The European Union gained its 28th member on Monday -- Croatia. It's a major milestone for the former Yugoslav country, which was ravaged by war only two decades ago. But to pull out of its current economic slump, it still has a lot of work to do.
Croatia Accedes to European Union 20 Years After Balkan Wars - SPIEGEL ONLINE
Monday, July 1, 2013
Merkel Accused of Campaigning For Reelection At EU expense - SPIEGEL ONLINE
Germany's EU partners are accusing Chancellor Angela Merkel of campaigning for re-election this year at Europe's expense. Even her government's center-right allies within the bloc are needled by Berlin's sudden resistance to Brussels.
Merkel Accused of Campaigning For Reelection At EU expense - SPIEGEL ONLINE
Merkel Accused of Campaigning For Reelection At EU expense - SPIEGEL ONLINE
Alcoa to Host Webcast of Second Quarter 2013 Results
Alcoa Press Release:
July 1, 2013
Alcoa to Host Webcast of Second Quarter 2013 Results
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alcoa (NYSE:AA) will hold a conference call on Monday, July 8, 2013 beginning at 5:00 p.m. (Eastern Time) to discuss Second Quarter 2013 results and business developments. The conference call will be webcast live via Alcoa's website, with presentation materials available on-line.
Conference Call Information
Note: Adobe Flash 9 or higher is required. Please refer to the system check to verify that your computer meets the system requirements. Click here if you need the latest version of Adobe Flash. Presentation materials used during this meeting will be available for viewing at 4:30 p.m. at www.alcoa.com.
Replay Information
A replay of the call will be available from 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time on July 8 until July 15 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time.
About Alcoa
Alcoa is the world’s leading producer of primary and fabricated aluminum, as well as the world’s largest miner of bauxite and refiner of alumina. In addition to inventing the modern-day aluminum industry, Alcoa innovation has been behind major milestones in the aerospace, automotive, packaging, building and construction, commercial transportation, consumer electronics and industrial markets over the past 125 years. Among the solutions Alcoa markets are flat-rolled products, hard alloy extrusions, and forgings, as well as Alcoa® wheels, fastening systems, precision and investment castings, and building systems in addition to its expertise in other light metals such as titanium and nickel-based super alloys. Sustainability is an integral part of Alcoa’s operating practices and the product design and engineering it provides to customers. Alcoa has been a member of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for 11 consecutive years and approximately 75 percent of all of the aluminum ever produced since 1888 is still in active use today. Alcoa employs approximately 61,000 people in 30 countries across the world. For more information, visitwww.alcoa.com, follow @Alcoa on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Alcoa and follow Alcoa on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Alcoa.
July 1, 2013
Alcoa to Host Webcast of Second Quarter 2013 Results
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alcoa (NYSE:AA) will hold a conference call on Monday, July 8, 2013 beginning at 5:00 p.m. (Eastern Time) to discuss Second Quarter 2013 results and business developments. The conference call will be webcast live via Alcoa's website, with presentation materials available on-line.
Conference Call Information
| Time: | 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time | ||
| Hosts: | Klaus Kleinfeld, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer | ||
| William Oplinger, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer | |||
| Call: | (877) 280 4957 | ||
| + 1 (857) 244 7314 (International) | |||
| Pass Code: 83187914 | |||
| To avoid a delay in start time, please dial-in beginning at 4:45 p.m. | |||
Webcast:
|
Invest section of the Alcoa website to listen and view slides only.
| ||
Replay Information
A replay of the call will be available from 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time on July 8 until July 15 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time.
