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($1 = 3.0115 Malaysian ringgit)

Mobile computing initiatives are changing the ways that teachers teach and students learn. Collaborative, interactive learning: As schools seek to improve student engagement, they are emphasizing one-to one learning experiences, in which each student uses a laptop computer for accessing multimedia content and completing lessons. Mobility gives schools flexibility in how classroom space, teachers, and learning resources are used.

Meru completely changes how schools view and use wireless. With Meru, schools can keep students, teachers, and administrators continuously connected in the classroom, across the school campus, and between schools in a system or district. Schools are able to transparently enhance the students learning experience with seamless access rich multimedia content, online books, and virtual tours to another part of the world. Easy to deploy and simple to manage, schools are able to deliver an incomparable user experience and a lower total cost of ownership than other wireless LANs.

This Meru Networks EMEA white paper looks at:

• Symptoms of network problems

• Supporting partner solutions

* Morgan Stanley Q1 commodity revenues fall 77 pct

* Total commodity revenues on Wall Street down 54
pct-Coalition

By David Sheppard and Barani Krishnan

NEW YORK, May 15 (Reuters) – Global investment banks
suffered another bruising decline in commodity trading in the
first three months of this year, new reports showed on
Wednesday, with Morgan Stanley’s revenues collapsing to a
quarter of what they were a year ago.

While industry heavyweights Goldman Sachs and
JPMorgan reported slightly higher revenues year-on-year
in detailed quarterly filings made with the SEC in the past
week, the overall sector continues to be squeezed by increased
regulation, tepid markets, and low levels of client activity.

Combined commodities revenues at the 10 largest banks fell
54 percent in the first three months of 2013 to just $1.2
billion, according to a report by Coalition, a London-based
analytics firm that surveys sector performance at investment
banks.

“The biggest declines came in energy, where we’ve seen lower
revenues from oil trading and partial exits from trading
European gas and power for some banks,” Coalition said.

“We also saw far lower revenues from institutional investors
as they continue to shift out of the asset class.”

The dramatic reversal of fortunes for commodity trading on
Wall Street has been well documented, with Goldman Sachs,
JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley all reporting double-digit
percentage declines in revenues for oil, grains and copper
trading last year.

The latest quarterly data indicates the worst may not be
over.

Coalition, which does not break out individual bank results
in its quarterly report, said capital constraints and regulatory
challenges were forcing some banks to re-evaluate the scope and
scale of their commitment to parts of the commodities business.

Morgan Stanley, which has looked at a possible sale or
restructuring of its commodity arm, said in its first quarter
earnings call last month that commodity revenues had picked up
from the fourth quarter, the bank’s worst in commodities in 18
years, but that “cyclical headwinds” continued to weigh.

In its quarterly filing with the SEC last week, Morgan
Stanley provided the first hard numbers on its performance: a 77
percent drop in revenues versus the first quarter of 2012,
partly as a result of a drop in the number of structured deals
the bank did for clients.

The bank declined to comment on the figures on Wednesday.

JPMorgan reported commodity revenues from ‘principal
transactions’ of $688 million in the first three months, up from
$627 million in the same period last year.

Goldman Sachs revenues edged up to $493 million from $471
million in the same period of 2012, according to its quarterly
SEC filing. Goldman says its results may differ as they do not
include the effect of hedging interest rate and foreign exchange
moves on its commodities business.

Tricumen, a UK-based markets intelligence firm, said it
estimated a less dramatic decline among the top players, pegging
the first quarter drop at 15 percent to $2.3 billion among the
13 biggest banks in commodities.

Seb Walker, a managing partner at Tricumen, said that while
commodity revenues were down overall, banks had seen growth in
Asia-Pacific, and some were still “selectively investing” in
parts of the sector where they saw opportunities.

“Out in Asia, the focus is increasingly shifting to oil from
metals,” Walker said.

“In the United States, there’s been some positive growth in
oil because of the opportunities created by the U.S. shale
boom.”

U.S. investment banks have scaled back market exposures
since the Dodd-Frank financial reform law passed in 2010 to
limit excessive risk-taking by U.S. financial institutions.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley also face pressure from the
Federal Reserve over their ownership of physical commodity
assets after their conversion to financial holding companies in
2008.

* CVC has until 1600 GMT Tuesday to decide on firm bid

* Company asked that CVC be given an extension

By Anjuli Davies and Kylie MacLellan

LONDON, May 13 (Reuters) – Private equity firm CVC Capital
Partners has been given an extra 24 hours to commit to a firm
bid for online gambling company Betfair, in what would
be the biggest deal taking a British listed company private in
more than a year.

