Not even 200 of the approximate 10,000 students from the Indian Institutes of Technology took up jobs outside India last year. This is in sharp contrast to past when a majority of the students went abroad for further studies or jobs. Reason: Most students perceive that India offers more opportunities.
MUMBAI: One leg of an IITian is in India, the other in Air India, went a popular wisecrack in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Every year hundreds of freshly minted engineers from these highly rated institutes would fly westward. This time, the template followed by several graduating classes was disrupted as many turned down international job offers.
Not even 200 of the approximate 10,000 students from the Indian Institutes of Technology took up positions outside India last year. Fifty students, who make up the largest contingent, will be leaving from IIT-Bombay, followed by 40 from Delhi, 25 from Kharagpur, 19 from Kanpur, 13 from Madras, 17 from Roorkee and five from Guwahati. In 2012, 84 IIT-B candidates had accepted international job offers.
“Compared to 20 years ago, a very small percentage of students go abroad today. This is contrary to the general perception ,” says IIT-Delhi director V Ramgopal Rao. “Twenty years ago, 80% of the BTech class used to go abroad. Now these numbers are insignificant.”
The count was larger last year, though not dramatically different. While the first phase of placements have concluded, the ensuing edition is unlikely to have international companies flying down to campuses. “When we asked companies why they were coming to campus with fewer offers, they said that their requirement was lower and profiles too had changed,” said professor Kaustubha Mohanty, convenor of the All-IIT Placement Committee.
But that may not be the entire story. Deepak Phatak, chair professor at IIT-Bombay, said that the real question is how many IITians applied for international jobs. “A large number of our students are not seeking jobs outside India,” he said.
In fact Phatak was concerned about the quality of graduates when international offers started dwindling a few years ago. “So I conducted exit interviews and found that students perceive that the land of opportunity is here,” he said. Moreover, with global companies setting up offices in India, students can join Google in Bennigana Halli in Bengaluru instead of Mountain View, California.
In the early ’90s, the outflow of computer science graduates to the US was so high that the World Bank, in a report, had suggested that an exit tax be imposed on IITians and other professionals leaving the country—this, it said, could earn the government over $1 billion (about Rs 4,400 crore then) per annum. This year, the US which used to attract most candidates has been pipped by Japan. For instance, 35 students from IIT-B are headed far east as compared to 10 who are going to the USA (see box).
The concern that state-subsidised educated talent was flying off to the West to build a foreign economy and driving innovation and entrepreneurship there, gave birth to the aching term—brain drain. The turn of events, has led to a new vocable, the euphonious “brain circulation”.
“A small percentage (less than 15% of a graduating batch) of the students go abroad for higher studies. Others stay back,” said IIT-Guwahati director Gautam Biswas. “Many graduates keep moving between countries abroad and India. Indeed, brain drain is a myth now, one may call the paradigm brain circulation.”
INDIA IPPON DESU
Saturday, September 24, 2022
Friday, September 16, 2022
London Firm picks up Russian clients in the midst of war
Bloomberg Article
Two-Man London Firm Scoops Up Russia Work Dumped by Big Banks
i2 becomes debt-market middleman for Gazprom, Polyus, Lukoil
Limerick-based firm takes up discarded shell companies
16 September 2022 at 16:54 GMT+5:30
Beaming from behind laptops in the shadows of a lounge bar, Sanjay Jobanputra and Mark Brescacin strike a casual pose in the sole photo on an Instagram account linked to their company.
The former employees of BNY Mellon and advisory firm D.F. King are the founders of London–based firm i2 Capital Markets Ltd. You might not guess it from the informal snapshot and i2’s bare corporate website, but this summer they quietly took over the role of debt-market middlemen to the biggest companies in Russia.
As providers of trust services, they’re responsible for playing intermediary between the Russian companies that issue bonds abroad and the investors who hold them, making sure payments are made, bond terms are adhered to, and votes go ahead on any changes to documentation. It’s an unglamorous yet vital capital-market cog.
