Is Bangalore another Silicon Valley in the making?HYPE knows no borders. So it was probably inevitable that Bangalore would be branded another Silicon Valley, soon to be populated by armies of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Reality is more sobering, but something is afoot. More venture capital (VC) is flowing into the country--including some from American VC firms active in India--and a growing share of it is being invested in innovative early-stage firms.Things are moving in the right direction, but this is hardly Silicon Valley. For one thing, the infrastructure for technology entrepreneurs is at "an early stage", says Surendra Jain of the Indian arm of Sequoia Capital, a Silicon Valley VC firm. The "term sheets" listing the financing conditions are the same, he says, but the courts may not interpret them in the same way. Similarly, professional networks and the collective knowledge of how things are done are still developing. This is why Helion Ventures, a local VC firm, has made aspeciality of advising entrepreneurs by, say, helping them find a chief financial officer. ...

  A political spat with China puts German businesses on edgeEIGHT life-size terracotta warriors, thought to be from Xian, China, went on display in Hamburg on November 25th, but are now suspected of being fakes. Museum officials are investigating the latest twist in Germany's fraught relations with China, which took a nosedive after Chancellor Angela Merkel received the Dalai Lama on September 23rd.The worries about China come as German businessmen are having a difficult time with Ms Merkel closer to home. She has attacked the excessive pay of top executives who put their companies at risk at the expense of other employees, though she stops short of proposing a legal ceiling. She has also threatened to impose a minimum wage on more industries where collective agreements are being side-stepped. German business confidence fell to a 15-year low in the latest poll carried out by ZEW, a research centre in Mannheim. ...

  Is India's computer-services industry heading for a fall?MOST foreigners visit Mysore to see its many palaces, testaments to bygone royal splendour. But the city, south of Bangalore, is also a good place to observe monuments to India's modern might. One of its suburbs contains a lush campus with a collection of futuristic buildings: the Global Education Centre, one of the world's largest corporate-training facilities, operated by Infosys, a leading Indian information-technology (IT) services firm.Visiting the centre, you would think that for India's IT businesses, the sky is the limit. Rarely has an industry grown so rapidly for so long. It has boasted annual growth rates of nearly 30% in the past ten years, with revenues now nearing $50 billion, about 5.4% of India's GDP. But some in India are starting to worry that the industry is heading for a fall. At the very least, analysts say, the industry's leading firms--Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro, to name only the three largest--need to do more to adapt their business models as the industry matures. ...

  Lululemon, a Canadian clothing firm, rides the yoga boomIF THERE is no seaweed in a T-shirt, does it still reduce stress and make your skin feel softer? That was the worry that threatened to distract North America's yoga practitioners from their routines last month. Shares in Lululemon Athletica, a Canadian firm that sells yoga clothing and equipment, fell after news reports claimed that tests had failed to find any trace of seaweed fibre in some of its garments, which were supposed to contain the stuff. Lululemon insisted that its own test results showed seaweed really was present, though it agreed (at the request of Canadian regulators) to withdraw unsubstantiated claims about its supposed therapeutic benefits.None of this appears to have affected the devotion of Lululemon's fanatical customers, of which there are many. Yoga Journal, a magazine, estimated in 2005 that about 17m Americans practise yoga, spending about $3 billion a year in the process--$500m of it on clothing. "This is one of the best growth stories in retail," says Paul Lejuez, an analyst at Credit Suisse. Lululemon, with sales of $66m in the most recent quarter, is by far the most visible brand. "If you're going to call anything a yoga pure-play, this is the one," says Mr Lejuez. ...

  A renowned activist investor turns his attention to yet another food companyNELSON PELTZ is stepping up his campaign for more influence over the management of Britain's Cadbury Schweppes, the world's biggest confectionery-maker measured by sales. In mid-March the activist investor, who specialises in big food companies, revealed that he had a 3% stake, spurring Cadbury's management into disclosing its plan to demerge its American soft-drinks business. This week, in partnership with QIA, Qatar's state-owned investment fund, Mr Peltz's investment vehicle, Trian, increased its holding to 4.5%. Cadbury Schweppes, which makes gum, sweets, chocolate, iced tea and fizzy drinks, is just recovering from a series of disasters. Todd Stitzer, who became the firm's boss in 2003, had to preside over several profit warnings, an accounting scandal at the firm's Nigerian division, the botched launch of a computer system and two product recalls. All this happened on Mr Stitzer's watch, though it was not all necessarily his fault. "He was a bit like Gordon Brown," says Julian Lakin, an analyst at Mirabaud Securities, a stockbroker. ...

