Leadership

In Vijay Govindarajan’s view, many of the major innovations of the future will originate in emerging markets. Global companies in the developed world will need to get in on the act if they are to compete, he says. Gone are the days when the major mass markets were the US, Japan, and Europe. Today, emerging markets such as Brazil, China, India, and Russia represent half of the world’s GDP and over 40pc of its exports. They now represent the mass markets that need to be served, and not with products designed for traditional consumers. With many forecasting that the developed world will see a prolonged period of the slow growth…

Infrastructure support services group Siteserv has announced it has been selected, through its subsidiary Sierra Communications, as the preferred bidder for Bord Gáis Home Energy’s ‘Provision of Appliance Servicing, Boiler Installation and Related Services’ contract. Both parties will now enter into a period of contractual negotiations and a further announcement is expected to be made in the first quarter of 2010. The contract has an estimated value of €50m over the three-year term and has a potential to extend to a further two years, Siteserv said. Siteserv is a holding company for businesses including RoanKabin, Sierra Support Services, Holgate Infrastructure & Motorway Services and Rentafence.

John Teeling remains one of Ireland’s foremost entrepreneurs, with business interests that range from Cooley Distillery to African diamond mines. He spoke to Irish Director magazine about a lifetime in business. Given John Teeling’s portfolio of interests, which includes Cooley, Ireland’s only independent whiskey distillery, diamond-mining companies in Botswana and Guinea, oil exploration operations in Iraq and South America and a gold exploration business in Iran, it’s no great surprise when he reveals that he has always been interested in high-risk, high-potential ventures. It is interesting, however, to note that Teeling made his initial money from speculating on the stock exchange, which he says “was my first love and my best skill,…

Henry Mintzberg is widely recognised as one of the world’s leading management thinkers. As he publishes his latest unfussily titled book Managing, he speaks to Irish Director magazine. Described by Tom Peters no less as “perhaps the world’s premier management thinker”, we were delighted to catch up with Henry Mintzberg (pictured) on the occasion of the release of his latest book, which is rather unpretentiously entitled Managing. Well known for his forthright and often irreverent take on all things management, Mintzberg is quick to dismiss the current trend to separate ‘leadership’ from ‘management’. “You can’t separate those two,” he tells me. “Nobody wants to have a manager who is not…

With the global recession driving the demand for and price of airline fares downwards, there was surprising news from Germany today as the government there has forced Dubai’s Emirates airline to increase the price it is charging for business-class tickets on flights leaving Germany for non-EU destinations. The Financial Times reports Emirates as saying that the “imminent threat of significant fines” meant it had to increase the price of business-class fares on flights originating from Germany, with some routes seeing prices increase by as much as 20pc. Emirates described the charges as “anti-consumer” and “commercially nonsensical”, claiming the charges are not being levied on other airlines flying out of Germany and saying…

AIB today announced that it provided finance for 40pc of all residential property transactions in the third quarter of 2009. The bank said this level of new business activity offered “strong evidence” of its commitment to the overall economy and support for the housing market in particular. AIB also pointed out that it had been responsible for one in three of all new first-time buyer mortgage drawdowns in the market in the third quarter. According to the bank, when compared with the same period last year, this means that AIB’s overall market share of first-time buyer mortgages has more than doubled. Steady flow of good-quality applications “While the demand for…

The US Treasury has criticised the Chinese Government for what it sees as a lack of flexibility in the Chinese currency, the yuan. In its Semi-Annual Report to Congress on International Economic and Exchange Rate Policies published yesterday, the US Treasury also said that China’s renewed accumulation of foreign exchange reserves risks unwinding some of the progress made in reducing global imbalances when stimulus packages are eventually withdrawn and demand by China’s trading partners recovers. Both of the rigidity of the yuan and China’s reacceleration of reserve accumulation are “serious concerns” that should be corrected to help ensure a stronger, more balanced global economy, the US Treasury said. It also…

Ireland’s recovery from recession will be slower than elsewhere, the Central Bank said today as it acknowledged hopes are rising that the global downturn in European and the world economies has now reached a turning point. Raised Forecasts for Irish Economic Growth However, despite the gloomy comparisons to other economies, the bank did raise its forecasts for Irish economic growth in its latest quarterly bulletin. The bank’s latest forecast suggests that, while the pace of decline in economic activity is moderating, the weakness in Irish economic activity is set to persist into the first-half of 2010. However, it has raised its forecast for economic growth in 2009 and 2010 slightly…