Benefits of Mergers and Acquisitions in Banking Industry of Pakistan: A Case Study of Five Latest Transactions

One of the principal objectives of merger and acquisition is to reap up the benefits of economies of scale especially in the banking sector around the globe. Over the last decade, banking sector in Pakistan has not only grown-up in term of size but also consolidated, matured and diversified to contribute towards constructing a strong financial system. The current study has analyzed five mergers cases in banking industry of Pakistan. Different variables like change in growth of capital, deposits, advances and investment pattern were taken to investigate effect of pre and post mergers. Null hypothesis was proposed as no mean difference in the values of variables of interest. On the base of empirical findings, null hypothesis was rejected and alternative hypothesis was accepted. It was concluded that latest mergers and acquisitions providing benefits to the banking sector in term of synergy. Thus, more mergers and acquisitions were recommended in future. Keywords: Merger; Acquisition; Banks

Agency Problems, Product Market Competition and Dividend Policies in Pakistan

The present study investigates the influence of product market competition on the dividend policies of the listed companies at KSE 100 index in Pakistan. It identify whether product market competition mitigates agency problems between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders. In particular, we examine firm dividend policies in competitive market, the study use three statistical measures for the analysis of 30 textile firms. The result shows that the product market competition have no significant impact on dividend policies of Pakistan. This study recommends that the product market competition can be an effective tool that can force the managers to give cash to shareholders. Keywords: Agency Problem, Dividend Policy, Corporate Governance, Product Market Competition, Textile Industr

How Billionaires Become Valuable Millionaires? Psychological Impact of Redenomination on Economy

The study aims to investigate the psychological impact of deleting zeroes from the value of national currency. The data were collected from five countries: Israel, Argentina, Poland, Turkey and Brazil to investigate the impact of deleting zeroes. Line graphs and simple percentages were used to analyze the impact of redenomination on inflation. The results revealed almost positive impact of redenomination on economy in all cases. Negative impacts were found only in two events of the countries i.e. Argentina and Brazil in 1983 and 1996 respectively. It was concluded that the redenomination can be used to create value and to control inflation. Keywords: Currency Redenomination, Value Creation; Inflation, National Economy; Psychological Impac

+MRT: Centralized Web Based Application for Managing Repetitive Tasks

Abstract—Task management is broadly classified as a process of managing and assigning different tasks to co-workers, employees or subordinates throughout the life cycle of a project via project managers. Tasks can be of various natures but more specifically we are referring here tasks that are used in the software industry. In this modern world, why a project manager has to assign a repetitive task to its team members repeatedly when a new project arrives. This research paper particularly addresses this issue of automatic task management. In this research we have investigated the problems regarding task management, that can occur during the life cycle of a project and presented a web application MRT which can be effectively served as a solution to those problems. Existing applications like Jira and Trello etc. are helping project managers to automate this process. However, we argue that they are still lacking in few aspects. After examining the existing tools, we felt that there are some problems in automatic task management which are not solved yet. We have solved the problems of task management via MRT. We claim that project managers can use MRT for automatic tasks assignments. MRT novel features, therefore, eliminates the need for human effort for repetitive tasks management. Another aspect of Task management is to provide global access to information regarding tasks status to different levels of employees in hierarchy such as manager, CEO, that helps them regarding taking strategic decisions about employees and further projects. MRT can be used as a safeguard against delays and missed deadlines. More precisely our contributions are i) An algorithm for assigning automatic tasks to employees based on their skill set. ii) Tracking of task dependencies that leads to successful project completion iii) Sub Tasks dependencies tracking that are essential to consider, for declaring a task as completed, pending or not completed. iv) Notification management for timely review of tasks. v). Task Tracking at various levels. vi) Priority-based task assignment vii) Additional feature of document storage viii) Creation of Executive Dashboard of the project to visualize the important metrics. ix) Usage of state of the art ASP.Net Web APIs which ensure the use of mobile apps for MRT x) Fresh API Tokens are sent on each call to enhance the security of MRT. xi) The creation of web services that allows integration of MRT data into various devices such as mobiles, tablets etc

