Christmas is fast approaching and for a number of companies this is their busiest time of the year. It is also a time of opportunity. Or at least that’s what brothers Henry and Victor Mears thought was the case. In terms of legality and ethics though their business plan left a lot to be desired. [...]

Microsoft and Salesforce don’t exactly love each other. Founded in 1999 by former Oracle executives, Salesforce is a very successful cloud based CRM (Customer Relationship Management) company. There’s no love lost between them and Microsoft though and earlier this year Microsoft sued Salesforce claiming it had infringed a number of patents. This week Salesforce held [...]

Although it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact time when wine was first made, it is commonly thought to originate from many thousands of years ago. Since then people have drunk it, enjoyed it and on occasions no doubt regretted it following an almighty hangover the following day. Over the years the methods involved in making [...]

During the Icelandic volcano eruption earlier this year when air traffic was severely disrupted I travelled on a Stena Lines ferry. The staff were great – polite and very helpful. There are certain things that employees look for in a leader. Inspirational, empathetic and knowledgeable are just 3 of the characteristics that successful leaders often [...]

If you give investment advice in the UK and your employer provides you with a mobile phone the chances are that from next year all your calls will be monitored and recorded. Fixed phone line calls involving financial business such as share purchases are already recorded but the UK’s financial watchdog, the Financial Services Authority [...]

Christmas shopping for me is normally a last minute rush before the shops close on 24 December. This year though I was determined to be organised and last weekend headed off to hit the shops in London’s West End. It was a pleasant surprise to find that arguably the two most famous shopping streets in [...]

To put it bluntly, in order to pass the ACCA exams and qualify as an accountant you have to be intelligent. You will have needed to have put in a significant amount of work over the last few months to cover all of the main areas of the syllabus. Now whilst no training company knows [...]

Discrimination in the workplace due to gender, race, religion or sexual preference is not only unethical but is also illegal in most countries. Importantly though if an organisation does undertake discriminatory activities in for example deciding not to recruit certain people it can miss out on good quality employees from the “excluded segment” of the [...]

A few years ago things were fairly simple when it came to deciding what was a computer and what was a phone. A computer tended to fill a room and a phone was attached by a wire to the wall. Then along came mobile phones and laptop computers. It was still possible to tell the [...]

What did you have for lunch today? Did you manage to get out of the office or did you grab a quick sandwich at your desk? If you’re a stockbroker working at the Hong Kong stock exchange then the chances are you had a rather nice long lunch. The Hong Kong stock exchange has one [...]