65 per cent Indians using the Internet first to research before zeroing down on the vehicle of their choice. This is ahead of consumers in the US and Europe -- where only 62 per cent of users go to the web as their first point of research. Google, however, said that the base of Internet users would be larger in these markets.
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Vijay is a sub-dealer of Angel Broking at his office in Bhandup, a suburb in north-east Mumbai. He has been busy updating his clients who trade derivatives, asking them to keep deposit adequate margin money with Angel Broking to avoid penalties that could be levied because of Securities and Exchange Board of India's (Sebi) new directive. Sebi's objective appears to be to limit excessive market volatility stemming from higher than normal trading activity in derivatives on the stock exchanges.Starting Friday, stock exchanges will monitor the margins in the derivative (future & options) segment at the client level, and not just at the broker level. If the margin requirements fall short, exchanges will levy a heavy fine on the client as well as the broker. As a consequence, traders and investors may have to keep a larger than hitherto required amount of money on deposit with their brokerage firms, which could dampen the level of trading activity. And that may be exactly what the markets need.Earlier And NowHere's an example: if a client has gone short on Reliance Industries, and the price of Reliance Industries moves upwards, it creates a shortfall. Earlier margin shortfalls were monitored by the exchanges at the broker level at a threshold acceptable to the exchange, At such times, members were issued a warning. Beyond the threshold, members are charged a penalty which is a certain percentage of the shortfall amount with a cap on the same. Now the exchanges will monitor the margin shortfall at the client level and any shortfall in margin money, clients will have to pay the differential immediately. In case the client fails to provide additional margin money or even if it is short by a single rupee it will attract a penalty. For shortfall up to Rs one lakh, the exchange will levy a penalty of 0.50 per cent of the shortfall amount per day and if the shortfall is greater than Rs one lakh, it will attract a flat 1 per cent penalty on the shortfall amount per day. However if there is a shortfall for 3 consecutive days or 5 days in a month, the penalty will be increased to 5 per cent of the shortfall amount per day. In fact the exchanges are going to be strict to the extent that it can even suspend trading of a member in case it comes to know that the collections are reported wrongly. With the new norms it's unlikely that with large number of brokers and their multiple branches and large number of clients they won't default on margin collection on a daily basis. One wonders why the regulator, Sebi has been harsh on brokers who have not run into problems even on days when the market has gone into freeze. It clearly shows that the regulator perceives risk in the market and with the new norms it is trying to cut down the risk. This would certainly cut down risk as the new norms will increase cost of trading and in the current scenario with markets being volatile, clients will prefer to stay away from the market thus in the near term bringing down the volumes in the market.
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Maruti Suzuki's new Swift which is scheduled to be launched on 17 August has already received a booking number of 38,000- hardly a month after its announcement. The booking for the new Swift started on 11 July 2011.In May 2005, Maruti Suzuki India had opened bookings for its European design car Swift, well before it was introduced in the market. At the time of launch, over 9000 customers had booked the Swift without actually seeing the car. It sold 53,000 units, the same year. The waitlist continues even when the new model of the popular Swift is set to hit the Indian roads. "There is a growing demand amongst the consumer for the new Swift. And therefore we are expanding our current manufacturing capacity from 12,000 units to a progressively 17,000-18,000 units a month at our Manesar plant," says Mayank Pareek, managing executive officer at Maruti Suzuki India. At present Swift has around 25 per cent market share in premium A2 segment (between Rs. 3.9 lakh to 5.5 lakh). Some other car models present in the segment are i20, Polo, Fabia, UVA, Micra, Getz, Punto, Palio and the newly launched Liva."The new Swift will come with a new VVT engine and will be bigger with more leg room, premium interiors with new dashboard design and high end stereo. The diesel option will also continue with a fine tuning of the engine to give 6 per cent more fuel efficiency," adds a company official. So far the company sold around 6 lakh units of the old Swift in the overall segment. On an average, the model sells over 11,000 units a month and has always been in short supply despite its efforts to continuously scale up its production volume. In 2010-11, Swift registered a growth of over 21 per cent. In the last couple of months, Maruti Suzuki has been hit hard in terms of market share and production due to the strike in the Manesar plant. In May 2011, the company had a market share of around 46 per cent, but in June the share came down to 38 per cent. "We will try and meet the market demand with the help of the increase in our capacity," says an optimistic Pareek. The company is hopeful to deliver the 38,000 cars to its customers within a time span of 2-3 months.
