UM Singapore hired Vinitra Chaudhuri as Regional Business Director. In her role, she will be assisting on regional accounts such as MasterCard, Exxon Mobil and other regional new business leads. Vinitra brings to UM Singapore more than 12 years of experience in the communications industry where she has worked across a range of disciplines including account planning, research, media and integrated communication. In the past 6 years, she lived in India, Taiwan and Indonesia and is now settling in Singapore.

Vinitra previously worked at Starcom Indonesia where she handled key clients and worked then at Mindshare Indonesia where she was the client lead on key accounts in the Unilever portfolio, covering some of the largest brands in Indonesia.

Buddy Media announced the newest member of its executive team, Susan St. Ledger, as President, Buddy Media. In her role, St. Ledger will lead global revenue generation and oversee the company’s sales and client service teams. She will report directly to co-founder and CEO Michael Lazerow.

St. Ledger joins Buddy Media after more than seven years with Salesforce.com, most recently as Senior Vice President of Industry Verticals, where she focused on Salesforce.com’s largest clients within their vertical industries, including tech, financial services, insurance, media, & telecommunications. Previously, St. Ledger was Senior Vice President of Global Platform Sales at Salesforce.com. Prior to salesforce.com, St. Ledger held the role of Vice President of the Global Manageability Services Practice at Sun Microsystems, Inc., driving sales and generating over $3.5 billion dollars in revenue annually for the company. St. Ledger joins Buddy’s burgeoning West coast team based out of its San Francisco office.

In order to further support the community, Buddy Media has joined forces with San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, and a number of other Silicon Valley giants, in participating in San Francisco Citizens Initiative for Technology & Innovation (sfCITI). sfCITI seeks to be a civic leader in technology, promoting job growth in the Bay Area technology sector.

InMobiSmartPay and Opera Software announced their partnership to bring InMobi’s SmartPay mobile payment platform to Opera’s more than 160 million mobile browser users worldwide.

InMobiSmartPay will enable Opera users to pay seamlessly for digital goods in key markets around the globe, when they make purchases with some of the leading publishers that partner with InMobi. The two companies are committed to providing choice to consumers, mobile content developers and app developers, by building viable third-party monetization solutions in the mobile browsing and computing space.

InMobiSmartPay is a simple, smart, global solution for mobile payments and app monetization aimed at mobile-content publishers and app developers. Opera Mini is the world’s most popular mobile browser with users on most mobile platforms including iOS, Android, Symbian, BlackBerry and Java. Including other browsers for computers, TVs and connected devices, and Opera Mobile, the browser for high-end mobile devices, Opera has more than 250 million users all over the world.

Singapore-headquartered Tata Communications announced a multi-year technology service and marketing agreement with Formula One Management. The agreement will see Tata Communications delivering world-class connectivity to all 20 Formula 1 race locations over its global network, the largest in the world. It will also provide hosting and content delivery services to Formula1.com, which is accessed by tens of millions of fans around the globe.

Formula One group businesses and race locations will now be connected to the Tata Global Network (“TGN”), supported by secure MPLS connectivity. Formula One Management's IT infrastructure and Formula1.com will be co-located and hosted in Tata Communications’ world-class data centres.

Tata Communications’ capabilities in video and content delivery networks (“CDN”) will enable uninterrupted, high-quality connectivity to the multi-media portal on Formula1.com, due to Trans-Atlantic and Trans-Pacific data transfer capacity of one terabit per second. Tata Communications will also provide Formula1.com with a new Managed Security Suite and will apply an additional layer of managed security monitoring to ensure an increased level of protection to Formula One Management's IT infrastructure. Looking ahead, Tata Communications and Formula One Management will also work in close collaboration on research and development around connectivity and the latest video technologies.

PHD Singapore has been appointed to handle NTUC Income’s media planning and buying, following a competitive pitch. The account is a win back for PHD from Maxus and effective immediately.

PublicisGroupe announced the acquisition of two specialty marketing agencies in Asia: King Harvests and Luminous. Both agencies will be integrated into MSLGROUP, the flagship strategic communications network of PublicisGroupe.

Founded in 2002, with 360-degree marketing capabilities across Tier-one and Tier-two cities in Mainland China, King Harvests' staff of more than 100 offer particularly strong expertise in both events and experiential marketing to local and international clients including Bosch, Haier, Sanyo and Siemens.

Established in 2005 and with more than 40 employees, Luminous is an award-winning experiential marketing consultancy with offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Macau. Luminous produces live marketing events for clients including Cathay Pacific, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Prudential.

Agency heads Laura Lee and Antony Spanbrook -- founders of King Harvests and Luminous, respectively -- will report to Isabelle Chouvet, the founder of Emotion, MSLGROUP's high-end and luxury events communication agency in Asia. King Harvests' and Luminous' experiential marketing expertise will enrich the scope of Emotion's service offering.

King Harvests and Luminous are the latest in a series of acquisitions in Greater China by PublicisGroupe, including Eastwei Relations, Interactive Communications Ltd (ICL), Dreams, Genedigi, Wangfan, Gomye and most recently UBS. It is in line with PublicisGroupe's strategy to increase its presence in fast growing markets, with China at its core and where PublicisGroupe has set an objective to double its size.

Sybase 365, a subsidiary of Sybase, Inc., the global leader in mobile messaging and mobile commerce services, announced a global, strategic partnership with Telefónica Digital to provide mobile wallet services.

Sybase 365 will help develop Telefónica’smWallet which will be the gateway for its customers to a wide range of mobile financial services. The mWallet, provided by Sybase 365, will be a virtual wallet which will offer a convenient and secure way of accessing a range of services from a stored value account through to payments and peer-to-peer transfers. It will be capable of storing prepaid, debit, credit and loyalty cards, thereby simplifying online purchases. And as NFC technology becomes more widespread it will be possible to make payments directly from the wallet via compatible handsets and point of sale terminals.Telefónica expects to see the first commercial wallet services launching in Latin America and in Europe during the first half of 2012.

Komli Media acquired Admax Network that brings its new owner with the region’s largest and most diverse publisher network of 4,600 local and international websites, including Admax’s exclusive sales partnership with Facebook in Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines and with MSN in Thailand.

Komli Media will consequently have the greatest reach of the total SEA online audience and access to the region’s largest local language sites. Furthermore, Admax’s experienced team and sales relationships with over 350 premium advertisers such as Sony, Citibank and Blackberry will fortify Komli’s leadership presence in the region. Komli Media is planning to integrate its current SEA team, operating as Aktiv Digital, with that of Admax’s, under the Komli Media brand and be with this acquisition more than 400 people strong and service more than 1000 active advertisers across Asia Pacific with a reach of over 150 million unique monthly users, making the company the largest independent media network in the region.