PURPOSE OF WORLD BANK

The World Bank is one of the world’s largest sources of funding and knowledge to support governments of member countries in their efforts to invest in schools and health centers, provide water and electricity, fight disease, and protect the environment.

The World Bank is not a "bank" in the common sense. The World Bank is an international organization owned by the 184 countries¾both developed and developing¾that are its members.

Since it was set up in 1944 as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The number of member countries increased sharply in the 1950s and 1960s, when many countries became independent nations. As membership grew and their needs changed, the World Bank expanded and is currently made up of five different agencies.

All support to a borrowing countries is guided by a single strategy (in the case of Afghanistan it is the "Transitional Support Strategy") that the country itself designs with help from the World Bank and many other donors, aid groups, and civil society organizations.

DEFINITION OF BANK ON WEB

• sloping land (especially the slope beside a body of water); "they pulled the canoe up on the bank"; "he sat on the bank of the river and watched ...
• depository financial institution: a financial institution that accepts deposits and channels the money into lending activities; "he cashed a check at the bank"; "that bank holds the mortgage on my home"
• tip laterally; "the pilot had to bank the aircraft"
• a long ridge or pile; "a huge bank of earth"
• enclose with a bank; "bank roads"
• an arrangement of similar objects in a row or in tiers; "he operated a bank of switches"
• do business with a bank or keep an account at a bank; "Where do you bank in this town?"
• a supply or stock held in reserve for future use (especially in emergencies)
• act as the banker in a game or in gambling
• the funds held by a gambling house or the dealer in some gambling games; "he tried to break the bank at Monte Carlo"
• a slope in the turn of a road or track; the outside is higher than the inside in order to reduce the effects of centrifugal force
• be in the banking business
• deposit: put into a bank account; "She deposits her paycheck every month"
• savings bank: a container (usually with a slot in the top) for keeping money at home; "the coin bank was empty"
• a building in which the business of banking transacted; "the bank is on the corner of Nassau and Witherspoon"
• cover with ashes so to control the rate of burning; "bank a fire"
• a flight maneuver; aircraft tips laterally about its longitudinal axis (especially in turning); "the plane went into a steep bank"
• trust: have confidence or faith in; "We can trust in God"; "Rely on your friends"; "bank on your good education"; "I swear by my grandmother's recipes"

RATAN TATA PROFILE

Born: December 28, 1937
Achievement: Honored with Padma Bhushan, one of the highest civilian awards in 2000.

Ratan Tata is presently the Chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group. Ratan Naval Tata is also the Chairman of the major Tata companies such as Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Power, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Tea, Tata Chemicals, Indian Hotels and Tata Teleservices. He has taken Tata Group to new heights and under his leadership Group's revenues have grown manifold.

Ratan Tata was born on December 28, 1937, in Bombay. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in architecture from Cornell University in 1962. Ratan Tata had a short stint with Jones and Emmons in Los Angeles, California, before returning to India in late 1962. He joined the Tata Group and was assigned to various companies before being appointed director-in-charge of The National Radio & Electronics Company (NELCO) in 1971. Ratan Tata was appointed Chairman of Tata Industries in 1981. He was assigned the task of transforming the company into a Group strategy think-tank, and a promoter of new ventures in high technology businesses.

In 1991, Ratan Tata took over the Chairmanship from JRD Tata. Under him Tata Consultancy Services went public and Tata Motors was listed in the New York Stock Exchange. In 1998, Tata Motors came up with Tata Indica, the first truly Indian car. The car was the brainchild of Ratan Tata.

Ratan Tata was honored with Padma Bhushan, one of the highest civilian awards in 2000. He was also conferred an honorary doctorate in business administration by Ohio State University, an honorary doctorate in technology by the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, and an honorary doctorate in science by the University of Warwick.

LARRY ELLISON NAME&SPOUSE NAME

Date of Birth

17August 1944,Bronx,Newyork,Usa

Birth Name

Lawrence Joseph Ellison

Spouse

Melanie Craft	(18December2003 - present)
Barbara Boothe	(1983 - 1986) (divorced) 2 children
Nancy Wheeler	(1977 - 1978) (divorced)
Adda Quinn	(1967 - 1974) (divorced)

larry ellison(founder of oracle) biography

Lawrence J. Ellison was born in the Bronx, New York. At nine months, he contracted pneumonia, and his unmarried 19-year-old mother gave him to her aunt and uncle in Chicago to raise. Lawrence was raised in a two-bedroom apartment on the city's South Side. Until he was twelve years old he did not know that he was adopted. His adoptive father had lost his real estate business in the Great Depression and made a modest living as an auditor for the public housing authority. As a boy, Larry Ellison showed an independent, rebellious streak and often clashed with his adoptive father. From an early age, he showed a strong aptitude for math and science, and was named science student of the year at the University of Illinois.

