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MATERION CORPORATION REPORTS RECORD FIRST QUARTER 2019 FINANCIAL RESULTS AND RAISES FULL-YEAR 2019 EARNINGS GUIDANCE
MAYFIELD HEIGHTS, Ohio - May 2, 2019 - Materion Corporation (NYSE:MTRN) today reported first quarter 2019 financial results.
First Quarter 2019 Results
Net sales were $301.4 million; value-added sales increased 4% to a first quarter record of $187.7 million
Operating profit was a record $21.4 million, or 11.4% of value-added sales, the ninth consecutive quarterly year-over-year increase
Diluted earnings per share were a record $0.82, up 61% year-over-year
The Company is raising its full-year 2019 adjusted earnings guidance to $2.80 to $3.00 per share, diluted; a 22% increase over prior year earnings
“Our momentum continued in the first quarter as we delivered record earnings and the ninth consecutive quarter of year-over-year value-added sales and profit growth,” stated Jugal Vijayvargiya, President and Chief Executive Officer. “We remain intently focused on our multi-pillar strategy to consistently deliver profitable growth. Based on our first quarter performance and outlook, we are raising our full-year 2019 adjusted earnings guidance range to reflect a 22% year-over-year increase in earnings.”
FIRST QUARTER 2019 RESULTS
Net sales for the first quarter of 2019 were $301.4 million, compared to $303.5 million for the prior year. Value-added sales of $187.7 million were a first quarter record, up 4% from the prior year. Strong commercial execution particularly in the defense, energy, and telecom infrastructure end markets drove the value-added sales growth and more than offset weakness in consumer electronics.
The following information was filed by Materion Corp (MTRN) on Thursday, May 2, 2019 as an 8K 2.02 statement, which is an earnings press release pertaining to results of operations and financial condition. It may be helpful to assess the quality of management by comparing the information in the press release to the information in the accompanying 10-Q Quarterly Report statement of earnings and operation as management may choose to highlight particular information in the press release.
View differences made from one quarter to another to evaluate Materion Corp's financial trajectory
Compare this 10-Q Quarterly Report to its predecessor by reading our highlights to see what text and tables were removed, and by Materion Corp.
Ticker: MTRN CIK: 1104657 Form Type:10-Q Quarterly Report Accession Number: 0001104657-19-000039 Submitted to the SEC: Thu May 02 2019 8:06:25 AM EST Accepted by the SEC: Thu May 02 2019 Period: Friday, March 29, 2019 Industry: Metal Forgings And Stampings


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BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 3. The amount of foreign currency exchanged in Iran under the NIMA exchange rate increased by 80 percent during the first six months of the current Iranian year (March 21 through September 22, 2022), compared to the same period last Iranian year, Director General of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), Ali Salehabadi said, Trend reports referring to IBENA.
According to Salehabadi, $22.4 billion worth of foreign currency was exchanged in the country under the NIMA exchange rate.
“Meanwhile, in the same period last Iranian year, the figure stood at $12.4 billion worth,” he added.
The director general also noted that $600 million worth of foreign currency was exchanged in the organized foreign exchange market in Iran.
The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) created a NIMA system in 2018 for exporters to sell a portion of their export earnings to banks to eliminate the shortage of foreign currency in the country for various reasons (sanctions, economic situation, etc.).
In this system, exporters who earned more than 1 million euros from export a year must sell a portion of their export earnings to banks at the NIMA rate. Later, banks used to sell foreign currency to importers for the import of several products at this rate.
The Central Bank of Iran has not imposed rules on exporters that earned from export less than 1 million euros a year.
Those with total exports of one to three million euros per year are required to offer 50 percent of their received foreign exchange from the government through the NIMA system.
The exporters with annual exports of three to 10 million euros are obliged to offer 70 percent. Those with exports of above 10 million euros per year must offer 90 percent of the received foreign exchange at NIMA.
The price of 1 euro at NIMA is 265,853 rials, and the price of $1 is 271,217 rials.
Follow the author on Twitter:@BaghishovElnur

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Informal Sharon "country market" runs through Oct. 16
If you go
What: Sharon Country Market
When: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. The last market of the season will be from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 16.
Where: Intersection of Baldwin and North streets, downtown Sharon.
SHARON Make it casual, make it Sunday and make it fun.
It’s as informal a formula as you’ll get for a farmers market, but it works for Sharon.
On Sunday, Sharon will hold its monthly “country market” on North Street in the tiny village’s downtown.
“It’s a couple of local farmers that bring in eggs and produce,” said Linda Dipiero, president of the Sharon Chamber of Commerce.
Depending on the Sunday, the market also includes homemade candy, honey, leather goods, candles, soaps and a bake sale for a good cause. This Sunday, the bake sale will benefit the MS Society.
