Thai-ASEAN News Network – Financial Market Unaffected by Ratings Cut in EU and News on Terrorist Attacks

The central bank governor is confident that the credit rating downgrades of nine European nations and the news of possible terrorist attacks in Thailand will not have a significant impact on the country’s financial market.
Bank of Thailand, or BOT, Governor Prasarn Trairatworakul said that the credit rating downgrades of nine European nations by the leading credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s was in line with the global financial market’s expectation.

Prasarn further said that the ratings downgrade will have not much impact on Thailand’s financial markets since Thai financial institutions have invested a small amount of money in the bonds of the nine European countries.
As for the news of possible terrorist attacks in Bangkok, he said the situation would likely ease up soon and that investor confidence has not been affected.
Prasarn admitted that the rising energy cost resulting from the government’s planned energy structure adjustment will lead to an increase in food prices and that will push the inflation rate upward.
He noted that it is normal for people to come out and oppose against the energy price hike as they have used cheap energy, which is among the cost-saving measures, for a long time.
The central bank governor also gave an update on the BOT’s plan to repay the Financial Institutions Development Fund’s debt, saying the central bank plans to request state-run banks to contribute to the Deposit Protection Fund like private commercial banks do.
However, Prasarn stated that Finance Minister Thirachai Bhuvanartnaranubala disagreed with the plan, fearing its impact on the competition of financial institutions.
The BOT governor added that the finance minister has planned to control the scope of doing business and the expansion of state banks’ assets such as the issuance of loans to prevent inequality in financial institutions.
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Newly Launched Hyde Park Venture Partners Makes First Investment in Virtual Store Research

HPVP is a newly-launched venture capital fund investing in high-growth technology companies in Chicago and the Midwest. As its first investment, it has chosen the growing field of online virtual store research, co-leading the $1.5 million funding of InContext Solutions.
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) January 08, 2012
A new early-stage investor has emerged in the growing entrepreneurship and technology landscape of Chicago: Hyde Park Venture Partners (HPVP). Its first investment is in InContext Solutions, a pioneer in web-based 3-D virtual store environments. HPVP, along with Hyde Park Angels, co-led InContext Solutions’ recent $1.5 million round of equity funding. The consortium of investors also included leading graphics and computing company, AMD.
HPVP is an early-stage venture capital fund investing in technology companies in the Midwest, with particular focus in Chicago.
“We are proud to add HPVP to our financial partners and to be recognized among Chicago’s technology leaders,” said Bob Gillespie, CEO and co-founder of InContext Solutions. “We plan to continue to grow our software offering and to lead innovation in virtual store research and in collaborative product and store planning.”
“InContext Solution’s unique offering and experienced management team are exactly what we look for in a company,” said Guy Turner, managing director of HPVP. “In the retail and consumer manufacturing world, speed is critical to staying on the shelf and ahead of the competition. Thanks to InContext Solutions, product and packaging decisions that used to take months can be completed in a matter of weeks. We are excited for what will come next.”
About InContext Solutions

InContext Solutions is an award-winning technology and market research firm specializing in online 3-D environment simulations with applications in virtual store research, collaborative store planning, and e-commerce. The company’s research delivers highly accurate behavioral and attitudinal insights into shopper behavior, while its collaborative software tools allow many of the world’s best-loved consumer brands to make more effective decisions around product and store planning, environment design and other in-store revenue drivers. As a next-generation e-commerce platform, InContext Solutions’ vision is to drive online sales through lifelike user experiences that engage, entertain and captivate with 3-D audio-visual elements.
For more information, visit http://incontextsolutions.com/.
About Hyde Park Venture Partners

Hyde Park Venture Partners (HPVP) is a venture capital fund investing in early stage technology companies in the Midwest, with particular focus in Chicago. HPVP invests in technology-enabled business and consumer services and healthcare IT companies raising their first or second round of institutional capital.
HPVP draws on its strategic relationship with Hyde Park Angels (HPA) to provide industry and business expertise to its portfolio companies through a network of more than 90 seasoned business executives, entrepreneurs and service professionals. HPVP’s principals and the HPA network take an active role in mentoring and guiding portfolio companies in product development, business strategy, financing and exit through both formal director roles and informal mentorship relationships.
For more information, visit http://www.hydeparkvp.com/.
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Chiara Piccinotti
InContext Solutions
312-462-4491
Email Information

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Travel Sites Hate Google More than Ever

Travel sites still say that Google is using its own algorithm to promote its flight searches and hiding those of competitors, while the search titan maintains that’s the only way airlines wanted to do business.
“The airlines told us that they would not give us [travel data] if we provided booking links to” online travel agencies, Jeremy Wertheimer, an ITA Software founder and now a Google vice president, said at an online travel conference last month according to the Wall Street Journal.

The travel industry outcry started last year when Google bought ITA Software for $700 million, the company from which most everyone gets their flight search information, and Microsoft, Expedia and Kayak began to lobby to stop the deal. Not surprisingly, when Google managed to clear the government antitrust probe and used a Google flight search without ITA’s software, the travel sites are still unhappy with the deal. (Google has used ITA Software to create a flight search on its Android and iOS app OnTheFly, which is nothing short of great.)

Google, which has branched into travel, likely saw the buy as a supplementing its search services. But online travel agencies such as Expedia, and more importantly travel search engines such as Kayak, see the competition as deadly.
It’s true that Kayak has the most to lose here, because it has the least to offer. At least Orbitz and Expedia are travel agencies that sell airlines, trips and hotel rooms (and make most of their money from hotels,) but Kayak made itself simply an online tool to aggregate travel information. In a face off between aggregators — a small, narrowly-focused aggregator doesn’t stand a chance against Google’s almighty algorithm. Is that fair? We suppose it depends on whom you ask.

Google’s search engine was started 13 years ago, long before Kayak’s travel search started in 2004. So isn’t it simply a matter of Kayak having a poor business model from the beginning? Of course, that idea will be batted away for now because the company is desperately trying to launch an  IPO before anyone sees that this startup isn’t viable in the long term.

 

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