During the final exams in his second year, Larry Ellison's adoptive mother died, and he dropped out of school. He enrolled at the University of Chicago the following fall, but dropped out again after the first semester. His adoptive father was now convinced that Larry would never make anything of himself, but the seemingly aimless young man had already learned the rudiments of computer programming in Chicago. He took this skill with him to Berkeley, California, arriving with just enough money for fast food and a few tanks of gas. For the next eight years, Ellison bounced from job to job, working as a technician for Fireman's Fund and Wells Fargo bank. As a programmer at Ampex, he participated in building the first IBM-compatible mainframe system.

In 1977, Ellison and two of his Ampex colleagues, Robert Miner and Ed Oates, founded their own company, Software Development Labs. From the beginning, Ellison served as Chief Executive Officer. Ellison had come across a paper called "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" by Edgar F. ("Ted") Codd, describing a concept Codd had developed at IBM. Codd's employers saw no commercial potential in the concept of a Structured Query Language (SQL), but Larry Ellison did.

Ellison and his partners won a two-year contract to build a relational database management system (RDBMS) for the CIA. The project's code name: Oracle. They finished the project a year ahead of schedule and used the extra time to develop their system for commercial applications. They named their commercial RDBMS Oracle as well. In 1980, Ellison's company had only eight employees, and revenues were less than $1 million, but the following year, IBM itself adopted Oracle for its mainframe systems, and Oracle's sales doubled every year for the next seven years,. The million dollar company was becoming a billion dollar company. Ellison renamed the company Oracle Corporation, for its best-selling product.

Oracle went public in 1986, raising $31.5 million with its initial public offering, but the firm's zealous young staff habitually overstated revenues, and in 1990 the company posted its first losses. Oracle's market capitalization fell by 80 percent and the company appeared to be on the verge of bankruptcy. Accepting the need for drastic change, he replaced much of the original senior staff with more experienced managers. For the first time, he delegated the management side of the business to professionals, and channeled his own energies into product development. A new version of the database program Oracle 7, released in 1992, swept the field and made Oracle the industry leader in database management software. In only two years the company's stock had regained much of its previous value.

Even as Oracle's fortunes rose again, Ellison suffered a series of personal mishaps. Long an enthusiast of strenuous outdoor activities, Ellison suffered serious injuries while body surfing and mountain biking. He recovered from major surgery, and continued to race his 78-foot yacht, Sayonara, and to practice aerobatics in a succession of private jets, including decommissioned fighter planes. In 1998, Ellison and Sayonara won the Sydney to Hobart race, overcoming near-hurricane winds that sank five other boats, drowning six participants. Ellison is a principal supporter of the BMW Oracle Racing team, which has been a significant force in America's Cup competition. His own yacht, Rising Sun, over 450 feet long, is one of the largest privately owned vessels in the world.

Oracle's fortunes continued to rise throughout the 1990s. America's banks, airlines, automobile companies and retail giants all came to depend on Oracle's database programs. Under Ellison's leadership, Oracle became a pioneer in providing business applications over the Internet. Oracle benefited hugely from the growth of electronic commerce; its net profits increased by 76 percent in a single quarter of the year 2000. As the stocks of other high tech companies fluctuated wildly, Oracle held its value, and its largest shareholder, founder and CEO Larry Ellison, came close to a long-cherished goal, surpassing Microsoft's Bill Gates to become the richest man in the world.

Beginning in 2004, Ellison set out to increase Oracle's market share through a series of strategic acquisitions. Oracle spent more than $25 billion in only three years to buy a flock of companies and large and small, makers of software for managing data, identity, retail inventory and logistics. The first major acquisition was PeopleSoft, purchased at the end of 2004 for $10.3 billion. No sooner was the ink dry on the PeopleSoft deal than Ellison trumped rival SAP to acquire retail software developer Retek. Within the following year, Oracle also acquired competitor Siebel Systems. Ellison capped his buying spree with the acquisition of business intelligence software provider Hyperion Solutions in 2007.

Today, Lawrence Ellison has his principal home in Woodside, California. He served as President of Oracle from 1978 to 1996, and undertook two stints as Chairman of the Board, from 1990 to 1992, and again from 1995 to 2004. Since its founding, he has been Oracle's only Chief Executive Officer.