  Passengers are being asked for their views on the in-flight use of phonesLIKE many flights, the use of mobile phones on aircraft has been subject to unexpected delays. But some passengers, at least, are now sending text messages and e-mails, and soon an Air France plane will go further. Once it has reached its cruising altitude, its "fasten seatbelt" sign will be switched off--and so will a new "no phones" light alongside it. Passengers will then be able to switch on their handsets and make and receive calls.Airlines are unsure what passengers will make of this. Surveys have found that many people are vehemently against the idea, but others say they would welcome the opportunity to text, access the internet or make calls. So airlines plan to test the market before deciding how and when to allow phones to be used in the air. ...

  Peter Chernin, number two at News Corporation, holds the key to a smooth Murdoch family successionALL eyes in the media industry this week were turned on Rupert Murdoch's youngest son, James, who was appointed on December 7th as News Corporation's chairman and chief executive for Europe and Asia. At 34, James is now well on his way to the top job at the world's third-biggest media company. No one spared much of a thought for Peter Chernin, News Corporation's chief operating officer, who runs the firm from day to day--after all, he is a mere employee, not a Murdoch.Investors, however, know how important Mr Chernin is to News Corporation. They want him to stick around for several more years while James gains more experience. But insiders say that James's new role, together with other changes at News Corp, mean that Mr Chernin may not stay beyond June 2009, when his five-year contract ends. That in turn could make it harder to pull off the elder Mr Murdoch's plan for James to succeed him as chief executive. ...

  The future of a controversial business lies with people such as Antonio BonchristianoTODAY, for better or worse, the public face of private equity is Steve Schwarzman. It has been hard to keep the American billionaire out of the news this year: one minute he is paying $1m to have Rod Stewart sing at his 60th birthday party, the next he is giving speeches claiming that private equity is a "force for good". In June he controversially turned his outfit, Blackstone, into a public company, prompting people to ask whether a private-equity firm that lists its shares in a public equity market is undermining its own business model. The private-equity boom then came to an abrupt halt in America, helping to drive down Blackstone's share price by 40% and generating widespread envy about Mr Schwarzman's good timing.Nobody has accused Antonio Bonchristiano of undermining his business model by taking his company, GP Investimentos, public a year before Blackstone's initial public offering (IPO). Even after recent wobbles, as the woes of the global financial system reached the emerging economies, the shares of Brazil's biggest private-equity firm are trading at nearly three times their IPO price. And whereas Blackstone's IPO was, in part, about creating a way for Mr Schwarzman and other executives to cash out some of their stake in the firm, the money raised by GP was to invest in what Mr Bonchristiano, its co-head, calls a big opportunity for private equity in Brazil andmuch of Latin America. "None of the money went into our own pockets," he says. ...

  After a bumper year, the luxury-goods industry is heading for uncertain timesMORE than any other industry, the luxury-goods business needs people to feel good about spending money. So at a recent conference in Moscow, Bernard Arnault, the head of Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the world's biggest luxury-goods group, went to great lengths to dismiss investors' fears about the impact on the industry of America's credit crisis, a possible recession and the weak dollar. Indeed, Mr Arnault said he expects the industry's sales almost to double in the next five years, thanks to strong demand from emerging markets and the creation of new wealth across the globe.After a depressing period at the beginning of the decade when the terrorist attacks in America, the outbreak of SARS and the war in Iraq reduced international travel and people's appetite for frivolous things, the industry has had three excellent years. According to Bain, a consultancy, sales of luxury goods grew by 9% in 2006 to EURO159 billion ($200 billion) and will reach about EURO170 billion this year, which would be double the 1996 figure. Europe remains the biggest market, with about 40% of sales, though the strongest growth is in China, Russia, the Middle East and some Latin American countries. ...