The work, which covers about $25 billion of bonds sold before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February invasion of Ukraine, was discarded by established bond service providers like BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank AG and Citigroup Inc. after the war broke out. The big players largely follow European Union and US sanctions, which bar trustees from doing business with Russian companies. The UK hasn’t yet followed suit on implementing that restriction, opening up a lucrative opportunity for anyone willing to stomach the risks.
“You’d always expect someone to fill the gap,” said Alper Kara, a finance professor at the University of Huddersfield, UK. “It seems the larger trustees may think that sanctions and being attached to the Russian market may dent their reputation so they’re backing off.”
i2's Flourishing Business
London firm got trustee roles dropped by big banks
Note: Some trustee appointments still need to be approved by bondholders. Data as of Sept. 16.
It’s a sign of the chaos created by Putin’s war that the work is being conducted by tiny companies. Some of the world’s biggest money managers still hold Russian corporate debt either because they can’t find a buyer due to sanctions or they don’t want to take the hit from selling at a loss.
Previous work undertaken by i2, which was founded in 2016, has included acting as tabulation agent in Libor transactions. They were also an administration agent in a share-pledge deal for Mindgeek Sarl, owner of adult content platform Pornhub, according to filings. Now their client roster reads like a who’s who of Russia Inc., including natural-gas giant Gazprom PJSC, the country’s biggest private oil company Lukoil PJSC, and fertilizer-maker PhosAgro PJSC.
The company’s registered address is a basement of a red-brick office block just north of London’s financial center, but administrative staff in the building said the address is mostly used for incoming mail. Previous addresses include various residential properties around London and the neighboring county of Kent.
Brescacin declined to comment on transactions with Russian firms, citing client confidentiality. The company isn’t involved directly with Mindgeek or Pornhub, he said. Shortly after Bloomberg spoke to Brescacin, a list of deals with Russian clients was removed from public view on the firm’s website and photos of the founders were taken down.
Russian companies doing business with i2 didn’t respond to questions about how they were introduced to the firm. Mindgeek representatives didn’t respond to emails and calls seeking comment on the share pledge agreement.
Russian corporations with foreign debt also rely on companies to provide directors and accounts for the special-purpose vehicles set up to sell the bonds. A tiny Limerick, Ireland-based firm called Chern & Co has scooped up the contracts for those shell companies after they were ditched by service providers Cafico International, Vistra Group and TMF group earlier this year.
Chern & Co is run by Alex Chernenko, a native of the Ukrainian port-city of Odessa, who also runs a translation company called Translit, which has been offering free translation help to Ukrainian refugees. Cherneko didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
The work of both companies could be short lived if sanctions are extended. The UK has said it will bar trustees from doing business with Russian companies, though it’s not clear when and how that will impact outstanding debt. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office didn’t respond to a request for more information.
And while the roles are largely passive, sanctions have made the job more complex. A consent solicitation prepared by i2 for Polyus PJSC, Russia’s largest gold miner, proposed amendments that allow direct transfers to Russian investors, and the use of rubles instead of dollars for payments when servicing the company’s $2 billion of bonds. In addition, the tweaks let the issuer buy back Russian holders’ bonds at a discount and cancel them, as well as extending the grace period before default.
There’s no reason why companies shouldn’t fulfill this gap in the market if it doesn’t go against sanctions, according to Frank Flanagan, who specializes in commercial litigation as a partner at Dublin-based law firm Mason Hayes & Curran LLP. However, it has to be done “on foot of painstaking due diligence and carefully considered and detailed legal advice,” he said.
— With assistance by Yuliya Fedorinova, and Philippe Roubert
Two-Man London Firm Scoops Up Russia Work Dumped by Big Banks
i2 becomes debt-market middleman for Gazprom, Polyus, Lukoil
Limerick-based firm takes up discarded shell companies
16 September 2022 at 16:54 GMT+5:30
Beaming from behind laptops in the shadows of a lounge bar, Sanjay Jobanputra and Mark Brescacin strike a casual pose in the sole photo on an Instagram account linked to their company.
