Sector

The banking sector faces a continuous trade-off between competition and stability. Too much competition increases instability and the risk of systemic failure, but too little competition will also have dire consequences for consumers and investors. What is the balancing point?...

Apple created a stir last month when it revealed figures showing that it had cash equivalents and marketable securities of about US$76.2 billion. Likewise, General Electric boasted cash holdings of US$136.3 billion on its balance sheet for the last financial...

31 August 2011. The future of energy in Europe is trapped in a political quagmire. As a result of the political bickering among opposing views in European parliaments, little is being done to address the energy problems for the future....

26 August 2011. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, many expected Western banks to abandon their foreign interests and refocus on their domestic markets. Yet today, the presence of foreign banks in local markets is much greater overall...

Some say that the best expression of excess capacity and overdevelopment in China is its real estate market. Shanghai, for example, is a prime instance of the property boom that the country has experienced in the past decade. In key...

Back in 2006, Californian filmmaker Chris Paine announced the premature demise of the electric car in his cult, prize-winning documentary Who Killed The Electric Car? Now, just five years on, Paine has proclaimed the rebirth of the electric car in...

21 July 2011. Now let's get this right: Singapore is a great place to do business. It's the gateway to Asian economies and where businesses big and small base themselves to trade with the rest of South East Asia -...

30 June 2011.Fifa is corrupt and everybody has known about it for years. The most recent allegations against executive committee members Bin Hammam and Jack Warner – which involved bribes totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars in return for votes...

27 June 2011.CFOs across the US plan to implement policies to reduce their reliance on oil in the future as prices continue to soar, it has been found. The survey, conducted by Duke University/CFO Global Business Outlook survey, found that...

  21 June 2011.     21 June 2011. I first met Reza Behnam when he was the Managing Director of Yahoo South East Asia. Having worked with him closely on several projects there, we became friends and I have...

17 June 2011.Casinos. Where dreams of becoming an overnight millionaire are made – and mortgage payments are broken. The house always wins. But it doesn’t seem that way, by design. The poker-faced dealers hardly look like sharks and the only...

2 June 2011.The twin spectres of regulation and cloud services were major areas of concern among delegates at the recent FST Summit Europe 2011 event, held 17-19 May at the Hotel Nassauer Hof in Wiesbaden, Germany. But innovative ideas around...

24 May 2011. It takes a brave person to write about politics in Singapore. Over the years, publications and journalists have been sued - and even jailed for criticising the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), who have been in power...

In the wake of the recent Sony PlayStation hack, Amazon EC2 outage and Epsilon data theft, information security is once again back in the news – for all the wrong reasons.The web has become a playground for hackers and malcontents eager...

29 April 2011.Something very strange has been happening to me recently. People have been asking for my advice on blogging, like I’m some sort of expert! The first time I wondered why are they asking me? However, as time has...