Transport

Ravi Mattu The consumer as founder

May 15, 2013 3:25 pm by Ravi Mattu
When US businessman Victor Kiam tried a Remington electric razor, he liked it so much he “bought the company”, and spent the rest of his life telling the rest of the world about it. But for some entrepreneurs a bad customer experience can be an equally powerful spur.
This was the case for Taavet Hinrikus and Kristo Käärmann, co-founders of London-based money transfer start-up TransferWise, which announced this week that Valar Ventures, the fund launched by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, had made the company his first European investment.

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Posted in Banks, Business, Entrepreneurship, India, Innovation, Transport |
From FT.com January 13, 2013

No corporate activity is as dispiriting, as futile, or, unfortunately, as common as blame-shifting. The tawdry process is familiar to anyone who has worked in business. However, the temptation to lay blame first and ask questions later is greatest at big companies with their web of complex, global suppliers. Read more

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Posted in Business, Retail, Transport |

Andrew Hill TNT Express now needs permanent CEO

January 14, 2013 1:07 pm by Andrew Hill

TNT headquarters, Hoofddorp. Getty Images

Unless you’re an avid reader of Dutch newspapers you may have missed the mini-drama playing out behind the long-running UPS attempt to take over TNT Express, which ended on Monday when Brussels said it would block the deal.

At the height of the discussions with the European Commission last September, Marie-Christine Lombard, TNT Express’s chief executive, resigned abruptly. She went on to join competitor Geodis, a French express and logistics group, in the same role. Read more

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Posted in Business, Manufacturing, Transport |
From FT.com October 29, 2012

Like a man with a broken umbrella trying to hail a cab in a downpour, the maker of the famous black London taxi is clinging to its last shreds of hope. Last week Manganese Bronze announced it was no longer a going concern and intended to appoint administrators. Read more

Posted in Business, Management, Manufacturing, Regulation, Transport, UK |
From FT.com September 17, 2012

For BAE Systems and EADS, the European aerospace and defence companies whose courtship was revealed last week, it’s simple. Business logic will help level the political hurdles and bridge the legal pitfalls that lie in the path of their proposed union. Read more

Posted in Aerospace, Business, Europe, Management, Transport |

Andrew Hill Howard Davies’s mañana mandate on Heathrow

September 6, 2012 11:41 am by Andrew Hill

Anyone who reads Sir Howard Davies’s acerbic regular diary column in Management Today magazine will know that the former head of the CBI and London School of Economics is extremely well-qualified to lead an independent inquiry into UK airport capacity. He seems to spend much of his time travelling by air between international destinations – dropping in the occasional barb about the airports he passes through.

In July, he pointed out that “you need a sense of humour to fly from Venice airport. Congested? It makes Heathrow Terminal 1 look like a county cricket ground on a wet afternoon”. Last December, he recounted a bad Paris-Munich TGV experience, but added he was “instinctively pro-train, except when it is owned by Richard Branson”.  Read more

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Posted in Aerospace, Politics, Transport, UK |