Business Briefs
(May 2013) Since the 1960s, innovators have flocked to towns such as Palo Alto in the San Francisco Bay Area to build start-ups in the hope of changing the world -- and making a fortune in the process. Now cities from Kansas to London are trying to find ways to attract young tech entrepreneurs and replicate the Valley's technology formula.
(May 2013) Growth appears to be non-existent in the developed world, or sluggish at best, but markets are at all-time highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 15,000 for the first time Tuesday as stocks continue a historic four-year run that investors are finding increasingly irresistible.
(May 2013) Card issuance in China more than tripled to 331m over the past five years to end December 2012, according to the People's Bank of China, as companies target ¥43.6tn yuan ($7tn) in household saving. Last year, 46m credit cards were issued in the world’s second-largest economy, boosting the total 16% from the end of 2011. However there is no bonanza for issuers.
(May 2013) Warren Capital, which had global level return ranking returns in 2012, was the only Norwegian company which was nominated in the selection of the best Nordic hedge funds last week, in an event in Stockholm. Sverre Rørvik Nilsen, a financial consultant in Oslo, says WST rarely owns assets longer than a few minutes or sometimes even a few seconds.
(April 2013) The Economist says that according to Gary Hamel, a London Business School professor, management is the single most important invention of the past hundred years. Making business leadership a more considered pursuit, through basic ideas such as paying employees for their talents and capital budgeting, has made companies more competitive and helped to pull millions out of poverty. The Master of Business Administration (MBA) is the academic embodiment of this. It was first offered at the beginning of the 20th century at grand American institutions such as Harvard and Dartmouth College. Since that time it has done much to make management more professional. The publication says today, there are probably 250,000 MBA students studying at reputable universities - - and countless more at less-than-reputable ones. But as the MBA industry has grown, so have its critics. Some question whether an MBA really equips business people with the skills to be better managers. Worse, others question whether they actually harm the economy; could they be blamed for recent economic meltdowns?
(March 2013) The global airline industry says it expects a modest improvement of its business outlook in 2013 with Asia Pacific and North American carriers likely to profit most from an economic recovery.
(March 2013) For many companies, moving their web-application servers to the cloud is an attractive option, since cloud-computing services can offer economies of scale, extensive technical support and easy accommodation of demand fluctuations. However, for applications that depend heavily on database queries, cloud hosting can pose as many problems as it solves.
(March 2013) Barack Obama visits Israel, Britain announces its budget, Xi Jinping visits Moscow and the world's largest indoor sculpture is unveiled in Germany.
(March 2013) Do the benefits derived from shale gas outweigh the drawbacks of fracking? This animated graphic reveals the results of the debate.
(March 2013) Technology is changing the way retailers do business with some brands combining analytics and mobile apps to learn about their customers. Scott Morrison of Diesel UK and Computer Weekly's Bryan Glick talk to the FT's Bede McCarthy about giving customers something in return for their data.
