Four key questions for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Businessam StaffJune 26, 2017

Rapid change and rampant inequality are testing the resilience of economies and societies. It is in our hands to ensure that the potentially disruptive shifts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution not only herald a change of guard in the highest echelons of the global economy, but also rebalance opportunities and outcomes across geographic, generational and […]

We are all used to an 8-hour work day, but is it effective?

Businessam StaffJune 26, 2017

The 8-hour workday is an outdated and ineffective approach to work. If you want to be as productive as possible, you need to let go of this relic and find a new approach. The 8-hour workday was created during the industrial revolution as an effort to cut down on the number of hours of manual […]

The salvation of Barclays comes back to haunt it

Businessam StaffJune 21, 2017

During the depths of the financial crisis, Barclays Plc raised 12 billion pounds ($15 billion), about half from Qatar, to avoid a collapse like Lehman Brothers or a bailout like Royal Bank of Scotland. It retained its independence, but a succession of investigations into misbehavior dating to those years has since bedeviled five chief executive officers. Now […]

Comparative analysis of Nigerian public debt

Businessam StaffJune 20, 2017

The public debt (total of both external and domestic debt) in Nigeria has been increasing over the last five years and the issue of the sustainability of the debt level has generated a lot of debate. A comparative analysis of the debt-to-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a number of countries show that the ratio of […]

Nigeria’s half-measures on currency are only half-working

Businessam StaffJune 20, 2017

A year after Nigeria scrapped a currency peg that sent foreign investors fleeing, it’s still battling to entice them back. But trying to placate investors by introducing multiple exchange rates isn’t going to work, bond funds and Wall Street lenders including Citigroup Inc. say. To end the dollar shortage that has hamstrung West Africa’s biggest economy and […]

Help for Africa – all talk and no action?

Businessam StaffJune 13, 2017

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to host African leaders ahead of the G20 summit. Berlin would like to see the G20 focusing more on Africa. Past initiatives for Africa have seen only moderate success.In 2005, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair hosted the G8 summit in the Scottish resort of Gleneagles. The meeting of […]

The Nigerian rice conversation and the nexus with food security

Businessam StaffJune 13, 2017

  The Rice debate in Nigeria is an intense and fierce one by different players who don’t understand the dynamics and only tend to put out emotional arguments not grounded on facts and logic but aim to score cheap political points. They try to play to the fact that self-sufficiency is a walk in the […]

Should you trust your own judgement when investing?

Businessam StaffJune 8, 2017

Most investors and dart players miss. But simple behavioural nudges can help improve our accuracy so that we’re more on target. Take economist Richard H. Thaler’s oft-cited example of the urinals at an Amsterdam airport: Patrons were making a mess. Their aim was off. Why? Maybe they were distracted, tired, or simply careless. They weren’t […]

London’s big bang banking hub pivots for post-Brexit reinvention

Businessam StaffJune 7, 2017

For 30 years, an army of UBS Group AG traders packed the football-field-sized floors of a building in the City of London’s largest office project. Now teams of laborers in high-visibility jackets are busily transforming the property for a different type of worker. Broadgate, a 32-acre (13-hectare) complex built to accommodate the banks and law […]