Hoffman Design Group is specialize in creating beautiful, attention-grabbing plantscapes, corporate floral arrangements, and green wall designs in Philadelphia, suburban Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey.
Our award-winning Philadelphia Landscaping Company serves the city and surrounding suburbs. Also check out some of our Delaware Landscape Designs and New Jersey Landscaping ideas. Whatever your corporate landscaping needs are, Hoffman Design Group can meet them.

Hoffman Design Group, Inc. is not just any corporate landscaping company. Our distinguished landscape designs have won many awards. We take great pride in our elegant, environmentally-friendly seasonal and holiday decorating, corporate floral arrangements, plantscapes and urban exterior landscaping.

Washington: The World Bank Wednesday said it spent a record $58.8 billion on loans, grants, guarantees and social projects over the last year to help poor countries steer through a dramatic global recession.

The development bank said its budget jumped 54 percent between July 2008 and June 30 from a year earlier and is now at the highest level in its 60-year history.

The money keeps developing countries from cutting back on social programmes, and World Bank President Robert Zoellick said he expected the demand to remain high as the economic crisis continues through 2010.

“The pace of recovery is far from certain,” Zoellick said. “Millions of people are still suffering, and we must continue to help countries safeguard priority expenditures.”

Bangalore: After a year of carnage in the global banking industry, five Indian banks figured in the list of the world’s top 1,000 banks in 2009, compiled by trade magazine ‘The Banker’. State-owned State Bank of India holds the first position among the Indian banks and ranked 64th position and ICICI bank ranked 81st among global banks.

The top five banks in the world are JP Morgan Chase followed by Bank of America, CITI Group, Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC Holdings by capital strength. Among all these five banks, HSBC is the only bank that has not received any government support.

The other Indian banks in the global first 500 league are Punjab National bank, HDFC Bank and Bank of India at 239, 242 and 263, respectively.

The rankings are based on nine parameters-the strength of their Tier I capital, the size of their assets, their capital adequacy ratio, pre-tax profit, growth in profit and five performance indicators (profits on average capital, return on assets, cost income ratio, Basle capital ratio and percentage of non-performing loans).

‘The Banker’, a part of the Financial Times group has been carrying the rankings since 1970. According to publication, banks that stuck to the basics, taking deposits and lending in their home markets fared the best.

“In future banks will be run much more conservatively. Regulators will require them to hold more capitals and be less leveraged which will reduce the profits of the industry as a whole but will bring about a safer banking system,” said Brian Caplen, Editor, The Banker.

The Reserve Bank of India cut its key short-term rates by 25 basis points each on Tuesday to shore up faltering growth in the face of the global economic slowdown.

The repo rate, at which the Reserve Bank of India infuses cash into the banking system, will be cut to 4.75 per cent, and the reverse repo rate, at which it absorbs excess cash from banks, will be reduced to 3.25 per cent, effective immediately.

The central bank cut is growth estimate for 2008/09, which ended on March 31, to 6.5 to 6.7 per cent, and forecast growth of around 6 per cent for 2009/10.

It said that managing large government borrowing in 2009/10 in a non-disruptive manner would be a major challenge, and said it would used a mix of monetary and debt management tools to ensure this was done smoothly.

“Large borrowings also militate against the low interest rate environment that the Reserve Bank is trying to maintain to spur investment demand in keeping with the stance of monetary policy,” the central bank said in its policy statement.

The bank rate, used by banks to price long-term loans, remained at 6.0 per cent. Banks’ cash reserve requirements were also left unchanged at 5.0 per cent.

Analysts polled by Reuters were almost evenly split over whether the central bank would cut rates or not. Six out of the 11 analysts polled expected the bank to bring down its lending rate by 25 to 50 basis points. The other five forecast the rate to be held steady.

The RBI has now cut its short-term lending rate by 425 basis points in six steps since Oct. 20 as the global economic crisis has hit Asia’s third-largest economy harder than expected. The central bank said wholesale-priced based inflation was expected to turn negative early in the current fiscal year, but this should not be interpreted as deflation for policy purposes.

It projected WPI inflation would be around 4 per cent at the end of 2009/10.

The central bank said a planned April 2009 review of the policy on foreign banks in India would now not go ahead until there was greater clarity regarding stability, recovery of the global financial system and better global coordination on regulation and supervision.

