After telling me yesterday there will be no press statement on the departure of Christian Unger, CEO of MIH Internet Europe, and the appointment of Hein Pretorius as his successor, Naspers today released a statement. [Read on]

This just for the record – my records here on the blog.

The diamond miner and marketer De Beers has stopped mining for diamonds inside the Kalahari Nature Reserve, Botswana, home of a group of about 1,000 bushmen. But, Gem Diamonds, a diamond miner with a major shareholder in Kuwait, is still there – and apparently harrassing the local bushmen population.

It’s one thing to own a trademark. Quite another to defend it. In the late 70s I worked in the trademark division of Rupert International in Stellenbosch, where we administered 60,000 trademarks for the Rembrandt Group of companies then still headed by the late, great Anton Rupert. [Read on]

According to the web publication DefenceWeb, Denel Saab Aerostructures, the joint-venture between Saab of Sweden and Denel’s earostructures division, the duo is close to a deal with Airbus which could keep them busy for a few years. Denel is the state-owned remnant of Armscor, the arms manufacturer of the pre-1994 government in South Africa.

…or has he been there? I’m not sure now. Anyway, this looks like another classic move. [Read on]

With every new “crisis day” and every new round of newspapers I’m more convinced that life will still become very unpleasant for those who’ve been “creating wealth” in the banking industry around our globe in the past decade. It’ll take a while for “the people” to understand what had been done to them; to get to grips with the extent of the damage and to get insight into the nature and intensity of the “Gier” which had driven this whole debacle. When they do, they’ll take to the streets.

It might still get quite unruly in some places in the months to come.

The cell phone TV consortium Mobile 3.0, consisting of German media houses Burda and Holtzbrinck, the South African media group Naspers and Pixelpark founder Paulus Neef, will this week hand back its DVB-H licence to the state institution responsible for regulating mobile television in Germany.

The German media reported earlier that Mobile 3.0 might refuse to hand the licence back. In that case the state organisation was ready to take legal action. 

According to the German publication Kress Rudolf Gröger, president of Mobile 3.0, said the test-runs started in June have been abandoned. Shortly after the tests started in selected German cities, it was apparently already clear that the service and business model might not be successful.

For the reasons why the consortium failed in Germany and was ordered by the state organisation to hand the licence to organise/market mobile TV in Germany back, go here.