June 15, 2013
With more than 85% of its population under the age of 35, the most naturally rain fed arable land in the world, a huge power deficit, and over 650 million mobile phone subscribers, “Africa has arrived,” says Ugandan businessman Ashish Thakkar, founder and chief executive of pan-African business conglomerate Mara Group.
Mara Group operates 16 companies in 26 countries from its base in Dubai. It has over 7,500 employees across industries ranging...
June 14, 2013
Conde Nast, the worldwide publisher of fashion, culture, food and home magazines, illegally employs interns in violation of federal and state labor laws, Outten & Golden LLP alleged today in New York federal court.
The class action complaint, filed on behalf of two former interns who worked at W Magazine and The New Yorker, accuses Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc., which does business as CondeNast Publications, of failing to pay interns...
June 14, 2013
Two adjacent parking spots in the US city of Boston have been auctioned for $560,000 (£357,000), almost double the average price of a home in the region.
Bidding for the patch of asphalt began at $42,000 during an onsite auction in the city's upmarket Back Bay area.
They were sold by the Internal Revenue Service, which had seized them from their original owner over a tax debt.
Lisa Blumenthal, who lives in a multi-million...
June 9, 2013
It is getting ever harder to do business in the United States, argues Niall Ferguson, and more stimulus won't help: Our institutions need fixing.
Not everyone is an entrepreneur. Still, everyone should try—if only once—to start a business. After all, it is small and medium enterprises that are the key to job creation. There is also something uniquely educational about sitting at the desk where the buck stops, in a dreary office you've just...
June 9, 2013
Nicaragua's new waterway will be a higher-capacity alternative to the 99-year-old Panama Canal, which is currently being widened at the cost of $5.2bn.
Nicaragua has awarded a Chinese company a 100-year concession to build an alternative to the Panama Canal, in a step that looks set to have profound geopolitical ramifications.
The president of the country's national assembly, Rene Nuñez, announced the $40bn (£26bn) project, which will reinforce...
June 6, 2013
A top official at the U.S. Internal Revenue Service on Thursday acknowledged that it was "embarrassing" how much the tax agency spent on training videos, including a Star Trek spoof, and other lavish expenses during a 2010 conference in California.
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June 6, 2013
Since going public in 2011, the professionals’ social network has gone from a networking site to a must-have tool for recruiters. Will adding content and big data enhance its professional value?
Hari Krishnan, managing director for Asia Pacific and Japan at LinkedIn, embodies the Silicon Valley start-up spirit. Wearing jeans and a shirt, telephone headset on, he paces restlessly back and forth in his rectangular Singapore office overlooking a...
June 4, 2013
Nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years. The world should aim to do the same again
In his inaugural address in 1949 Harry Truman said that “more than half the people in the world are living in conditions approaching misery. For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of those people.” It has taken much longer than Truman hoped, but the world has lately been...
June 4, 2013
Trying to assess just how enormous Amazon Web Services is has become a sort of parlor game among techies. Counting servers is as good a way as any to get a grip on its size and the latest to take a stab at that is Netcraft, which pegs the numbers of AWS web-facing servers at 158,000, up from 118,000 such servers in September, 2012.
Figuring out just what goes on within AWS often feels like the blind men and the elephant parable, with each...
June 4, 2013
American International Group and General Motors will rejoin the S&P 500 index this week, marking a key milestone in the recovery of two companies that needed billions of dollars to stay afloat during the financial crisis.
AIG and GM will rejoin the S&P 500 after the stock market closes on Thursday, the S&P Dow Jones Indices said on Monday.
The move represents a symbolic victory for AIG and GM, which have...
Value is the only commonality in an increasingly complex, challenging and interdependent world.