Swiss Bank Corporation

Swiss Bank Corporation (SBC) (German: Schweizerischer Bankverein (SBV), French:Societe de Banque Swiss(SBS), Italian:Societa di Banca Svizzera) was a large intergrated financial services company located in Switzerland. Prior to its merger, the bank was the 3^rd largest in Switzerland with over 300 billion CHF of assets and 11.7 billion CHF of equity.

Throughout the 1990s, SBC engaged in large growth initiative, shifting its focus from traditional commercial banking into investment banking in an effort to match its larger Swiss rival credit issue. As part of this strategy, SBC acquired US based investment bank Dillion Read & Co. as well as London based merchant bank S.G.Warburg in the mid 1990s. SBC also acquired Chicago based Brinson Partners and O’Connor & Associates. These acquisitions formed the basis for a global investment banking business.

In 1998, SBC merged with Union Bank of Switzerland to form UBS, the largest bank in Europe and second largest bank in the world. The Company’s logo, which featured three keys, symbolizing “confidence, security, and discretion”, was adopted by UBS after the 1988 merger. Although the combination of two banks was billed as the merger of equals, it quickly became evident that from a management perspective, it was SBC that was buying UBS as nearly 80% top management positions were filled by legacy Swiss bank professionals. Today, what was SBC forms the core of many of UBS’s businesses, particularly UBS Investment Bank.

History:

Swiss Bank Corporation traces its history to 1854. In that year, six private banking firms in Basel, Switzerland, pooled their resources to form the Bankverein, a consortium that acted as an underwriting for its member banks. Among the original member banks were Bischoff zu St Alban, Ehinger & Cie; J.Merian Forcart, Passavant & Cie; J.Riggenbach and Von Speyr & Cie. The establishment of joint stock banks in swirzerland such as Swiss Bank’s earliest predecessors (often structured as a Swiss Verein) was driven by the industrialization of the country and the construction of railroads in the mid 19^th century.

Academy Award informally known as Oscars

Academy Award (Oscar)

An Academy Award statuette

The Academy Award (informally know as the Oscar) is an accolade by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors and writers. The formal ceremony at which the awards are presented is one of the most prominent award ceremonies in the world and is televised live in more than 200 countries annually. It is also the oldest award ceremony in the media; its equivalent, The Grammy Awards (For music), Emmy Awards (For television), and Tony Awards (For Theatre) are modeled after the academy. The AMPAS itself was conceived by Metro Goldwyn Mayer studio boss Louis B Mayer.

The 1^st Academy Awards ceremony was held May 16, 1929, at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of the 1927-1928 film seasons. It was hosted by actor Douglas Fairbanks and director William C de Mille. The 82^nd Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best in film for 2009, was held on March 7, 2010 at the Kodak theatre in Hollywood with actors Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin hosting the ceremony.

History:

The first awards were presented on May 16, 1929 at a private brunch at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post Awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel. The cost of guest tickets for that night’s ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other personalities of the filmmaking industry of the time for their works during the 1927-28 periods.

The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performance in The Last Command and the Way of All Flesh. He had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give the prize earlier; this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. The honored professionals were awarded for all the work done in certain category for the qualifying period; for example, Emil Jannings received the award for two movies in which he started during that period. Since the fourth ceremony, the system changed, and the Professionals were honored for a specific performance in a single film. As of the 82^nd Academy ceremony held in 2010, a total of 2,789 Oscars have been given for 1.825 awards. A total of 302 actors have won Oscars in competitive acting categories or been awarded Honorary or Juvenile Awards.

At the 29^th ceremony, held on March 27, 1957, the Best Foreign Language Film category was introduced; until then, foreign language were honored with the Special Achievement Award.

Shivaji The Great

CHHATRAPATI SHIVAJI BHOSLE

Shivaji Bhosle (19 february 1630 – 3 april 1680) with the royal title Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj was a Marathi King from the Bhosle dynasty who founded the Mraratha Empire. Shivaji led a resistance to free the Marathas from Sultanate of Bijapur, and establish the rule of the Hindus (“Hindavi Swarajya”). He created an independent Maratha kingdom with Raigad as its capital and fought against the Mugals to defend his kingdom successfully. He was crowned Chhatrapati of the Maratha kingdom in 1674.

