FROM THE PEN The Driving Issue Every business must answer the question, what drives your business? And it’s no different for SAICA. In his column this month, Nazeer Wadee talks broadly about SAICA’s strategic imperatives and mentions quite proudly that the results of the latest MSI survey has risen to 84% in the first wave…
FROM THE PEN BRAND SA As I write this month’s editorial, brand South Africa is truly in the spotlight. The Information Bill and the media tribunal debate; former police chief, Jackie Selebi, granted leave to appeal his sentence; July trade surplus of R2 billion; and a new statistics revelation that black South Africans own 18…
FROM THE PEN THE GLOBAL CFO Never before has the perception of Africa, and especially South Africa, been more positive than during the 2010 world cup. First time foreign visitors to our shores were perhaps jolted into a reality we’ve long lived with. Our infrastructure proved world-class, our local judicial processes worked so well even…
FROM THE PEN WE CAN DO IT ALL… Our cover this month is of the iconic World War 11 (WW11) American ‘Rosie the Riveter’, who, according to American history, inspired a social movement that increased the number of working women in America to 20 million in 1944, an increase of 57% from 1940. Although the…
FROM THE PEN Mergers and Acquisitions In the most recent month’s column, I shared with you that I was hopeful of Africa’s emerging role in what is termed the ‘new financial world order’. After all, as explained, ‘Africa is well placed to take advantage of any global economic recovery, especially because it is relatively less…
FROM THE PEN The Clean-up Issue The next G20 summit is to be held in November this year, and I can honestly say that I’ve never been more intrigued or anxious of what surely is to come from this meeting. Why? Well, in April leaders of the world’s top emerging economies (BRIC – Brazil, Russia,…
FROM THE PEN Change and Risk There’s definitely an enormously huge shift happening to the world as we know it. Not only are we experiencing climate changes and excessive electricity hikes, which will either cripple us or lend themselves to more energy efficient households, and an unusually well performing property sector as far as Mergers…
FROM THE PEN Reflections The time of Nelson Mandela’s release from Victor Verster prison in 1990, Mac Maharaj said that our released hero looked “quite somber, not celebratory, not pumping the air and jumping about like a victorious boxer, but walking very sternly, and I think I saw a sense of bewilderment in him”. Many…
FROM THE PEN A tribute to Ken Walton When we first started the column Death and Taxes nearly ten years ago, who would have thought that it would become one of the journal’s most popular columns? Thought provoking, provocative, thoroughly entertaining, and always educational, Penelope Webb’s articles definitely went against the grain of what many…
FROM THE PEN Foundation Issues With 33 chapters and an estimated 6.5 billion copies printed, Chairman Mao Zedong’s (Tse-Tung) book, The Little Red Book, during the 60s, was arguably the single most visible icon in mainland China, even more visible than the image of the Chairman himself. In posters and pictures created by the Chinese…