The International Monetary Fund (IMF) executive board successfully completed the fourth examination of Argentina’s economic performance within the Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) of 3 years that was sanctioned on June 20^th, last year.

This completion of the fourth review will allow officials to ship around $5.4 billion to Argentina through a loan program that will help secure the economy of Argentina.

On Friday, the IMF mentioned that it would release SDR 3.9 billion in cash to the country.

Earlier, in June 2018 IMF financing contract sanctioned around $57 billion and this new installment is part of it.

Managing Director of IMF, David Lipton in a statement mentioned, “The Argentine authorities continue to show a strong commitment to their economic policy program, meeting all applicable targets under the Fund-supported program.” Adding: “While it has taken time, these policy efforts are starting to bear fruit. Financial markets have stabilized, the fiscal and external positions are improving, and the economy is beginning a gradual recovery from last year’s recession. The Fund is strongly supportive of these important policy efforts.”

The new installment might help President of Argentina, Mauricio Macri to embattle as he aims to cool markets and increase investors trust before the first round of presidential elections, scheduled in October. Macri is looking for the second term as President.

He further mentioned the economy is starting to recover from the 2018s recession.

The government of Argentina has regularly shown its dedication towards fiscal and has overcome its fiscal targets of March and June. He stated:

“The officials have asked the IMF to support raising the end-September primary balance targets as a signal of their priority of ensuring that Argentina’s debt-to-GDP ratio is placed decisively on a downward path.”

Lipton added, the Argentine government managed to fulfill its fiscal targets, simultaneously safeguarded social programs and used fiscal tools to protect the most unprotected from the recession impacts. The officials have also asked the IMF to help in promoting social spending floor to include assistance programs meant for adults having no children and women having less income. These efforts will boost the scope of social safety and promote gender equality.

Argentina President Macri has been under immense pressure for economic failure and was forced to implement tough steps as officials faced difficulties in stabilizing the currency and check inflation to guarantee IMF funding access.

The consumer inflation in May reached at 3:1 percent and has increased by 19 percent till July 2019.  In 2018, unemployment reached more than 9 percent, and the poverty rate increased to 32 percent.

The present government of Argentina hopes inflation to end in 2019 within 40.3 percent. In May the inflation reached at 57 percent.

Moody- American based credit rating agency on Friday changed the view of Argentina from steady to negative.

Moody’s decision was according to growing uncertainty that the country would introduce policies that would balance its currency and economy, in a statement Moody mentioned.

Lipton stated more measures are required to restructure tax system, to grow competition within local markets, and in-depth measure to improve governance, and address corruption. Such amendments will have significant potential to increase the growth potential of Argentina, create more employment, decrease poverty, and enhance the living standard of all people across Argentina.

In 2019 beginning, Verizon communication, one of the largest communication technology firm was searching buyers for one of its leading internet financial news hub ‘Yahoo Finance,’ three people familiar with the news informed Reuters over this week.

However, the communication company managed to end its search recently, and refused to reveal the buyers’ names as the matter was private.

On Thursday, Verizon media firm made a statement and said,

“We do not comment on rumors and speculation. Yahoo Finance is integral to Verizon Media’s growth strategy. We continue to invest in the expansion of live programming, audio programming and the recently launched Yahoo Finance Premium product.”

Yahoo has become an integral part of the Verizon Media communication firm and also the main focus of its plans. Verizon plans to save Yahoo Finance, considered as one of the dominant set of internet assets which has been shrinking from 2000.

The two biggest brands under Verizon Media are Yahoo and AOL. Verizon Media also acquires Techcrunch and Engadget – the technologies based news websites and HuffPost-news publication, it also acquires Tumblr – a social media website.

US-based wireless service carrier never introduced a formal sales process but secretly emphasized willingness in Yahoo Finance despite restructuring its media section. Earlier the company was named as Oath and recently changed its name to Verizon Media.

Yahoo Finance was once considered as the most visited website by users across its business and finance news section in May 2019. Yahoo Finance attracted more than 100 million users across the world in 2019 and a strong competitor to its rivals. It outperformed leading financial news and business websites such as Forbes and CNBC, comScore- a media analytics firm revealed the information.

Despite the tremendous loss of value and usage of Verizon’s businesses, Yahoo Finance still holds a powerful position in the market.

The sources say, Verizon received spontaneous interest in Yahoo Finance business but failed to consider the discussions.

Earlier in 2015 and 2017, Verizon Media invested around $9.2 billion to acquire Yahoo and AOL.  Verizon Media faced difficulties with decreasing usage and revenue. Back in 201 Verizon net book value of its media assets was $4.6 billion.

Yahoo was founded in 1995 and was the beginning of the internet world. The company’s value during its highest level in the 1990s was estimated to more than $125 billion.

AOL revealed deal to purchase Time Warner by paying $165 billion in 2000 and the combined value of ALO after the announced was estimated to more than $340 billion.

It’s not clear how much Verizon was planning to get through Yahoo Finance sale. However, other publication deals might offer a standard for evaluation.

In June 2019, Yahoo Finance introduced a premium subscription to customers that will provide enhanced portfolio features, investment plans, and research report. Customers can avail this service by paying $50 every month.

An analyst, Walt Piecyk mentioned, Verizon is dedicating more towards its wireless business and less towards is media section ever since Verizon appointed new CEO in 2018, Hans Vestberg.

Piecyk stated,

“Whatever Verizon is able to sell (Yahoo Finance) for will not move the needle for the business.”

