How Tze 浩知

Popular games such as football, golf, tennis, basketball, cricket, yachting and car-racing have evolved into international events with a huge following, creating gigantic marketing potential for the organisers. The organisers of popular games such as FIFA (football), PGA (golf) and so on organise and manage the events in such a manner to extract maximum value from others who want to exploit the marketing potential the events offer. Let us look at various streams of revenue to the organisers. The first line of revenue is sponsorship fees. This includes the right to display the sponsor’s trademark inside the games venue, the right to use the event identifiers on articles made by the sponsors (eg Kia, Coca-Cola) or the right to use the event identifier in association with a service (eg banking, credit card), or placement rights (eg next to tee boxes in golf courses – Rolex). The second line of revenue is gate collection. Even here the printing of tickets may be sponsored – the ticket bear...

It is the true story of Robert William Kearns, or Bob Kearns, the inventor who came up with the intermittent windshield wiper. He had tried to sell his idea to Ford, Chrysler and General Motors but all three did not show any interest, although Ford had asked him to prepare a cost analysis. Despite the rejection, these companies proceeded to install the intermittent windshield wiper which Kearns had patented. It was at the launch of the latest Ford Mustang that Kearns discovered that his idea had been stolen as the intermittent windshield wiper – which Kearns invented based on the blinking action of the human eye – became the car’s main selling point. The invention was his "flash of genius"; patent law terminology meaning that an idea for an invention could come to someone out of nowhere irrespective of his skills, experience or knowledge over the matter. Between 1978 and 1990, Kearns fought what is arguably the most famous patent infringement case in US history as he sued For...

Interesting notes: The high IPO price made the company's founders, the low-profile couple Li Li and Li Tan, who hold a combined stake of 72 percent, the wealthiest people in China overnight. Based on the current stock price, the value of the stake exceeded 50 billion yuan ($7.3 billion), surpassing Wang Chuanfu, chairman of electric car manufacturer BYD, China's richest person in 2009 with a fortune of $5.1 billion, according to the 2009 Hurun China Rich List. US investment bank Goldman Sachs, which paid $4.9 million for 12.5 percent of Hepalink in 2007, also saw a more than 200-fold return based on the current price. The Shenzhen-based drug company was founded in 1998. It primarily produces herapin, which is purified from pig intestines then made into a shot used to prevent blood clots in patients with heart conditions or undergoing surgery. As the only Chinese company accredited by the US Food and Drug Administration to export herapin, the company's net profit jumped from...