Banks know they make too much money, and South African banks could learn a thing or two from this. Five of the UK’s biggest banks, including Lloyds, Barclays and RBS, as well as other credit card companies, have agreed to scrap the charges associated with buying currency with a card while abroad.
Saab Automobile has spent the last two years fighting to salvage the iconic brand that manufactured cars for six decades, but today announced that it had filed for bankruptcy in a Swedish district court. General Motors, who still had control over technology licenses, had disapproved of negotiations with two Chinese firms that sought to save Saab.
On 9 December 2011, British Prime Minister, David Cameron emerged from 10 hours of negotiations with European Union leaders, announcing his decision to reject new European Rules on behalf of Britain. It is a move that has set Britain up for a season of icy relations with its continental cousins that may last much longer than this year’s winter.
A new bit of legislation has just come into force in Hungary, in an attempt to deal with the large number of homeless people in Budapest. The regulation makes it a punishable offense to be homeless; the offense is punishable by a fine just under ZAR 5 000. Because, you know, that makes sense.
There appears to be a growing trend among rich New Yorkers in response to the increased attention being paid to “the 1%”. They’ve taken to buying cargo vans that look plain on the outside, but are opulent on the inside, tricked out with massage chairs wi-fi and widescreen televisions. Some of these guys cost upwards of ZAR 4 million.
At 2am this morning the NYPD started violently clearing out Zuccoti Park, where the peaceful Occupy Wall Street protestors have been camped out. The cops are using pepper spray, they are using LRAD sound weapons, and they are actively preventing any official media from reporting on their violation of OWS members’ constitutional rights. Shit’s gotten real.
Effective January 1, 2012, the minimum wage is going to increase by as much as 20% in Guangdong, the industrial province in China where most of the stuff you’ve bought in the past decade was produced. Which means you’ve got yourself a significant rise in consumer good prices worldwide incoming.
A report released by U.S. intelligence agencies claims that Chinese and Russian hackers, hired by their governments, have been stealing classified data from American government organizations. Assumptions like this have been made before, but this is the first time such a report to Congress has pointed the finger squarely at China and Russia.
George Papandreou’s shock announcement that he will put Greece’s bailout to a referendum helped the FTSE open nearly three per cent down this morning. It was interesting listening to Lindsay Williams on 2oceanVibe Radio a little earlier too. He remarked that there are more Porsche Cayennes registered in Greece than taxpayers declaring an income of 50 000 euros or more. Clearly Greeks aren’t fans of paying tax.
European leaders are secretly all doing little victory dances. The Eurozone crisis has never looked better. Leaders have agreed new deals that slash Greek debt and increase the main bailout fund to around €1 trillion. They’re basically printing money. Athens will get a new €100 billion bailout early in the new year, and existing bond debt will be cut by 50%.
In a move that’s widely expected to attract further, and much needed investment diversification, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan yesterday announced that the Treasury will allow local investors to trade in foreign-domiciled companies, especially throughout Africa. The move will no doubt heighten the attractiveness and status of the local exchange.
Age really is just a number for 103-year-old Dr Moises Broggi, who is standing for a seat in Spain’s Senate on November 20. Dr Broggi is the main candidate in Barcelona for a coalition led by the Catalan Republican Left party. If the former field surgeon is elected, he will become the oldest Spanish senator ever.
While Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of RIM, has already publicly apologized for last week’s three-day BlackBerry outage, the PR guys figured that that probably wasn’t enough. Which is why they’ve announced that they’re offering BlackBerry customers a bunch of free “premium apps,” in the hopes of winning back some love. Check the app list after the jump.
It promises to be one of the largest strikes since the resurgence of the catastrophic violence two years ago, and will touch virtually every industry of the deeply troubled state. At least half of the four million-strong workforce is expected to partake as parliamentarians vote on a package of austerity measures demanded by international lenders.
Just before lunchtime, a rumour began to do the rounds, courtesy of Sky News, that credit ratings agency Fitch was going to bring more bad news for Britain’s banks. A credit rating downgrade of major banks was possible later in the day. Sky changed their tune and withdrew the statement on TV, but the blog post remained, and now the downgrade has happened.
