Despite weeks of intense negotiations, Chrysler failed to gain full support from its lenders to avoid the first-ever bankruptcy filing by a major US automaker. The move was hailed by President Barack Obama as a critical step in saving 30,000 jobs at Chrysler, majority-owned by Cerberus Capital Group, and hundreds of thousands more jobs at affiliated suppliers and dealers.

At the same time, Chrysler entered an expected alliance with Fiat SpA, in which the Italian carmaker was given an initial stake of 20 percent. The deal will allow Fiat to own up to 35 percent as it makes investments in US operations and small-car technology for Chrysler.

Over time, Fiat could eventually own 51 percent after Chrysler has repaid its loans to the US Treasury. Chrysler has struggled in recent years to compete, hurt by its near total reliance on the US market, poor quality and a truck and SUV-dominated vehicle line-up with the lowest combined fuel economy of any major automaker.

Founded in 1925 by Walter P Chrysler, three years later the company laid the cornerstone for the Chrysler Building, briefly the world’s tallest building and still a landmark on the Manhattan skyline.

The Chapter 11 filing, in US Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, has implications for the entire industry–including Chrysler’s rivals and suppliers. As part of the filing, the US government will provide up to $3.5 billion in debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing and up to $4.5 billion in exit financing.

Obama said he hopes the entire process will take only 30 to 60 days. Some of Chrysler’s 3,600 US dealers are expected to close, and Chrysler Financial will stop providing loans for new cars and trucks. Instead, General Motors Corp’s financing arm, GMAC, will provide loans to Chrysler dealers and customers. The legal proceedings will be overseen by Judge Arthur Gonzalez, the same jurist who oversaw the Enron and WorldCom bankruptcies.

In addition to Fiat’s ownership stake, U.S. officials expect Chrysler to be 55 percent owned by the United Auto Workers’ healthcare trust fund while the U.S. and Canadian governments hold a combined stake of 10 percent.

Chrysler has three manufacturing plants in Canada and had to reach agreements with its unions there and the Canadian government under the restructuring. The automaker is not filing for bankruptcy in Canada, but the Canadian government, along with the province of Ontario, said they will provide $2.42 billion in financing to help the company restructure.

Fighting words

The bankruptcy signals that Obama is prepared to play hardball with holdout lenders rather than knuckle under to their demands and will likely set the tone for similar discussions with bondholders of General Motors–which is now on the clock to restructure its operations by the end of May.

While Obama voiced his support for Chrysler and the deal with Fiat, he was pointed in his criticism of the investors who did not agree to this deal. “I don’t stand with them. I stand with Chrysler’s employees and their families and communities,” the president said. “I don’t stand with those who held out when everybody else is making sacrifices. That’s why I’m supporting Chrysler’s plans to use our bankruptcy laws to clear away its remaining obligations.”

“No one should be confused about what a bankruptcy process means,” Obama said. “This is not a sign of weakness but rather one more step on a clearly chartered path to Chrysler’s revival.”

As part of the deal, Chrysler is signing a partnership with the Italian company Fiat. The government will be an investor in the revamped Chrysler and will help choose its new directors, but the Obama administration does not plan to help manage the company.

Bankruptcy does not mean the third largest US automaker will shut down.

A Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing would allow a judge to decide how much the company’s creditors would get while the company continues to operate.

The goal is for the whole process to happen quickly, perhaps within a couple months.

Obama said Chrysler has been responsible for helping to build the American middle class, but had become an industry pillar weakened by “papering over tough problems and avoiding hard choices.”

“For too long,” the president said, “Chrysler moved too slowly to adapt to the future, designing and building cars that were less popular, less reliable and less fuel efficient than foreign competitors.”

The Obama administration had long hoped to stave off bankruptcy for Chrysler LLC, but it became clear that a holdout group would not budge on proposals to reduce Chrysler’s $6.9 billion in secured debt.

Obama praised all the constituencies that have offered sacrifices and blasted those that did not.

He said a group of investment firms and hedge funds were holding out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer bailout.

“I don’t stand with them,” Obama said at the White House event.