Dipiero said there have been many as 20 vendors and as few of five.
“We started the market about four years ago,” Dipiero said. “I used to run a coffee shop downtown, and customers were always bringing me extra produce.”
An informal market would give people a chance to sell that produce, and it might bring additional people into the downtown, Dipiero said.
The market starts at 10 a.m., and lots of people “come down after church,” Dipiero said.
Some market regulars include:
-- Ed and Liz Sprigler, who sell honey, whole honey combs, beeswax candles and honey mustard.
-- Becky Smith and her family, who focus on heirloom vegetables.
-- Stephanie Whitney, who offers reflexology services right at the market.
Over vendors have included a woman who makes clothes for American Girl dolls and a woman who sold strawberries grown in her yard.
“She sold out on Sunday by noon and told people to come to her house on Tuesday, when she’d have more,” Dipiero said. “Everybody knew where she lived, and she sold out on Tuesday, too.”


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Mark Burnett, the TV producer behind “The Apprentice” and “Survivor,” and his actress wife Roma Downey are trying to raise $100 million to launch a subscription-based streaming service for Christian viewers, according to people familiar with the situation.
The fundraising effort comes as the number of streaming services is about to explode. On Friday, Apple launched its Apple TV Plus service, while Disney launches Disney Plus on Nov. 12. Next spring both AT&T’s WarnerMedia and Comcast’s NBCUniversal are due to launch their own services. All are jumping into a market dominated by Netflix but where Amazon, Hulu and various niche services have long operated. Still, a Christian-themed service is likely to resonate with at least some viewers where high-profile services may not.


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You are here
Dollar climbs as US data backs December rate hike view
[NEW YORK] The dollar rose on Friday, on track for its largest weekly gain in more than seven months against the euro, after strong US retail sales and producer prices data for September reinforced expectations the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates in December.
The safe-haven yen and Swiss franc fell versus the dollar after risk sentiment got a boost from Chinese data showing producer prices rose for the first time in nearly five years. That boded well for the global economy which has been battling the threat of deflation in recent months.
The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, added 0.3 per cent to 97.788. It was up 1.2 per cent for the week and 2.4 per cent for the month so far.
The US retail sales data, which showed a 0.6 per cent rise last month after declining 0.2 per cent in August, supported the dollar's gains. Other data on Friday suggested a pickup in inflation, with producer prices rising broadly last month to record their biggest year-on-year increase since December 2014.
"Following a disappointing August, Fed Chair Janet Yellen will be pleased to see retail sales rebound strongly in September," said Dennis de Jong, managing director at UFX.com in Limassol, Cyprus. "Observers are increasingly confident that December will finally bring the long-awaited interest rate hike."
The minutes of the latest Fed meeting in September, released on Wednesday, prompted investors to raise their bets of a US rate increase in December. Markets are now pricing in around a 70 per cent chance that the Fed will hike then.
Against the yen, the dollar rose 0.5 per cent to 104.28. It was up 1.2 per cent for the week.
The dollar did trim gains after a report showed that consumer sentiment, as gauged by the University of Michigan, fell this month to 87.9, the lowest since September 2015.
The euro fell 0.4 per cent to US$1.1015, heading back toward its Thursday's low of US$1.0982, its weakest level since late July. It was down 1.6 per cent for the week, its worst weekly performance since late February.
Later on Friday, Ms Yellen will address an economics conference.


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The Economist commodity-price index
Our commodity-price index reached a new high this week, buoyed by soaring food prices. Grains and soyabean prices are at record levels thanks to strong demand for animal feed and biofuel, and to buying by commodity funds. America's Department of Agriculture reckons the country's wheat stocks will fall to a 60-year low this year and that world maize stocks will be the smallest since 1984. Palm-oil prices are at their highest ever and the price of Robusta coffee beans is a near 12-year high. By contrast, the price of industrial commodities has fallen by 12% since May last year, crimped by concerns about the global economy. American timber prices are at a five-year low.
This article appeared in the Economic & financial indicators section of the print edition under the headline "The Economist commodity-price index"
From the January 19th 2008 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contentsExplore the edition


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ICA’s Year of Shame: Unjust Lockout of ACTRA Performers
Canadian Labour Congress supports ACTRA’s boycott
TORONTO (April 25, 2023) – Tomorrow marks one year since the Institute of Canadian Agencies (ICA) unlawfully locked out 28,000 performers, refusing to agree to minimum rights and protections of ACTRA members who make their living doing commercials.
“The ICA and it’s fifteen advertising agencies are shamefully trying to gut ACTRA’s National Commercial Agreement,” said Eleanor Noble, ACTRA National President. “While they refuse to bargain a fair agreement with us, their actions continue to be devastating, keeping ACTRA performers from earning a living for a year now. It’s unconscionable.”
