Nigeria has moved up 11 steps to become the 26th largest economy globally, ahead of South Africa, following the reclassification of the based year of the gross domestic product (GDP) from 1990 to 2010.
Updated 6 Years ago

It now expects the Chinese economy to grow by 7.6% in 2014, down from its earlier projection of 7.7%. A slew of disappointing figures has triggered concerns of a slowdown in the world's second-largest economy.
Updated 6 Years ago

Huge financial cost, running into millions of naira is scaring most of Nigeria’s over 800 Microfinance banks from adopting the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), BusinessDay investigations have shown.
Updated 6 Years ago

France’s Socialist President Francois Hollande may not have planned on a wave of mergers and acquisitions by his country’s biggest companies to be a defining feature of his term. That’s what he’s getting. France Inc. is on a deal-making tear, with cement manufacturers Lafarge SA (LG)and Holcim SA in talks to create a global cement giant with more than $40 billion in revenue, and Vivendi SA (VIV) in the process of leaving the country’s wireless industry by selling its SFR phone unit for more than $23 billion. They followPeugeot SA (UG)’s $4.1 billion capital-raising effort that’s set to bring in China’s Dongfeng Motor Corp. as a partner and a shareholder.
Updated 6 Years ago

Hundreds of fans had been waiting for hours behind the police barricades on Hollywood Boulevard, in front of the El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles. Many of them wore Captain America masks and held replicas of his shield. One by one, the stars of Captain America: The Winter Soldier arrived.
Updated 6 Years ago

Here’s a philosophical question Google (GOOG) investors can ponder this morning: If you own stock in the tech giant, would you rather have voting rights that are essentially worthless or ones that are literally worthless?
Updated 6 Years ago

As top government officials speed up the birth of a national credit card system in an asymmetrical response to U.S. sanctions over Russia's incorporation of Crimea, major state banks are eyeing their share in the multi-billion dollar financial transactions market. President Vladimir Putin has supported German Gref, the CEO of Russia's largest lender Sberbank, who offered to create a national payment system based on the existing Universal Electronic Card, or UEC.
Updated 6 Years ago

Just as the management of Russia's biggest social networking site VK was preparing to elect a new chief executive on Thursday, the website's founder Pavel Durov withdrew his resignation from the position, saying the joke was on those who had believed him. The board of directors of VK, formerly known as Vkontakte, had been scheduled to convene on Thursday to elect a new CEO. But Durov, who announced his resignation on Apr.1 in a farewell letter published on his personal VK page, said Thursday the move had been a prank.
Updated 6 Years ago

First, let's talk about that word story. It's one I find impossibly squishy in a business context. For me, it can conjure up performance art more than industry. But storytelling as it applies to business isn't about spinning a yarn or fairy tale. Rather, it's about how your products or services exist in the world. It's who you are and what you do for others--how you add value to people's lives, ease their troubles, meet their needs. A compelling brand story gives your audience a way to connect with you, one person to another, and to view your business as what it is: a living, breathing entity run by real people offering real value.
Updated 6 Years ago

Lack of money is a convenient scapegoat for many startups, but is being low on cash really the biggest thing holding your company back? "Sometimes, money just hides the real problems," says Caroline Ceniza-Levine, co-founder of SixFigureStart, a New York City-based business-coaching firm. "If you don't know what those issues are, you're going to be throwing good money after bad. Money should be the last thing entrepreneurs worry about." It's not hard to see why many entrepreneurs dive into the money hunt early in the game, especially when deal-hungry investors make it hard to resist. "Money is loose right now," says David Kalt, angel investor and CEO of Reverb.com, an online marketplace for new and vintage musical instruments that's based in Chicago. Twenty-six percent of venture capital deals in 2013 were seed funding--with dollar amounts increasing 22 percent from 2012 and 74 percent from 2011, according to the research firm CB Insights.
Updated 6 Years ago