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GE
to streamline ops into 6 units
New York: General Electric (GE) is reorganise its
business units from 11 businesses into six to improve
transparency and save $200-300 million per year.
GE
manufactures products ranging from light bulbs and jet
engines to gas turbines and medical equipment and also
has a large financial services division, as well as the
NBC Universal media holdings and film studios.
After
the reorganisation GE's six branches will now be GE Infrastructure;
GE Industrial; GE Commercial Financial Services; NBC Universal;
GE Healthcare; and GE Consumer Finance.
These
changes are expected to accelerate GE's growth in key
industries.
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MasterCard
knew about card fraud in December
Canberra:
MasterCard
International was alerted last December by one of Australia's
largest banks about a scam potentially affecting 40 millio
credit card-holders world-wide.
MasterCard however on June 17 notified financial institutions
around the world that a security breach at CardSystems
Solutions, a payment processor, had exposed data, including
account numbers, of about 40 million accounts.
Many
companies have reported the theft or disappearance of
data pertaining to vast numbers of customers this year.
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Talks
on Russia joining WTO in trouble
Geneva:
Talks
on Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO)
ran into trouble. Disagreements emerged between Russia
and trading partners including Australia, Canada, the
European Union and the United States during informal talks
about agricultural trade as well as health and veterinary
measures.
Diplomats
have been aiming to seal an agreement on Russia's accession
at a WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December.
Negotiators requested clarification from Russia about
the agriculture and sanitary and phytosanitary issues
(SPS).
The
talks on the multilateral part of the package for Russia's
membership of the WTO were adjourned until Friday. Agriculture,
intellectual property protection in Russia, financial
services and aviation industry tariffs were among the
key obstacles during the last round in Geneva in April.
In May 2004, Russia reached an agreement on the WTO with
its main trading partner, the European Union, one of a
series of parallel bilateral agreements that Moscow also
needs to strike with concerned trading partners before
it can join.
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