Bankserv is a lucrative business with an annual turnover of about R200-million — which is why global electronic payments companies would love to get their hands on it. First Data’s mooted offer this week was evidence of this. Ownership of Bankserv would provide the new owner with a guaranteed income stream from about 20-billion banking transactions a year.
Strong earnings from corporate America and optimism that the meltdown in the housing market will be contained sent Wall Street’s yardstick of blue-chip stocks through the 14 000 level for the first time on Tuesday. Less than three months after it scaled the 13 000 mark, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 60 points in early trading yesterday to 14 011 as dealers took heart from rising profits in the financial sector and signs of a pick-up in demand for manufactured goods.
In a titanic battle worthy of Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, one of Britain’s largest supermarket chains and the country’s most powerful independent publisher squared up this week over the latest and last novel about the young wizard. Less than a week before the launch of <i>Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows</i>, supermarket chain Asda launched an attack on Bloomsbury.
Those involved in peace and in anti-conscription movements during apartheid, are mourning the loss of peace activist Nan Cross, who died last weekend aged 79. Her religion and her pacifist sentiments meant that her contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle centred on conscientious objection.
Sajida Khan (55) died in her home on Sunday night, during a second bout of cancer caused — she was convinced — by Durban’s largest dump. The Bisasar Road site, which handles most of the city’s rubbish, was placed directly across the street from her home in Clare Estate in 1980.
There has been a ruckus recently because Discovery Health Medical Scheme has continued to fail to meet its 25% solvency ratio required by law. The question Discovery Health members are asking is: are their benefits safe? Can Discovery Health meet member claims?
Last week France and Germany abandoned the dual-nationality management structure at Eads, the owner of Airbus, in an attempt to turn the struggling aerospace and defence group into a "normal" global company. The move will bring an end to the strife that has crippled the group for the past two years.
Philomena Appiah’s factory is the surprising source of thousands of American uniforms and workwear items, tailored by Ghanaian seamstresses and shipped across the Atlantic to stores in the United States as part of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa).
Two toddlers sit on a rusting grille platform built on bamboo stilts at the entrance to one of Bangladesh’s fastest-growing housing developments. Three feet below them lies a festering mound of rubbish, into which a gushing waste pipe from a nearby factory discharges. Beyond them are rows and rows of windowless, airless, corrugated iron rooms, stacked on top of each other like chicken coops.
Motorists can be expected to pay more for fuel soon as crude prices soared again to nearly $77 a barrel. Turmoil in the international oil markets — due to strong demand, geopolitical instability and a shortage of refining capacity — will put further upward pressure on forecourt prices.