Walmart shouldn’t be allowed into South Africa, according to the unions. We know that already. But the deal was approved, and the notorious retailer has already bought and paid for Massmart. A couple of months ago, three Cabinet ministers announced they were suing Walmart before the competition appeal court so that the conditions imposed on the deal will be sufficiently stringent. On Monday morning, Cosatu and Saccawu both rubber-stamped their action and promised to do their bit to pressure Massmart’s shareholders. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.
I’m so depressed. Really. Like Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy. Here we are, a country the size of South Africa, and we are having stupid fights with people who want to come and spend money here. Walmart is coming, Cosatu is hiding its head in the sands of ideology. By STEPHEN (won’t he just cheer up please) GROOTES.
It was the end of an era for Avusa when Prakash Desai left the building with millions in his pocket as a reward for what can only be described as a less than mediocre tenure. The big question shareholders should ask themselves is why Desai was so handsomely compensated for such a dismal performance. By MANDY DE WAAL.
Once it was regarded as the “soft stuff” of business, now meaning is becoming a real attraction for younger generations who want a “purposeful life” in work places. Meaning is becoming an unparalleled differentiator for companies like Apple who understand that reason for being gives people a cause in which to - and makes money. By MANDY DE WAAL and DAVE DUARTE.
Not three years after trashing the term “cloud computing”, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison announced a public cloud service by Oracle. The new service has almost immediately courted controversy, but mainly because Ellison spent a great deal of his cloud unveiling trashing other cloud service providers. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.
With the debate over the Dalai Lama and China’s influence over South Africa raging, PAUL BERKOWITZ wants to know: what has China really done for us lately?
He invented all the devices you love, or insist you hate. Apple’s founder has passed away at 56, and coming to terms with his legacy requires some tricky thinking. A personal tribute by RICHARD POPLAK.
Speaking at The Economist magazine’s High-Growth Markets Summit in London last Friday, Goldman Sachs’ Jim O’Neill dropped something of a bombshell when told his influential audience “I don't acknowledge the S in Brics. South Africa is not of the same economic magnitude of the other Brics.” Oops. Of all people, he should know. By J BROOKS SPECTOR.
A gigantic oil refinery in Singapore could be out for more than a month following a fire that burnt from Wednesday to Friday. Dutch Shell, the company that owns the refinery, notified some of its clients that it could possibly fail to meet some of its obligations due to the blaze. Tanker berthing operations have already resumed though, so impact on global oil prices is likely not to be felt. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.
Apple is currently in talks with record labels and music publishers to obtain international music rights for its new iCloud service, which would make sharing music on the service via Apple as easy as downloading it from iTunes. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.
Media24 is opening their cheque book in a big way for City Press’s new magazine which premiered as a supplement to the newspaper this past Sunday. Big on luxurious eye-candy and sporting good writers, i magazine has potential, but is it distinctive enough to make readers want to hang on to it past Monday morning? By MANDY DE WAAL.
In the heady days of the Apple iPhone, the Samsung Galaxy S II and the other super-smart mobile phones on the market, it is easy to forget that the majority of cellphones out there don’t run on nectar and can’t start world wars. They’re simple, elegant and unassuming. Nokia hasn’t forgotten that. Their software innovations for “lower-end” smartphones demonstrates that. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.
Our economic sages have long hoped that the rand would depreciate. So why aren’t they celebrating now that it’s in freefall? By GREG NICOLSON.
After a week of high drama at Avusa and amid market speculation about his departure, it comes as no surprise that a SENS announcement now confirms that Prakash Desai has resigned. By MANDY DE WAAL.
Ah, hubris. When Google offers you $6 billion for your too-good-to-be-true company, you take it. You don’t tell them “up yours” and then try and put your company on the stock market for couple of bucks more. But that’s exactly what Groupon CEO Andrew Mason did. Does he feel stupid now? Probably that feeling is not as strong as the relief Google must be feeling for not buying the overpriced poisoned chalice. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.