After months of no progress at the bargaining table, ACTRA launched a national consumer boycott of six major brands who use those agencies: H&R Block, Canadian Tire, Rogers, Wendy’s, Home Hardware and Sleep Country.
“This year-long union busting attack on ACTRA performers affects all of us in the labour movement,” said Bea Bruske, President of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). “Canada’s workers won’t tolerate shameful union busters who disrupt Canadian industries and undermine workers. The CLC’s 3 million workers stand in solidarity with ACTRA members and we won’t back down.”
The CLC’s Executive Committee voted to endorse ACTRA’s boycott which has been widely shared with all affiliate unions, which collectively represent 3.3 million workers.
ACTRA members have been picketing outside H&R Block locations in Canada. The union’s boycott and letter writing campaign has been widely promoted across Canada, asking consumers to send a message to the CEO’s of Union Busting Brands and their ad agencies saying they will take their business elsewhere until they bargain fairly. Download the printable boycott poster here.
ACTRA’s complaint of bad faith bargaining against the ICA is before the Ontario Labour Relation Board.
ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists) is the national union of professional performers working in recorded media in Canada. ACTRA represents the interests of over 28,000 members across the country – the foundation of Canada’s highly acclaimed professional performing community.
Contact: Carol Taverner, ACTRA National Public Relations Officer: firstname.lastname@example.org


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In Europe 70% of staff have returned to their offices. In the UK, the figure is just 37%
“Get back to work,” exhorts the Government using the wrong words, yet again. The fact is that many people are working perfectly satisfactorily at home and have little desire to restart the daily commute to their office.
Indeed, for some, the productivity gains from working from home are significant. With less disturbance, more can be achieved.
People will return to their office, but it will be a steadily growing trickle, rather than a flood. Employers and employees are understandably nervous and, in any case, social distancing rules prevent the full use of the office space.
Remote working during lockdown has been a success for many businesses. For many staff, this is the work-life balance they always wanted.
Productivity is not about where you work, or even when you work, it is about what you achieve.
• The new Thames Valley 250 is published online this autumn and it shows the diverse range of business sectors in the region.
While tech is massively important to the area, we shouldn’t forget that manufacturing is a key sector, and there are many highly successful and world-leading companies that are ‘making things’ locally.
David Murray Publisher
Top of the Track Thames Valley
Despite the early coronavirus lockdown weeks, Heathrow was still flying high when compared to most of the other large companies in the UK when it came to announcing sales figures for the past year.
It was again top of the pile among Thames Valley-based concerns according to the latest Sunday Times HSBC Top Track 100 league table, which ranks Britain’s 100 private companies with the biggest sales. The 19th annual supplement was published as a special Covid-19 edition, highlighting how the UK’s biggest private companies have supported the country during the crisis, how it has impacted their industries and how they are adapting.
Heathrow, 13th in the UK table with sales of just over £3 billion, faced long-term disruption to travel with passenger numbers down 97% in May. With a staff of nearly 8,000, it cut a third of its managerial roles and launched a voluntary severance scheme for frontline staff in June.
The airport became a vital hub for medical supplies coming into the UK during the lockdown, and chief executive John Holland-Kaye led calls for a global standard in health screening at airports.
But plans for a third runway suffered a blow in February when the High Court ruled that the Government had not adequately considered the Paris climate agreement when approving the expansion. The company is appealing the decision in the Supreme Court.
The Reading technology distributor Westcoast, which over the years has been something of an ever-present in profit and sales league tables, proved 2020 was no exception with another top 20 placing (sales of £2.7b earning 18th position in the UK).
Founded in 1984 by chairman Joe Hemani, who still has a 100% shareholding, the firm employs nearly 1,500 people and sells everything from desktop PCs and notebooks to software, printers, spare parts and consumables.
Sunday Times Top Track 100
Its more than 14,000 customers include retailers, dealers and resellers in the UK, Ireland and Europe, to which Westcoast also provides credit, marketing and logistics services.
As the coronavirus took hold, it says it saw “unprecedented demand” and began to prioritise NHS orders. It made sure its warehouses were at full operational capacity.
Thames Water, the UK’s largest water company headquartered at Reading, supplies 2.7 billion litres of drinking water and recycling 4.4 billion litres of sewage for 15 million households across London and the Thames Valley.
Owned by a consortium of investors, with Canadian pension fund Omers the largest shareholder, it is investing £1b to improve services and infrastructure, and is offering flexible payments for customers financially affected by the pandemic.
With some 6,000 staff, the last year saw sales of £2b to gain third place in the region and 29th nationally. Sarah Bentley will become chief executive in the autumn, joining from Severn Trent Water.