The Indian startup ecosystem used to be one of the most vibrant in Asia even a couple of years ago, but in recent months space has gone through a bit of churn due to a range of factors, starting from drying up of investment capital to changes to the tax structure. However, it seems that things are now changing for the better as startup investment major Tiger Global Management has gone in aggressively into the Indian startup ecosystem and decided on investing in a range of companies as it tries to broaden its footprint in one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The hedge fund, which has investments worldwide, is known to be extremely secretive in nature and the startups in which it has invested is still unknown.

That being said, there are certain reports which state that some of the investments are in the enterprise software solution and Fintech space. In this regard, it needs to be said that the tech industry in India has been a target for investment from globally renowned investment vehicles for quite some time, but Tiger Global Management has actually made a series of deals and that makes these developments so important.

It is also important to note that the prospects of investing in startups in China have deteriorated considerably over the course of the past months due to a slowdown in the local economy and the trade war. In such a situation, it is only prudent for investors to bet on the second biggest economy in Asia. There is also a belief among investors that the Indian economy and the investment climate have matured considerably over the past few years. As a consequence, the country has now become a far more promising investment destination for many overseas investors. The Chief Executive Officer of one of the Indian startups stated,

“Investors are excited to see India’s transition from an IT services powerhouse to a rising B2B solutions hub. Not just Tiger — other global investors too are waking up to the exciting surge of B2B startups coming out of India.”

There is no doubt the e-commerce has changed the way people shop, and in fact, changed the way some of the biggest companies in the world conduct their business. In this regard, it needs to be remembered that one company which is responsible for this revolution is Amazon. However, once an industry grows at such a pace, there are certain problems that creep into the whole thing, and one of the biggest problems for Amazon is the sale of counterfeit products on its platform. Since, at end of the day, Amazon earns from the sale of those products as well, it is their responsibility to help stop such malpractices.

In a new development, it has now emerged that the company’s anti-counterfeit tool known as Transparency, which was only ever used in some markets, is not going to be expanded substantially and will be made available in Europe, Indi, and Canada. Those are some of the biggest markets for the company, and it is not a surprise that Amazon is ready to take steps to tackle the problem head-on. The tool in question helps in serializing all products on the Amazon platform and then a QR- code type scanning needs to be performed in order to figure out whether the product is genuine or not. It is a sound step, considering the fact that there are plenty of third-party sellers who ply their trade on the platform and over the years, many of them have been caught selling counterfeit items at the price of the genuine ones.

The VP of Customer Trust and Partner Support at Amazon, Dharmesh Shah, spoke about the ways in which the availability of Transparency might help everyone. He said,

“We created Transparency to provide brands with a simple, scalable solution that empowers brands and Amazon to authenticate products within the supply chain, stopping counterfeit before it reaches a customer.”

Although the tool has not yet grown at the pace at which Amazon may have desired, the expansion into the new markets might help it a lot.

IBM, the tech giant company, has finally sealed a deal with Red Hat. IBM acquired Red Hat for $34 billion and marked as the second biggest technology deal in the world ever made by any firm in the history. The deal will eventually set IBM-US based company on the right path to fight with leading software providers in the cloud business.

IBM is a 108-year-old company. IBM stands for International Business Machines; the company was once identical with mainframe computing, has been facing problems to use cloud technologies and is attempting to provide computing and other software products and services across the internet meanwhile catching up to its competitors like Microsoft and Amazon Inc.

IBM’s CEO Ginni Rometty has risked her legacy over the deal developed to protect the tech company from irrelevancy. It is considered as a big movement.

During an interview Rometty mentioned, the deal is regarding hybrid cloud and it is the future technology, it is the final aim of the cloud. This market is worth of trillion dollars, is developing and it’s very much appealing to me that the news you listen to everyone is speaking of it too.

IBM revealed about the deal in October and on Tuesday the company mentioned in a statement that IBM provided $190 for each share of Red Hat in cash. The overall equity is valued at $34 billion.

IBM already lack in the public cloud and it is playing big on hybrid cloud, which enables firms to execute programs in parallel on their internal servers and also on large public cloud suppliers such as Amazon Web Services and Azure of Microsoft. IBM is positioning itself as a collaborator for these companies instead of a competitor.

IBM’s Cloud Revenue

IBM has noticed declining revenue for nearly 6 years from the last 7 years and this new hybrid cloud method might help IBM to increase its growth, Anurag Rana, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst mentioned.

Currently, cloud revenue of IBM has increased by 25 percent of overall revenue. In 2013 the cloud revenue accounted for 4 percent, New York-based firm, Armonk stated. Within 12 months through Q1 of 2019, cloud revenue of IBM soar over $19 billion. The acquisition of IBM will add compound annual revenue growth’s two points to IBM for 5 years, the company stated.

IBM shares were slightly altered at $139.90 in New York. The company achieved around 12 percent from the time they announced about Red Hat deal.

Concerns over acquisition

The acquisition deal was noticed as an acceptance that the existing cloud strategy of IBM was not functioning. Few experts questions if Red Hat will safeguard it. However, it is believed that Red Hat will increase profit margins of IBM and will lead IBM ahead into the hybrid cloud business. Meanwhile, the acquisition deal will not make IBM a significant player within the public cloud.

Open hybrid cloud technologies of Red Hat will be paired with sales team, industry analyst of IBM across more than 175 nations, IBM mentioned. Both the groups will able to develop a ‘next-generation hybrid multi-cloud platform,’ that relies on open source technologies, for example, Linus and Kubernetes.  The new hybrid platform will enable tech companies to deploy and control their applications and data over on-site, on private and numerous public clouds.

Amit Daryanani, Evercore ISI expert in a statement informed investor on Tuesday,

“From a strategic point of view, we think the acquisition will position IBM as a formidable player in the hybrid IT market.”