Have you ever counted 3,546 small plastic insects?I have.One of my first sales as a business broker intermediary was a party store sold to a young couple by the retiring owner. Because the deal called for the buyers to purchase the inventory at cost, it was necessary to count every item in stock, whether in…
Buying property and building a house in Nicaragua requires patience and planning, as in every other place. Building in Central America introduces a few new challenges to investors and homebuyers. The Nicaragua property boom is just taking off, and so quality construction is still in its infancy. At this time only about 30% of the…
As banks and financial institutions wake up to the growing potential of the online trading market, they continue to look for the technological solutions for gaining reliable, fast access to the sector. However, developing a workable, tried and tested platform for online trading is neither a cheap, straightforward nor timely exercise – and it was…
It isn’t just corporate bombast. It’s a reality many US businesses have already witnessed. For many corporates, transfer pricing is the most important issue any large global business has to face up to during the next five years. Tax authorities – including Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customers (HMRC) – are getting tough with any company…
As a result of EU accession on May 1, 2004, investors in Hungary find themselves in a single market of 493 million consumers with enormous potential for developing new markets and new horizons. At the geographical centre of the region Hungary is destined to become a bridge between present EU members and those countries on…
Is it or isn’t it a bear market? Perhaps that’s not the question, but rather whether a young, new stock exchange in London like PLUS Markets Group can survive the volatility that’s been seen in the stock markets in the past few months. Ask these questions to PLUS’s director of business development Nemone Wynn-Evans, however,…
Custodians have a love/hate relationship with risk. On the one hand, they are wary of using their balance sheets for client financing, a reluctance that has helped investment banks make headway in the administration business. At the same time, custodians are interested in administering highly complex investment portfolios and products, many of which carry a…
1995 represented a major turning point in the financial markets. The futures markets ruled supreme with the tail wagging the dog in the underlying cash markets. Few saw the significance of 1995 though, as it marked the introduction of Windows 95 and Internet Explorer. However, the real change came in 2000 when DSL lines became…
If large banks had suffered losses, it seemed logical that their highly-paid employees would share the pain. The reality is likely to be more complicated. Though several institutions have not yet reported their results, it increasingly looks as if the bonus pot shared between employees of the world’s largest investment banks will be larger than…
When I started in the City of London, the UK was entering a terrible period. Sterling was in free fall and the IMF were being called in by the then Prime Minister James Callaghan. His nemesis came in the form of Margret Thatcher who boldly stood on the election platform in 1979, tearing a Pound…
