A few years ago I was lucky enough to visit Tanzania. It’s a beautiful country with some amazing sights and fantastic wildlife. Little did I know though that had I visited Tanzania recently I could have been fortunate and quite possibly have seen a frog named after some accountants. Now I don’t mean “Fiona the [...]

There are certain things in this world that really should be readily available no matter where you live. School education for children for example is one such item. In some countries however it is a sad fact of life that children often have to walk many kilometres to their nearest school. This can understandably result [...]

If an organisation can create a successful barrier to entry then it will have a great competitive advantage. In simple terms, a barrier to entry can prevent competitors entering the market. We’ve blogged before about a good example of a barrier in the Indian telecommunication market but a recent attempt to create a barrier by [...]

Binge drinking in the UK is a major problem. City centres at the weekend can be full of people that are literally trying to drink as much as possible in as short a period of time. Violence and health issues often ensue. As well as the disturbances to local residents there are also the costs [...]

A report issued by Credit Suisse this week highlighted the fact that costs of manufacturing in China are on the increase. Average salaries for example have increased from $1,000 per annum in 2000 to nearly $4,000 in 2010. This increase, together with the cost of transporting goods to Europe and America, means that the cost [...]

Gone are the days when auditors were manually checking and ticking lots of pieces of paper. Today’s auditing techniques involve significant use of computers. But how far can this computer use go? Will they be able to predict when accounting fraud is going to take place as opposed to tracking transactions that have already occurred? [...]

Anthony Ward, a British financier who set up hedge fund Armajaro Holdings, bought a huge chunk of chocolate on Friday. To be precise, he spent over £650 million buying 241,000 tonnes of cocoa beans. This was the highest single purchase of cocoa for nearly 15 years and happened as cocoa bean prices rose to their [...]

We mentioned in a previous blog about Nike publicising their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) policies on their website. Asda, Britain’s second biggest supermarket chain has gone one step further in being transparent with regard to their CSR policies. In the past they have been criticized by some campaigners for the low wages and poor conditions [...]

My new year’s resolution was to get back into jogging. My friends never believe me but a couple of years ago I even managed a half marathon but unfortunately work and my like for food meant that the weight went on and the exercise took a back seat. On 1 January this year I made [...]