-
Money
-
Barclays Fined £290 Million Over Libor Fixing
28 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Well this is terribly worrying. Yesterday, Barclays bank – one of the biggest banks in the world – was fined a record £290 million for attempting to manipulate the world’s benchmark borrowing rate – the Libor. This is a huge blow to the bank’s reputation and raises questions over the future of chief executive Bob Diamond. Up to 40 other global banks face being named and shamed too.
-
Frank.Net – Life Investment Made Simple, And Fun
27 Jun 2012 by Seth Rotherham / No Comments
Frank.net sell Life Cover, Disability Cover, Serious Illness Cover, and Salary Protection directly to people without using brokers. They’re backed by Munich Re – the world’s leading re-insurer – so you never have to worry if they actually have the money. They tell it like it is, and don’t hide behind big words or misleading […]
-
Cyprus Becomes The Next Card In The Euro Zone Pack To Fall
26 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Cyprus has become the fifth euro zone country to seek emergency funding from Brussels, and it may require a bailout amount worth up to half the size of its economy. We’re not talking the kind of numbers that Spain and Greece have been after, but when half of your economy is looking a bit worse for wear, it’s not ideal.
-
Larry Ellison’s Island Is Bigger Than Some Countries
25 Jun 2012 by Seth Rotherham / No Comments
It’s quite rad to be in that gang of famous people who own their own islands. But you’ve done something particularly impressive when the aerial photo of your island is actually a satellite photograph. You gotta give it to Oracle boos, Larry Ellison – he really nailed it with this latest $500 – $600 million […]
-
Richemont CEO Donates His €3,6 Million Salary To Charity
22 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Here’s a Friday-feel-good story for you all, executive chairman and CEO of Richemont, Johann Rupert, took home €3.6 million for the year and instead of buying a new yacht or diamond-infused body lotion he promptly donated it to charity.
-
SARS To Get The Power To Search And Seize Without A Warrant
20 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Soon the South African Revenue Service will have the power to search and seize relevant material without the need for a warrant, a tax expert has today told the City Press. The Tax Administration Bill could “have serious and significant ramifications” for taxpayers, the expert continued. However, this doesn’t appear to be a bad thing, if you’ve got nothing to hide.
-
The World’s Richest Athletes: Mayweather Claims Top Spot
20 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Forbes on Tuesday released its list of the 100 highest paid athletes, boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr., nicknamed “Money,” is in the top spot with earnings of $85 million. He is a solid 23 million ahead of second placed Manny Pacquiao, and miles ahead of the only South African on the list, Ernie Els, who is in 91st place with earnings of $17,4 million.
-
Auction Alliance Wins Court Case Against NCC
19 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
Yesterday, the Western Cape High court handed down a judgement that ruled that National Consumer Commissioner, Mamodupi Mohlala-Mulaudzi, acted outside of her powers when she summoned three Auction Alliance executives, including Rael Levitt, to appear before the National Consumer Commission earlier this year. It’s a notable victory for Auction Alliance, but doesn’t rule out a criminal investigation into possible fraud.
-
South Africa’s ATM Fees Tops List Of 27 Countries
15 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 4 Comments
A recent survey has found that South Africa has the highest ATM withdrawal fees out of a group of 27 countries which includes the likes of the United Kingdom and the USA.
-
Is Greece’s Exit From The Eurozone Imminent?
15 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
While no official statements have been made by anyone, an external analysis is showing the first signs of Greece leaving the Eurozone. For those of us in SA, where the markets are highly reactive to what’s happening in Europe, could this bring the relief and stability that we’ve been waiting for?
-
Former T20 Billionaire Allen Stanford Sentenced To 110 Years In Prison
15 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
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.
-
Tokyo Tops List Of Most Expensive Cities For 2012
13 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
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.
-
Iran’s Oil Exports Plummet 40%
13 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
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 Forms Content Partnership With CNBC
13 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
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.”
-
Microsoft One-Ups Google In Battle For Cloud Market
08 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
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.
-
FNB Slashing Prices And Reducing Fees
08 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 8 Comments
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.
-
Knott-Craig Says Telkom Did The Right Thing
08 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
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.
-
ABSA Has Taken Over Edgars Store Cards
07 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
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.
-
Nasdaq To Reimburse Facebook Investors $40 Million
07 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
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.
-
Cell C Slashes Contract Prices By Up To 50%
06 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
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 Not Making Anyone Believe, Shares Lowest Since 1980
05 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
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.
-
Spain Reveals €100 Billion Cash Exodus
01 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
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.
-
Government Considering Special Appropriations Bill To Bail Sanral Out
31 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
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.
-
Russian Millionaire Taunts Passersby With Paper Money Planes [PIC]
31 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
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.
-
Europe Is Working On Emergency Plans For Greek Euro Exit
18 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
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.
-
Vintage Leica Camera Sells For Record Price At Auction
14 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
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?
-
Millions Of Rands Worth Of Textbooks Dumped At Eastern Cape Warehouse
14 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
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.
-
JPMorgan Drops $2 Billion In Enormous Hedging “Error”
11 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
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.
-
More Than 30 000 Positions Stand Vacant In The Local Government Sector
11 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
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.
-
The Floating Tech Start Up Haven Is Becoming A Reality
10 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
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.
-
-
-
2oceansvibe Partners
-
-
