Carmaker General Motors (GM) says it is withdrawing a TV commercial for its Chevrolet Trax four-wheel drive after its soundtrack was deemed “offensive”.
Read the original here: GM withdraws ‘offensive’ car ad
Category : Business
Category : Business
Italy’s new prime minister says growth policies must be urgently adopted to counter an austerity drive under which the country is “dying”.
View original post here: Italy must focus on growth, says PM
Sir Steven Rose among 500 business chiefs calling for ‘national drive to renegotiate the terms of UK membership of EU’
Five hundred British business leaders, including Ocado chairman Sir Stuart Rose and Next boss Lord Wolfson, have backed a campaign urging David Cameron to negotiate a new deal for the UK with Brussels.
The Business for Britain campaign, whose supporters range from blue chip firms to small companies, has backed the prime minister’s approach to renegotiation and called for a cross-party “national drive to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s membership of the EU”.
Cameron has pledged to claw back powers and then offer voters a choice of staying in the EU in a referendum by the end of 2017, if the Conservatives are returned to power at the next election.
Business for Britain’s co-chairman Alan Halsall, who is also the head of Yorkshire pram-making firm Silver Cross, said: “Business for Britain has been formed because many would have you believe that business doesn’t want politicians to try and renegotiate a better deal from Europe.”
Retailer JML’s founder John Mills, a Labour supporter, said: “This campaign is not about taking political sides or backing the right horse – it’s about doing what’s best for British business.
Other signatories include Lord Bilimoria from Cobra beer, Richard Burrows from British American Tobacco, hairstylist John Freida, Lord Harris from Carpetright, Moni Varma, the rice tycoon and John Clement from Littlewoods.
Category : World News
Study Results: Brands Can Use Digital Video Advertising Channel to Drive Brand Awareness and Message Association, and to Complement TV Campaigns
Read more here: Tremor Video, Internet Advertising Bureau UK, Nielsen and Performics Announces Results of TV and VOD: Friends With Benefits
Housing starts and rebounding gold prices drive gains, along with strong earnings from Coca-Cola, J&J and Goldman Sachs.
Originally posted here: Stocks rebound from year’s worst sell-off
How the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists made sense of the 260 gigabytes of information
The ICIJ’s exploration of offshore secrets began when a computer hard drive packed with corporate data arrived in the post. Gerard Ryle, ICIJ’s director, obtained the small black box as a result of his three-year investigation of Australia’s Firepower scandal, a case involving offshore havens and corporate fraud.
The hard drive contained more than 260 gigabytes, the equivalent of half a million books. Its files included 2m e-mails, four large databases. There were details of more than 122,000 offshore companies or trusts, and nearly 12,000 intermediaries (agents or “introducers”).
Unlike the smaller cache of US cables and war logs passed in 2010 to Wikileaks, theoffshore data was not structured or clean, but an unsorted collation of internal memos and instructions, official documents, emails, large and small databases and spreadsheets, scanned passports and accounting ledgers.
Analysing the immense quantity of information required “free text retrieval” software, which can work with huge volumes of unsorted data. Such high-end systems have been sold for more than a decade to intelligence agencies, law firms and commercial corporations. Journalism is just catching up.
Category : Business
Fried-chicken chain plans to open more than 40 restaurants across UK and Ireland, and refurbish 160 existing eateries
Fried-chicken restaurant chain KFC will create 1,600 jobs this year by opening more than 40 restaurants across the UK and Ireland.
The US-owned firm plans to spend £40m on the expansion drive. It will also spend a further £40m on a makeover of 160 existing eateries to “create a more modern, welcoming environment for customers”. The expansion drive will be co-funded by franchisees.
This year’s openings will boost its total number of UK and Ireland restaurants to nearly 900. The group says it could eventually have a total of 1,200 in the two countries.
KFC, which employs about 24,000 people, has been adding at least 30 new restaurants in the UK a year and says it has seen seven years of same-store sales growth in a row.
Low-cost fast food restaurants have been prospering, despite the economic slowdown. McDonalds has reported improving sales in the UK and Domino’s pizza delivery service recently reported a 10% improvement in annual profits despite sales growth slowing due to January store closures caused by bad weather.
KFC UK, which is a subsidiary of Pizza Hut parent company Yum! Brands, came to Britain in 1965. The first store opened in Preston, Lancashire.
The brand was founded in the US by Colonel Harland Sanders in the 1950s.
Category : Business, World News
China’s inflation rate hits a 10-month high in February, as Lunar New Year festivities drive up food prices.
Follow this link: China inflation hits 10-month high
Category : Business
The EU’s proposed cap on banker bonuses will drive business away from London, says Boris Johnson, the mayor of Europe’s biggest financial centre.
Continued here: EU banker bonus cap ‘self-defeating’
Category : Business
A system to enable a car to drive itself has been shown off at Oxford University, with a hope such technology could eventually cost just £100.
Continued here: Self-driving car given UK test run