Ravi Mattu Tech entrepreneurs are the new rock stars

June 19, 2013 4:25 pm by Ravi Mattu

Spend one-and-a-half days at a Founders Forum event and it’s impossible not to get infected by the techie-enthusiast bug. The day after last week’s big get-together I found myself beginning a Bob the Builder story with my two-year-old: “It was a busy time in Silicon Valley.”*

The Financial Times is media partner with the event, and this year sponsored two prizes. Founder of the year was won by Ikka Paananen, chief executive and co-founder of Supercell, the Finnish gaming company behind Clash of the Clans and Hay Day, while Eben Upon, founder of Raspberry Pi, the credit card-sized microcomputer, was awarded the One to Watch prize. Read more

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Posted in Business, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Technology, Telecoms |

John Gapper How Chinese universities are letting down students

June 19, 2013 1:43 pm by John Gapper

The western image of Chinese higher education is of relentless self-improvement and of hundreds of thousands of students graduating from universities with degrees in science and engineering. From China’s perspective, it looks a little different.

The slowing of growth and the fact that most new job creation is now taking place in the private sector, rather than in the public sector and state-owned enterprises, has led to a glut of new graduates. The unemployment rate among 21 to 25-years olds is now highest for university graduates.

But some Chinese analysts think it is not simply a demand problem – there is also a supply issue. Victor Yuan, chairman of Horizon Research, a Shanghai-based research group, argues that many universities are offering poor quality vocational education. Read more

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Posted in Business, China |

Andrew Hill Banks: business schools’ role in their downfall

June 19, 2013 1:38 pm by Andrew Hill

“Fashionable management school theory appears to have lent undeserved credibility to some chaotic systems.”

This line leapt out from the 571-page UK parliamentary review of banking published on Wednesday. It’s in the conclusion to the passage criticising the way in which banks applied the “three lines of defence” risk control framework – line managers, risk controllers and compliance staff, and internal audit. Read more

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Posted in Banks, Regulation |

Andrew Hill Bank of England hands over the keys

June 18, 2013 3:49 pm by Andrew Hill

If I were Charlotte Hogg, newly appointed as the Bank of England’s first chief operating officer, I would be a little worried.

It’s not that the UK’s central bank doesn’t need an extra pair of operational hands at the top. The possibility that future governors would be overloaded was one of my principal concerns about the BoE takeover of a large chunk of the now-defunct Financial Services Authority, so Mark Carney, governor-designate, has made the right move.

But chief operating officers are, as I’ve written before, eminently dispensable and their roles are usually difficult to define. Read more

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Posted in Banks, Regulation, UK |

John Gapper The disruptive force of Weibo users in China

June 18, 2013 11:51 am by John Gapper

Being invited for tea in China sounds like the sort of hospitable gesture that visitors come to expect. For the growing arm of Chinese bloggers – and users of Sina Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter – it has a different connotation.

In that context, “he cha” (drink tea), means being asked to come and talk to the state security services about what you have been writing. That doesn’t mean being arrested, or even banned from Weibo permanently, but it is a shot across the bows. Read more

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Posted in China |
From FT.com June 17, 2013

I once rashly asked the chief executive of a large listed enterprise if he was overpaid. “I’ve taken no holiday and spent every weekend of the past 18 months trying to rescue this company, breaking up my marriage in the process,” he responded drily. “So, no, I don’t think I’m overpaid.” Read more

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Posted in Management |

John Gapper An American yacht maker ventures up the Yangtze

June 17, 2013 11:36 am by John Gapper

You would think that an American executive who came to China in 2006 and has only made one sale since then might be feeling a little discouraged. But, as I discovered on a visit to the city of Wuhan in Hubei province, Brad Bean is not.

Since Mr Bean is trying to sell luxury yachts to billionaires – 70-to-100-metre vessels that retail for between $50m and $120m each – he thinks he is making good progress. China, after all, is not the obvious place to buy a yacht. Read more

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Posted in Business, China |

Andrew Hill “Good banks” need good management

June 13, 2013 12:48 pm by Andrew Hill

You’re about to hear a lot more about “good banks” and “bad banks”. The report from the parliamentary banking standards commission, due on Friday, and Stephen Hester’s departure from Royal Bank of Scotland will reignite questions such as whether RBS should be split into “good” and “bad” operations (Mr Hester opposed this).

Running in parallel is a philosophical debate about how you ensure banks are “good” – in the sense of having a strong, positive purpose.

But there is also the question of whether banks that do good are always good banks. Read more

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Posted in Banks, Management, Regulation |
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