So, it’s been another bad week for the banks. Two weeks ago RBS suffered a systems meltdown following a software upgrade that affected up to 17m customers. To put that into perspective, the UK’s population is around 62m. This debacle even led to a defendant spending a weekend in jail […]
The Press and the blogsphere have been full of talk of the financial markets over-ruling democracy. Now we’re talking about over-ruling democracy in Europe of all places – and most would see Europe as the global champion of human rights. Some see that is a negative step, for example, Skelton[1]. […]
Two things that we took for granted when preparing our business plans. Unwritten assumptions that democracy and capitalism would survive all that the world could throw at them. Well, many are frightened that this might not be the case. Most are pointing to the current Euro Area crisis as a […]
And at the time of writing this post the FTSE 100 here in London is down 1.3% after about 5 hours trading. If we look back over just the last three months we see a real roller coaster: FTSE 100 Since the end of July the total value of investments […]
Download pdf version Quick Points: An overview in 120 seconds During the past three months two major studies, focusing upon the future of the global economy, have been released. Both show significant global growth and the emergence of a swathe of new economies. This information can be interpreted from two […]
The maximisation of shareholder value has been hailed over the last decade as managements’ central and ultimate driving mission or purpose in life. On the surface, it’s one that makes sense too. The shareholders are the ultimate owners of an organization, so the maximisation a business’s financial value (variously defined […]
Every morning I spend about an hour or so scanning news feeds from a range of sources with the primary of objective of updating my database of world trends – and of course getting ideas for blog posts! Living here in London we have a saying about buses. When you’re […]
Introduction A new term has entered our vocabulary, “The Great Recession”. A period of turmoil and shock that started, at least publicly, with the demise of Lehman Brothers on 15 September, 2008. Whether of not we are still in the grips of the Great Recession depends largely on where you […]
Especially when it comes to assumptions that underpin your business and its strategy. Most businesses have assumed that (a) global warming is happening and (b) we are approaching an energy supply crisis. In the past two days both of these tenets have been challenged: Firstly, a report challenging global warming[1] […]
It was surprising to note that, apparently, the hot topic in Davos was the discussion of the merits of State Socialism[1]. This infers that China has got it right and represents a considerable swing in attitudes from previous Davos summits. It is worth remembering that the current State Socialism model […]