The former employees of BNY Mellon and advisory firm D.F. King are the founders of London–based firm i2 Capital Markets Ltd. You might not guess it from the informal snapshot and i2’s bare corporate website, but this summer they quietly took over the role of debt-market middlemen to the biggest companies in Russia.
As providers of trust services, they’re responsible for playing intermediary between the Russian companies that issue bonds abroad and the investors who hold them, making sure payments are made, bond terms are adhered to, and votes go ahead on any changes to documentation. It’s an unglamorous yet vital capital-market cog.
The work, which covers about $25 billion of bonds sold before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February invasion of Ukraine, was discarded by established bond service providers like BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank AG and Citigroup Inc. after the war broke out. The big players largely follow European Union and US sanctions, which bar trustees from doing business with Russian companies. The UK hasn’t yet followed suit on implementing that restriction, opening up a lucrative opportunity for anyone willing to stomach the risks.
“You’d always expect someone to fill the gap,” said Alper Kara, a finance professor at the University of Huddersfield, UK. “It seems the larger trustees may think that sanctions and being attached to the Russian market may dent their reputation so they’re backing off.”
i2's Flourishing Business
London firm got trustee roles dropped by big banks
Note: Some trustee appointments still need to be approved by bondholders. Data as of Sept. 16.
It’s a sign of the chaos created by Putin’s war that the work is being conducted by tiny companies. Some of the world’s biggest money managers still hold Russian corporate debt either because they can’t find a buyer due to sanctions or they don’t want to take the hit from selling at a loss.
Previous work undertaken by i2, which was founded in 2016, has included acting as tabulation agent in Libor transactions. They were also an administration agent in a share-pledge deal for Mindgeek Sarl, owner of adult content platform Pornhub, according to filings. Now their client roster reads like a who’s who of Russia Inc., including natural-gas giant Gazprom PJSC, the country’s biggest private oil company Lukoil PJSC, and fertilizer-maker PhosAgro PJSC.
The company’s registered address is a basement of a red-brick office block just north of London’s financial center, but administrative staff in the building said the address is mostly used for incoming mail. Previous addresses include various residential properties around London and the neighboring county of Kent.
Brescacin declined to comment on transactions with Russian firms, citing client confidentiality. The company isn’t involved directly with Mindgeek or Pornhub, he said. Shortly after Bloomberg spoke to Brescacin, a list of deals with Russian clients was removed from public view on the firm’s website and photos of the founders were taken down.
Russian companies doing business with i2 didn’t respond to questions about how they were introduced to the firm. Mindgeek representatives didn’t respond to emails and calls seeking comment on the share pledge agreement.
Russian corporations with foreign debt also rely on companies to provide directors and accounts for the special-purpose vehicles set up to sell the bonds. A tiny Limerick, Ireland-based firm called Chern & Co has scooped up the contracts for those shell companies after they were ditched by service providers Cafico International, Vistra Group and TMF group earlier this year.
Chern & Co is run by Alex Chernenko, a native of the Ukrainian port-city of Odessa, who also runs a translation company called Translit, which has been offering free translation help to Ukrainian refugees. Cherneko didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
The work of both companies could be short lived if sanctions are extended. The UK has said it will bar trustees from doing business with Russian companies, though it’s not clear when and how that will impact outstanding debt. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office didn’t respond to a request for more information.
And while the roles are largely passive, sanctions have made the job more complex. A consent solicitation prepared by i2 for Polyus PJSC, Russia’s largest gold miner, proposed amendments that allow direct transfers to Russian investors, and the use of rubles instead of dollars for payments when servicing the company’s $2 billion of bonds. In addition, the tweaks let the issuer buy back Russian holders’ bonds at a discount and cancel them, as well as extending the grace period before default.
There’s no reason why companies shouldn’t fulfill this gap in the market if it doesn’t go against sanctions, according to Frank Flanagan, who specializes in commercial litigation as a partner at Dublin-based law firm Mason Hayes & Curran LLP. However, it has to be done “on foot of painstaking due diligence and carefully considered and detailed legal advice,” he said.