The analysts of the Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands by consultants Millward Brown found that the company’s value of $101.4 billion puts it 25 per cent more valuable than computer software king Microsoft at $77.3 billion, reported Daily Mail on Thursday.

Coca Cola ($68.5 billion) managed the third place in the list.

Technology companies make up the bulk of the top 10 with IBM (fourth at $67.5 billion), Apple (sixth at $63.9 billion) and China Mobile (seventh at $62.2 billion), along with consumables like cigarette brand Marlboro (10th at 50.1 billion) and burger chain McDonald’s (fifth at $67.3 billion).

Energy major GE (eight at $59.9 billion) and telecom giant Vodafone (ninth at $50.2 billion) complete the top 10 valuable brands in the world.

Google, formed at Stanford University by studentsLarry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997, went up 16 percent in brand value in the past year to just break the $100 billion mark.

Google marketing manager Lorraine Twohill said: “We know that without consumers you have nothing and there is a great element of trust in us.”

“We think about the consumer first and expect everything else to fall into place after that. We don’t feel big. We still work in little crappy teams and we feel very small,” he added.

Among industries to see their value grow over the past year, most are ’stay at home’ brands, said the Millward Brown research.

Coffee companies like Nescafe benefitted from cutbacks on drinking expensive lattes in Starbucks and other coffee shops, for instance.

Soft drinks, fast food and beer brands also grew as more people stayed at home to eat and drink while online sites like eBay and Amazon also grew.

Car companies, insurers, clothing brands and, not surprisingly, financial institutions were the ones to suffer the most, the research found.

Millward Brown Chief Executive, Joanna Seddon said: “In the current environment, brand has become even more important because it can help to sustain companies in tough times.

“Those who continue to invest in their brand will be better positioned for business growth as the economic situation starts to improve than those who have cut spend. The recession does not always harm individual brands as much as it does faceless corporations,” she added.

Researchers say that since the approach can be scaled down further in size, the new technology is a major step towards a cloak that would work for visible light.John Pendry from Imperial College London first theorized a cloak with a “carpet” design in 2008. One of the research teams describes its miniature “carpet cloak” in the journal Nature Materials.

“This is a huge step forward, a tremendous achievement,” says Professor Ortwin Hess of the Advanced Technology Institute at the University of Surrey. “It’s a careful choice of the right materials and the right structuring to get this effect for the first time at these wavelengths.”

Around 1,400 junior doctors – PG students and house surgeons – from across the state are on strike. Their demands include an increase in stipend and protection from attacks by patients’ families. 

The strike is sure to impact healthcare in government teaching hospitals, and may also affect screening of passengers at BIA. 

But the medicos appear to have chosen the wrong season to strike – there are sporadic cases of chikungunya and the high-level alert on swine flu spreading global gloom will fetch them little sympathy. 

Senior doctors are also annoyed. “Though they have announced a strike, the health commissioner has warned doctors against taking unnecessary leave and asked them to depute six junior doctors on a daily basis to BIA to screen passengers,” said Bangalore Medical College dean and director Dr G T Subash. With the election code of conduct in place, the health ministry cannot increase their stipend.

This one is different from the existing pension schemes available with insurance companies.

Rather it’s similar to the pension scheme for central government employees, which yielded an average return of 14.5 per cent in 2008-09.

There are some other things that make the scheme viable.

The charges are extremely low at .0009 per cent. This is the lowest in the world compared to the 2 per cent charges for existing unit linked schemes.

The scheme is managed by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) which certainly lends a sense of security in these troubled times.

Chairman PFRDA D.Swarup said, It’s very flexible. You have four different funds and also have the option to change your fund manager.”

Anyone between 18 to 55 can start investing even with 500 rupee as first installment. The minimum annual premium however must total to Rs 6,000.

Once invested, the person gets a Permanent Retirement Account Number or PRAN which can be accessed from anywhere.

Fund managers selected by the regulator will manage your funds.

Risk will have to be decided by the investor. However, an auto choice option profiles the investors risk appetite based on age. So a younger person will have more exposure to equity markets than someone who is 55 years old.

For this scheme to be a success, a lot will depend on the performance of private fund managers.

Beside tax benefit, safety, higher returns and flexibility are the things that make this scheme attractive during your winter days.