By Ian Fraser European Venture Capital Journal April 30th, 2008 Image courtesy of Science Clarified & US Department of Energy US wind farms can be profitable without the need of government subsidies As America wakes up to the threat of global warming, the nation’s burgeoning wind energy sector is presenting some tantalising opportunities for private [...]
By Ian Fraser European Venture Capital Journal April 30th, 2008 Wind power is expected to become viable even without the need for government hand holding. A fair wind has been blowing for the wind energy sector for a number of years now. Global warming – which even President George Bush recognised as a fact of [...]
April 29th, 2008 Seven prominent writers are urging Sir Terry Leahy, the chief executive of Tesco, to drop all libel actions against critics of the supermarket chain in Thailand. The writers, all of whom are members of English PEN, have sent an open letter to Leahy to condemn Tesco’s heavy-handed attempts to silence its critics in south-east Asian country. [...]
By Ian Fraser Sunday Herald April 27th, 2008 RBS’s refunding move is the first step in UK banks waking up from their self-delusion to the reality of the credit crunch. BRITISH BANKS, LIKE THE EMPEROR WHO WAS SO easily duped by his tailors, were suffering from chronic self-delusion at the start of this year. While their rivals on Wall Street and in [...]
By Ian Fraser The Herald Business April 24th, 2008 Multi-disciplinary partnerships are back on the agenda, despite unpromising first attempts THE last time Scotland’s leading law firms jumped into bed with firms of accountants, the liaisons turned out to be dangereuses. Back in 1997, Dundas & Wilson entered an alliance with accounting giant Arthur Andersen [...]
By Ian Fraser The Sunday Times Scottish Agenda column April 20th, 2008 THE collective burial of heads in the sand among Scottish business leaders, bank economists and housing market professionals about Scotland’s immunity to the credit crunch is something to behold. The consensus seems to be that Scotland’s economy is somehow different from that of [...]
By Ian Fraser The Sunday Times April 20th, 2008 GLASGOW’s four-year-old destination marketing organisation, the Glasgow City Marketing Bureau (GCMB), is claiming it has been so successful in attracting visitors and events to the city that Edinburgh wants to emulate the initiative. Scott Taylor, chief executive of the GCMB, said: “We have helped boost hotel [...]
By Ian Fraser The Sunday Times April 20th, 2008 MATHON, the asset-based commercial lender, has poached commercial property lawyer Andrew Sobolewski from solicitors Burness. Sobolewski takes over as the Glasgow-based company’s chief executive on August 5. As banks grow more cautious about lending to the property sector, investors have flocked to Mathon for bridging loans [...]
By Ian Fraser The Sunday Times April 20th, 2008 A Glasgow-based company has acquired one of Poland’s largest coal mines as part of the Polish government’s drive to privatise its coalmining industry. Gibson Group International will pay 205 million zloty (£50m) for the mine, located in the Czechowice-Dziedzice region of Silesia in southern Poland, and [...]
April 10th, 2008 Oh dear, oh dear. Far from behaving responsibly, it seems those unloveable bankers at Barclays, RBS and HSBC (including Barclays CEO, John Varley, pictured above) have left Britain more vulnerable to the effects of the global credit crisis than any other country in the world. The International Monetary Fund yesterday said it [...]