| Replay: | (888) 286 8010 | ||
| + 1 (617) 801 6888 (International) | |||
| Pass Code: 14319447 or at Quarterly Earnings Presentations on our website. |
Alcoa is the world’s leading producer of primary and fabricated aluminum, as well as the world’s largest miner of bauxite and refiner of alumina. In addition to inventing the modern-day aluminum industry, Alcoa innovation has been behind major milestones in the aerospace, automotive, packaging, building and construction, commercial transportation, consumer electronics and industrial markets over the past 125 years. Among the solutions Alcoa markets are flat-rolled products, hard alloy extrusions, and forgings, as well as Alcoa® wheels, fastening systems, precision and investment castings, and building systems in addition to its expertise in other light metals such as titanium and nickel-based super alloys. Sustainability is an integral part of Alcoa’s operating practices and the product design and engineering it provides to customers. Alcoa has been a member of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for 11 consecutive years and approximately 75 percent of all of the aluminum ever produced since 1888 is still in active use today. Alcoa employs approximately 61,000 people in 30 countries across the world. For more information, visitwww.alcoa.com, follow @Alcoa on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Alcoa and follow Alcoa on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Alcoa.
Healthcare Payers Improve Operational Efficiency and Gain Flexibility to Capitalize on New Market Opportunities with Oracle Health Insurance Components
Oracle Press Release
Healthcare Payers Improve Operational Efficiency and Gain Flexibility to Capitalize on New Market Opportunities with Oracle Health Insurance Components
Six Adaptable Service-oriented Architecture Solutions Provide Payment Processing Backbone to Accommodate New Customers Quickly, Reduce Operating Costs and Roll Out New Products Rapidly
Redwood Shores, CA. – July 1, 2013
News Facts
To help healthcare payers embrace new market opportunities while meeting U.S. healthcare reform requirements, provide more flexible and responsive customer service and reduce costs to improve competitive advantage, Oracle today announced Oracle Health Insurance Components. Together, the integrated components provide an end-to-end solution to support the complete health insurance claims lifecycle, including pricing and benefits adjudication, as well as the payment of providers through alternative, non-fee for service reimbursement methods.
Healthcare payers can deploy Oracle Health Insurance Components individually in in their service-oriented architecture (SOA) environments or pre-integrated as a complete, end-to-end processing backbone for payment processes. Built on a common architecture, Oracle Health Insurance Components enable a phased implementation, allowing customers to avoid a "big bang" system replacement and substantially reducing project risk.
Oracle Health Insurance Components include:
Oracle Health Insurance Claims Adjudication provides automated claims benefit adjudication to help payers accelerate processing, reduce costs and focus resources on more complex claims. This application, which supports first-pass processing, enables payers to quickly configure rules to manage flexible benefits, pre-authorization matching, duplicate claim (line) recognition, filing limit detection and call outs that retrieve information from other SOA components.
Oracle Health Insurance Claims Pricing helps payers to reduce operational costs by bundling claims into an episode of care and making a single payment to a provider, who then reimburses the other providers. Payers can recognize a new episode of care, in real time, from the submitted claims or can receive it from a care management application. The solution enables payers to support U.S. healthcare reform requirements and the shift from a fee-for-service model toward pay for performance.
Oracle Health Insurance Product Definition enables payers to rapidly configure plans to meet unique client requirements. As a benefit plan configuration platform that feeds into a benefits engine, it provides healthcare payers with the best of both worlds: ease of configuration and outstanding performance. The solution enables payers to use a set of core components as the foundation for a plan and then strategically focus resources on required customization, speeding time to market and optimizing operational efficiency.
Oracle Health Insurance Benefit Accumulator Management enables payers to avoid overpaying deductibles or benefit limits by providing a central source of truth for all member and family-level accumulators shared across multiple claims engines, and automatically tracks annual deductibles, out-of-pocket maximums and other limits. The solution gives payers the flexibility to configure these limits for varying time periods based on calendar year or contract start date and to accommodate carry-over periods.
Oracle Health Insurance Alternative Reimbursement helps payers to reduce operational overhead by providing automated payment generation. The solution enables payers to automatically identify members, periods, rates and calculations to create payment records, saving time and administrative costs. With a highly user-friendly approach to configuration and rules creation, payers can configure the Oracle solution to calculate nearly any scenario. Payers can change these configurations whenever a policy or regulation changes or when they want to support a new product or benefit to meet changing market demands.
