Gold Fields purchased Western Areas (through a share swap) and thus inherited the notoriously “toxic” hedge-book of Western Areas. This event is worth considering in the light of my previous blog on hedging. Let’s apply some analysis and critical thinking here. First, some real-world imperfections. The hedge book was created in the time of the…
Entrepreneurs are hailed as saviours of modern society. The current international paradigm (and one which is growing ever stronger in South Africa) is biased towards the idea that career success requires one to create something new and build up something from scratch – head out on one’s own and conquer the earth. OK, this doesn’t…
I’ve said before that I’m not an expert on Search Engine Optimisation, but it certainly is an interesting area where businesses of all sizes can reap definite benefits from applying a little analysis, maths and science to the problem. Have a look at this article explaining, in reasonably simple terms, some of the background behind…
Economic data out for South Africa is painting a good, if slghtly confusing picture. The good news is that the economy is still growing healthily (not compared with China’s official growth though) and inflation has dipped down very slightly. Neither of these are truly unexpected though. Exchange rate appreciation and a relaxation in the dollar…
I’ve had an idea to analyse some of the many topics that come up in conversation time and time again. Chances of winning the lotto, FNB’s Million a Month account, randomness of the iPod shuffle to name a few. I’ll try to get hold of some interesting datasets and perform some basic analysis. My aim?…
SEOmoz.org provide some great resources on search engine optimisation (“SEO”). Recently, they performed a really interesting analysis comparing actual site traffic for 25 sites that volunteered their data against indicators from a range of competitive intelligence metrics from sources such as Google PageRank, Technorati Rank, Alexa Rank and SEOmoz.org’s very own Page Strength Tool. The…
One of my favourite quotes is by George Box: “All models are wrong, but some are useful“. If you work with models and understand their place in the universe, you may already agree with this too. However, there is more than one type of wrong, and while it is not always possible to tell which…
I haven’t discussed measurable marketing initiatives yet, which is a shame because it’s one of the most important “fuzzy business decisions” that most companies assume don’t require hard analysis, measurement and good business judgement. There is a long-standing (and important) debate around whether creative advertisements achieve the stated objective of the advertising campaign. I don’t…