The extension, which required consent from Betfair’s board
as well as Britain’s Takeover Panel, signals the two sides are
working together on a mutually acceptable offer, instead of CVC
pursuing a hostile bid.

“They are not ready to part but they have not reached an
agreement yet,” a person familiar with the matter said.

Betfair stock, which was trading at 700 pence before CVC
said on April 15 it was considering a bid, closed on Monday at
895 pence. CVC had previously been given 28 days to either make
an offer, walk away or extend the deadline.

They now have until 1600 GMT on Tuesday, Betfair said in a
statement, an unusually short extension.

“By this time either the co-offerors will announce that they
do not intend to make an offer for Betfair or the company will
seek a further extension of the deadline,” Betfair said in a
statement.

On April 22, Betfair rejected a preliminary offer of 880
pence per share from CVC, saying the price was too low and had
too many strings attached.

Betfair’s technology allows gamblers to bet online against
one another at their own prices. It is also offering more
conventional sports betting with odds set centrally to compete
with rivals in an expanding yet highly competitive sector.

Deals in which a publicly listed company is taken over by a
private entity, typically a private equity fund, helped drive a
boom in private equity dealmaking in 2006-2007.

They accounted for around half of private equity-backed
mergers and acquisitions in those years, according to Thomson
Reuters data, but that fell to just 12 percent of the total last
year.

The decline was partly a result of the financial crisis,
which made it harder to find financing for such deals. Falling
valuations also made it less appealing for company owners to
sell.

Since Betfair listed in 2010, the stock has tumbled from its
debut price of 13 pounds. Analysts said the company had failed
to clearly identify whether it was a technology or gambling
business.

Under Chief Executive Breon Corcoran, who joined from Irish
bookmaker Paddy Power last year, Betfair has withdrawn from
markets such as Greece and Germany, where regulations are not
clear cut or tax rates are punitive, and has cut 500 jobs to
help save 30 million pounds ($46.6 million) in costs.

Faced with the takeover approach, Betfair raised its profit
forecast and cost savings targets earlier this month.

CVC, which is the largest shareholder in Formula One motor
racing, believes it could turn Betfair around more quickly by
taking it private.

CVC often leaves management in place at companies it has
acquired. It has joined forces with Richard Koch and Antony
Ball, who own 6.5 percent of Betfair.

* Government wants to boost competition, lower prices

* Social protests puts big players on the spot

By Maayan Lubell

JERUSALEM, May 10 (Reuters) – He was once celebrated for his
vast fortune and daring deals, but when Israeli tycoon Nochi
Dankner was about to catch a break from the bank on his massive
debts, public outrage kicked in.

Under a cascade of negative media attention, Bank Leumi
, Israel’s second largest bank, abruptly cancelled its
plans to forego 150 million shekels ($42 million) – a third of
the debt owed by Dankner’s Ganden Investments.

After first defending the deal as the best it was likely to
get from Dankner, Leumi suddenly announced it had revoked the
offer because it concluded that another businessman was going to
call off an investment in Dankner’s company.

Leumi’s announcement included a nod to public opinion: CEO
Rakefet Russak-Aminoach “stressed that the bank is responsive to
the hearts of the public and respects them,” it said.

The reversal was widely perceived as a sign of change in
Israel, where heat is still on from a summer of mass street
protests two years ago against the high cost of living.

In an election last January, middle-class dissatisfaction
helped to propel political newcomers promoting economic and
social reform to key positions in Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s new coalition government.

The shift in tone and voter sentiment is dramatic in a
country with one of the highest concentrations of corporate
power in the developed world and a skyline of towers in business
capital Tel Aviv housing the ultra-rich.

Stung by an unexpectedly weak showing for his party in the
ballot, Netanyahu is now vowing to crack down on “monopolies and
cartels that prevent competition and thwart price-lowering”.

“It seems things are going to change,” said Daniel Doron
head of the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress. “For
the first time in years, Israelis voted on economic issues, not
security and there are now people who want to make changes.”

FACEBOOK RAGE

Like the protests that drew crowds of hundreds of thousands
two years ago, the campaign against Dankner’s debt write-off by
Bank Leumi gathered pace on the Internet after the Israeli media
caught wind of the deal. Thousands joined a “Boycott Bank Leumi”
Facebook page.

The Bank of Israel, the central bank, now says it plans to
investigate the cancelled deal.

A spokeswoman for Leumi said that, since cancelling
Dankner’s debt break last month, the bank had not entered into
new negotiations with him and was “continuing all options to
collect the debt”.

