Business

That fine line that divides good and evil. When I was young, the product of Calvinist schooling, I thought good and bad people where two separate things. That the good guys fought the bad guys at some proverbial high noon in a shoot-out between the just and the wicked. Only later when I understood the […]

An article that damns South Africa as the riskiest of emerging market economies is a good example of how not to write about economics for a popular journal. The Economist article, titled Domino Theory, published on February 26, used several indicators to compile a ranking according to risk. These seemed mainly to be taken from […]

Fin24.com recently ran a story on its website that South Africa’s property industry has already lost 55 000 registered estate agents out of 90 000 as a result of the weaker housing market. As interesting as the story were the comments left on the web page by readers: Stan About time, with their exorbitant commission at 7% […]

Why did graft become just another line item at a world class company?

Headlines from the Financial Times, February 21: Markets tumble amid fears over banks Investors flee to gold and government bonds 19 000 Anglo American jobs to go Saab files for bankruptcy protection Eurozone lurches deeper into recession Other headlines Soros sees no bottom for world financial “collapse” — Reuters Roubini says crisis end distant — […]

Looking back at the Budget presented just over a week ago, I find the tax proposals present the most surprising twist. Finance Minister Trevor Manuel announced a R13,6-billion adjustment to personal income tax to account for the effects of inflation and then took back a big chunk of that with increases in the fuel levy […]

Can social media be used for business-to-business (B2B) brands? The answer is, yes! The reason why I think social media is not, yet, a mainstream activity for many B2B marketers is because the outcomes that most B2B marketers seek to deliver on are more suited towards “traditional” online and offline marketing techniques such as pay-per-click […]

Why do we keep paying more for food at supermarkets even as the petrol price and producer prices fall? Business Day’s explanation in an editorial this week is far from convincing. It starts off praising Woolworths for cutting the price of 245 “selected food lines” (what is the difference between food lines and food?) — […]

A phrase that seems to be cropping up lately is, “It may not technically be a recession, but it doesn’t matter whether it is or not, it feels like one”. Well, recession for me means an actual contraction in the economy as a whole. We are either in it or not. What worries me is […]

M-Web have confirmed rumours that it will be retrenching about 7% of its staff. The number of jobs is about 66, out of about 1 000, according to its CEO, Rudi Jansen, speaking on The World at Six radio programme. The reduction in staff numbers cannot however be attributed to the global economic slowdown, as the […]