Unit trusts have an improved fee disclosure with the introduction of total expense ratios (TERs), but investors need to understand what they are comparing. In the investment world, disclosure of fees and expenses has come under the spotlight recently. And, in a move that will increase disclosure within the unit trust industry greatly, the Association of Collective Investments has implemented a standard that requires all its members to publish TERs from April 2007.
Thousands of Venezualan workers took control of foreign-owned oil fields on Monday as Hugo Chávez stepped up his battle with Washington in a new wave of nationalisation and an announcement that the country was leaving the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Mathematical literacy aims to develop more effective self-managing individuals, contributing workers, lifelong learners and critical citizens. With mathematical literacy we are not only concerned with teaching students the mathematical skills needed for each of these life roles, but also with developing appropriate attitudes and values to contribute responsibly to the world in which we live.
Moses Owidi’s real-estate agency sits in the middle of a bustling suburb in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. But Owidi’s business has been losing customers for more than a year because of increasingly frequent power cuts. Simple electronic tasks take longer because they have to be done manually. Owidi’s clients have become impatient, and unforeseen costs are regularly incurred.
The unit trust industry has been lamenting the fact that investors have missed out on the best bull run we have seen in decades. Conservative investors who were badly burnt at the end of the Nineties have shown an unwillingness to enter the market. Investors have learnt that what goes up can also come down.
As 20 000 extra United States troops arrived in Baghdad in February as part of George W Bush’s "Baghdad security plan", I asked a university professor there if she thought the Americans staying would improve security. "No," she said, "it will get worse." And if they leave? "It will still get worse. There is no win-win option any more. Whatever happens now, the people of Iraq will be the losers."
Sierra Leone has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. In developed countries, on average there are fewer than 10 maternal deaths for every 100Â 000 live births. In Sierra Leone, the rate is nearly 200 times higher. This statistic, from the United Nations children’s agency Unicef, is just one of several staggering indicators of the lethal nature of childbirth in one of the world’s poorest countries.
We can judge how far the recent Nigerian elections fell below internationally accepted standards by the wide range of observers who cried foul. The two previous exercises — 1999 and 2003 — were marred by widespread irregularities, but on a lesser scale and at a time when everyone was still anxious to keep the military at bay.
South Africa’s only civil society network for rape and abuse victims, Themba Lesizwe, has collapsed after the European Union withdrew â,¬20-million it had pledged to the organisation over the next three years. Themba Lesizwe, established in 2001 by four NGOs, had grown into a network of 269 affiliates in the victim empowerment sector in South Africa.
Theo Botha is not your typical activist. He doesn’t carry placards or wear T-shirts with socialist slogans. He is always mild-mannered, well spoken and neatly dressed in standard corporate attire. All the same, he is probably the most unpopular man in local business, with a knack for asking powerful people uncomfortable questions.