On Sunday, beleaguered airplane manufacturer Boeing delivered the first of what will be hundreds of its new 787 Dreamliners to a commercial airline company. The programme, delayed four years and facing billions in cost overruns, may struggle to prove successful. It is a lesson in the perils of post-industrial manufacturing. By RICHARD POPLAK.
It is a really good time to be a patent lawyer. Business partners and bitter rivals Apple and Samsung are suing each other in almost every major economy in the world, whilst collaborating on other business deals. As wearying as this war is from an outsider’s perspective, there seems to be no end in sight. At least, for as long as we insist on buying expensive tablet devices and smartphones. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.
City Press has thrown down the gauntlet in its war for the lion’s share of Sunday’s print news market. During the first weekend of October, the Naspers-owned title will deliver a luxurious format 32-page lifestyle magazine, distributed as a supplement to the newspaper – as if to say “Take that, Sunday Times”. By MANDY DE WAAL.
It’s the end of an era as “Mr MXit” Herman Heunis takes a sabbatical from what has been Africa’s fastest growing mobile social network. World of Avatar’s Alan Knott-Craig comes in as CEO and brings in a new COO, but apart from that everything at MXit remains as is. By MANDY DE WAAL.
But is he cashing out? By MANDY DE WAAL.
After some last-minute drama and posturing from the Foster’s bigwigs, SABMiller has finally got its hands on the Australian brewery, and with it a big footprint not only on the continent, but the Pacific as well. It’ll also serve as a nice addition to SABMiller’s expanding Asia presence. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.
The Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is meeting this week to decide whether to keep interest rates steady or cut them in the face of a worsening economic outlook. PAUL BERKOWITZ looks at the arguments for and against a rate cut and decides that, ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what the MPC does if the country as a whole isn’t prepared to face up to much bigger problems.
When you hear the phrase “This is the BBC”, one mostly thinks of London – of empire fallen and influence that still reigns. But we’re also going to have to think of something else from now on as the BBC also means the Black Business Council. Revived as part of the falling out between Business Unity South Africa and some of the black organisations, the BBC sets sail in turbulent times. By STEPHEN GROOTES.
The quarterly employment statistics released by Statistics South Africa suggest we’re in some serious trouble. Before blame gets heaped onto the government (although the five million jobs thing was a reach) it is worth considering that hardly any country in the world is hiring new people in huge numbers these days. By SIPHO HLONGWANE and PAUL BERKOWITZ.
It has been a bit of an annus horribilis for Avusa, even though Prakash Desai’s still taking home a handsome incentive bonus. There was that ugly spat with Mvelaphanda over the UHC deal, Capitau was on, then Capitau was off, and that pesky shareholder activist just wouldn’t leave them alone. But the worst was yet to come this week as the company’s chairman and two non-executive board members resigned amid speculation that Desai would be next. By MANDY DE WAAL
Apple recently took on more security staff. There’s no comment on whether this has anything to do with the iPhone 5 prototype that went missing in a pub a few weeks ago. The company is far more worried about corporate espionage, it said. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.
We’ve lamented the death of Hollywood in these pages on numerous occasions. Now it’s official. John Calley, super-producer and studio don, has breathed his last. Will Hollywood and the movies ever get another like him? By RICHARD POPLAK.
Innovator, disruptor, and West African software pioneer, Herman Chinery-Hesse wants to make Ghana the “Singapore of Africa”. Given he’s already created one of Ghana’s most successful software companies and is spawning innovations that solve barriers to trade between Africa and the rest of the world, he has a good chance. By MANDY DE WAAL.
Carol Bartz, the Yahoo CEO who was unexpectedly fired last week, has now equally suddenly resigned from her position on the company’s board of directors. But this news will come as no shock to anyone who read her interview in Fortune magazine last week. By REBECCA DAVIS.
Trade union Solidarity has accepted Telkom’s 7% two-year wage offer, putting an end to a six month negotiating period that threatened to derail more often than not. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.
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