Oracle Health Insurance Claims Analytics provides payers with prebuilt dashboards, reports and metrics that enable them to monitor performance analyze key performance indicators and compare them to benchmarks. With the flexibility to customize the dashboards for each role within the organization, payers can detect issues and diagnose them, thus enabling them to quickly and cost-effectively implement corrective actions and/or cost containment measures.
Supporting Quotes
"Today, healthcare payers face common challenges, including rising treatment costs, ever-changing government regulations, new payment models, uncertainty around the impact of U.S. healthcare reform and a highly competitive marketplace. All of this is putting pressure on payers to change to keep pace with the market and reduce administrative and treatment costs in an effort to stay competitive. Oracle Health Insurance Components’ rules-driven, SOA architecture enables payers to adapt quickly to regulatory changes, respond to competitive threats, plan for the future and meet any opportunity or challenge the market delivers,” said Srini Venkatasanthanam, vice president, Insurance and Healthcare, Oracle Insurance.
Supporting Resources
About Oracle
Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), visit www.oracle.com.
About Oracle in Industries
Oracle industry solutions leverage the company’s best-in-class portfolio of products to address complex business processes relevant to insurance, helping speed time to market, reduce costs, and gain a competitive edge.
Trademark
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
# # #
Jordan Ahli Bank Turns to IBM to Transform Customer Experience and Accelerate Growth
IBM Press Release:
Jordan Ahli Bank Turns to IBM to Transform Customer Experience and Accelerate Growth
New IT Infrastructure to Raise the Bar for Customer Service while bringing Enhanced Productivity, Security and Energy Savings
AMMAN, Jordan - 01 Jul 2013: Jordan Ahli Bank, a leading Jordanian financial institution, has chosen IBM (NYSE: IBM) to transform its core banking systems in a major program of modernization and business expansion. IBM is providing hardware, software and IT services that will set new standards in customer service by enabling the bank to offer smarter products and services, enhance client satisfaction with improved time to market services, increase its banking application performance and cut energy consumption costs.
Jordan Ahli Bank was established in 1955, and currently has more than 50 branches across Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Cyprus. Last year, the bank began a full-scale business transformation program, named “DNA”. The DNA program involves restructuring the bank’s organizational structure, operational model and technology to help it provide enhanced customer service and gear up for future growth.
CEOs and C-Suite leaders around the world are reassessing how to serve their customers, not as a large audience, but as individuals with personalized needs. As part of its broader strategy, Jordan Ahli bank is making a major investment to transform its entire front office – every system, process and person interacting with customers – to better anticipate, respond to and capitalize on future events quickly and ahead of the competition.
The bank turned to IBM to provide a universal banking platform including smarter banking applications from Temenos using IBM’s service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform and smarter computing hardware infrastructure. IBM is delivering the services in collaboration with its business partners Jordan Business Systems and Professionals for Smart Technology (PST).
“Jordan Ahli Bank’s transformation into a smarter bank will allow us to drive greater levels of customer service, flexibility and efficiency,” said Samer Abu Zayed, Deputy CEO, Head of Group Information Technology & Enterprise Programs at Jordan Ahli Bank. “This is one step further towards achieving our DNA Program transformation journey which will help us meet the rising customer demand for new products and easy digital access to services”.
Jordan Ahli Bank will use IBM WebSphere software and business consulting services to build a service-oriented architecture foundation platform to integrate its applications to quickly aggregate critical data generated by separate systems. The SOA platform will also include IBM’s Business Process Management (BPM) software and services which will allow the bank to automate and integrate business processes to increase efficiencies and achieve business agility and IT governance and standardization. The bank will use IBM Rational Enterprise Architecture solution to govern the IT-Business alignment using a standard operating model.
