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It's time to let you in on a dirty little secret: You may not own the stock you own. That's right, if you invest with a brokerage firm, the shares you bought are almost certainly not held in your name. Technically, they're held in the name of the Wall Street firm you do business with, hence the term "street name."
No, you haven't been robbed. Ultimately, the decision to hold shares on the books under a different name doesn't affect the economic ramifications for you. You¿re listed as the "beneficial owner," even though the firm is the official owner of the shares. But, you are giving up some rights, and investors concerned about good corporate governance might want to get that stock back in their own names.
Here's the problem: If your stock is technically owned by, say, Merrill Lynch, then Merrill Lynch gets to do things with it that might work against your wishes. Take short selling. Investors who want to sell shares short need to first borrow those shares. The lenders are often the big Wall Street firms that are handing out Street-name shares. So, if you feel that a company you own is a victim of aggressive short selling, chances are your own shares are being used to fuel the shorting.
Also, your brokerage firm can cast ballots on some corporate matters affecting a company without getting your input. Technically, this can only happen in votes considered ¿routine¿ by securities regulators. But, there's a big catch: some big events, like board elections, are considered "routine" under law.
The good news is that you can easily fix the Street name problem: Just request that your brokerage firm makes you the listed owner of the shares. If they refuse, find a new firm.
Home / Markets / Industries / Technology
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Ribbit Gives a "Voice" to Enterprise Applications
Comtex
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA, May 06, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX News Network) ----After an extraordinarily successful private beta program involving more than 70 businesses of all different sizes, Ribbit -- Silicon Valley's first phone company -- today announced general availability of Ribbit for Salesforce, the first enterprise application to ever link mobile voice communications and Software as a Service (SaaS) business workflow. Ribbit for Salesforce is now available to all U.S. customers of salesforce.com, the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service, via the salesforce.com AppExchange.
A New Service in a New Category
As part of today's announcement, Ribbit introduced a new technology -- "voice automation" -- a new category of services designed to increase productivity by automating and integrating voice into the workflow of mission-critical applications. Ribbit for Salesforce is the first of many innovative services expected in this new category.
"Ribbit is a great example of the new breed of innovative partners that are delivering powerful business applications on the Force.com Platform," said Clarence So, Chief Marketing Officer at salesforce.com. "Mobile voice in sales force workflow is a combination that is sure to bring productivity breakthroughs to many Salesforce customers."
"It's a big moment for Ribbit, the on-demand world, and businesses everywhere," said Denis Pombriant, Managing Principal, at Beagle Research Group. "Salesforce.com helps to drive the top line at many businesses worldwide. With the integration of voice services into workflow, those organizations now have a new, time-proven modality to maximize productivity -- voice."
The Role of Voice in CRM
The opportunity for businesses to benefit from voice automation is especially clear in the world of CRM.
"The convergence of business mobility and on-demand CRM is inevitable, as businesses of all sizes are coping with the demands of an increasingly mobile sales team," said Greg Goldfarb, General Manager of Enterprise Applications at Ribbit. "The pressure on these businesses is to provide their staff with an easy to use, integrated environment for managing their customers. We designed Ribbit for Salesforce with that very clear objective in mind, and our customers are already experiencing great success."
Early customers are reporting both productivity gains and increased customer satisfaction, two of the most critical measures in sales operation.
"This is a great tool -- especially when on the road, it's almost like a personal message taker," said Kevin Edelmann, CRM Product Solutions Administrator, at Delta Dental. "Ribbit converts voice to text and puts it right into Salesforce. Task lists, agendas, account updates, even email drafts -- I just call from my mobile phone and they're waiting in Salesforce when I get back to the office. It's also great to be able to quickly go to whatever voicemail you want and have it automatically organized along with all the other information we track about our customers."
The Ribbit platform -- a carrier-grade telephony-plus-software infrastructure with a community of 4,000-plus application developers -- is enabling enterprises to completely rethink the way they manage their customer relationships via voice. By treating voice as a data object, Ribbit for Salesforce enables a wide range of voice enabled services, including updating records by phone, the integration of voice and messages into workflow, a web based clone of your mobile phone in salesforce.com, and the automation of many processes via voice.
"Salesforce automation redefined enterprise productivity, and now voice automation promises to deliver the next wave of innovation," said Ted Griggs, CEO of Ribbit. "Voice automation is about delivering and integrating voice with the efficiencies of a SaaS environment, and the market is already responding to the immense benefits Ribbit for Salesforce brings to businesses."
Availability
Ribbit for Saleforce is available immediately to all U.S. based salesforce.com customers using Professional Edition and above. Ribbit for Salesforce is an AppExchange Certified Application, and uses your existing mobile number. For more information and a free, unlimited 30 day trial, please visit www.ribbit.com/salesforce.
About Ribbit
Ribbit is working with the best and brightest technology and business leaders to build Silicon Valley's first phone company. Our mission is to "liberate voice from the device, and integrate it into the workflow of life, both business and personal." By providing a world-class telephone carrier infrastructure -- and the first open platform for Internet and voice developers -- we are helping to unleash innovation across the entire telephony marketplace, from the development of leading-edge consumer voice services to the integration of voice with the world's best business applications.
Ribbit headquarters are located in Mountain View, CA. Ribbit has received investment from Alsop-Louie Partners, Allegis Capital, Peninsula Equity Partners, and KPG Ventures. For more information about Ribbit, please visit www.ribbit.com.
Media Contacts: Denise Vardakas The Conversation Group denise@theconversationgroup.com 650.483.5083 Don Thorson Ribbit don@ribbit.com 650.387.7929
SOURCE: Ribbit
mailto:denise@theconversationgroup.com mailto:don@ribbit.com
Copyright 2008 Market Wire, All rights reserved.
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