— With assistance by Yuliya Fedorinova, and Philippe Roubert
Saturday, September 10, 2022
Everything Everywhere All at once : Movie Review
Dir: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert. Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis. 15, 139 minutes.
The multiverse is having a moment. I’m undecided on whether the decision to chase up Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with Everything Everywhere All at Once – a film grounded in the same concept of parallel realities, yet made with a fraction of the budget – is foolhardy or ingenious. Either way, David has shown Goliath how it’s done. While Marvel executives huddle around conference tables, braiding together franchises in a grand show of corporate synergy, here’s a film that really understands what the infinite might look like.
Everything Everywhere All at Once exists in the outer wilds of the imagination, in the realm of lucid dreaming and liminal spaces. It bounces off familiar representations of altered states, whether it be The Matrix or the phantasmical films of Michel Gondry, while feeling entirely unclassifiable. It’s both proudly puerile, with a running joke about butt plugs, and breathlessly sincere about the daily toil of intergenerational trauma. That curious mixture of tonal extremes will already be familiar to fans of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, otherwise known as The Daniels. Following the success of their music video for DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What” – in which a guy smashes crotch-first through several storeys of an apartment building – they made their debut feature Swiss Army Man (2016) about the tender relationship between the survivor of a shipwreck and a farting corpse played by Daniel Radcliffe. With Everything Everywhere All at Once, these filmmakers have fully hit their stride.
At the heart of its story is an ordinary woman, Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh). In fact, she’s the most ordinary of women, quietly running a laundromat in the Simi Valley, California, with her sweet, sprightly husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). Tensions are high. Evelyn’s father (James Hong) is visiting from China and has always looked down on her decision to marry Waymond and move to America. Her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), has brought her girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel) along, already bitter in the knowledge that her mother is about to shove her back in the closet. Oh, and Evelyn’s being audited. “From a stack of receipts, I can trace the ups and downs of your life,” her assigned IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis, delightfully and manically mundane) warns. “And it does not look good.”
Then, out of the blue, a version of Waymond from somewhere called the “Alphaverse” commandeers her husband’s body in order to tell her that she’s the key to saving all reality. Out of all the Evelyns that exist, branching off from every choice she’s ever made, this Evelyn has fared the worst. That means she’s the only one who still has unfulfilled potential. What a beautiful way to look at the world – that a life in stasis is really one of bottomless possibility. We meet quite a few of the other Evelyns: a martial arts star who could easily be Yeoh herself (spot footage of the actor on the Crazy Rich Asians red carpet), a dominatrix, a piñata, a Chinese opera singer, a hibachi chef and a woman with hot dogs for hands. Aided by the freneticism of Larkin Seiple’s cinematography and Paul Rogers’s editing, we shuffle through Evelyns like cards in a deck. There’s an exquisitely constructed homage to Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, alongside full-blown fight scenes choreographed by Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ Brian and Andy Le.
To elaborate any more on the plot would spoil the fun, but the power packed into Everything Everywhere’s punch is that all this elaborate chaos has a distinct purpose to it. The Daniels have fully captured the fractured feeling of modern existence, of never quite being at the wheel of your own life. Evelyn’s task, she’s told, is to “take us back to how it’s supposed to be”. But that proves to be an empty phrase. If every path in life can live side by side, who’s to say any of them is the right one? It’s the sort of philosophy that needs to be tethered to something forceful and absolute – that’s Yeoh, who moves through Everything Everywhere All at Once like she could hold the entire film in the palm of her hand.
You could argue the actor, in a way, has lived a few different lives herself: as the Hong Kong action star in Heroic Trio (1993); the Bond girl of Tomorrow Never Dies (1997); the romcom matriarch in Crazy Rich Asians (2018). But the Evelyns she plays aren’t parodies or costumes; they are a set of emotions placed on a gradient. To say this is a showcase for her talent almost feels like an understatement – the same can be said for Quan, who played Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Data in The Goonies (1985) and then learned the hard lesson of how little Hollywood cares for the accomplishments of Asian actors. If the industry has really changed for the better, this return to acting should mark the first role of many.