The Impact of Green Entrepreneurial Orientation on Firm Performance through Green Innovation: The Moderating Role of Strategic Green Marketing Orientation

Environmental protection has become a matter of market rivalry and competitive advantage. Therefore, the ideas of green entrepreneurial orientation, green innovation and green marketing etc., highly concern from last few decades in business research. Although the direct relationships between green entrepreneurial orientation (GEO), green innovation (GI) and firm performance (FP) have been investigated by different researchers but indirect relationship through GI are scant in literature. This study fills out the gap by investigating the impact of GEO on FP through GI and moderating role of strategic green marketing orientation (SGMO) in SMEs of Pakistan

The Impact of Green Entrepreneurial Orientation on Firm Performance through Green Innovation: The Moderating Role of Strategic Green Marketing Orientation

Environmental protection has become a matter of market rivalry and competitive advantage. Therefore, the ideas of green entrepreneurial orientation, green innovation and green marketing etc., highly concern from last few decades in business research. Although the direct relationships between green entrepreneurial orientation (GEO), green innovation (GI) and firm performance (FP) have been investigated by different researchers but indirect relationship through GI are scant in literature. This study fills out the gap by investigating the impact of GEO on FP through GI and moderating role of strategic green marketing orientation (SGMO) in SMEs of Pakistan

Guidelines for dimensional accuracy and machining allowances of 3D printed metal parts

In this research, characteristics of 3D printed metal parts are investigated. Main objectives are to find dimensional accuracy and define machining allowances for 3D printed metal parts. To achieve this goal internal threads were manufactured, and their quality was examined. Method of this study was to examine quality of M5 and M8, internal threads. For this purpose, preholes were printed in flat plates in 5 different printing inclinations to build plate. Aluminium and maraging steels were main materials used in this research. Printing-machine’s recoater angle was varied to observe its effect in determining part’s dimensional accuracy. Printed parts were examined in as-built condition and after heat treatment. Physical properties measured during experimentation were surface roughness, flatness, hardness, porosity near surface, hole size and drilling forces. Thread strength was measured using thread stripping forces and thread profile was analyzed with optical microscope. In results, effect of printing inclination on material properties was investigated. Comparison of different recoater angles and heat treatments were done separately. Results revealed that printing inclination and recoater angle do not affect material properties significantly and that threads are equally strong in all directions. Machining allowances, due to material surface defects, are recommended to be 0.2 mm for aluminium and 0.1 mm for maraging steel components. Making a pre-hole during printing reduces drilling forces up to 80%. To avoid off-centering effects during drilling, pre-hole size is recommended to be 1 mm smaller than nominal diameter. Funding for this project was provided by Aalto University, Department of Mechanical Engineering, “FIN3D” research project. Equipment from laboratories of Production Engineering and Material Science of Mechanical Engineering, Aalto University, were utilized in the research. EOS Finland provided metal printed parts and valuable information

Long-run Performance of Public vs. Private Sector Initial Public Offerings in Pakistan

The private sector had its major share in the economic development of the country in the early years of its independence in the 1950s. However, the private sector suffered a set back in the early 1970s, when a huge process of nationalisation of a large number of private industrial units was undertaken by the then government. Over the decades these enterprises were not professionally managed and the political influences in the management and running of these enterprises played havoc with them and consequently the experiment proved to be a failure. Attending to the weaknesses and inefficiencies inherent in the public sector enterprises, privatisation was systematically initiated by the then government in the early 1990s. Various privatisation commissions were set up in subsequent years and the privatisation process got some momentum during the present government and many large and profitable firms were privatised in the last few years, particularly at a time when the overall climate in the country was responsive and conducive for investment. The government, however, privatised many enterprises through public offerings on individual-case basis