ICICI Bank, the biggest private lender of India, is open to buying loan portfolios of European banks, its chief executive said.

“The opportunity to pick up some good assets at good pricing clearly exists. So, that’s what we are looking at all the time and exercising it whenever we see the right opportunity,” Chanda Kochhar told the Reuters India Investment Summit on Wednesday.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

European banks are struggling to raise their capital cushions to become more resilient against future shocks, which they can do by increasing equity they hold or by shrinking their asset base.

The European Banking Authority has said banks need more than 100 billion euros of new capital, but the International Monetary Fund warned in September EU banks faced possible losses of 300 billion euros as a result of sovereign and interbank lending risks.

Kochhar, who was ranked fifth in Fortune’s 50 most powerful women in business, ruled out the acquisition of any European bank.

“We have picked up some which are India-related assets, but I would say not very large number, because given the fact that on the other hand the ability to raise funds currently has also become more expensive,” she said.

Online shoppers did not wait around till Cyber Monday to start their holiday shopping.

U.S. consumers spent 20 percent more online on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, this year than last, while online sales jumped 39 percent on Thanksgiving Day, according to IBM Corp. research unit Coremetrics.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

Coremetrics measures sales data from more than 500 online retailers, including half of the top 50. It doesn’t reveal its partners or specific dollar figures.

Both Coremetrics and e-commerce payment site PayPal, a united of eBay Inc., said shopping by mobile phone is increasingly substantially this year. PayPal said it saw five times more mobile payments worldwide this Thanksgiving, compared with last year.

And Coremetrics said about 17 percent of Black Friday visitors to retail websites came via mobile devices, up from about 5 percent a year ago.

“People keep spending money online, so that’s a great indicator that the sites are running,” John Squire, an executive with IBM’s e-commerce marketing unit, said.

The software services companies of India are set to report strong revenue growth when they kick off their quarterly earnings next week but orders may get crimped down by a slowing U.S. economy and the debt crisis in Europe.

A weak rupee may help boost margins of market leaders Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys, with the sluggish global economy poses a risk to pricing and new orders.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

Most of the clients of the companies, which manage computer networks and maintain IT operations for several Fortune 500 firms, usually set their annual budget for the next year by November.

Infosys, India’s No.2 software-services firm, will kick off earnings on Wednesday and some analysts expect the company will cut its 2011/12 dollar revenue growth target as demand tapers.

In April-June, the company’s new client additions were the lowest in at least four years and it had warned in July that it faced a volatile global economy that could slow client spending.

“We expect the results to be decent, but the focus will be on their guidance to get a sense of whether clients are postponing spends or expecting price cuts,” said Mohit Mirchandani, head of equity at Religare Portfolio Management, which holds IT stocks in its portfolio of around $250 million.

Stocks plunged on Thursday to extend a selloff to four days as the failure of policymakers to arrest global economic stagnation sent markets spiraling downward.

The heavy volume of the day’s plunge suggested that investors are selling in anticipation of more losses. The CBOE volatility index, considered as the “fear gauge” of the Wall Street, jumped 12 percent as investors protected against more losses to come.

From Reuters.com:

Weak data from China followed an unsettling outlook about the U.S. economy from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday in stoking recession fears. The previous session’s losses were sparked after the Fed said it saw “significant downside risks” facing the economy.

China’s once-booming manufacturing sector contracted for a third consecutive month, while the euro zone’s dominant service sector shrank in September for the first time in two years.

Those searching for positive market signs could point to the benchmark S&P 500 index holding above 1,120, seen as a key technical support level which could trigger more selling if broken.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 391.01 points, or 3.51 percent, to 10,733.83. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 37.20 points, or 3.19 percent, to 1,129.56. The Nasdaq Composite Index slid 82.52 points, or 3.25 percent, to 2,455.67.

If you are designing a new website or thinking about switching to a new web hosting company, the first thing that would probably come to your mind is price. After all, you want to get the most for what you will be spending like every business owner and individual on the web.

The first thing that you need to highlight upon, while choosing the best webhosting company, is how much disk space and how much bandwidth you need to house your website.

If you are unsure about these factors, it is best to go for a hosting company that offers unlimited plans. However, it is very important for you to note that the cheapest webhosting plans in the towns are not always the best plans. It is good for you to consider and select a web hosting company that has been a reputed name when it comes to providing both affordability and a 99.9% uptime.

Following such an informed approach would help your business site offer premium-quality products, content, or something else of value to potential and existing customers searching on the internet for what you have to offer in the best possible way. In addition to that, it is very important for you to read the fine print of affordable web hosting plans since cheap web hosting plans may come with hidden fees that are not apparent in the first place.

We hope that this information on affordable web hosting and how to choose the best webhosting provider would have been useful to you in more than just a way.

Porn websites were among the big winners after Google made a change to its page ranking algorithm.

This finding was revealed by German Analytics Company Searchmetrics.com, compiling lists of the top 100 losers and top 100 winners of the change in Google’s algorithm.

From Newswire.xbiz.com:

KeezMovies.com,YouJizz.com, PerfectGirls.net and SitesLike.com were among the porn winners with the update, known as Panda. Even file sharing site FilesTube.com was in the top 100.