He achieved the re establishment of Maratha rule on their homeland after being ruled and dominated by various Muslim dynasties for few hundred years. He established a competent and progressive civil rule with the help of well regulated and disciplined military and well structured administrative organizations. The prevalent practices of treating women as war booty, destruction of religious monuments, slavery and forceful religious conversions were firmly opposed under his administration. Shivaji was a religious Hindu, and showed respect toward other religions. He also innovated rules of military engagement of that era. He pioneered “Shiva Sutra” or Ganimi Kava (guerrilla tactics), which leveraged strategic factors like demographics, speed, surprise and focused attack to defeat his bigger and more powerful enemies.

Early life of Shivaji:

Shivaji was born in the hill fort of Shivneri near the city of junnar. While Jijabai was pregnant, she had prayed the local diety “Shivaji” for the good of her expected child. Shivaji was named after his local deity.

Shivaji’s father Sahaji Bhosale was the chieftain of a hardy band of warrior class mercenaries that served the Deccan Sultanates. His mother was Jijabai, the daughter of Lakhujirao Jadhav of Sindkhed. During the period of Shivaji’s birth, the power in Deccan was shared by Sultanates-Bijapur, Ahmednagar and Golconda. Sahaji kept changing loyalty between the Nizamshahi of Ahmadnagar, Adil shah of bijapur and the Mugals, but always kept his jagir(fiefdom) at pune and his small army with him . Gomaji Naik Pansambal, a trusted master of state craft, was deputed by Lakhuji Yadavrao(Jadhav) to look after Jijabai. He remained Jijabai and Shivaji throughout his life. He also was a master of sword. But most importantly, he advised Shivaji in making certain crucial decisions which had far reaching effects on the character of the Maratha empire.

Marathi Language:

Chhatrapati Shivaji made preparations for effective use of Marathi language his mother tongue. He started Rajvyavharkosh(translation: dictionary for administration of Kingdom) and Encyclopedia of Marathi words.

Forts of shivaji:

Shivaji constructed a chain of 300 or more forts running over a thousand kilometers across the rugged Western Ghats. Each were placed under three officiers of equal status lest a single traitor be bribed/tempet to deliver it to the enemy. The officers (Sabnis, Havladar, Sarnobhat) acted jointly and provided mutual checks balance. Shivaji had control of 360 forts when he died.



Google

Google

Google Inc. is a multinational public corporation invested in internet search, cloud computing, and advertising, technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of internet based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising, through its ad words program. The company was founded by LARRY PAGE and SERGEY BIN often dubbed the “Google incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998, and its initial public offering followed on August 19.2004. The company’s stated mission from the outset “to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful”, and the company’s unofficial slogan coined by Google PAUL BUCHHEIT is “Don’t be evil”. In 2006, the company moved to their current headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Google runs over one million servers in data centers around the world, and processes over one billion search requests and about twenty four petabytes of user generated data every day. Google’s rapid growth since its incorporation has trigged a chain of products, acquisitions and partnerships beyond the company’s core search engine. The company offers online productivity software, such as its Gmail email software, and social networking tools, including orkut and more recently Google Buzz. Google’s products extend to the desktop as and editing software and the Google talk instant messaging application. Notably, Google leads the development of the Android mobile phone operating system, used on a number of phones such as the Nexus One and Motorola Droid. Alexa lists the main U.S. forced google.com site as the internet’s most visited website, and numerous international Google sites (google.co.in, google.co.uk etc) are in the top hundred, as are several other Google owned sites such as YouTube, Blogger and Orkut. Google is also BrandZ’s most powerful brand in the world. The dominant market position of Google’s services has led to critism of the company over issues including privacy, copyright and censorship.

History:

Google’s original homepage had a simple design since its founders were not expected in HTML, the language for designing web pages.

Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California.

While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships between websites. They called this new technology PageRank , where a website’s relevance was determined by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site.

A small search engine called “Rankdex” from IDD Information services designed by Robin Li was, since 1996, already exploring a similar strategy for site scoring and page ranking. The technology in RankDex would be patented and used later when Li founded Baidu in China.

Page Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine “BackRub”, because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of the site.

Eventually, they changed the mane Google, originating from a misspelling of the word “GOOGOL”, the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was meant to signify the amount of information the search engine was to handle. Originally, Google ran under the Stanford University website, with the domain google.stanford.edu.

The domain name for the Google was registered on September 15, 1997 and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. It was based in a friend’s (Susan Wojcicki) garage in Menlo Park. California. Craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD student at Stanford was hired as the first employee.