The Woking-based automotive technology group McLaren made 42nd place with sales of £1.4b. The company designed and built the lightweight trolleys that medical ventilators for the NHS are fixed on, as well as some components.
It comprises three divisions: Automotive which develops supercars; Racing which owns the Formula One team; and Applied which develops software and components.
Former Diageo boss Paul Walsh joined as executive chairman in March, when McLaren raised £300m from shareholders. It plans to cut 1,200 jobs — a quarter of its workforce which did total nearly 4,500 — and recently secured £150m in further funding.
A third Reading group making the chart was WSH (81st), the hospitality services provider, which recorded sales of £933m. Benugo and BaxterStorey are among the
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Sainsbury’s is Bangor bound
Sainsbury's will begin work next month on a new superstore on the outskirts of Bangor, it was revealed on Tuesday.
Around 350 jobs are expected from the redevelopment of Balloo retail park, with the supermarket giant as one of the anchor tenants.
Planning permission for the 60,000 sq ft Sainsbury's was granted earlier this year. It is expected to begin trading before the end of next year.
David McNellis, agency director at Lisney letting and managing agent, said the company would act as an important draw to the park.
“In a complex deal involving the re-configuration of the existing Homebase space, it is extremely satisfying to have landed Sainsbury's, who will bring a lot of additional footfall to the retail park. We will shortly be releasing the second phase, totalling 20,000 sq ft of retail,” he said.
“This will provide excellent opportunities for retailers that are complementary to Sainsbury's and Homebase, and we have already had some expressions of interest, despite the second phase having not yet been released.”
The Bank of Ireland funded the investment.
Stephen Dunlop, town centre manager at Bangor and Holywood Town Centres Ltd welcomed the announcement. He said: “I welcome the new investment in the town. I do believe Sainsbury’s will offer something extra to a town that has almost everything.
“I wish them every success with their building programme. Bangor pulls in people from Ards, the Ards Peninsula, Holywood and beyond and they will all enjoy the shopping experience that Bangor has to offer.”
UUP MLA for North Down, Leslie added: “The 350 jobs are very welcome, given the unemplyment rate. This store increases the shopping mix in the town.”


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Table mountain, the striking mesa above Cape Town, lords over another impressive African monument: the multistory Golden Acre shopping center. Lunchtime crowds pour into the glassy, brightly lit structure, and from within it is impossible not to notice the dominance of South Africa’s second-richest man, Christo Wiese. His bargain-bin clothier, PEP, pulls foot traffic to the basement. Above it, you’ll find his more upscale Ackermans chain. Around the corner is his OK Furniture and his grocery chain, Shoprite, which takes up two floors.
By and large, they all carry the same message. PEP’s window ads, accented in canary yellow, proclaim it the home of the “Lowest Price in South Africa.” Brightly colored bunting in OK Furniture heralds a similar promise. Shoprite (among its many slogans: “Lower prices, that’s our promise”) will even play moneylender, fronting customers up to R7,500 (roughly $470).
“The business has basically been built on one slogan: Low prices you can trust. Just very, very low everyday prices,” says Wiese (whose name, fittingly, is pronounced VEE-sa, like the credit card). “I suppose we could be described as the Wal-Mart of Africa.” Underscoring the cost-conscious philosophy, the 74-year-old is telling me this at his company headquarters, in an industrial area that abuts a composter and Adult World, which sells what you think it does.
His offices, like his stores, are decidedly spare: drab beige enlivened only by some hotel- quality art (a portrait of an elephant herd hangs outside the door of the conference room he uses as an office). “People have very limited budgets,” continues Wiese, clad in a capitalist’s power uniform – blue suit, blue shirt – the very picture of the lily-white executive that still controls most of South African business. “They have to get extremely good value for their money.” His hunch – that value trumps everything – led him to create the largest retail business in Africa. Publicly traded Shoprite does revenue of $9.9 billion a year, while PEP’s parent company, Steinhoff, brings in $11.8 billion (some of it from selling cellphones and home furnishings). Combined, they net almost $2 billion in annual profits, operate more than 9,000 stores in 30 countries and employ over 200,000 people. No other African retailer comes close to rivaling their breadth and depth, and Wiese controls both.
Those stakes are largely what makes Wiese one of the planet’s richest people, with a $5.8 billion fortune. More than 60% of his wealth is in Shoprite and Steinhoff, while another 30% or so comes from his shares of Brait, an investment vehicle Wiese uses to buy other companies, many of them outside South Africa. His stock in Tradehold, a real estate firm, accounts for much of the remaining 10%.
