Finance

This paper assesses the benefits, problems and implications of the use E-commerce to developing economy like ours (Nigeria) in the area of international marketing. The position of this paper is that despite the myriad benefits of e-commerce in the international scene, the concept has held African countries under electronic siege. It promises freedom for all but in practice it's under developing Africa faster. The historical evolution of NWICO is responsible for this scenario. The lesson to be learned from the paper is that Africa should join the rest of the world in developing electronically platforms that 'will help our products marketed and competed internationally in the "market space ".

Electronic banking (e-banking) system has become an important practice among commercial banks in Nigeria. The introduction of this banking system has improved banking efficiency in rendering services to customers and the public. However the gains of e-banking has been associated with some hinderances ranging from internet failure to arbitrary withdrawal of money by customers which negates the cashless policy being heralded by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). It was in line with this that the study aims at examining the challenges facing this banking system and the prospects accruable to its adoption. Among the various suggestions made in this study- to benefit maximally from e-banking- include provision of enabling environment that can guarantee safety of lives and cash deposits of customers, provision of an interrupted power supply and internet service in order to enjoy efficient services from the banks. Lastly, enforceable e-banking regulations should be put in place to back up the cashless policy already initiated by the CBN. This will go a long way to reduce money laundering and reckless withdrawal of cash and thereby boosting capital formation and investment in the economy.

Today world economy is more concerned about a disease which is much dangerous than swine flu, know as Global Financial Meltdown. The impact of GFM experienced by financial and economic systems around the world. The rising defaults on sub-prime mortgages in the US had triggered a global crisis for the financial markets. Many of the world’s leading investment banks have collapsed .The crisis has become one of the most radical reshaping of the global banking sector, as governments and the private sector battle to shore up the financial system following the disappearance of Lehman and Merrill as independent entities. The impact was so severe that it brought about new challenges for corporate around the world and were forced to initiate measures which left employees jobless and morale nose diving. The measures like salary cut, retrenchment /layoff became tools to tackle GFM.

While capital markets play a pivotal role in promoting economic development, investors can be motivated to invest in the capital market only if securities in the market are appropriately priced, which, in turn, is governed by the market efficiency. Market Efficiency is closely related to the random walk hypothesis which states that a share price will follow a random walk. While there has been ample research to test the Random Walk Hypothesis at the capital markets in developed economies, very few studies have been conducted for capital markets in India. Further, even fewer studies have been conducted for the Indian Banking sector, represented by the Bank NIFTY Index. The current study examines Random Walk Hypothesis at the Bank NIFTY Index for the period from 1st April 2014 to 31st March 2017. Normality tests indicate that the day-wise returns are normally distributed. In order to provide a better understanding of the data utilized in this study, the descriptive statistics are examined. Further, results from the Run test indicate that the Bank NIFTY Index does not follow a random walk for the period examined.

Successful project management depends upon practicing nine knowledge areas; managing project scope, time, cost, quality, time and workload management for human resources, stakeholder communication, procurement, risk and integration of all these. However, existing literature does not give primary importance to workload management for human resources. From July 2007 to April 2009, this study observes that in the IT industry working in Islamabad, Pakistan, workload management was considered as support or secondary function of human resource management. Focusing on workload management this study hypothesized that the quality of the workload management determines the project outcome. Adopting stratified sampling 70 heterogeneous IT projects from 24 different software houses were selected. Using a reliable instrument, data was about the quality of workload management by the project managers and the consequent results of the IT projects was collected in a cross sectional manner. The data was analyzed using frequency distribution, Pearson correlation and linear regression. The findings confirmed a strong correlation and dependency of project outcome on proper workload management. This study recommends good quality workload management a primary tool for determining the project’s scope, time and cost. The study contributes guidelines and templates to help project managers improve workload management skills and its role in project outcomes respectively.