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The August of 2011 will be remembered as one of the most turbulent and chaotic months in recent history with the western world coming under grips of social, economic and political turbulence. The nervousness around Euro and fear of contagion of bad European debts, riots and social unrest in England, the government debt gridlock in the US and the downgrading of her debt for the first time since 1941 were too much for investors around the world to bear and their flight towards safety fuelled a downward spiral in equity indices. The FTSE 100 index dropped by 14 per cent, the Dow-Jones index fell by 13.5 per cent and Germany's DAX lost more than 23 per cent in less than a month. Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, such volatilities of financial market indices over and above the normal bands, partly reflecting the sombre outlook of investors about the future prospect of global economy, have become a part of the international financial market. So, a worrisome question is: when will the sharp edges of volatilities turn smooth and a normal pattern of movements of indices within a reasonable range come back for a longer duration? To answer these questions, all one needs to do is to introspect into the chain of events that took place in recent months. The recent downgrading of US debt certainly had an impact on all of these partly due to revised estimate of risk factors and its consequent impact on market liquidity, volume of trading and reallocation of portfolio but their combined effects on the world financial indices will be minor and transitory. The downgrading of US Government debt does not even remotely resemble similar changes in rating accorded to Greece or even to Japan. It is true that that US pays $250 billion as annual interest rate to her creditors and has a debt of $14 trillion, but the overall wealth and assets of the country far exceed the total liabilities. Hence, it is not a question of capability of repayment that is a relevant concern when rating agencies downgrade the quality of debt. In fact, after a temporary selling, investors again came back to US treasuries which is, paradoxically, still treated as one of the safest sanctuaries, leading to fall in its yield. The problem lies elsewhere. Though credibility of S&P is itself in doubt but its statement "More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011'' is hardly questionable. The main structural problem facing US currently is her rigid political system which prevents the government from financing the stimulus package either via raising current taxes paid by the rich or through extra borrowing. Inability to reach a political consensus on the method of financing government expenditure is adding uncertainties to the process and speed of full recovery which is even harder this time primarily due to forces of globalisations. In all earlier downturns, recovery was relatively easier because all US had to do was to regain the lost ground (in terms of lost jobs and GDP) from herself. The emergence of China as an industrial giant has been made possible due to irreversible relocations of erstwhile US factories to that country and these job losses are permanent. At the top of it, rigidity of both democrats and republicans on agreeing upon the debt-tax deal had certainly added salt to the wounds.Second, financial markets are tumbling but this time it is very much different from 2008. Unlike then, the banks' balance sheets do not look disrespectful and they do not need a rescue programme. Banks have cash but they are not lending. The corporations are also sitting on piles of idle money but not investing. Both are holding back because of the aggregate demand uncertainty, thanks to the imposition of a forced cut in aggregate demand boosting aggregate expenditure and a temporary truce in reaching a debt deal. However discredited among academic (primarily Minnesota Chicago), regulatory and conservative political circles, the Keynesian economics still remains the best palliative in a depression stricken economy. The country has a choice between borrowing money now to fund stimulus and raise overall taxes after economy completes a recovery to pay back debt or to cut expenditure to balance its budget now. The former achieves balance in Government budget over time without hurting the economy at present and the latter balances budget immediately at the expense of recovery. Apparently, by cutting $2.4 trillion over a next decade in exchange for a marginal increase in debt ceiling, the US Government has signalled that it has opted for the latter. Not surprisingly, the forecast for growth of the country in the next quarter was revised down sharply from 1.9 per cent to 0.4 per cent and in the last quarter the economy grew at an annualized rate of 1.3 per cent which is much lower than expectations. It is also reported that in July, employers in US had added only 1,17,000 jobs and will be adding less than 100,000 net jobs in rest of the year. The news is perhaps worse in the other side of Atlantic. The Europe's structural problems lie elsewhere. In the zeal of making a unified Europe, it has made monetary union faster without fiscal reunions leading to profligacy of Governments of constituent countries which had indulged in expenditure far beyond its capacity. The debt to GDP ratio of Greece is 140 per cent; for Ireland it is 95 per cent. These countries cannot have their currency devalued because they do not have any on their own and the value of Euro depends on the average performance of disparate countries. With some in deep and bad debt, the spill over effects are felt all over. Worse, the monetary union even did not have any contingent plans for crisis of individual countries. Hence, the recovery of Europe is not in sight either. All these bad news hit the markets at the same time making investors jittery and nervous and fled from the equity market which tripped immediately. China, on the other hand, apparently looks good internally due to a projected growth rate of 9 per cent but her future is at stake as well. The country via export led growth and a manipulated exchange rate regime is running a current account surplus of $3 trillion and had invested almost $1.1 trillion in US dollars. The US, in order to reduce the burden of foreign debt and to ease her own budget constraint will certainly monetise its debt by devaluing its currency via printing money. This will partially shift the burden to her lenders in the form of both devaluation of US dollar and inflationary pressure. A weak dollar and inflation will mitigate the cost of servicing interest payment of US to her creditors. China with her huge exposure to US dollars will suffer more in the future and this will certainly heighten the tension between these two giants. At this point, China has no escape route because there is nowhere it can stash the dollars that she had accumulated almost in a fit of absent mindedness. The process of global recovery requires co-ordination of fiscal, monetary and exchange rate policies under the supervision of an undisputed leader. With her eroding manufacturing bases, persistence of high unemployment, falling value of dollar and a political gridlock within the country weakened the position of US considerably. Bad debts and fear of their contagion have gripped Europe. China has a long way to go before it can make Yuan world's hard currency. Investors across the world market thus realize that not only will the downturn be prolonged but the vacuum in the global leadership created by weakness of US will not be filled up by anyone else very soon. Hence, any crisis and its propagation across borders, big or small, in the future will not be addressed in a coherent manner. Such realisations will show up again in the form of statistics, estimates and figures of key indicators that financial markets routinely churn out. The world market will tumble again.The write is a Professor of Finance at Nottingham University and can be reached at Sanjay dot Banerji at nottingham dot ac dot uk
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