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Good food, friendly people, a vibrant nightlife, a very busy and stressful traffic with daily gridlocks and beeping car drivers – well, this may sound like Bucharest, but I’m talking about Tel Aviv, Israel. Besides all similarities between Bucharest and Tel Aviv, there are considerable differences. And I don’t talk about geographics like the beautiful 14 km-shoreline along the Mediterranean Sea …

Two unknown giants are leading the ranking If the names ‘Vitol’ and ‘Trafigura’ are unfamiliar to you, then your are in good company. Vitol and Trafigura Beheer are rarely mentioned in the general news, although they are leading the ranking of the 13 largest privately held companies in Europe by revenue: Vitol Holding B.V. – Revenue: 270 billion USD The …

How ‘Millennials’ are shaping and changing the global economy For at the least a century now, the vast majority of economic trends and our consumer-behavior have their roots in the US. Front and center was the rise of the automobile culture – that started when cars became affordable to average workers thanks to Henry Ford’s persistence (see chapter 41) – …

US-producer’s message to Opec: ‘Above 40 – we are back!’ Over the last few days, the price for Brent-crude climbed regularly. On March 1st, 2016, it reached a new year-high of over 37 USD/barrel, that’s quite a rise from the January-lows of 29 USD. Could this be the beginning of a rebound of oil to price-levels from a year ago, …

Humans are creations of habits and quickly feel uncomfortable, when something – or someone – disrupts their habits. For decades, the creature of the human stock-investor could be sure that ‘falling oil’ means ‘rising stocks’. After all, we learned from dusty textbooks back at the university or private investment experience, that with cheaper oil: • Private households and companies would …

The first, the biggest, the highest, the largest – and a few other remarkable financial- and business world records. The biggest one-day-drop in percent for the Dow Jones Industrial was on Monday, October 19, 1987 when the Dow lost 22,61%. The highest one-day-gain in percent occurred more than 80 years ago. On Wednesday, March 15, 1933, the Dow recovered by …

This is the beginning of the end of manual labor for humans Exactly 30 years ago, a science-fiction movie called ‘Short Circuit’ centers upon the experimental military robot ‘Number 5’ that is struck by lightning and gains a more human-like intelligence, with which the robot embarks to explore the real world. Well, this film-fiction is coming soon – in one …

The six dangerous hotspots of the chinese economy right now 1. Overcapacity In basically each industrial sector, the chinese factories have currently much bigger production-facilities (and number of employees) than really needed. In the steel-sector for instance, the overcapacity is about 350 million tons/year sending steel prices on the market down the tube. But China has not followed through on …

Chinese companies realized a record of acquisitions abroad this year. In just the first 2 month of 2016, the chinese bought foreign companies in value of over 80 billion USD thereby clearly topping last year’s record figures. What’s behind this buying spree? For once, the declining opportunities at home have spurred chinese investors to look abroad. Big real estate purchases, …

The Leader-List You want to be a leader in business? Fine, here are 20 things truly great leaders have and apply every day. Do you keep up? 1. Great Leaders share their vision. The most important thing a leader can do is provide his or her team with a goal that is worth their time. Granted, the boss doesn’t always …