Panda lowers the ranking of sites with aggressive advertising and recycled content.

Searchmetrics says that it has performed an analysis of 8 million different keywords in the U.K. in the past 10 months that shows the impact of the recent update.

The list of losers and winners was calculated using its Organic Performance Index on a week-on-week basis, according to a keyword’s search volume, position and statistical value of the traffic distribution.

These sites may have won a favor with Google but many big names including Microsoft-owned comparison site Ciao have brought anti-trust complaints against Google.

The level of confidence among U.S. small businesses rose in May to the highest since September 2008. A private survey found that this confidence was because executives became more upbeat about the economy six months from now.

From Bloomberg.com:

The measure is still lower than levels reached in past economic rebounds, indicating the recovery will take time to gain strength. The report shows that while smaller firms are beginning to benefit from the expansion, they’re trailing larger companies such as General Electric Co.

“Small businesses have lagged the jobs recovery and the economic recovery and are likely to do so,” said John Herrmann, senior macro strategist at State Street Global Markets in Boston. “We’re seeing the slightest of indications that business hiring and risk-taking in the form of expansion and business formations may be taking place.”

The small-business optimism gauge has recovered more slowly than measures such as the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index that capture activity among companies of all sizes. GE Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt said May 24 that the U.S. economy is “very good and improving.”

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, 99 percent of all employers in the United States are represented by small businesses.

When it comes to reaping and optimizing the benefits of online marketing, there is nothing more effective and rewarding than directory submissions.

With a few clicks, you can promote products and services of your business before millions of potential customers who trust the directories as reliable sources of guidance about product vendors, service providers, and information.

From Buy-expo.com:

Web directory submissions are one of the easiest ways to promote a site. The fact that most of the web directories are human edited and follows some established standards before offering one-link relationships to websites is a great impetus, to say the least.

Moreover, a place on a web directory (eminent, of course) is regarded by the search engine spiders as a good proof about credibility, relevance, and uniqueness of the site in question. This simply because that an online business marketing its presence on directories such as Google Directory and Yahoo! Directory is bound to get more “respect and rewards” in the form of qualified leads, more sales, and more site visitors than its counterparts not having a presence on these directories.

In this regard, free web directories can prove to useful options as they allow site managers and submitters to have a close feel of the directory submission norms before putting their presence on the paid directory maps. Moreover, these web directories follow almost the same standards as the paid directories and therefore a place on them is equally “respected and rewarded” by the search engine spiders. An online business can expect to drive traffic to its website and explore more opportunities by marking its presence on the map of online web directories.

In short, opting for directory submissions can be one of the best decisions you will be taking to promote the cause of your business in the short as well as the long run.

If you are a business owner or online marketer ready to create a marketing plan, this blog will surely be helping you in endless ways. Let us read about do’s and don’ts of creating a marketing plan.

Before you take the pen in your hand or about to type the first word with the keyboard, try to think from the perspective of your targeted audience. Most businesses fail because they try imposing their own set of rules on the customers when they should have been devoting quality time understanding the needs and preferences of their potential customers. Do not repeat this mistake and remember that your business can grow only when the customers are happy, you will become happy on seeing them happy and satisfied with your products and services.

Do not try emulate your competitors, try something unique. You can attain success only when customers find a reason valid enough to do business with you and trying to be just like the competitor is surely not the way. Try to find strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and make sure that you have more strong points and less weak points that they have.

Once you have analyzed the customers and competition, go online and spend some time on keyword research. For this, you can seek the services of an Internet marketing agency. Now make use of online as well as offline marketing tools and techniques such as online ads, articles, blogs, newsletters, email marketing, and radio advertising. Concentrate on your targeted market (local, state, national, or international) rather than going for all and achieving nothing. Things may take time but results will come for sure.

Every business emphasizing upon growing sales, improving customer satisfaction, and maximizing profits needs to remember that success in the business world is elusive to only those businesses that respect, care, and serve customers and there is nothing but failure before businesses that make mockery of business ethics for attaining short-term gains. In this blog, we will be reading about easy yet effective ways to create trust for marketing efforts.

No modern day business can expect to survive unless it has a clear focus to serve its customers in the best and most satisfying manner, irrespective of what happens in the market. This means that a business needs to demonstrate that it has the ability as well as the dedication to provide quality products and services at the lowest possible costs without compromising on customer satisfaction. By doing this, a business helps its customers trust it and gain a foothold in psyches of customers – the ONLY way leading to success in the world of business and marketing.

In order to do so, a business must be very clear and careful about making promises before the customers. Every promise made must be fulfilled at all costs as a single incident of “broken promise” or “false information” may mean loss of business more than perceived. Remember, a business is worth its goodwill. If you can fulfill all promises without any fail, you will gain else failure may haunt you for long.

Never indulge in selling email list of customers or providing sub-standard products and services. In addition to that, care for your customers and their needs before-sale as well as after-sale. A business ignoring after-sale services cannot expect referrals, which are next to none when it comes to attracting more customers.

Follow these tips in order to create trust for marketing efforts and see the world changing, more than you expected and for the good.