The Italian debt crisis has the potential to make the Greek crisis seem small. It must be reiterated that Italian debt makes Greek debt look laughable. It currently stands at some €1,8 trillion. That’s excluding the purported €175 billion the Italians need to keep their country running until the end of the year.
It looks like the tides that swept up the Occupy Wall Street protest campaign – ongoing after three weeks – have broken national boundaries; ‘Operation Ubuntu’ has been set up to launch a simultaneous protests on the 15th of October in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and Grahamstown, as part of the global Occupy Revolution campaign.
After having recently bought Fosters, fresh rumours surfaced yesterday that SABMiller might itself face a takeover from Anheuser-Busch InBev, the biggest brewer in the world. SAB shares soared 7% to their highest gain in almost three years as a result.
Disney’s 3D The Lion King reissue has been topping the box offices for the past two weeks, and netted them a cool $22,1 million over a weekend. So it’s not surprising that somebody in the studio realised that, hey, they have a bunch of other well-loved movies that they could probably re-release and make money with too.
Russian Prime Minister and, let’s face it, soon-to-be-President-again, Vladimir Putin has made calls for a “Eurasian Union” as part of his presidential campaign platform. A Eurasian Union made of entirely of former Soviet Union states. Because it worked so well the last time that happened.
While it might not be doing too well at the moment, the New York Stock Exchange is fairly important. One of the world’s biggest markets, the daily business of the NYSE has been threatened for a while now by the Occupy Wall Street protests. Internet hacker group, Anonymous, has now also jumped on the bandwagon, […]
As the “Occupy Wall Street” protests enter their ninth day, an increasing number of videos and photos have begun surfacing, showing near-indiscriminate use of tasers, mace and kenneling by the NYPD on demonstrators, who are protesting a financial system that apparently favours the wealthy and powerful over ordinary citizens.
South Africans have one-upped the Aussies again. Brewing giant, SABMiller, has flexed its muscles and laid claim to the iconic Australian brand, Foster’s. The takeover of the Australian beer maker should be complete by the end of the year, and the price tag has been confirmed at $10,2 billion, with a bit of change for some dividends.
A European Union trade pact that dictates that the name “port” may only apply to fortified wines from Portugal will mean that the word will disappear entirely from bottle labels in this country by the beginning of January next year. The move has been on the cards since 2000, when the South African government agreed to stop using it.
China’s time is now. We’ve all been saying it for ages, but their time really is now. A report from Bloomberg doesn’t beat around the bush: “China is willing to buy bonds from nations involved in the sovereign debt crisis.” They already own millions of hectares of land right here in Africa, but now they want to invest.
European stocks have bounced back slightly (well, leveled, more than anything) on news that China and Italy are in discussions about “significant” purchases of Italian bonds and investments in strategic companies. Greece will probably get that next round of funding, but Europe still needs to approve it. Here are some interesting numbers if Greece does go bang.
Vodacom has popped a cap in the bandwidth of Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) subscribers who exceed a monthly data limit of 100mb – cutting the speeds from 3G to 2G. Vodacom claims that this should only affect around 5% of the user base, as the rest are all using the service “fairly”.
Reports coming out of the East and Europe this morning paint a dismal picture for Greece. The Euro had already slipped to a 10 year low against the Yen and a six month low against the dollar in overnight trading. Bloomberg thinks Germany might give up on Greece because a Greek default is probably inevitable.
To demonstrate the lethal speed at which the Texan wildfires are spreading, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department have released footage of the wildfire consuming the 6 000 acre Bastrop State Park – 84% of which has been burnt down as of today, in spite of firefighters’ efforts to save a number of historic Civilian Conservation Corps cabins.
Huang Nubo, the sixteenth richest person in China, has offered $100 million to buy 300 square kilometres of Icelandic wilderness. He calls himself a “poet and adventurer,” so it would make sense that he’d want to buy the property to develop a golf course and tourist destination.