But if Wiese is to continue his expansion he must move outside of his African comfort zone. The continent isn’t booming the way it once was. Economic growth across Africa has slid from close to 7% in 2007 to about 4% in 2014, the last year for which data are available. In coming years it isn’t likely to much surpass that figure. South Africa, still Wiese’s most important market, is emblematic of the larger trend – stuck at sub-2% growth for the foreseeable future. The slowdown gravely threatens Wiese’s ambitions. He can shut his eyes and picture his empire twice as big as it is today, but for it to grow that large, he must look beyond Africa.
And he’s already started. PEP is expanding rapidly in Europe, while Wiese is snapping up all sorts of companies through Brait, including majority stakes in British discount retailer (sound familiar?) New Look for $1.2 billion last June and Richard Branson’s fitness center chain, Virgin Active, for $1 billion a month later. Put broadly, Wiese is a little Sam Walton, in terms of his focus, and a little Warren Buffett, in terms of amalgamating a portfolio. As a matter of fact, he’s beaten Buffett handily lately. His holding company, Brait, has trounced Berkshire Hathaway in total returns over three years (160% versus 31%), five years (230% to 51%) and ten years (314% to 121%).
“Christo has been a massive risk taker his whole life,” says Syd Vianello, a retail analyst in Johannesburg, who has observed Wiese over many decades. “Africa is not a place for sissies. You’ve got to have nerves of steel. In Africa they see him as a genius.”
The breathtaking views of Cape Town, where land and sea dramatically converge to produce vistas of green mountains towering above deep blue water, can be quickly forgotten on a nine-hour drive north to the dry, hot savanna city of Upington, an unsightly provincial town alongside the Orange River, close to the Kalahari Desert. Upington does possess one unique site: a statue of a donkey, a rare tribute to the quintessential beast of burden. It is not undeserved. Starting in the 1880s, farmers, employing donkeys to pump water, tamed this rough part of the country with an almost puritanical determination.
Wiese’s father was one of those men. He owned a sheep and cattle farm, as well as a car dealership in town. “People in Upington were hardworking, very neat, very orderly – disciplined,” says Wiese. “People who were not neat always stood out like a sore thumb.” For college, Wiese attended Stellenbosch University, one of South Africa’s better schools, situated in a sleepy area awash in wine and vineyards. He studied law and became head student of his residence hall and an active member of a progressive student organization.
After graduating in 1967, he decided he’d rather return home and join the small retail business owned by his cousin’s husband than become an attorney. The company had around ten discount stores near Upington, which were called PEP. With Wiese on board and helping guide expansion, sales went from 4 million rand in 1970 to 29 million rand (around $100 million today) four years later. Fast growth, but Wiese lost interest after a moment of self-discovery.
“I had worked out for myself that I’m not really” – he trails off, as if about to utter a dirty word – “a number-two man.” There was another concern, too. “I started thinking about getting married,” he says. “And the way I lived in those days, I was away from home 20 days a month. That’s no way to build a marriage. So I thought if I go and practice law, at least I’ll be home much more.”
While working as a barrister in criminal and commercial law in Cape Town, Wiese, restless still, made a futile run for parliament in 1977 on the opposition party ticket, partly inspired by his new father-in-law, a controversial member of parliament expelled from the ruling, pro-apartheid party for dissension. Wiese also grew interested in something that has always attracted the ambitious in South Africa – diamonds. He found a mine nearer his hometown, in Richtersveld. (“The area has a stark beauty, like a moon landscape. Very sparse vegetation, very little rainfall.”) He bought it for about $20 million in today’s currency and began mining and trading diamonds.
Five years after purchasing it, in 1981, he sold it, and looking for his next chapter, he turned to his cousin and PEP, which by then had 450 locations, including a grocery business, Shoprite, it had added a few years earlier. In taking a check (worth roughly $100 million in current terms) for his successful, middling business, the cousin was set for life. Wiese, no longer number two, pictured something much grander. “Maybe I was more ambitious,” he says, quietly, eyebrows arched.
What Wiese envisioned was retail at its rawest, and he understood how attractive it could be. In modest, unadorned storefronts, PEP sold only the simplest kinds of clothes (“underwear, schoolwear, very basic stuff”). The choice between a white shirt and a blue one was often the most complicated one in the store. Shoprite did the same with groceries. All that mattered to Wiese’s target market – poor whites and a black population kept systematically impoverished – was price.
In a perverse twist, apartheid ensured him a gigantic customer base of some 20 million nonwhites, who made up more than 70% of the population. They were incapable of climbing the ladder or earning more money – or shopping elsewhere. And the heavy economic sanctions against South Africa meant little in the way of foreign competition. It was a perfect market: massive and artificially protected.
