I recently got back from more than two weeks in Scandinavia and my time in Sweden was a big unexpected surprise. I’ve done my fair share of travel, living abroad too. And Sweden was never really a consideration. Too cold, too boring, too not special. How wrong I was! The Swedes, with their famously high standard…
As it stands now, POPI could cripple the small business community our economy is based on. Kevin Phillips elaborates The Protection of Personal Information Act, generally known as POPI, regulates how anyone with access to personal information must collect, manage, store, secure, share and even dispose of it. POPI has been in the works for…
A new dispensation? The new Companies Act has removed the courts’ legislative discretion to require an impecunious plaintiff company to furnish security for costs. So what does this mean for defendants? By Willem Janse van Rensburg and Clayton Gow The repealed section 13 of the Companies Act 61 of 1973, together with its predecessor, section…
Jaguar has broken all its own design norms to come up with a modern classic in the form of the all-new XJ, while Citroën combines comfort and apps in the new Picasso Citroën C4 Picasso The French have been known for making cars that are different to the norm: in fact, some may say that…
A focus on Africa Islamic finance A new world for the insurance industry SMP opportunities in Africa require local expertise Business in Africa In the past ten years, African countries have experienced unprecedented growth rates, with seven of the top ten fastest-growing economies in the world being those of key African countries Africa is a…
February is usually the month in which we relapse on all the well-intentioned goals that we set ourselves at the start of the New Year. Unfortunately, our indulgences over the past festive season now seem to have added up at the cost of our health. Studies have shown that four main risk factors – physical…
Franz Gmeiner’s career has taken interesting twists and turns. By Yuven Gounden It would seem like Franz Gmeiner was destined to be an entrepreneur. It seems like even he was baffled at the extent to which he took his entrepreneurship aspirations. The journey to the Orion Group dream was punctuated by deviations. But the eventual…
South Africa’s political punditry issues frequent calls for greater accountability on the part of our politicians and state. But they hardly any ever stop to make the obvious connection: before there can be accountability, there must be accounting. In his wonderful book The Reckoning, historian Jacob Soll shows how accounting has shaped kingdoms, empires and…
When you’re calculating how much capital you need to retire on, take care because the assumptions we use for post-retirement costs may be much different to your current pre-retirement costs. Your basket of goods changes and research in the US has shown that inflation for retirees over the past three decades has been higher than…
The dramatic collapse of the oil price during the final quarter of the year was probably the most important macro-event of 2014. Oil fell from $91/barrel at the start of the fourth quarter to $55 at the end of the year. It fell further in the first two weeks of 2015 to around $48/barrel. Since…