Moscow: Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) may not be a safe way of transaction anymore as a new software virus has been found out which infects ATMs to steal money from bank accounts of their users. Doctor Web and ‘Kaspersky Lab, two major anti-virus software producers have discovered such virus in the networks of several bank ATMs, which is able to collect information from bank cards.

This is a malicious program intended to infect and survive in ATMs. It is possible that new software will appear, aimed at illegitimately using banking information and removing funds,” an official of the Kaspersky Lab was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti news agency.

According to the official, the virus is a Trojan which is able to infect the popular American Diebold brand of ATMs, used in Russia and Ukraine. Judging by the programming code used, there is a high probability that the programmer comes from one of the former Soviet republics.

The computer security experts say the number of infected ATMs is minimal but individual bank cardholders will not be able to detect whether an ATM is infected or not. However, banks can run security software to find out if their machines are at risk.

Citi s new mobile banking solution will offer its customers convenient, on-the-go banking. Its advanced mobile technology will be compatible with popular mobile devices across most GSM operators

Citi Mobile customers can check account balances, send money, issue drafts, pay bills, make credit card payments, register for services like e-Statements, request for a cheque book, stop payments and much more, said a company release.

Citi Mobile will address customers emerging lifestyle needs and support them in accessing their money in a fast, convenient and secure manner through something they always have with them - their mobile phones, said N. Rajashekaran, country business manager of Citi India, Access through mobile service will require the mobile number to be registered with the bank, and a Java-enabled mobile phone with a GPRS connection.

Banks to consider lowering lending rates in a few days.

Less than a week after third-quarter GDP estimates showed a lower-than-expected 5.3 per cent growth rate, the Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday surprised the market and sent fresh signals to banks to lower lending and deposit rates by pruning the repo rate and the reverse repo rate by 50 basis points each.

The repo rate, or the rate at which RBI lends to banks, has been cut to 5 per cent, while the reverse repo rate, or the rate at which the central bank absorbs liquidity, has been pared to 3.5 per cent. The market had given up hopes of an immediate reduction after the central bank prodded banks last week to lower rates.

Around the time the central bank announced its latest move to boost economic activity, Canara Bank said it would cut interest rates on housing and vehicle loans and domestic term deposits, effective March 11.

Others banks, however, said their asset-liability committees (alcos) would meet over the next few days to examine the cost of funds and then decide whether to reduce lending rates.

“Wednesday’s move is prompted by the fact that inflation is coming down and there is a possibility that the numbers may go down to negative territory in June. We expect the cost of funds to drop in a fortnight. When the cost of funds comes down for us, we will pass on the benefit to borrowers,” said HDFC Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Keki Mistry.

An Axis Bank executive said that the bank would review its home loan rates soon but did not comment on the prime lending rate.

“This is a signal from RBI to review the rates. Our alco will meet in three or four days to take stock of costs and then decide the issue,” Bank of Maharashtra Chairman and Managing Director Allen C A Pereira said.

“RBI has sought to create conditions conducive to consumption and investment, taking into account global developments and their impact on India: a slowdown in growth on one hand and decline in inflation on other,” said ICICI Bank CEO-designate Chanda Kochhar.

The RBI move is largely a sentiment booster for banks rather than a technical one, as banks already have ample liquidity and hardly borrow from the repo window right now, she added.

A cut in reverse repo rates will discourage banks from parking surplus funds with RBI through the liquidity adjustment facility and encourage them to boost lending to the commercial sector. Over the past three months, RBI has slashed the rate 250 basis points.

With the latest repo rate reduction, the fifth since October 20, the overall cut since the global credit crisis intensified adds up to 400 basis points.

Since September, the central bank has also lowered the cash reserve ratio, or the proportion of deposits that banks set aside, by another 400 basis points to inject Rs 1,60,000 crore into the system. Through the series of measures, RBI has provided Rs 3,88,000 crore of primary liquidity to the system.

Banks have, however, refrained from passing on the entire benefits to borrowers and have reduced lending rates 50 to 200 basis points, with private and foreign banks being reluctant to cut rates.

As a result of banks’ risk aversion that prompted them to park larger sums of money in government securities, the flow of resources to the commercial sector from banks and non-banks fell to Rs 4,98,136 crore between April and February 13, against Rs 6,08,351 crore in the corresponding period of the last year. On a year-on-year basis, non-food credit growth, which rose to 29.4 per cent on October 10, decelerated to 19.7 per cent on February 13.

