“[The Dangote System by Ndubuisi Ekekwe] is my best read so far in 2021. I’m reading “The Creative Edge” by Matthew Ashimolowo now, let’s see if it will topple this one”. Olusegun A, Doctoral Researcher
If you are looking to understand how markets work, and find deeper insights on the mechanics of competition, you need to read “The Dangote System: Techniques for Building Conglomerates”. Remember, until you have read a book, do not comment on the title!
Begin reading the book here.
A few weeks ago, I shared the story of a young man who finished a PhD in computer science in Europe in May 2020 but has been unable to collect his certificate as the school requested for a VALID passport. His old Nigerian passport had expired and the delay for a new one he applied for has been unprecedented. Many people here said he was lying that one does not need a passport to collect a certificate. The comments were exceedingly unforgiving and many showed absolute lack of passion for a fellow citizen.
I told the young man to ignore the noise that help would come. Magically, help did come; the embassy did its work after the heat we mounted. Today, he shared the certificate as he just collected it. Notice that the university could not have issued it without a valid passport as they put the passport number in certificates issued to foreign students. So, those arguing they did not have that experience in the US, UK, and {my village} are totally wrong.
Once again, congratulations young PhD. You have joined the most prestigious club in the world. I got mine for career insurance because to my knowledge, there is always a job for PhDs – and that means you can try whatever you want in life. If the worst comes, there is always a school to teach!
Young people, PhD will never take you backward. In short, it makes people write your name before others. Why? Less than 0.1% can claim one. Get yours!!!.
Tekedia Institute is excited to be welcoming the University of Ibadan amazing students to Tekedia CollegeBoost, a mini-MBA designed for university students. The onboarding is May 24, 2021 and Eyitayo Adeleke is coordinating. We hope to spend 8 weeks with you all, to co-share and co-learn. You are already well prepared by the premier university; Tekedia will simply expand your horizons on market systems. Welcome to Tekedia Institute.
Tekedia CollegeBoost is an Advanced Diploma in Business Administration designed for students in colleges. It involves an 8-week program which could be broken into two semesters or taken in one semester, depending on the arrangement with the school or group of students. This course is only offered to a group of students.
Ant Group Co.’s profit rose to $3.4 billion in the December quarter after Chinese regulators thwarted its record initial public offering and told it to scale back its sprawling business, reported Bloomberg.
Billionaire Jack Ma’s fintech giant contributed nearly 7.2 billion yuan to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s earnings, a company filing showed Thursday. Based on Alibaba’s one-third stake in Ant, that translates to 21.8 billion yuan ($3.4 billion) in profit, up 50% from 14.5 billion yuan in the previous three months. Ant’s earnings lag one quarter behind Alibaba’s.
The tally underscores the earnings powers Ant boasted before authorities demanded China’s largest fintech company fold its financial business into a holding company, curtailing its growth prospects. Regulators have issued a battery of proposals that threaten to curb Ant’s dominance in online payments and scale back its expansion into consumer lending and wealth management.
While Chairman Eric Jing has promised staff that the company will eventually go public, it’s likely to be worth much less than before the crackdown that saw the IPO halted in November. Fidelity Investments halved its valuation estimate for Ant to about $144 billion in February, compared with $295 billion assigned in August.
Ant isn’t alone in facing the clampdown. The government imposed wide-ranging restrictions on the financial divisions of 13 companies including Tencent Holdings Ltd. and ByteDance Ltd. Units of JD.com Inc., Meituan and Didi Chuxing were also among companies summoned to a meeting where regulators handed out stricter compliance requirements in April.
The growth is attributed to Ant Group’s success in the non-money-market mutual funds. Ant Group became China’s largest seller of non-money-market mutual funds in the first quarter, industry data showed, disrupting a market dominated by banks despite a regulatory crackdown.
Part of the authorities demand from Ant and Alibaba is to reduce the size of Yu’ebao, China’s biggest money market fund managed by Ant-controlled mutual fund house Tianhong.
