Plusto.com, an interesting auction platform best to be described as an eBay-for-big-boys, opened its global web doors about a week ago. Ten days later not much is happening on it still, but that is set to change soon. [Read on]

Many things will die in the wake of the global banking crisis, including hedge funds, some financial instruments which are simply to risky to be allowed in the hands of investment experts mostly younger than 35 and off-balance sheet tricks. 

But, what isn’t widely understood yet, is that the world’s tax havens are also about to be “closed down” – indirectly as a result of the banking crisis. My reading of the mood and the thinking of policymakers in Europe is that they will use the “grand redesign of the global banking system” (which will happen in the next months) as an opportunity to get to the world’s tax havens.

Not possible. Yes, it is. The big countries wil stand together to put pressure on all the little islands near and far to cooperate and become more transparent. As they are doing with Switzerland already. (With success, I believe.)

Pressure will take the form of economic and other sanctions against tax havens which refuse to toe the line.

As a non-user of tax havens, I’ll naturally be delighted when this happens.

Only months after becoming CEO of Naspers subsidiary MIH Internet Europe Christian Unger has resigned and joined Switzerland’s biggest media house Ringier. With 50+ websites and operations in eastern Europe, Ringier is a Naspers competitor (although its focus is on print). [Read on]

…little did we know how successful we would be.

According to this article here, Hendrik du Toit, CEO of Investec Asset Management, once said: “Our philosophy as a business has always been that ‘ordinary won’t change the world’.”

I bet he won’t repeat that line for the next few years (if at all).

Origin Wines, new owner of the Stormhoek range of wines (among others) will go on the attack in the UK with a range of marketing and other measures aimed at elbowing the brand into the Top Five biggest-selling SA wines in that country. [Read on]

When the gigantic Dubai Shopping Mall opens its doors on 30 October, Richemont will be represented by two of its luxury watch brands, namely Piaget and Panerai. [Read on]

After making it with my blog into the semi-final round of the big, annual, worldwide BOB’s Blog Award of Deutsche Welle (with 8,500 other blogs around the world), I heard today that I wasn’t a finalist. [Read on]

The phrase “clash of civilisations and remaking of world order” first coined by American Samuel P. Huntington in 1992, is fast assuming a different meaning. A different kind of “clash of civilisations” will hit the world in the next two months, with the first rounds to be fired on 15 November. It will be a clash between Anglo-American economics and Continental Europe/China/emerging countries economics. [Read on]