Bhutto Dynasti

Source: Times Online

19 year-old Oxford undergraduate, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s oldest son, has been named to succeed her as the family’s Pakistan People’s Party (Shakil Adil/AP)

Benazir Bhutto, daughter of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. She served twice as the prime minister of pakistan and was the first woman in the whole muslim world, elected as prime minister. She was assassinated on 27th December, 2007 while returning from her election campaign at Liaqat Baagh, Rawalpindi.

Bilawal’s grandfather and Ms Bhutto’s father, the former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founded the PPP in 1967. He was executed by hanging in 1979 (AP)

Zulfikar’s wife, Begum Nusrat Bhutto, took over the party after his death, but soon ceded control to her daughter. She has stayed out of the limelight in recent years due to a battle with Alzheimer’s (Muzammil Pasha/Reuters)

Ms Bhutto had three children, who live mostly in Dubai. Asifa, 14, is the youngest (B.K. Bangash/AP)

Bakhtawar, 17, is Ms Bhutto’s elder daughter (Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty)

Bilawal, Bukhtakar, and Asifa’s father, Asif Ali Zardari, will take over the running of the PPP until Bilawal completes his philosophy, politics and economics degree at Oxford (Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images)

Fatima Bhutto, Ms Bhutto’s 25 year-old niece, is a newspaper columnist and was always one of her harshest critics (Paul Rogers)

Fatima lives with her mother, Ghinwa Bhutto, who is estranged from her in-laws and runs her own faction of the PPP. Ghinwa blames Ms Bhutto for the death of her husband, Murtaza Bhutto (Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty)

Murtaza, Ms Bhutto’s younger brother, was killed in a police shootout in 1996, while Ms Bhutto was Prime Minister. Her youngest brother, Shahnawaz Bhutto, died in suspicious circumstances in France 11 years earlier (Reuters)

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Junior, 18, is Murtaza’s second child after Fatima, and the nephew of Ms Bhutto (Shakil Adil/AP)

Sanam Bhutto, 50, is Ms Bhutto’s younger sister and the only remaining child of Zulfikar Ali and Nusrat Bhutto. She is based in London and claims she has no interest in politics (Zahid Hussein/Reuters)

Top five web/internet companies acquired in 2007

Thanks to private equity firms, 2007 was an active year for M&A in general. But interestingly, in the web/internet space, most of the large acquisitions were done by Stretegics, the corporate acquirers, and not the private equity firms.

The sector that saw the highest activity was the Internet advertising sector; aQuantive, 24/7, DoubleClick, Right Media and a long list of others were acquired this year.

Here are the top 5 acquisitions in the Web/internet field.

(1) aQuantive - Microsoft : $6B. aQuantive is a digital marketing and technology company. It is now part of Micorosoft’s Advertiser and Publisher Solution group.

(2) WebEx - Cisco : $3.2B. Webex is a leader in the online video concerning. Cisco’s mantra? “Unified communication”. Hmm, where have I heard that before?

(3) Double Click - Google : $3.1B. The deal is not complete yet but it was approved by FTC. DoubleClick develops and provides internet ad serving service. Google + DoubleClick will rule most of the clickable space on a webpage.

(4) Club Penguin - Disney : $700M. Club penguin is a virtual world for kids. Social Web - start them when they are young.

(5) Right Media - Yahoo : $680M. Yahoo already owned 20% of Right Media and purchased the remaining 80%. Some suggest that Yahoo purchased Right Media in response to Google’s DoubleClick purchase.

Some other notable acquisitions of 2007 are:

• Postini - google : $625M. Postini is an e-mail and communication security company.
• 24/7 real Media - WPP : $649M. 24/7 is a significant player in the online advertising marketplace.
• Zimbra - Yahoo : $350M. Zimbra provides online office software.
• Adult Friendfinder - Penthouse : $500M. Adult FriendFinder is an an online adult dating site.
• How Stuff Works - Discovery : $250M. How Stuff works has expanded in to online video instructions.
• American Greetings - Webshot : $45M. This was notable because CNET purchased Webshot for $70M not too long ago. I still remember the time when Webshot was a wallpaper site.
• Business.com - Donnelly : $345M. From a directory serving Google text ads to the sale at $345M was remarkable.
• Lexico - Answers.com : $100M. Lexico owns dictionary.com and thesaurus.com. This deal was notable because Answer.com paid almost $10/unique visitor - that is on the rich side for sure.

For a more detailed list, see PartnerUp and seeking Alpha and DealBook.

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Terrorising is the job of Terrorists

HRCP assails vigilantes

Lahore, January 01: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has called for immediate disbandment of vigilante squads maintained by the establishment or its favourite political party as their interference with citizens' normal affairs is not only unlawful it would lead to chaos. In a statement issued here today HRCP said:

On Monday night (Dec. 31) a most deplorable incident took place in Gulberg area. A few young girls, including Muneeza Jahangir, HRCP Chairperson's daughter and a well-known TV producer/reporter, accompanied by a couple of young men, decided to take photographs of some election posters. Suddenly a bunch of armed toughs pounced upon them, mercilessly beat up a young man, dragged the girls and shut them up in the office of the son of the outgoing Punjab Chief Minister. The armed goons abused the girls and threatened them by pointing their guns at them, and offered the same treatment to Ms. Asma Jahangir when she arrived at the scene to rescue the girls. These men had no right or authority to resort to violence and imprison their victims in private premises. Worse, the culprits seemed to enjoy local authorities' patronage and were reportedly backed by a couple of police constables in uniform. HRCP calls for immediate disbandment of all such private storm-troopers as their unlawful activities will pose a serious threat to citizens' life and security and plunge society into a total chaos. The interim rulers must probe the matter and call the guilty to account, that is, if they have the power to do so.

Iqbal Haider
Secretary-General

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