Replies to post #3547 on The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[DewDiligence]

IBM opens R&D lab in Nairobi, Kenya:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/i-b-m-adds-africa-to-its-growing-global-research-network
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-research-lab-open-kenya-110000305.html

[DewDiligence]

IBM/CSCO/INTC/GOOG/AAPL/MSFT/ORCL/QCOM/etc—The Global Demographic Tailwind has special challenges in China for large technology companies, who do a lot of their business in China with the government and large state-controlled companies; (disclosure: I don’t own any companies in the above list):

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/world/asia/american-businesses-in-china-feel-heat-of-a-cyberdispute.html

The published leaks from Edward J. Snowden…in the summer of 2013 undercut the Obama administration’s criticisms of China and made Chinese officials even warier of American technology. Chinese news reports talked about the dangers of China being “infiltrated” through technology from big American companies nicknamed the “eight guardian warriors” — Cisco, IBM, Google, Qualcomm, Intel, Apple, Oracle and Microsoft.

Cisco’s sales in China have dropped sharply. And the national procurement office recently barred government offices from using Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system.

… Central government agencies, including the People’s Bank of China and the Finance Ministry, are reviewing the use of IBM servers and considering whether to expand the use of Chinese-made servers, Bloomberg News reported last week.

[DewDiligence]

JCI, TYC agree to tax-inversion merger:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/johnson-controls-tyco-to-merge-in-inversion-deal-1453724828

The companies said the merged entity would save at least $150 million a year on taxes and at least $500 million in costs over the first three years after the completion of the deal.

Under the deal, Johnson Controls shareholders will receive one share of the combined company or cash equal to $34.88 a share, a weighted average of the price of Johnson Controls’ shares over the past five trading days.