Archive for March 18th, 2010

The excitement is now palpable; World Cup 2010 is less than 3 months away. Jeremy Gardiner, director of IAM chats to Lindsay Williams about the unique opportunity South Africa has by staging the biggest event, sporting or otherwise, in the… »

South Africa is up with France as an exporter to the UK, but the local industry is in trouble. Up to 50% of Cape farms might be in the red, and with the rand so strong and the 2010 harvest relatively poor, the near term future appears tricky. Can the World Cup save us? Don… »

Cape Town, Mar 18 (I-Net Bridge) - The build up of South Africa’s foreign exchange reserves is assuring resilience to market turbulence, ratings agency Moody’s senior vice president for sovereign credit in Europe and Africa, Kristin Lindow, said Thursday.
According to Lindow, South Africa’s modest foreign debt exposure by both government and… »

Greece has upped the ante in an escalating game of brinkmanship, threatening to turn to the International Monetary Fund for support unless EU leaders come up with an acceptable rescue package at their next summit on March 25…. »

Recent revelations that Greece used derivatives to disguise its true level of borrowing have surprised markets. The reaction is reminiscent of Captain Renault (played by Claude Rains) in Casablanca: “I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.”

Use of derivatives to disguise debt and arbitrage regulations and accounting rules is not… »

March 17, 2010 — March 16 (Bloomberg) — Federal Reserve officials repeated their pledge to keep the main interest rate near zero for an “extended period” and confirmed that emergency measures to prop up the housing market will end as planned this month. While the economy has “continued to strengthen,” policy makers noted that “housing… »

The Glazer family are considering a second round of refinancing in an effort to remove Manchester United’s huge debt burden.

The American owners also hope that the move would help to stave off a planned takeover by the Red Knights.

Initial talks have taken place within the Glazers’ inner circle about how to get rid of their… »

A few weeks back, The Economist published a story touting the well-known fact that the “American economy just had its worst decade since the 1930s.” Whether looking at gross domestic product (GDP), consumption, income, or nonfarm payrolls, the decade from 2000 to 2010 generally looks bad from an economic perspective. During this decade, of course,… »

Johannesburg, Mar 18 (I-Net Bridge) - Global resources giant BHP Billiton (BIL) remains cautious about the state of the global economy and notes the recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report which highlighted the gap in growth between developed and developing economies.
Don Argus, in his last letter to shareholders as BHP Billiton Chairman,… »

At noon on February 26, from a temporarily set up “war room”, ArcelorMittal SA’s executive team were making frantic phone calls to directors, preparing them for the trading halt in the company’s shares on the JSE.

They had just two hours to do this. Earlier, around 11am, ArcelorMittal SA CEO Nkululeko Nyembezi-Heita and her executive team… »