A dream solution for navigating the bedroom battlefield at night November 11, 2012 YOU wake in the middle of the night wanting to visit the bathroom. Tired, you regret having a few glasses of water hours earlier before hitting the sack. For a few moments you ponder rolling over and returning to sleep, but you know the need isn’t going to go away. So you slowly arise in [...]
British fashion reaps rewards at industry gongs November 6, 2012 The 2012 Global Fashion Awards was a very British affair this week. The annual event, which celebrates the best in fashion and retail across the world, saw many British companies walk away with several of the big awards. Victoria Beckham was one of the biggest winners of the night, beating stiff competition from the likes [...]
The Fed has created golden opportunities October 23, 2012 MONETARY expansion has inadvertently given commodity prices a huge boost – but should traders focus on the spot commodity or gold mining equities? With the creation of QE Infinity – the open-ended quantitative easing programme unveiled last month by the US Federal Reserve – traditional monetary policy is now nothing but a speck on the [...]
Competition for scarce resources may bring the West to a standstill October 10, 2012 THERE are limits to growth. Extra economic activity in emerging economies can lead to less growth for us in the West. At least partly, global economic growth is a zero sum game. Restrictions in the supply of minerals, energy, food and water mean growth is likely to be constrained. If we are lucky, world growth [...]
Visit Malaysia for the birds, the bees and the leeches October 7, 2012 MY HERO swoops down in the nick of time. I’m perched atop a bare rock, too petrified to move when she flies to my rescue. Barely seven inches tall, the blue-winged pitta flits to the ground and within moments, her beak is filled with what look like needle-thin worms. I’ve never been happier to see [...]
Yacht owners threatened by rise of piracy September 19, 2012 THERE’S no escape for the ultra-rich following reports that their superyachts are the new favoured target for pirates off the coast of Africa. While most people’s main holiday concern is remembering to pack the suncream, maritime security firm MAST says the number of enquiries it has received from private individuals has risen by 80 per [...]
City Moves | Who’s switching jobs September 18, 2012 Barclays Tom Wood has been appointed head of professional services at the banking group. He joined Barclays in 2007 as a relationship director, and most recently spent three and half years as corporate director and deputy head of its professional services team. Wood has also held roles at RBS. Jupiter Asset Management Andrew Clark has [...]
Sunderland Liverpool September 13, 2012 IT has been an incredibly emotional week for everyone involved with Liverpool Football Club and if ever a team is likely to be fired up for a game, it is the Reds against Sunderland in tomorrow’s early evening kick-off. Brendan Rodgers, similarly to Villas-Boas, will be very disappointed with the start his team has made [...]
Even dead cats can bounce back to life August 20, 2012 WHEN things go disastrously wrong, the market is always ready to obliterate a stock. It could be because of mistakes made in a company’s operations, as in the case of Carnival earlier this year when one of its liners ran aground off Italy’s west coast. It could be like Facebook’s IPO, where the price rose [...]
The Manchester medal factory: Be grateful for this strange cluster of genius August 16, 2012 THE Manchester velodrome is a medal factory. It won as many golds in this summer’s Olympics as the whole of Australia. As well as a cause for national celebration, that’s a problem. Because the truth is, we don’t know enough about why. Genius clusters. Renaissance Florence. Elizabethan London. The Scottish Enlightenment. Extraordinary individual achievements, sporting [...]