Without founder Apple will lose edge August 25, 2011 ONE of the rooms in my father’s house is full of old Apple products, a kind of museum of Macs gone by. Those made between 1985 and 1997 – the period of Steve Jobs’ exile – are rubbish. The worst, such as the Newton, an early tablet computer, are so bad that they are pristine, [...]
THE LUVVY RECOVERY August 24, 2011 Sir Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of WPP, yesterday said that the LuVVy-shaped recovery was still on track, but warned that it had been “battered” by recent turmoil, writes David Crow. Sir Martin’s recovery analogies have been closely-watched ever since he predicted a “bath-shaped” advertising downturn in 2002. So what does he mean by a [...]
THE LUVVY RECOVERY August 24, 2011 Sir Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of WPP, yesterday said that the LuVVy-shaped recovery was still on track, but warned that it had been “battered” by recent turmoil, writes David Crow. Sir Martin’s recovery analogies have been closely-watched ever since he predicted a “bath-shaped” advertising downturn in 2002. So what does he mean by a [...]
Commodities giant still hungry for buyouts August 24, 2011 GLENCORE has hit the acquisition trail for the third time since going public in May. This time it is offering A$268m for the 27 per cent of shares it doesn’t already own in Minara, the Australian nickel miner. By paying a 36 per cent premium on Minara’s pre-bid price, Glencore is making it clear that [...]
Success of Autonomy is all too rare August 22, 2011 AS success stories go, the tale of Autonomy has everything. Its chief executive, Dr Mike Lynch, began work on the mathematical formulas that underpin the firm’s software in the early 1990s, when he was completing a postdoctoral thesis at Cambridge University. In 1996, he founded Autonomy as a tiny startup, and spent the next four [...]
There is nothing so bad that politicians can’t make it worse August 18, 2011 IT was Thomas Sowell, the American economist, who said “there is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse”. In recent weeks, politicians have tested that maxim to destruction. From horse-trading over the US debt ceiling to cack-handed policymaking in Europe, almost every political intervention has served only to fan existing fears over the [...]
The new front in the mobile phone wars August 15, 2011 THE future for companies like Nokia and Motorola, once the great pioneers of the mobile phone industry, has been bleak for some time. The likes of Apple and RIM have eaten away at their share of the high-end smartphone market for several years now, while cheaper Asian manufacturers will soon do the same in the [...]
ECB pays a premium for breathing space August 8, 2011 DESPITE all the economic turmoil, the price of one commodity continues to rise inexorably. No, not gold, but breathing space. That is all the ECB has bought by entering the market for Italian and Spanish bonds – and it will pay a heavy price. Analysts at RBS think the ECB and the EFSF, the new [...]
Sotherton reveals naked truth about Olympic hopes August 3, 2011 WITH the countdown to next summer’s London Olympics well under way and the nation rapidly warming to the prospect of staging an event of such global importance, one of Britain’s greatest multi-eventers is resisting the temptation to let her mind wander. Kelly Sotherton, 34, a former Olympic bronze medallist, has never been one for toeing [...]
Unintended consequences strike again July 28, 2011 ANOTHER piece of poorly thought-out regulation, another set of unintended consequences. At the start of this year, the European Commission imposed on its banks the most onerous regime governing bonuses in the world. The banks responded by jacking up salaries, something that started in 2009 when they attempted to avoid Labour’s 50 per cent bonus [...]