RBI, while advising banks to “monitor their loan portfolio and take early action, to prevent asset impairment” also asked lenders to appropriately price the risk “and ensure that creditworthy enterprises continue to get funding”.

Overall economic activity has slowed, with the economy projected to grow 7.1 per cent this year, against over 9 per cent during the past three years. Industrial output contracted in December, exports have shrunk for four months in a row and growth in the services sector has slowed.

State Bank of India (SBI) has gone live on cash management product across corporate accounts group divisions at more than 300 branches. The Bank has selected Nucleus Software Export Limited’s Nucleus cash management product Cash@Will (payments and collection) for the project.

Cash@Wi!l, a cash management product for managing cash flow and implementing long-term flexible solutions, will help the Bank in managing its government clients better. It will help SBI improve revenue, maximize profits, optimize costs, and establish efficient management systems to accelerate growth, according to a statement.

SBI is now using Cash@Will for drafts, Income-Tax refund orders (ITRO), multi-city cheque (MCC) and collection services. The implementation was done in a phased manner where payments and collections modules implemented initially were subsequently replaced by the newer version of Cash@Will. The solution will power the cash management product of SBI, which handles businesses like ITRO, SBI Rights Issue.

Vishnu R. Dusad, CEO and MD, Nucleus Software Exports Limited, said, “As an IPR-led company, our synergistic approach of aligning our intellectual capital with business requirement helps our clients improve their operational efficiencies and customer value.”

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued a Notification to all the banks in India, making it mandatory for them to develop a system wherein additional authentication/validation is offered to an online banking customer through a password input.

Also, for transactions exceeding Rs. 5,000, it will be mandatory for the banks to send an intimation to the customer.

“RBI has been reviewing various options to enhance the security of online card transactions,” said G. Padmanabhan, chief general manager of RBI, in his letter to the banks. The letter goes on to say that the above-mentioned Notification has to be strictly followed, on failure of which the banks will be liable for penalty charges.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) transactions will not have to comply with the compulsory password protection procedure for the time being. For this, separate instructions will follow from the bank. The Notification comes into effect from August 1, 2009.

Planned expenditure

Government’s planned expenditure for April-November 2008 stood at Rs 1.3 lakh crore
April-Nov planned expenditure is 56% of the estimated Rs 2.4 lakh crore Including all fiscal measures announced, it is expected to rise Rs 35,000 cr to Rs 2.7 lakh crore

Brokerage houses estimate planned expenditure in FY10 at Rs 2.9 lakh cr.

Non-plan expenditure

• Govt had estimated non-plan expenditure of Rs 5 lakh crore, up  13% YoY
• On account of rising demand, govt asks Parliament for supplementary grants
• Non-plan expenditure would be Rs 6.1 lakh crore, up 21% higher than budget estimate
• High agricultures producer/foodgrain prices in the first half of fiscal increased food bill subsidy by Rs 4,100 cr

Budget expectation

Banking

• Expected to increase banks’ mandatory lending limit to MSMEs
• May persuade PSU banks to reduce home loan rates, through interest subvention or any other means
• May reduce the duration of deposits (estimated at 3 years) to drive an increased flow of deposits towards banks.

Logistics

• Timeline for CST phase out by 2010 to be maintained
• Focus on implementation of freight corridor of the Railway
• Sec 80IA benefits to continue for ICD & CFS investments

Automobile

• Removal of additional duty of Rs15,000-20,000 on vehicles with engine capacity above 1,500cc
• Accelerated depreciation of 50% of purchase of CV before Mar 2009 may be extended

Brokerage Expectations

• Direct tax collections to decline by 4%. Indirect tax collection is already under pressure on a series of duty cuts.
• To increase capital commitments, already up 20% over budget estimate.
• Subsidies are likely to be considerably lower in FY10 due to substantial decline in fertiliser prices.
• The revenue projection for FY09 is looking aggressive in the changed economic environment.
• Net tax revenues falling short of budget estimates by 5%.
• Lower subsidy bill ensure production utilisation towards growth
• Gross fiscal deficit of FY10 seen at 5.3% of GDP
• Net tax revenue to decline due to lower personal income and corporate earnings
• FY09 direct tax to decline by 4% to Rs 3.5 lakh crore from budget estimates of Rs 3.6 crore
• Excise duty collection to fall short by 16% for FY09 due to fall in prices of most goods and commodities