Business and Economics

By Philip Benton  Vietnam is a country famous for its delicious cuisine, motorbikes and thanks to Top Gear’s Vietnam Special, massive model boats. But perhaps you were unaware that it also plays an instrumental role in producing the world’s second most valuable traded commodity – coffee. A thriving coffee industry has helped to transform an economy, devastated by a 30-year long war, but can coffee sustain the rapid economic growth of Vietnam? An unlikely success story Vietnam is the world’s...

by Valentina Magri According to IMF forecasts, Britain will enjoy a bigger increase in GDP than any other country in Europe after being upgraded from 1.9 per cent to 2.4 per cent. But there are at least four risk factors that may weaken the recovery. Puzzling politics There is a complicated political background to deal with this year. To start with, David Cameron has promised British people “reform first, referendum second” over Europe exit by the end of 2017. The...

By Adam Walker, Economics Correspondent A Northerner’s Perspective London is an economic powerhouse, a hub of global headquarters and a melting pot of cultures, but is it a drain on the rest of the UK? Recently there has been a lot of speculation and debate surrounding the question of whether London has a positive or negative influence on the overall UK economy with heavyweights such as The Times’ David Smith and Vince Cable contributing their own analysis. Research by the Centre for...

By Adam Walker, Economics Correspondent Since the financial crisis hit in 2007 there has been a great deal of debate concerning the culture of big business capitalism and the demonisation of the financial industry. The elitism associated with the banking industry, coupled with accusations of political bias, immunity from punitive action and excessive bonus schemes has been the main target of people’s anger, many claiming that the financial sector is out of control when compared with other industries. However, are these...

By David Dumeresque of Tyzack Partners The Art of Survival: Adapting to Change in the Digital Era Fifty years ago, Leon Megginson, Professor of Management and Marketing at Louisiana State University wrote in the Southwestern Social Science Quarterly: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” What Professor Megginson was referring to, in a business sense, was that those who survive are the...

Kerry Lister-Pattinson – 28, founder Making Winter Warmer I'm the type of person who really feels the cold. One especially freezing November night in 2013 a thought popped into my head; 'what must it be like for people living on the streets?' It was that thought that led me on to launch Making Winter Warmer for those Without. My idea was simple, to collect warm clothing that my friends no longer needed and to get them to the people who do....

By Nathan Lee, Finance and Politics Correspondent  Martin Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street rubs salt in the wounds of those most affected by the financial crisis and massages the ego of the bankers who allowed it all to happen.   Five years on from the greatest financial crisis in history and it all seems rather like a pantomime. The mountains of sub-prime debt, spiralling consumerism and fragile economics are staged as the audience screams; IT’S BEHIND YOU! The trouble is, it...

By Carlotta Stephens, Commercial Director, Maine-Tucker As a corporate member of the REC (Recruitment and Employment Confederation) I recently attended an event at the House of Lords on the topic of youth employment. Staggeringly there are nearly one million young people in the UK who are neither in work, training or education. Statistics point to the fact that if you have a gap in your career early on, you are far more likely to have gaps in employment later in life....

By Adam Walker, Economics Correspondent Politics & Economics: Two Forces Pulling Against Each Other Following the US Government shutdown in late 2013 there has been speculation surrounding the fragility of global economic wellbeing when it is at the mercy of party politics, in particular when a few idealists manage to halt the entirety of a democratic system through a reluctance to compromise. However, the bigger question is whether politics and economics will ever be a successfully functional partnership in a democratic...