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Govt ponders green taxes
The government is promoting broader discussion on “market-based instruments” for “incentivi- sing” or “disincentivi-sing” environmental performance, the department of environmental affairs and tourism said this week. This includes looking at the concept of a “Green Budget” as mooted by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel early during his budget speech. |
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Levi's feels the squeeze
One of the most enduring clichés in the fashion world is that it is the details that make the difference. This particular detail measures 12cm by 10cm, but it has started what is turning out to be the biggest legal battle in the fashion industry. The back pocket of Levi’s jeans, decorated with two intersecting arcs and a simple cloth tag, has been, Levi’s contends, “shamelessly copied” by other denim brands. |
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Snot en trane at Pay-TV hearings
The public hearings to select South Africa’s new Pay-TV operators claimed further casualties this week, with yet another applicant withdrawing and another breaking into tears under cross-examination. The hearings, held by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa), were fraught with interested parties trying to cut others down to size. |
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 Principles and percentages
Ordinarily, it should be old hat that a business organisation, even if it is one of the best in its industry, is majority black-owned, as the Jupiter Drawing Room is. The agency's press release writers say it is "Africa’s largest, black-owned, independent advertising agency". What is less subjective is that last month Jupiter was voted the AdFocus Ad Agency of the Year. |
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Netcare in the spotlight again
The thorny issue of private-sector healthcare is once again before the competition authorities. This time opinion appears to be against the large hospital groups -- if the Competition Commission’s opposition to a proposed takeover by Netcare of a small hospital group is anything to go by. |
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Conrad Black: invincible quest
The former media mogul Conrad Black has a broad face, as impervious as an Easter Island monolith and nearly as motionless; he expresses himself by tiny adjustments in the narrowness of his eyes. In court in Chicago, where he is facing up to 101 years in prison for fraud, he assumes a detached, sceptical air. |
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Sasol's CTL: as good as it looks?
Sasol’s coal-to-liquid technology is making headlines from Johannesburg to Beijing and New York. It has scored big with the coal industry as a way for coal-rich countries such as the United States, China and South Africa to reduce their dependency on imported fuel from hotspots such as the Middle East and Nigeria. |
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Bush's can-do free trader
At first glance Robert Zoellick, who George Bush nominated to be the next president of the World Bank, could not be more different than his predecessor, Paul Wolfowitz. While both men have been at the heart of Republican-dominated Washington for many years, with careers stretching back into the term of the current President Bush’s father, the two have widely differing personalities. |
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Big gun bags VoIP start-up
Deutsche Telekom is investing $20-million in hotly tipped internet telephony start-up Jajah.com as the online communications industry continues its rapid growth. Jajah has already been backed by venture groups such as Sequoia Capital -- the Silicon Valley company that was instrumental in the rise of Google, YouTube and PayPal -- and Intel. |
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Streamlining BEE
Now that the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Codes have taken over the job of encouraging companies to implement affirmative action, the Employment Equity Act should be scrapped. With it should go the Commission for Employment Equity. |
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Cash-strapped film unit to close
In a circular to its stakeholders, the organisation’s executive officers, Dorothy Brislin and Tsikani Mthembu, wrote: “Unless a rescue injection of funds occurs within the next few days, the board’s decision to liquidate FRU will proceed.” By Tuesday, the pair had already made a desperate plea to Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan for urgent intervention to prevent liquidation. |
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A battle royale
The scrap has well and truly begun for the precious subscription broadcasting licences that the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) intends to issue. This week saw the launch of public hearings held by the regulator, which will allow it to whittle down the 18 applicants to those deserved few, who will be given an opportunity to make their fortune in the billion-rand pay-TV industry. |
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Sunny side up
Eskom is to switch to a new ally in its continuing bid to keep the lights on: the sun. The power utility -- which has been battling in recent times to meet demand, especially during cold spells -- is understood to be finalising an aggressive financial programme to incentivise the use of solar water heaters. Industry sources say close to a million solar-powered water heaters could be subsidised over a five-year period to the tune of R2-billion. |
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Google's DoubleClick deal probed
Concerns about Google’s dominance in online advertising have prompted the United States Federal Trade Commission to investigate its $3,1-billion takeover of internet marketing company DoubleClick. The purchase of DoubleClick, announced last month, is intended to give Google enhanced software and stronger relationships with agencies. |
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Belt tightening for Tito?
Consumer inflation has breached the Reserve Bank’s upper limit for the first time in 44 months, upping pressure for an interest rate hike next week, and sending the JSE plummeting. CPIX, which is the main consumer inflation indicator, reached 6,3% year-on-year in April, according to figures released recently, while headline CPI reached 7% year on year. |
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 Here comes the neighbourhood
There was a time not too long ago when established business started deserting the CBD. In droves. Some moved to Parktown, shortly afterwards to abandon state-of-the-art buildings for the relative perceived sanctuary of Sandton. Even new office complexes in town stood unoccupied in the general frenzy to put as much distance between corporate headquarters and the CBD. |
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China flexes its financial muscle
A huge shift in global capital flows is forecast after the Chinese government’s acquisition of a $3-billion stake in the sprawling United States private equity group Blackstone, owner of Café Rouge restaurants, Madame Tussauds and Center Parcs. The purchase is likely to be only the starting point of a $200-billion foray into world stock markets and private companies by the communist government in Beijing. |
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The face of new nuclear power
She’s known as “Anne Atomique” and the Financial Times lists her as the world’s second-most fashionable business person. Would you expect anything else from the French? But don’t be fooled by the chic exterior. Not yet 50, Anne Lauvergeon’s meteoric rise to the top of the nuclear industry has been made possible by a tough-as-nails, straight-talking approach to government and investors alike. |
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