MUMBAI: Sun Microsystems, the global leader in network computing, shared its ideas on adopting ERP in an easy and affordable price aiming at the small and medium enterprises in a road show in Mumbai on Wednesday. This road show was aimed at offering an excellent opportunity to understand the latest on the subject and how the companies could easily implement it for their business growth. The big-wigs in the ERP like Price Waterhouse, Coopars, Baan, Wipro, Oracle, KPMG, TSPL/QAD and Sun shared their knowledge, based on their vision and experience in this field in a seminar where the basics of the ERP were explained to companies.

MasterCard consumer confidence

MUMBAI: Consumer confidence around the region recovered dramatically in the second half of 1998, according to MasterCard International. The twice-yearly MasterIndex surevy measures consumer confidence in 13 countries and territories in Asia Pacific. From record lows in the June 1998 survey, the latest set ofresults show that consumer confidence in most markets surveyed is up. India moved just three index points lower from a MasterIndex of 51.7 (June 1998) to 49.3 (Dec 1998), thus maintaining a neutral score. However, the score is still the fourth highest MasterIndex in the region.

Vikas WSP pays 25 pc interim

MUMBAI: Vikas SWP Ltd, a 100 per cent export oriented company, has declared an interim dividend of 25 per cent for the current year. For this purpose, the record date has been fixed on April 19, 1999. The company has grown to become the world's second largest producer of guar polymers with a capacity of 39,900 TPA. In the first nine months of the current year, the company reported a net profit of Rs 28 crore on sales of Rs 112 crore. It expects to close the year with sales of around 160 crore.

KBS Capital

MUMBAI: KBS Capital Management Ltd has launched India's first website (www.kbscapital .com) offering real time online quotes of the BSE and the NSE free of cost, apart from providingexhaustive market information.Terming this as a revolutionary step towards investor's servicing, Tushar Shah, managing director of KBS, stated that an emerging market like India with a wide retail investor base had to follow the success stories of developed market.

In the United States alone, almost 40 per cent of the retail broking activity has shifted oneline, he remarked. This signals the imminent arrival of international broking in India, Tushar Shah added.