An MBA is the gateway to the international marketplace February 24, 2010 AN Australian-born executive based in London and married to a South African banker, Nick Kontopoulos could be seen as the very essence of today’s globe-trotting business internationalist. However it wasn’t until his MBA studies led him to China that he thought that he might end up living and working there. Kontopoulos, a marketing business developer [...]
To get on the right MBA course, be prepared to jump through hoops February 24, 2010 Taking a two year break from your career to study, and spending tens of thousands of pounds in the process, is up there with buying a house or getting married when it comes to serious, life-changing decisions. In the past decade the commercial success of MBA courses has seen them proliferate at hundreds of institutions, [...]
PROACTIVE APPLICANT | MAKE YOURSELF KNOWN February 24, 2010 IF you want to be a successful MBA candidate, then you should make sure that the people who run the course know you even before you send in your application. When your CV drops on the doorman, that shouldn’t be the first time it has heard from you. Most schools have online application forms, but you [...]
GETTING PICKED | ARE YOU DESIRABLE? February 24, 2010 GETTING on to an MBA course is not just about what it offers you, but what you can offer it. Business schools will put together cohorts that don’t simply contain the best candidates, but the right cross-section of nationalities, backgrounds and experience to build the most dynamic team. Programmes are generally structured in such a [...]
Business needs to win back public trust February 24, 2010 LET’S be blunt: there’s a serious problem with corporate governance. Corporate trust is being eroded and unless something is done, this trend will continue. Edelman PR publish an annual Trust Barometer, which tracks public trust in major institutions across all sectors. The latest barometer shows – unsurprisingly – that trust in politics was “volatile”, while [...]
Confusion over tax regime is damaging UK February 24, 2010 ON Monday, the prime minister released a draft Tax Framework for Business at a global trade conference, apparently aimed at reassuring multinationals, worried about the UK’s tax policy. The problem with this framework is that it offers no guidance at all on the direction of travel. Rather, its statements are a mixture of vague aspirations [...]
Japanese are looking overseas for returns February 23, 2010 FACED with the lowest interest rates in the G10, even the Japanese are abandoning the yen. In search of higher yields and better growth prospects, they are looking overseas to higher-yielding assets in emerging markets and piling in to Toshin funds, which allow retail investors to invest in high-yielding currencies. This week an estimated ¥3.9bn [...]
THREE EVENTS TO SHAKE UP THE WORLD February 23, 2010 FOLLOWING weeks of turbulence, FX appears to have found temporary support. So this week I want to consider three unlikely, but not improbable, scenarios that could have a radical impact on the markets this year. GREECE IS THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG The news that Greece used complex swaps to improve its budget finances put [...]
You’d be mad to ignore the loonie February 23, 2010 IT’S tough being Canada. Whatever you do, you are always going to be compared to the superpower next door. And even when you go and host a major sporting event, people only snipe. But you would be wrong to underestimate the land of lumberjacks and Labatt’s. For the past few months, the Canadian dollar has [...]
MARKET WILL NOT TOLERATE INDISCIPLINE February 23, 2010 THE latest moves in the FX markets indicate investors are increasingly discriminating about their risk asset exposure. In particular, there has been a growing divergence of performance between the G10 currencies. Those of resource-rich countries – such as the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian dollars – have tended to outperform while eurocentric ones have underperformed. [...]