“IBM is working closely with banks to implement smarter systems that allow them to become increasingly agile while continuing to offer innovative services to customers in order to gain a competitive edge in the market,” said Amr Refaat, General Manager, IBM Middle East and Pakistan. “Those who create innovative solutions that improve the experience of individual customers, will deepen customer relationships and ultimately create new pathways for revenue growth”.
“The SOA will allow existing and new applications to easily 'talk' to each other through IBM integration middleware,” said Alaaeddin Ahmad, Enterprise Architecture Manager, Jordan Ahli Bank, “This standards-based approach enables Jordan Ahli Bank to reuse existing business services, hence shortening the application development time required to bring the new banking product or service to market. As a result, the bank will be able to reduce the development time from up to three months to down to a few weeks, facilitating a dramatic improvement in responsiveness to client demands.”
About Jordan Ahli Bank:
Jordan Ahli Bank (previously Jordan National Bank) is a leading Jordanian institution, with a steeped national history and heritage.
Background:
· Jordan Ahli Bank was established in 1955.
· Ahli Bank was the first national bank to be established in East Jordan.
· Ahli Bank was the sixth public shareholding company to be established in the kingdom.
· First founders: Yousef Mouasher, Suleiman Sukkar.
· Initial capital upon establishment: JD 350,000.
· Today, regional presence in Lebanon, Palestine, Cyprus.
· For 50 years, the bank has been a leading player in the financial services industry in Jordan and beyond.
About IBM:
For more information about IBM solutions for Banking, please visit: http://ibm.com/banking
Iams Introduces New So Good! Giving Pet Parents the Value They Want and Quality Their Dogs Need
News Release:
| Iams Introduces New So Good! Giving Pet Parents the Value They Want and Quality Their Dogs Need |
Pet Food Maker Launches New Campaign Asking, “What's Really In Your Bowl?”
Iams So Good! Dog Food (Photo: Business Wire)
“At Iams we believe every pet and every owner deserves the very best nutrition at an affordable price; So Good! is a fantastic food dogs will love and their pet parents will love the lower cost too,” said
To help launch So Good!, and start a conversation among pet owners, a new Iams television ad recently launched. Developed by Saatchi & Saatchi (
The new Iams So Good! campaign will also include print, digital (web and iMedia), PR and social media activities.
Dog owners can show their love by feeding So Good! to their best friend – a tasty food that includes protein-packed chicken, veggies, fruit and crunchy kibbles. The newest food from Iams can be found in the pet food aisles at mass retailers, grocery and pet specialty stores for a suggested price of
In order to help consumers find out what’s really in the food they’re currently feeding their dogs, Iams createdwww.WhatsReallyInYourBowl.com. Visit the interactive site to compare new Iams So Good! against Pedigree, Beneful, Dog Chow and Kibbles ’n Bits. To learn more, pet owners can also visit Iams.com/SoGood.
About P&G Pet Care
For more than 60 years, P&G Pet Care (NYSE:PG), the maker of Iams and Eukanuba, has enhanced the well-being of dogs and cats by providing world-class quality foods and pet care products. To learn more about Eukanuba® and Iams®
About
P&G serves approximately 4.6 billion people around the world with its brands. The Company has one of the strongest portfolios of trusted, quality, leadership brands, including Pampers®, Tide®, Ariel®, Always®, Whisper®, Pantene®, Mach3®, Bounty®, Dawn®, Fairy®, Gain®, Charmin®, Downy®, Lenor®, Iams®, Crest®, Oral-B®, Duracell®, Olay®, Head & Shoulders®, Wella®, Gillette®, Braun®, Fusion®, Ace®, Febreze®, Ambi Pur®, SK-II®, and Vicks®. The P&G community includes operations in approximately 75 countries worldwide. Please visit http://www.pg.com for the latest news and in-depth information about P&G and its brands.
*Iams So Good! offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee.
Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/multimedia/home/20130701005261/en/
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