“Wiese saw the opportunity faster than anybody else,” says retail analyst Vianello. “He targeted the bottom end of the market, and nobody could argue his business had any element of waste. He cut out all the extravagance and gave people what they wanted at the lowest possible price.” The concept proved popular enough for Wiese to begin expanding aggressively, sometimes opening as many as 100 new stores a year. While other retailers concentrated on stores in large markets, he eagerly plunged into rural and poorer areas. He’d rather his customers spend their money in his stores than spend it traveling to them.
Wiese was maniacal about costs, a business necessity in lowmargin retailing and perfectly fitting with his personality – a billionaire who keeps spare change neatly stashed in a tiny bottle inside his Lexus SUV. “Christo is stingy,” says James “Whitey” Basson, Wiese’s right-hand man at Shoprite since day one and an old buddy from Stellenbosch University. “He’ll give me the nicest bottle of champagne as a present, and I’ll open it up, and I’ll see he forgot to take out the message: It’s a bottle from Lord So-and-So. He’s a regifter.”
To guard against corporate expenses, PEP manufactured many of its clothes in 11 factories; one was situated next to the company’s modest offices in Parow Industria. Most important, from almost the start PEP relied on a central distribution system with warehouses to store goods, a total departure from how most South African retailers operated (with many deliveries from many suppliers to each shop). “That was a no-brainer,” Basson says. “Getting one truckload to a store is substantially cheaper than getting 30 trucks to wait outside the store and offload 30 different times.”
In 1986 Wiese spun off Shoprite and PEP into separate public companies while maintaining control of both. Good timing. Four years later Nelson Mandela was freed after spending almost three decades in prison. Apartheid was ending. South African companies were no longer pariahs, and Wiese began to expand elsewhere in Africa. A year after Mandela ascended to the presidency in 1994, Shoprite opened its first store in central Africa, in Zambia, followed by Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Uganda. PEP had a similar trajectory. Their stores’ simple model made them easily exportable.
“Wiese and Basson sat down and took a view that they could conquer Africa, and they went out and conquered Africa,” says Vianello. Shoprite’s size ($2 billion in 1996 sales with about $120 million in cash flow and little debt) allowed it to move more quickly than local rivals. “How long does it take to clear a container in Angola or Nigeria? What bribes do you have to pay to get supplies in? Who on earth would finance them to put up stores? They had to build their own stores themselves. No one else would.” (Wiese insists he has spent not one rand on bribery.)
Other growth came through acquisitions. By the 1990s he had already made six purchases to expand both Shoprite and PEP, pushing PEP’s operations as far as Britain and its sales to more than $2 billion. In 1997 he bought OK Bazaars (and its nearly 300 grocery and furniture stores) from South African Breweries for just one rand. The catch? OK Bazaars was losing around $40 million annually, which was just about how much Shoprite was booking in annual profits. It could be kept on life support for just so long.
“We bet the farm,” says Wiese. He reached for a familiar page from the playbook: “cutting frills, lowering overhead,” including renegotiating several onerous leases. As it turns out, OK Bazaars had good bones and had simply been mismanaged. “Christo is a fantastic corporate deal thinker,” says Basson. “He always makes me think: What would the alternative be if I didn’t make a deal? What happens if the opposition buys the company?”
Wiese didn’t really develop a profile outside of Africa until recently, and to his annoyance, his arrival was trumpeted not by a cunning deal but by something more ignoble. It came after U.K. customs officials detained him at London City Airport in 2009 with two suitcases filled with nearly $1 million in cash. They seized it, suspecting illicit origins. The British and South African press merrily picked up on the incident – apparently suspecting Wiese had been nabbed for money laundering – and were further emboldened by Wiese’s stubbornness in fighting for the funds’ return and his insistence that the amount was “insignificant.” (The Daily Mail’s gleeful headline: “It’s Just Peanuts To Me.”) The government ended up returning the money – interest attached – but the damage was done. He still won’t talk publicly about the incident, and until recently, it was pretty much the extent of his reputation in the West.
That’s now beginning to change, and much of his activity is still in Britain. When his holding company, Brait, first showed an interest in stretching beyond South Africa in 2012, it invested in British supermarket business Iceland Foods and added to its position in November 2015, when it paid about $275 million to increase its position from 19% to 57%. Two more deals came last year: the stakes purchased in discount retailer New Look and gym chain Virgin Active. A second Wiese company, Invicta, has put its capital into industrial companies: unsexy firms with predictable, recurring revenue streams, like Singapore-based Kian Ann Engineering, a distributor of heavy machinery parts. And a third Wiese vehicle, Tradehold, watched the value of its U.K. property portfolio increase by about 50% to roughly $120 million in February 2015 (the latest full-year results available), driven substantially by new investments in the British real estate market, where it owns residential, industrial and office space.