Dankner’s firm Ganden said debt restructuring deals like the
one it was planning with Leumi have always been a normal part of
business in Israel and other Western countries. The companies
that are part of Dankner’s IDB group have historically paid all
their debts on time and are still working on a bank deal, said a
spokeswoman.

“We are convinced we can also reach a fair and agreed
arrangement with the banks,” she said.

Dankner’s IDB conglomerate is one of 10 large business
groups that control about 30 percent of the market value of
public companies in Israel.

Such conglomerates make use of a “pyramid” corporate
structure, using tiers of holding companies to allow a powerful
shareholder to hold sway over a business empire while actually
owning only a fraction of equity in the companies it controls.

In Dankner’s case, Ganden is a private company through which
he controls IDB Holding Corp, which in turn controls
Israel’s largest supermarket chain Super-Sol, Clal
Insurance and leading mobile phone operator Cellcom
.

IDB declined to comment on its corporate structure.

A businessman at the top of a pyramid can control a company
at the bottom with less than 10 percent of the capital.

Critics say such business structures impede competition,
keep prices high and stunt economic growth. By controlling
financial assets, pyramids can give their businesses access to
easy credit, creating risk across the financial system.

Israel is expected to pass a law this year constricting the
power of pyramids. Holding companies will have to limit how many
tiers of subsidiaries they have. Conglomerates will have to
choose between owning major financial or non-financial concerns.

The law could hurt tycoons, said Richard Gussow, senior
analyst at DS Securities: “They will have to restructure, sell
companies, and since everyone knows they are going to sell, they
might not get the full value for them,” Gussow said.

DEBT

Big debtors account for an increasing portion of the
corporate bond market. At the end of 2012, 91 percent of
outstanding debt in Israel’s corporate bond market was issued by
companies with more than 500 million shekels of debt, up from
75.5 percent in 2004, according to the central bank.

Israel’s Security Authority said that in 2012 about 28
corporations opened negotiations for debt rescheduling with
bondholders and that this was “worrying”.

Israeli media say the total owed by Danker’s firms is 9
billion shekels ($2.5 billion).

IDB Development, one unit of IDB Holding, owes nearly 6
billion shekels. Earlier this month, an Israeli court rejected
bondholders’ demands to hand them control of IDB Development as
part of a debt settlement plan. The court appointed outside
observers to monitor IDB’s conduct.

“This court has never seen such an extreme case in which
financial institutions gave credit at such sums, with no
collateral and without providing any explanation,” Judge Eitan
Orenstein said.

Outside the courtroom Dankner told reporters that IDB
Development had enough assets to pay its creditors.

“The company has wonderful assets, some of the best in
Israel’s market, worth a lot of money, worth billions, and if
the company wants to it can realize those assets,” he said.

Many of the IDB companies have already been hit by slowing
economic growth and accelerated competition. Shares in IDB
Holding have fallen more than 16 percent so far in 2013 after
plunging 74 percent in 2012.

A subsidiary of IDB partnered with Israeli tycoon Yitzhak
Tshuva’s Elad Group to invest $1.2 billion in land in Las Vegas.
Their plans to build a casino, just before the U.S. real estate
market crashed, created heavy losses for the company.

SHIFT

Netanyahu has long been a champion of free enterprise in a
Jewish state founded on socialist roots. He promised to revamp
the economy in his previous term in office, but little changed.

Morris Dorfman, head of the National Economics Council which
advises the prime minister on economic matters, said the shift
in public mood now made more aggressive change possible:
“Reforms are easier (now) because of public opinion.”

A draft budget law, set to be approved by the cabinet on
Monday, includes measures that would cut red tape to increase
food imports and limit dominant food retailers opening new shops
– moves aimed at boosting competition and lowering prices.

“These reforms will be on land, sea and air, in every
field,” Netanyahu said on April 28.

Protests over the economy helped make neophyte politicians
Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett the stars of the last election.
Lapid is now finance minister and Bennett is economy minister,
the most important allies in Netanyahu’s coalition. Bennett
heads a newly-announced ministerial committee tasked with
breaking down monopolies.

Other politicians have been drawn into the public chorus of
anger over Dankner’s proposed Bank Leumi deal.

“Regular people face monstrous interest rates and aren’t
eligible for the same convenient terms of the tycoons, who have
set up pyramids. They end up asking for debt arrangements,
despite their serial failures, and keep getting credit,” said
Zehava Galon, head of Israel’s leftist Meretz party.

Matan Hodorov, senior economic correspondent for Israel’s
Channel 10 television, said the attention being given to
economic affairs was transforming public discourse.