From The Independent.co.uk by Clarisse Loughrey
The multiverse is having a moment. I’m undecided on whether the decision to chase up Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with Everything Everywhere All at Once – a film grounded in the same concept of parallel realities, yet made with a fraction of the budget – is foolhardy or ingenious. Either way, David has shown Goliath how it’s done. While Marvel executives huddle around conference tables, braiding together franchises in a grand show of corporate synergy, here’s a film that really understands what the infinite might look like.
Everything Everywhere All at Once exists in the outer wilds of the imagination, in the realm of lucid dreaming and liminal spaces. It bounces off familiar representations of altered states, whether it be The Matrix or the phantasmical films of Michel Gondry, while feeling entirely unclassifiable. It’s both proudly puerile, with a running joke about butt plugs, and breathlessly sincere about the daily toil of intergenerational trauma. That curious mixture of tonal extremes will already be familiar to fans of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, otherwise known as The Daniels. Following the success of their music video for DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What” – in which a guy smashes crotch-first through several storeys of an apartment building – they made their debut feature Swiss Army Man (2016) about the tender relationship between the survivor of a shipwreck and a farting corpse played by Daniel Radcliffe. With Everything Everywhere All at Once, these filmmakers have fully hit their stride.
At the heart of its story is an ordinary woman, Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh). In fact, she’s the most ordinary of women, quietly running a laundromat in the Simi Valley, California, with her sweet, sprightly husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). Tensions are high. Evelyn’s father (James Hong) is visiting from China and has always looked down on her decision to marry Waymond and move to America. Her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), has brought her girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel) along, already bitter in the knowledge that her mother is about to shove her back in the closet. Oh, and Evelyn’s being audited. “From a stack of receipts, I can trace the ups and downs of your life,” her assigned IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis, delightfully and manically mundane) warns. “And it does not look good.”
Then, out of the blue, a version of Waymond from somewhere called the “Alphaverse” commandeers her husband’s body in order to tell her that she’s the key to saving all reality. Out of all the Evelyns that exist, branching off from every choice she’s ever made, this Evelyn has fared the worst. That means she’s the only one who still has unfulfilled potential. What a beautiful way to look at the world – that a life in stasis is really one of bottomless possibility. We meet quite a few of the other Evelyns: a martial arts star who could easily be Yeoh herself (spot footage of the actor on the Crazy Rich Asians red carpet), a dominatrix, a piñata, a Chinese opera singer, a hibachi chef and a woman with hot dogs for hands. Aided by the freneticism of Larkin Seiple’s cinematography and Paul Rogers’s editing, we shuffle through Evelyns like cards in a deck. There’s an exquisitely constructed homage to Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, alongside full-blown fight scenes choreographed by Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ Brian and Andy Le.
To elaborate any more on the plot would spoil the fun, but the power packed into Everything Everywhere’s punch is that all this elaborate chaos has a distinct purpose to it. The Daniels have fully captured the fractured feeling of modern existence, of never quite being at the wheel of your own life. Evelyn’s task, she’s told, is to “take us back to how it’s supposed to be”. But that proves to be an empty phrase. If every path in life can live side by side, who’s to say any of them is the right one? It’s the sort of philosophy that needs to be tethered to something forceful and absolute – that’s Yeoh, who moves through Everything Everywhere All at Once like she could hold the entire film in the palm of her hand.
You could argue the actor, in a way, has lived a few different lives herself: as the Hong Kong action star in Heroic Trio (1993); the Bond girl of Tomorrow Never Dies (1997); the romcom matriarch in Crazy Rich Asians (2018). But the Evelyns she plays aren’t parodies or costumes; they are a set of emotions placed on a gradient. To say this is a showcase for her talent almost feels like an understatement – the same can be said for Quan, who played Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Data in The Goonies (1985) and then learned the hard lesson of how little Hollywood cares for the accomplishments of Asian actors. If the industry has really changed for the better, this return to acting should mark the first role of many.
From The Independent.co.uk by Clarisse Loughrey
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)