Global positive sentiment looks set to help the JSE start the week on a firm footing, despite a slightly firmer rand. By 8.45am, near-dated all share index futures (Alsis) were 73 points higher at 14 195 after 49 contracts had changed hands, while industrial index futures (Indis) were untraded after finishing at 11 616. The rand was […]
Business today entails a good deal more than selling your products and services to customers. Increasingly companies and organisations are obliged to show sound business management that includes not only profits and a healthy bottom line, but also concern for their environmental impact.
Safika Holdings, one of the highest black economic empowerment fliers, is jointly controlled by Standard Bank, Competition Tribunal documents show. The tribunal earlier this year approved a merger between Standard Bank and Safika, where the former bought a 20% stake in the latter for an undisclosed sum.
The living conditions of Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa have shocked a group of Zimbabwean pastors on a week-long fact-finding mission in the country. They have likened the Lindela Repatriation Centre, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, to a "concentration camp".
Cape Biotech is investigating a possible bio-prospecting partnership which would enable South Africa, Brazil and India to share each other’s resources in order to capitalise on their rich biodiversity. Bio-prospecting is the search for valuable compounds in nature — plants, animals or micro-organisms — that can assist in the development of new drugs or industrial products.
In the spectrum of corporate incentives, the cabbage and the cauliflower don’t figure too prominently. Except in Scotland, where managers at two branches of the Bank of Scotland made staff sit the vegetables on their desks to try to prompt improved performance. The move prompted outrage instead.
With only six gold medals, five less than the Paris haul in 2003, Africa’s poor showing at the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) world championships in Helsinki, Finland, has incensed sports administrators and athletes alike.
Western governments heard a faint echo from the 1970s recently as the escalating cost of petrol contributed to higher inflation. And with tension in the Middle East providing another reminder of life three decades ago, the message was that consumers can expect more of the same over the coming months.
Germany’s conservative leader, Angela Merkel, recently presented her campaign team for next month’s general election, shrugging off remarks by a colleague who had described east German voters as ”frustrated cows”. Merkel, the leader of Germany’s Christian Democrats, introduced nine members of her team who are likely to play leading roles in any Merkel-led Cabinet.
”So, President Thabo Mbeki, exquisitely dressed as always, had a little huffy the other day about gated communities, accusing them of perpetuating apartheid-style separation. I can’t say that I’m a big fan of them either. As much as I love those grandiose fountains and dinky conifers, all in a row,” writes Lev David.