Business risk: Singapore ranks highest
Bureaucracy and corruption are far bigger threats to business than terrorism or armed conflict, a risk analysis from The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) said yesterday. Singapore emerged with the best overall business operations risk rating among 60 countries, followed by Germany, the US and Hong Kong. The analysis by RiskWire, a new EIU service, assigned the city-state an overall risk score of nine on a scale from zero, indicating the least risky, to 100, most risky. Only Singapore, Germany at 18, the US at 19 and Hong Kong at 20 received A grades. The study did not include any Western European country except Germany. Chile, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea got B grades, while Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines got C grades.
Patents: `Zyklon' application dropped
A company jointly owned by German industry stalwarts Siemens AG and Robert Bosch said on Thursday that it had abandoned plans to register the trademark "Zyklon" in the US because of the name's association with Nazi gas chambers. The company, Bosch Siemens Hausgeraete GmbH (BSH), which had hoped to use the trademark on household products including gas ovens, issued an apology, saying it had not meant to cause offence with the name. BSH said it had withdrawn two applications filed with the US Patent & Trademark office last year. Zyklon B was employed as a poisonous gas by the Nazis to murder millions of people in extermination camps.
Lending: Citigroup nears settlement
Citigroup Inc is close to an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission to pay about US$200 million to settle allegations of "predatory lending" to consumers, The Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition yesterday, citing people familiar with the matter. The talks could still fall apart -- settlement talks between the two have failed before -- but both sides believe an agreement could be announced this month, the newspaper reported. If Citigroup, the largest US financial-services company, ultimately pays around US$200 million, it would be the largest consumer-protection settlement with the FTC and by far the biggest amount ever paid in a predatory-lending case, according to the article. Predatory lending is generally viewed as mortgage lending that unfairly takes advantage of consumers through abusive practices such as deceptive marketing or unnecessary refinancings to generate fees, according to the article.
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