Around 50 million pounds
JC Flowers, the Private Equity house based in New York, has agreed to pay GBP50m for a 49% stake in a Joint Venture with Kent Reliance Building Society (KRBS).
Does JC Flowers see KRBS as a major business opportunity? Hardly, because Read more
Await the Chinese backlash
The latest European passenger vehicle emissions standard (“Euro5″) was introduced in September 2009. Since that date, in Europe it has been illegal to sell new vehicles that do not meet this standard. Older models that only met the Euro4 standard can only be exported outside Europe to markets with more lenient standards. Within Europe the cars have little value – they can only be disassembled in order to reuse the components – and this value is therefore below cost.
This situation alone raises the possibility that dominant carmakers in the other markets will already be very suspicious of Euro4-compliant automakers. But it can get worse, much worse. Imagine that Read more
Consumer Watchdog misses the biggest threat
The Consumer Watchdog April 21 asked the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to launch an antitrust action against Google. In its request it suggested that Google might be broken up.
While there is the potential for Google to develop into something that needs to be broken up, right now there is a candidate that is way higher in priority. And that is Read more
A new approach to punishing offenders and rewarding the best
The recent financial crisis was exacerbated by several failures, one of which was poor risk management by banks. Previous attempts to coerce management into being more responsible have failed. How about this approach? Read more
… a chunk of Mercedes-Benz
So Renault-Nissan and Daimler have agreed a cross-shareholding and cooperation on future technology. Here at Vox Sapiens we are not optimistic about this alliance. Read more
Why can’t they see the bigger picture?
So Microsoft (presumably on the advice of lawyers) used the DCMA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) to force Cryptome.org’s hosting provider, Network Solutions, to close down the website and keep a lock on the domain name to prevent the site being relocated. Then a day later the complaint was rescinded, allowing the site to be restored.
This was a bad thing to do? Why?
OK, where should I start? Read more
“First car for the second world family, second car for the first world family”
The Tata Nano is likely to change the lives of an immense number of families in the developing world, with the possibility that the Indian car market will increase by 65%, according to Standard and Poor’s Indian arm, CRISIL (source India Times). And much has been written about Ratan Tata’s dream of migrating Indian families from two wheels to four.
But how about the developed world? I believe that it will be disruptive here too – by fundamentally altering the tax applied to private vehicles. Read more
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