PEP has charged into eastern Europe, too. After its initial move into this part of the continent in 2005 (Poland mostly but also the Czech Republic and Slovakia), PEP has proven its model successful there. Its eastern European stores do about $1,800 per square meter, a 60% increase from 2012 and roughly double what a comparable competitor might do. The region is now 11% of PEP’s $2.9 billion in annual revenue (up from 5% in 2012).
As PEP broadens its store expansion into Britain it will likely run up against the most entrenched competition, including venerable discount retailer Primark. Considering this, Wiese blithely expresses a malapropism: “There’s the old American saying that only three things are certain: death, taxes and competition. You can’t shy away from competition. You’ve just got to go meet them.” And besides, Primark tries to be fashionable, while PEP proudly does not. “We don’t have fashion. You can’t come into our stores and expect a wide selection of colors and pattern,” says Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste. “Our stuff is for people who have to have it, not want to have it. It offers value to the bottom-end customer and gives them some dignity in what they wear.”
Last December expansion-minded Steinhoff began trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in addition to its long-standing listing in Johannesburg. But not before Wiese got slapped with a reminder that his international ambitions wouldn’t proceed without a false step. A few days before its Frankfurt debut German tax authorities raided local Steinhoff offices as part of an investigation into its accounting. Steinhoff dismisses the investigation as baseless, but it certainly spooked the company’s investors. The stock dropped about 15% in a month – wiping away almost $600 million from Wiese’s personal fortune.
Having long parried advances from those interested in buying his companies – including a visit by Wal-Mart heir and then chairman Rob Walton several years ago – Wiese sees himself firmly in command of his empire for the foreseeable future. Ahead, there’s one obvious final frontier for Africa’s retail pioneer: America. “We’ve been hesitant to plunge into the retail industry there. What can we teach them?” he says. “But we’re looking at getting involved there – one or two opportunities.
“In a decade I’m hoping you’ll find the business has grown, hopefully at the same pace as the previous decade. That will require a lot of thinking, a lot of commitment and a lot of energy – and I’m hoping that you’ll find me right here still.”
Forbes Africa | 8 Years And Growing
As FORBES AFRICA celebrates eight years of showcasing African entrepreneurship, we look back on our stellar collection of cover stars, ranging from billionaires to space explorers to industrialists, self-made multi-millionaire businessmen and social entrepreneurs working for Africa. They tell us what they are doing now, how their businesses have grown, and where the continent is headed.
Since its inception in 2011, and despite the changing trends in the publishing industry, FORBES AFRICA has managed to stay relevant, insightful and sought-after, unpacking compelling stories of innovation and entrepreneurship on the youngest continent, in which 60% of the population is aged under 25 years.
Many of those innovations have been solutions-driven as young entrepreneurs across the continent seek to answer questions that have burdened their communities.
Always on the pulse, FORBES AFRICA has chronicled and celebrated those innovations – prompting the rest of the globe to pay attention and be fully engaged.
A prime example of this is the annual 30 Under 30 list, which showcases entrepreneurs and trailblazers under the age of 30 from business, technology, creatives and sports. In 2019, we had 120 entrepreneurs on the list, finalized after a rigorous vetting and due diligence process to well laid down criteria.
We have always maintained the highest standards of integrity in all our reporting.
As we transition into the next milestone, FORBES AFRICA reflects on the words of civil rights activist Benjamin Elijah Mays, who once said: “The tragedy of life is not found in failure but complacency. Not in you doing too much, but doing too little. Not in you living above your means, but below your capacity. It’s not failure but aiming too low, that is life’s greatest tragedy.”
With the transformation in the media landscape, the recent awards given to the magazine for the work done by a hard-working, determined and youthful team, serve as a reminder that we are doing something right.
Early this year, FORBES AFRICA journalist Karen Mwendera received a Sanlam award for financial journalism as the first runner-up in the ‘African Growth Story’ category. In January, FORBES AFRICA’s Managing Editor, Renuka Methil, received the ‘World Woman Super Achiever Award’ from the Global HRD Congress.
In reflecting on the last eight years, this edition revisits a few of the strong, resilient men and women who have graced our covers.
For some, fortunes have literally changed, as witnessed in the fall of gargantuan African empires such as Steinhoff. Of course, there have been massive moments of triumph too, which have seen some new names feature on the annual African Billionaires List. There have also been moments of tragedy with former cover stars passing away.
Africa is ripe for the taking and is seen as the next economic frontier. The unique position the continent finds itself in will no doubt give FORBES AFRICA plenty to report on. Here’s to more deadlines and debates for the next eight years.
– Unathi Shologu
Mastercard: Diligent About Digital In Africa
Mastercard knows only too well that technology can drive inclusive financial growth with simpler and more efficient ways to do business and life. And Raghu Malhotra, the man spearheading this trajectory in Africa, is also focused on social progress.