Reuters reported that outstanding non-money-market mutual funds sold by Ant’s fund sales arm were worth 890.1 billion yuan ($138.23 billion) at the end of the first quarter of 2021, according to data released late Thursday by the Asset Management Association of China (AMAC).
China Merchants Bank (600036.SS) took the second spot at 707.9 billion yuan, followed by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the country’s biggest lender.
It was the first such ranking released by AMAC, highlighting the rapidly growing clout of independent fund advisers that sell funds via mobile apps and the internet, by-passing bank outlets.
“It’s.. about the strength of big-tech-company-backed IFAs (independent fund advisers), how far they have reached, how deep their client base is and how adaptive they are to the market trends,” said Ivan Shi, director at Z-Ben Advisors, a consultancy.
“It also speaks to how much service and tool development different tech companies have put into their IFA platforms.”
Ant (Hangzhou) Funds Sales Co’s main distribution channel is Ant’s ubiquitous payment platform Alipay.
Shi said Ant’s top rankings could also reflect lower risk appetite as investors shift away from equities funds to fixed-income products, which are popular on Alipay.
“If you log into the Alipay app, a lot of the products they are promoting are short-term bond funds, fixed income products. That’s a very quick response to market trends, so that’s going to catch a lot of outflows from equity products.”
According to AMAC’s ranking, Shanghai Tiantian Fund Distribution ranked fifth during the first quarter, while other tech-driven sales platforms, including Tencent’s fund sales unit and Baidu’s Du Xiaoman Fund Sales, far lagged Ant.
Revenues at Ant’s fund sales company more than tripled to 6.01 billion yuan in 2020 from a year earlier, public disclosures showed
This is a massive one: Google Cloud has won a contract to supply computing resources to SpaceX, and help deliver internet service through its Starlink satellites. SpaceX will install ground stations at Google data centers that connect to SpaceX’s Starlink satellites. This has a massive implication for telcos as it could begin a disintermediation if datacenters’ traffic suddenly go satellite, denying them major revenue. The Google team said it clearly: “The real potential of this technology became very obvious. The power of combining cloud with universal secure connectivity, it’s a very powerful combination.”
Simply, there is no need for cell towers: customers’ devices will communicate to satellites, and then the satellites will link up to Google data centers. Microsoft Azure already has a partnership like this with SpaceX.
In SpaceX’s case, there is no need for cell towers. Instead, customers’ devices will communicate to satellites, and then the satellites will link up to Google data centers. Inside those data centers, customers can run applications quickly using Google’s cloud services, or they can send the information on to other companies’ services that are geographically nearby, enabling low latency so there’s minimal lag. Data then comes right back through the Google data centers to satellites, and then down to end users.
In July 2019, I wrote that “Amazon is unveiling a satellite broadband venture. Watch out, very soon, Amazon Prime members may be getting internet services at home from Amazon.” The highly popular Amazon Web Services will be connected to these satellites just as Google and SpaceX Starlink are planning now.
This is a massive one, from the FCC filing: “Amazon sells products and services to hundreds of millions of customers today via physical and online stores, entertainment content streaming, design and manufacturing of consumer electronics devices, and leading public cloud computing web services. Amazon also has global terrestrial networking and compute infrastructure required for the Kuiper System, including intercontinental fiber links, data centers, compute/edge compute capabilities and the tools, techniques, and know-how to securely and efficiently transport data.”
If you look at this critically, the world’s leading cloud computing providers have major satellite plays. And if they execute as they plan, from datacenters to datacenters, GSM providers like MTN, Glo and Airtel may struggle as I expect them to experiment heavily in Africa due to our challenging rural connectivity issues. As this happens, for customers, the future looks amazing because quality will improve even as price drops, and it will lead to a new age of connectivity, and advancement in rural economies.
Google Cloud Wins SpaceX Deal for Starlink Internet Connectivity