Banking sector contributes 95% of the total financial sector in Pakistan economy and financial sector has a large share in overall growth of the country. For banking sector performance growth, State Bank of Pakistan has taken many significant steps. Banks involved in providing the financial needs of government and private businesses and neglecting the needs of small and medium enterprises, agriculture sector and consumer sector. Massive financial reforms as privatization, interest rate liberalization and banks restructuring and alike were introduced by Government of Pakistan in order to improve the performance of banking sector. The current study is designed to cater the need of financial reforms in banking sector, entailing the major financial reforms in banking sector by the Government of Pakistan and excogitate their impact on performance of banking sector in Pakistan. The outcome of the meta-analysis suggests that in this dynamic world of financial liberalization and global market integration the regulatory body must be vigilant and agile to cater the needs of every sector and introduce transformations on regular basis in order to create sound, healthy and competitive economy.

The relationship between stock market and various macroeconomic variables has always been divisive. Studies indicate that stock market is influenced by changes in macroeconomic variables. Some of which affect the stock market returns and index positively while others have an adverse impact on stock market returns and index. This article examines the impact of four macroeconomic variables i.e. GDP per capita, gross domestic savings, inflation and discount rate on KSE index of Pakistan. It covers a period of 20 years from 1991 to 2010. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) is used to test the multiple regression model. Analysis results indicate that GDP per capital and gross domestic savings have a significant and positive impact on KSE Index. On the other hand, discount rate and inflation (being measured through CPI) posses a significant but negative impact on KSE Index. Explanatory variables under study accounted for 98% variation in KSE Index. Therefore, it is suggested that government should take remedial measures to control inflation. Also it should work on maintaining appropriate discount rate. There should be a balance between excessive high and low discount rate. It will boost investments in stock market and consequently stock returns and index.

It is very hard job to understand the customer’s psychology and very challenging to measure the satisfaction level of the consumers. This study in reference to the customer satisfaction regarding Interest free banking system in Pakistan will give an insight into the various factors of customer satisfaction such as quality products and services, customer relationship and economic benefits to clients. Though some deviation was found in satisfaction level of customers related to services and products offered by Interest free banks in Pakistan but insufficient knowledge about Interest free banking system is the major weakness at the end of customers. Purpose of this conceptual study is to review the different angels of customers’ satisfaction and depict the various features of Interest (Riba) free banking system to satisfy and retain the existing customers as well as develop future prospective marketing strategies including expansion of innovative and diversified products and services to establish new clientage market.

This paper presents the economic feasibility study for the implementation of Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) system in Malaysian. BIPV is a relatively new technology which is being introduced by the Malaysian government as a step to encourage the use of renewable energy in reducing the dependence on fossil fuel energy which is becoming scarce from time to time. The objective of this study is to evaluate the possibility of BIPV system to be implemented in Malaysia in terms of financial feasibility. As a result of this study, it is found that BIPV faces a stiff challenge which holds the technology to expand further. The current situations make the BIPV system is not feasible economically to be implemented in Malaysia. However, this does not limit the implementation of this technology in future. This problem can be overcome by the support of government by introducing a better policy which might be able to stimulate and create a conducive environment for BIPV to expand.

The aim of the paper was to analyse the relation between financial leverage on firm’s profitability from the perspective of Nigerian deposit money banks. We employed a random effects regression model with return on asset as dependent variable and three factors (leverage, liquidity and size) as explainable variables. The panel data series was collated from the annual reports and statement of accounts of 14 selected deposit money banks in Nigeria for the period covering 2000-2014. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and panel regression analysis. A panel random effect and panel fixed effect estimations will be processed while the Hausman test will be employed in selecting the most appropriate model. Panel unit root test will also be conducted since our series has a feature of time-series. We have found that financial leverage has a negative impact on profitability. The results of the estimation model show that size and liquidity have positive impact on profitability. As expected, the relationship between liquidity and leverage appears to be negative. Our regression results revealed that firm size is negatively related to leverage. As the selection of independent variables was influenced by availability of data, we consider that our analysis could be expanded by incorporating other determinants factors such as industry-level and country-level variables, so long as the data series are available.