Emerging-market stocks fell the most in three months, led by Eastern European mining and financial companies, as commodities tumbled and concern deepened the region’s deteriorating economies.OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel, Russia’s biggest metals company, dropped 15 percent as nickel and copper sank. Bank Pekao SA, Poland’s largest lender, and OTP Bank Nyrt., Hungary’s largest bank, led Eastern European lenders to the biggest decline on record. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index fell 4.9 percent to 520.87, the steepest retreat since November 20. This year’s political risk assessment of countries of import to the mining industry by Behre Dolbear finds Mongolia with scores similar to last year’s highlighting that it’s tax policies are among the least investor-friendly. Twenty-five countries, which are host to major exploration or mineral development efforts and/or mining operations, were ranked on seven criteria. Each category under consideration was rated from 1 to 10 with the maximum score attainable for a country being 70 points. Mongolia’s tally was 32, and it tied at 13th place with Tanzania. 

Diageo, one of the world’s leading premium drinks business, has launched  its sixth annual Africa Business Reporting Awards. The awards seek to encourage more prolific business journalism in Africa and to increase the continent’s share of voice in the international media. 36 investors across four continents with a combined portfolio of around US$20billion under management in Africa were surveyed. They supplied their views about the media and how it informs their investment decisions. This year’s study reveals that coverage of business in Africa has proliferated during the last five years, growing in quantity, quality and frequency. According to Microsoft executives, software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a key component in Microsoft’s core strategy to help sustain Microsoft Office’s market dominance in Asia’s emerging economies. Geoff Thomas, Microsoft’s Asia sales general manager of communications sector, told ZDNet Asia that the mass population in Asia’s large emerging markets such as India, typically cannot afford to privately own PCs. Microsoft hopes to address this issue by making public Internet kiosks available for use. And to help make this a compelling option for consumers, Microsoft this week introduced a service offering it calls, Online Desktop. Announced Tuesday with India’s telecommunication services provider Bharti Airtel, the service aims to provide a virtual personal desktop from the kiosk, allowing Airtel users to access documents, files and other features from these kiosks via a cloud-based version of Windows.