Recently added articles from The Sunday Independent (South Africa):
After war with Russia, as before, the buzzword in Georgia is reform.(Business Report Weekend)
Oct 05, 2008 ... Since its Rose Revolution in 2003, under President Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia has been an economic reformer, achieving: n Wholesale privatisation of 13 000 firms; n A cut in corporate tax from 47 percent to 15 percent, the abolition of capital gains tax, and lowered ...
Ratings agencies at the core of rot.(Business Report Weekend)
Oct 05, 2008 ... BYLINE: Elliot Blair Smith The flawed AAA ratings of mortgage-backed securities that turned to junk lie at the root of the world financial system's biggest crisis since the Great Depression, according to Raiter and more than 50 former ratings professionals, investment bankers, ...
'Threat of losing deals' pushed standards to sidelines.(Business Report Weekend)
Oct 05, 2008 ... BYLINE: Elliot Blair Smith In August 2004, Moody's Investor Service unveiled a new credit rating model that Wall Street banks used to sow the seeds of their own demise. The formula allowed securities firms to sell more top-rated, subprime mortgage-backed bonds than before. ...
If hedge fund managers spoke only the truth ...(Business Report Weekend)
Oct 05, 2008 ... BYLINE: Bloomberg I apologise for the photocopied letterhead, the handwritten envelope and the fact that you had to pay the postage upon receipt of this missive. Austerity is the new black. We at Short-Term are committed to preserving your capital, so we ...
zz quote of the day.(Business Report Weekend)(Quotation)
Oct 05, 2008 ... Is the rich world aware of how 4 billion of the 6 billion live? If we were aware, we ...
Bill to save the world gets all kinds of hangers on.(Business Report Weekend)
Oct 05, 2008 ... BYLINE: Bloomberg At the same time, legislators have been busy making the package sweeter for those who balked at such a huge transfer of money and power. And so, at the moment on Friday that the house of representatives voted on whether to pass it, it also voted on a ...
$700bn bailout package approved.(Business Report Weekend)
Oct 05, 2008 ... BYLINE: Reuters The house approved the financial rescue plan by a vote of 263 to 171, sending the measure to US President George W Bush and concluding two weeks of haggling that had roiled and captivated global markets. Wells Fargo stepped in to buy Wachovia, a bank ...
Pretorious still waiting for Mboweni to apologise.(Business Report Weekend)
Oct 05, 2008 ... BYLINE: Lucky Biyase and Bloomberg Johannesburg Mario Pretorius's campaign to extract an apology from South African Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni has failed. In a letter to Pretorius on Friday, attorneys for the bank and Mboweni said they did not intend to deal ...
Investec Bank faces R270m lawsuit.(Business Report Weekend)
Oct 05, 2008 ... BYLINE: Wiseman Khuzwayo Randgold &Exploration (R&E) has issued a summons for R270 million in damages against Investec Bank for 5.46 million R&E shares, which the company says were sold by Brett Kebble's JCI without the authority of Randgold Resources, a wholly owned subsidiary ...
BEE associates drawn into court battles.(Business Report Weekend)
Oct 05, 2008 ... BYLINE: Wiseman Khuzwayo Johannesburg Slain mining magnate Brett Kebble liked to be known as a black economic empowerment (BEE) champion. He was generous to empowerment firms associated with him, many of which are now in the sights of an entity he is alleged to have looted. ...
Legal claim seeks R648m from T-Sec.(Business Report Weekend)
Oct 05, 2008 ... BYLINE: Wiseman Khuzwayo Johannesburg Randgold & Exploration (R&E), the company that was allegedly pillaged by mining magnate Brett Kebble for his own aggrandisement and that of the JCI group, its subsidiaries and associated companies, has filed a claim of R648 million against ...
Shade of Kebble looms over R&E forensic audit.(Business Report Weekend)
Oct 05, 2008 ... BYLINE: Wiseman Khuzwayo Johannesburg The ghost of murdered mining magnate Brett Kebble continues to rear its head, giving a headache to many companies and personalities who are alleged to have been beneficiaries of his deep pockets and largesse. The Star reported ...
A first-hand account of Darfur.(Dispatches)
Oct 05, 2008 ... Daoud Hari was born in Darfur in 1973. After escaping from the region to a refugee camp in Chad, he began work as a translator for, among others, the United Nations and the BBC. Hence the title of his book, which is both a personal memoir and a record of, and commentary on, the Darfur ...
Life shapes urban spaces.(Life)
Oct 05, 2008 ... 'Architecture has a significant effect on all of our lives; imagine a world without libraries, bridges, motorways and parks," Sumien Brink, the editorial director of VISI, believes. "World Architecture Day gives people the opportunity to experience the full force of architecture ...
Metro centre a surprise gem; Beautifully detailed structure gives civil servants an aesthetically pleasing place to work.(Life)
Oct 05, 2008 ... A gem, a veritable pearl of a building stands in Johannesburg's civic centre at the southwestern corner of the massive Braamfontein municipal complex. It stands on upper Loveday street opposite Sappi Park and, to the south, the city's banal sculptural homage to mine-workers. ...
Van Graan takes on admin-challenged theatre.(Life)
Oct 05, 2008 ... BYLINE: Astrid Stark Mike van Graan has a CV as long as Loop Street and it is accompanied by a string of awards which include a Naledi Theatre Award and a Fleur du Cap Theatre Award. Playwright, director, actor, policymaker, administrator, mentor and journalist are just some of ...
Bin pickers dig up our dirt.(Life)
Oct 05, 2008 ... I've always been prone to the Gothic depression of Sunday nights. But then I moved into a small and rather Bohemian neighbourhood in Cape Town where Monday morning brings the delight of garbage collection, and garbage collection brings the delight of a cultural phenomenon I can ...
Trapped in Hamburger World.(Dispatches)
Oct 05, 2008 ... Like Peter Carey's His Illegal Self, reviewed here recently, David Guterson's latest novel also invokes Mark Twain's classic Huckleberry Finn, according to Ernest Hemingway the sourcebook of all American fiction. Guterson's narrator, the 50-year-old Neil Countryman, ...
Belief in a cantankerous character.(Dispatches)
Oct 05, 2008 ... Looking at Zoe Heller's back catalogue, it seems as though she has set herself the challenge of writing characters who are not at all easy to like. The hero of her first novel, Everything You Know, was a bitter, middle-aged man slowly unravelling. The character that made her ...
Delta blues from an old-timer.(Life)
Oct 05, 2008 ... Bob Perkins was born on July 7 1913 on Honey Island Plantation near Belzoni, Mississippi, and was later renamed Joe Willie Perkins. He started out as a guitarist but when he suffered severed tendons after he was attacked by a chorus girl he switched to piano. It was a provoked ...