  Our profile of Jim Goodnight ("Doing well by being rather nice", December 1st 2007) wrongly stated that he co-founded SAS while at the University of North Carolina. We should have said North Carolina State University. Sorry. This error has been corrected online. ...

  Sports teams and musicians want a cut of the ticket-resale marketIT WAS an expensive but instructive paper clip. Earlier this year a Missouri man ostensibly broke the state's anti-ticket-touting law by selling two tickets to a Cardinals-Cubs baseball game for $79 above their face value. When confronted he explained that he had not marked up the ticket price: the $79 purchased a "decorative paperclip" to fasten the tickets. He was neither arrested nor fined. Suppressing ticket touting, known as scalping in America, faces other obstacles. Is a buyer who agrees to buy a ticket from a tout really a victim? After all, it is legal for people to sell almost anything at whatever price the market supports.Anti-ticket-touting laws in America are rapidly being repealed. This year Connecticut, Minnesota, Missouri, New York and Pennsylvania abolished their laws. Illinois and Louisiana did so last year. Now only five states have anti-touting laws, and they are rarely enforced. Typically, the laws limit a ticket's resale price to a few dollars above its face value--Massachusetts, for example, caps such mark-ups at $2 per ticket. More fundamentally, existing anti-touting efforts are being undercut by the accepted business model of primary-market ticket companies who add "service fees" of far more than $2 that, some believe, constitute legal touting. ...

  The biggest-ever video-game deal shows how the industry is changingTHE bride and groom, a guitar-wielding rock vixen and a muscle-rippling dragon-slayer, make an odd couple--so it is hardly surprising that nobody expected their marriage. But on December 2nd the video-game companies behind "Guitar Hero" and "World of Warcraft", Activision and Vivendi Games respectively, announced plans for an elaborate merger. Vivendi, a French media group, will pool its games unit, plus $1.7 billion in cash, with Activision; the combined entity will then offer to buy back shares from Activision shareholders, raising Vivendi's stake in the resulting firm to as much as 68%.Activision's boss, Bobby Kotick, will remain at the helm of the new company, to be known as Activision Blizzard in recognition of Vivendi's main gaming asset: its subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment, the firm behind "World of Warcraft", an online swords-and-sorcery game with 9.3m subscribers. The deal was unexpected, but makes excellent strategic sense, says Piers Harding-Rolls of Screen Digest, a consultancy. Activision has long coveted "World of Warcraft", and Vivendi gets a bigger games division and Activision's talented management team to run it. As well as making sense for both parties, the $18.9 billion deal--the biggest ever in the video-games industry--says a lot about the trends now shaping the business. ...

  America's ailing electronics giant gets a new chief executiveNOT many bosses would hold mobile phones against their heads like giant ears. But Ed Zander, the boss of Motorola, is notorious for wisecracking. Doubtless he also made a joke when he told the firm's board that he would step down at the end of the year. Yet it is unlikely that he felt good about the resignation, which was announced on November 30th. He did not achieve what he was hired to do nearly four years ago: fix Motorola's mobile-phone business, which generated two-thirds of the firm's revenues and profits last year. This task will now fall to his successor and number two, Greg Brown.A year ago hardly anyone would have predicted such an outcome. A veteran of Sun Microsystems, a Silicon Valley computer-maker, Mr Zander seemed to have the Midas touch. Among other things, he brought better financial discipline and a more risk-taking culture. He rejuvenated the firm's cable-television unit. And he revived Motorola's mobile-phone business by making a big bet on the ultra-thin RAZR (pronounced "razor") handset, which became a hit. More than 110m have been sold since its launch in late 2004. ...

  Plans to liberalise Europe's energy markets are in disarrayTHE European Commission this week called for yet another scheme to promote energy liberalisation after opposition by France and Germany blocked two earlier proposals. In September the European Union's energy commissioner, Andris Piebalgs, offered two paths to a single European energy market. Integrated power companies could either unbundle their gas pipelines or electricity grids into separate companies, or keep them but run them at arm's length. The idea was to open the European market by making it easier for small energy companies to buy and sell power across Europe, with the hope this would lower prices. Independent network companies would be more likely to upgrade facilities by, for instance, improving cross-border links. ...