Former T20 cricket enigma and ex-multi billionaire, Allen Stanford, has been sentenced to 110 years in jail for defrauding investors of $7 billion. Stanford was also ordered to pay back $5,9 billion, which he doesn’t have, because he lost everything.
Every year, investment consulting firm Mercer releases its list of the most expensive cities in the world. Last year, Luanda (the capital city of Angola) held the top spot, but this year sees Tokyo taking over as the most expensive city in the world. See the full top ten list after the jump.
Western sanctions against Iran’s oil exports have shown that they have fallen by an estimated 40 per cent since the start of the year, according to the International Energy Agency. Separately, the UAE is nearing completion of an oil route that totally avoids Iran. Unlucky, Iran.
Yahoo has been criticised in the past for neglecting its original core business of being a search engine, and it may experience more of that with its latest exapnsion into content publishing. However, it has described its latest partnership with CNBC as a key strategy to becoming a “premium media network.”
As the American government continues its internal adoption of cloud computing services, Google and Microsoft have been scrambling for contracts – what with their being lucrative and influential and such. Sucks to be Google, then, because the FAA just awarded $91 million to Microsoft to have their platform transition to the Microsoft Office 360 cloud service.
Kicking off on 1 July, FNB will no longer charge for card purchases on a number of their accounts and will also reduce fees by up to as much as 11% in certain cases. Click through for the full breakdown.
Cell C’s Alan Knott-Craig Senior says he’s not surprised by the Cabinet’s decision to turn its nose up at a proposal from Korea Telecom to buy a 20% stake in Telkom. Why: because in the past, foreign companies have let South Africa down. He says governments, especially in developing countries, have to be involved in telecommunications penetration.
South Africa’s largest bank has announced that it will be taking over Edcon’s unsecured lending portfolio, which is fancy speak for all of its store cards. This is the bank’s largest investment since the takeover by Barclays a few years ago.
You might have picked up in the Morning Spice headlines that the Nasdaq stock exchange said it “owe[d] the industry an apology”. It’s gone a little further now, and says it will set aside $40 million to reimburse investors that suffered losses due to technical problems on Facebook’s first day of trading.
Following the announcement that Cell C had drastically dropped their prepaid cell rates, Alan Knott-Craig Senior has seemingly checkmated the competition yet again. Cell C announced today that they would also be reducing their contract rates with the launch of six “Straight Up” packages for postpaid and Top-Up customers on 22 June 2012. This is big.
Sony shareholders looked on as they watched the electronics and entertainment giant’s shares fall below 1 000 yen for the first time since 1980 yesterday. The Tokyo stock market took a dive early Monday after a dismal performance from Wall Street, bad US job data, and amid other global economic concerns.
If you thought things were tight in Greece, they certainly don’t look too much better in Spain. In the first three months of this year, nearly €100 billion in capital has left the country. Put differently: about 10% of the country’s GDP.
As Bloomberg pointed out the other day, South Africa’s credit rating may come under pressure as growth in Africa’s biggest economy slows and the government faces the prospect of bailing out the state-owned road agency. That prospect became more of a reality today when deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe said government is looking into a special appropriations bill to give Sanral a cash injection to allow it to service its R20 billion debt.
Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg, 27-year-old internet entrepeneur Pavel Durov, created a mini street riot in St. Petersburg recently when he and the vice-president of his popular Facebook-alike social networking site VKontakte were snapped throwing paper planes made out of 5000 ruble notes into the street below their head office. Picture of this cruel foolery, after the jump.
European officials have secretly been working on a plan for the worst-case scenario that at this point, seems possible: a Greek exit from the Euro. German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said earlier this week that she didn’t want Greece to leave. But with fresh Greek elections set for mid-June, elections that have already been dubbed as a major showdown between Greece and the rest of Europe, anything could happen.
A vintage 1923 Leica camera went under this hammer this weekend, and shattered the record previously set for a camera. The auction was held at the Galerie Westlicht in Vienna, with the camera being sold to a buyer who has chosen to remain anonymous. But exactly how much did it go for?
After receiving a tip-off, the Sunday Times on Friday discovered that millions of rands worth of school textbooks had simply been dumped at a warehouse in King William’s Town, in the Eastern Cape.
Well, this is terribly embarrassing: JPMorgan, the largest bank in the US, literally wiped seven per cent off their stock in a few hours with this blunder. The investment bank has blamed “sloppiness and bad judgment” for the enormous error.
We know; we also thought it was some kind of elaborate joke, or that we’d been mistaken for seeing an extra zero. We hadn’t. And nor is it a joke. The South African Municipal Workers Union is demanding that all vacant positions in the Local Government Sector be filled as a matter of urgency. Which makes sense, because that would benefit a lot of people.
Venture capitalist, Peter Theil’s dream of an artificial island utopia for tech start-ups is inching closer to reality off the coast of San Francisco. Riding a wave of investment capital from Thiel, the project has a name – “Blueseed” – and a website, as well as a lengthy lineup of tech companies that want to get on board.
Earlier this month, Apple was briefly the most valuable company in the world, and their cash in hand value currently stands at $76,2 billion. You could literally buy anything with that and still have enough change to buy some more anything. Still struggling? Click through for a look at the National Post’s lovely, informative and aptly named More Money Than God infographic.
Well at least we know where we are doing our shopping this weekend.
Thanks Richard.
Capitec shares rose to close at a new high of R214,76 yesterday. The bank also recently announced a dividend of 300c per share, showing why it isn’t surprising that analysts have happily placed “buy” recommendations on the stock.
“People power has brought down governments in North Africa; it can surely stop this assault on our living standards.” Cosatu has shown it doesn’t mess around when it comes to voicing its opinion. But will the “mother of all protests” against e-tolls actually make any difference?
Rael Levitt is apparently readying himself to expose widespread corruption across the auctioneering industry in an attempt to save himself, but there’s still little word on exactly where he is. All the while, other skeletons seem to be freely emerging from the cupboard too.
Well, that isn’t good news. Especially with e-tolling getting closer. The projected hike next month would mean an increase of virtually 10 per cent on the current price, and would bring the cost of 95 octane in Gauteng to R11.84 a litre. Comparatively, the average price per litre in the UK is about R16.44.
This really is quite something. One might even say a “trend” is occurring. Following the publication of a whistleblowing letter by an ex-Goldman Sachs employee in the New York Times, a second honest banker has emerged. He works at JPMorgan Chase, and wrote his letter to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Goldman Sachs lost $2,2 billion of its market value yesterday after Greg Smith – a South African-born Goldman “big shot” in Europe – chose to resign and write an opinion piece letter about Goldman’s corporate culture to the New York Times.
The liquidators of Aurora Empowerment Systems, which is accused of asset-stripping bankrupt Pamodzi Gold, amongst other dubious activities, will lay charges of fraud this week against Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Zondwa. President Jacob Zuma’s nephew should probably also look forward to facing some music.
Pending the outcome of investigations into claims of staff receiving kickbacks for preferential treatment, Absa, Nedbank, First National Bank and Investec have all stopped doing business with Auction Alliance. The latest development comes after news broke earlier in the week, that Auction Alliance CEO, Rael Levitt, had relinquished his post.