The Hindu Business Line : Investment Quiz

1. It was a $21.9-billion IPO that attracted bids worth $350 billion, making it the largest IPO in the world. Name the entity that floated this offering.

2. Sticking to IPOs, the book-building mode has turned out to be the mechanism of choice for a host of offers in the Indian market. Name the first company to take this route.

3. When this company was founded in 1898, it was called Compagnie Generale d'Electricite, and was set up ostensibly to compete with the likes of Siemens and General Electric. How do we know it now?

4. With which sporting goods manufacturer would one associate the tagline, "A better game by design"?

5. Time to take off into the world of business jets: If the Learjet is associated with Bombardier and the Citation with Cessna, with which company would the Gulfstream be associated with?

6. Legendary investor Warren Buffett, through his Berkshire Hathaway unit National Indemnity Company, recently bailed out a British outfit through a $7-billion reinsurance deal. Name it.

7. About 10 years ago, he founded a company called Yoyodyne that was subsequently acquired by Yahoo!

An acclaimed author, he's credited with bringing into the arena of marketing a phrase that's also the title of one of his bestsellers. Name him.

8. He came to Chicago in 1891 and started off selling scouring soap. The product the company is now famous for was actually an incentive that was given out free to merchants. The first two brands of the product were called Lotta and Vassar. Name him and the product in question.

9. Cricketer Harbhajan Singh recently signed a four-year deal with a celebrity management agency. Which one? (Hint: The same agency had also done a deal with Sachin Tendulkar earlier.)

10. An easy one to finish off with: On the London stock exchange, which company has the code CS?

Answers

1. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China

2. Hughes Software

3. Alcatel

4. Callaway, which makes golfing equipment

5. General Dynamics

6. Lloyd's Names, a group of 34,000 wealthy individuals who underwrote insurance policies

7. Seth Godin; the phrase be pioneered was Permission Marketing

8. William Wrigley; chewing gum

9. Iconix

10. Corus Group

Compiled by Nath Balakrishnan