“It’s an astounding change. Economic matters that were once
deemed too complicated for the public are now, following the
(2011) social protest, headline news. People now want to know
what powers are at play, who makes the moves,” Hodorov said.

ZHENGZHOU/CHONGQING, China (Reuters) – Wearing a floral brocade cardigan and toting a Huawei smartphone, Guo Qian, 22, gushes over her latest purchases on Taobao, China’s largest e-commerce platform. As an administrative worker, Guo makes only 3,000 yuan a month and spends most of it.

Not only does she spend nearly all of her own money, Guo also fritters away most of her father’s 1,000 yuan monthly pension on trinkets and clothes on Taobao. “Sometimes I feel guilty using his money, so I buy him some clothes.”

Guo, a Zhengzhou native, already owns an apartment – her parents helped finance the purchase last year – and is on the upward climb to join China’s burgeoning middle class.

As Beijing tries to engineer a crucial macroeconomic shift– toward more consumption and less investment, the crucial “rebalancing” China’s new leadership is committed to, and the rest of the world is counting on — it is young consumers like Guo Qian who may hold the key to the transition.

Raised in an era of unprecedented prosperity, Guo, like many other members of what is known as the `post-80s’ generation (anyone born after 1980) has a very different answer than her parents when it comes to a central economic question: whether to spend the money she has, or save it?

“I don’t save at all,” she told Reuters. ” Why should I?”

Her “spend it if you’ve got it” attitude, some economists argue, may help unlock the surge in consumption that China urgently needs to rebalance its economy over the next decade, ending an era of lopsided, investment driven growth.

“This 18-35 group, for a variety of reasons, are much more optimistic and more open to risk, because they haven’t yet experienced bad times at all,” says Benjamin Cavender associate principal analyst with China Market Research. “They tend to have high disposable income relative to their earning power, and they tend not to be saving heavily.”

This generational change in mindset, harnessed to the sheer number of people growing more prosperous in once poor provinces throughout the country – such as Guo’s native Henan – is recasting China’s economic landscape: both the composition of growth, and its geography, are about to change significantly.

GO WEST YOUNG PEOPLE

Today, cities along China’s eastern seaboard account for about 35 per cent of China’s annual 18 trillion yuan retail spending. This reflects the extent to which cities such as Shanghai and Guangdong have prospered compared to the rest of the country since China’s economic opening 30 years ago.

Surging income growth in China’s interior – as companies shift manufacturing capacity away from the east, in search of less expensive labor and new markets – is shifting the economic balance of power in China.

“(There) will still be growth along the (east) coast. But it’s in the first band of inland provinces – Jiangxi, Henan, Anhui– where you will see more significant growth in the consuming class,” said Jeff Walters, Beijing-based managing director at the Boston Consulting Group.

“If you look at the coming years, you have a lot of consumers whose incomes are rising, and they are just about to cross the threshold into those levels of income where households are going to become more comfortable spending more.”

The emerging comfort zone has important macroeconomic implications. Today, China’s household savings rate is around 28 percent, among the highest in the world. Most economists blame a patchy, still-under-construction social safety net for keeping savings rates high and consumption low.

But continued strong wage growth is prompting Chinese households to loosen the reins on spending. In urban areas, average total income per capita has grown nearly 30 percent since the end of 2010 while disposable income per capita has also risen about 30 percent. Helen Mees, an economics professor at New York University, forecasts the household savings rate will fall from to 24 percent by 2020.

WHERE THE GROWTH IS

The newly emerging economic landscape is most visible in Henan, the country’s third-most populous province, where bucolic pastures have long since given way to crowded cities and construction cranes.

The province grew by 11.6 per cent in 2011, in part due to a huge inflow of foreign direct investment. According to a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the province is now home to three of the fastest growing cities in China – Zhengzhou, Jiaozuo and Xinxiang.

Across China, the labor market has been steadily tightening, in part because China’s aging population is reducing the number of working age employees. In 2012, the number actually fell for the first time since China opened its economy more than 30 years ago.

In response, companies, both foreign and domestic, have been moving a massive amount of manufacturing capacity from the east to western and interior cities like Zhengzhou, taking advantage of lower labor costs and government tax incentives.

In Zhengzhou, the resulting jobs boom has lured nearly three million new residents to the city over the last decade – the overall population is now nine million – the vast majority coming from the countryside for the first time.

Partly as a result, by 2020 there will be nearly twice as many urban middle class and affluent households – defined as those making 75,000 yuan ($12,000) or more annually – in Henan than there are today in Shanghai, according to a Reuters calculation based on figures provided by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

“Provinces like Henan have a big population base, and on top of that, the people are becoming richer and richer at a faster pace,” said Louise Liu, deputy director of EIU’s Access China and co-author of a 2010 report on China’s fastest-growing cities.

Chongqing, Hunan, Hebei, Anhui will also experience a boom in urban middle class and affluent households, with their numbers growing to about the size of Shanghai’s currently, according to a recent study by Boston Consulting Group.

Not only are those regions now growing more briskly than cities in the east, the behavior of consumers, market researchers say, is changing across provinces in China’s heartland for concrete economic reasons.

Disposable incomes tend to be higher in places such as Zhengzhou and Chongqing, even if wages are slightly lower than they are in Beijing and Shanghai. A big part of the reason: for all the talk about a real estate bubble in China, apartments are much more affordable in smaller cities throughout China’s interior.

Guo already has her apartment, and she plans to buy another one with her boyfriend in two years.

“Lower housing and other costs in smaller cities mean households have more left over after basic living expenses to spend on discretionary items,” said BCG’s Walters. “This is a key reason why the lower-tier consumer who just crossed the middle class threshold tends to be more secure and willing to spend than their higher tier city counterparts.”

NO LONGER A SAVINGS MINDSET

Economists who believe China’s rebalancing is underway say population trends and income growth are only part of what will trigger a sustained increase in consumption’s share of the overall economy. Rising disposable incomes coincide with a change in psychology among younger consumers – a shift that means when it comes to money and spending they are decidedly not their parents.

“We don’t have that mindset to save all our money and worry about what will happen in the future,” said Han Lingxiao, a law student in Jiaozuo city, 90 kms (54 miles) from Zhengzhou. “We are more focused on how to improve our lives now.”

Han moved from a poor farming county near Jiaozuo to study law at a city university. She says her younger brother who is only 12 will also follow in her footsteps and move to the city.

For younger consumers like Han, three decades of steady economic growth means that “perpetual optimism is the driver,” said Ling Hai, China general manager for Mastercard. “They will not save as their parents have, and they will start to use tomorrow’s money.”

To be sure, a major economic shock of the sort that derailed the U.S. consumer in 2008-2009, could similarly undercut China’s. But absent that, many economists and market researchers now believe the shift in attitudes toward consumption will prove to be durable, even if the economy slows.

“China is fueled by a belief that tomorrow is going to be better than today,” said Tom Doctoroff, Asia Pacific head of advertising firm JWT and author of “Billions: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer.”

That psychology is evident in the evolving tastes of consumers. Like so many of their counterparts in the developed world, young Chinese, whether in Shanghai or Zhengzhou, now regard brands as investments reflecting their status in society, Doctoroff said.

BRANDS BETTING ON MIDDLE CLASS

Not surprisingly, with so many of those younger consumers located in smaller, more far flung cities, domestic and foreign consumer goods companies are making substantial bets on the anticipated surge in consumption.

L’Oreal, the world’s largest cosmetics company, forecasts that China’s middle class will expand by 260 million people by 2020, with smaller interior cities leading the growth.

“Tier three cities are really important for us. They’re growing really fast and are a way for us to reach this soaring middle class,” said Stephane Rinderknech, Vice President of L’Oreal’s luxury division in China at a press conference recently.

Sportswear maker Adidas has already doubled its lower-tier city presence over the past two years as part of a plan to expand into 1,400 cities by 2015. And Starbucks will increase the number of its stores outside wealthy cities like Beijing and Shanghai by 20 to 30 per cent over the next few years.

Ou Ye, 23, is precisely the type of consumer all three of those companies want to attract. The former model turned schoolteacher lives in Chongqing, a massive city in southwestern China and one of the places where the emerging consumer class is expanding most rapidly.

Wearing a fuchsia coat and black suede boots, Ou says she spends upwards of 70 percent of her 4,000 yuan per month ($640) teacher’s salary on clothes. Her favorite brands, she says, are Hennes & Mauritz and Shanghai-based Lulualways. She picks up new fashion trends off the Internet.

“I used to make my decisions purely based on designs, now I think about quality. If something is more expensive but has better quality, I will buy it,” Ou said.

Back in Jiaozou city, Jiang Xiao, a fellow law student and friend of Han Lingxiao’s, expresses another sentiment that consumer goods makers – not to mention economists worried about China’s rebalancing – love to hear. “My parents and grandparents,” she said, “believe whatever you earned is whatever you saved. But not our generation. We are more Western in our consumption style.” ($1 = 6.2143 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Melanie Lee; Editing by Bill Powell and Bill Tarrant)