In many ways, Raghu Malhotra is like the brand he works for, leaving his footprints in different parts of the world, and in some cases, the most unlikely corners.
On a scorching summer’s day in June 2016, Malhotra traveled 100km east of Jordan’s capital city Amman, to a camp with white tents named Azraq built for the refugees of the Syrian Civil War.
In the desert terrain and hot, windy conditions, people had to queue for hours on end for plates of food handed out of visiting trucks. But some of them, displaced and homeless overnight, expressed their gratitude to Malhotra, President for Mastercard in the Middle East and Africa (MEA).
Mastercard, a technology company that engages in the global payments industry, had distributed e-cards, as part of a global collaboration with the World Food Programme, to the refugees that they could now use to purchase food and other supplies from local shops.
“I spoke to the people myself and saw what their lives were… Even those who were doctors with their families and were displaced… They said to me ‘you have restored dignity to our lives; you have no idea how demeaning it is to queue up to be given food’… We actually digitized how that subsidy for food was given. Some of these things go beyond economics,” says Malhotra.
That very simply sums up Malhotra’s mandate for Africa as well.
The New York-headquartered Mastercard, ranked No. 43 on Forbes’ list of the World’s Most Valuable Brands, with a market cap of $247 billion, which connects consumers, financial institutions, merchants, governments and business, is fostering key partnerships across the African continent to help drive inclusive economic growth.
The idea, Malhotra says, “is to get our global skill-set to operate in its most efficient form in every local economy, at the same time, we must do good, and it must be sustainable.”
He calls Africa the next bastion of growth for various industries.
“As a company, we have stated we are going to get 500 million new consumers globally. And Africa plays a big part of that whole story… We want to be an integral part of various economies here,” says the man responsible for driving Mastercard’s global strategy across 69 markets.
“It probably took us over 20 years to get the first 50 million new consumers, in my part of the world, which is the Middle East and Africa (MEA). It took us probably five years to get the next 50 million, and last year alone, we put over 50 million consumers [in the formal economy] in MEA. That is part of our whole African story, so this is just not rhetoric; we are actually building our business on that basis.”
Home to four of the world’s top five fastest-growing economies, Africa has the fastest urbanization rate in the world, the youngest population, and a rapidly expanding middle class predicted to increase business and consumer spending.
It’s a continent of opportunity for global players like Mastercard with an eye on the potential of a booming consumer base and small and medium entrepreneurs, most of whom are still not a part of the formal economy. A large proportion of Africa is still unbanked. There is enough business opportunity in offering people digital tools so they can lead respectable financial lives.
But it is in knowing that financial inclusion is not just about technology, but more about solving bigger problems, as the World Bank says in its overview for Africa: “Achieving higher inclusive growth and reaping the benefits of a demographic dividend will require going beyond a business as usual approach to development for Africa. Going forward, it is imperative that the region undertakes the following four actions, concurrently: invest more and better in its people; leapfrog into the 21st century digital and high-tech economy; harness private finance and know-how to fill the infrastructure gap; and build resilience to fragility and conflict and climate change.”
And in order to enable financial access, Mastercard has a balanced strategy in place, with the right partnerships for inclusive growth on the continent, Malhotra tells FORBES AFRICA.
“Every emerging market has different segments of people and you need to get the right product for the right segment. What we do is a balanced growth strategy across the continent based on timing, opportunity etc… Of course, because the bottom of the pyramid is much bigger, I think what we need is to adapt things differently; that is where the inclusive growth story comes from. That is where the opportunity is, but there is a second part to it…” And that, he summarizes, is advancing sustainable growth, doing good and bringing more transparency and efficiency.
The new pragmatic dispensation of governments in Africa towards ideas, technology and innovation has surely helped open up the stage to newer segment-driven products, especially as Africa already has such global laurels as Safaricom’s mobile money transfer and micro-financing service M-Pesa that took financial access to a whole new level. Also, sub-Saharan Africa remains one of the fastest-growing mobile markets in the world.
Malhotra says he finds African governments consistent in how they are rolling out their digital vision, and in trying to collaborate towards creating better ecosystems for their economies, though each is unique with its own dossier of problems.
“When I speak to various governments around Africa, I see a commonality of what their needs are and I also see a commonality in how they are trying to respond. So I think a lot of them realize running cash economies is a very inefficient way of doing things… Also, the consumer base is much more open to new technology because there is no bedded infrastructure or legacy infrastructure. I think where governments need to start thinking a bit more is how much do they want to do completely on their own.”
Part of this transformation on the path to financial progress is alleviating the burden of cash. Cash still accounts for most consumer payments in Africa. Mastercard, which started out as synonymous with credit cards, continues its efforts to convert consumers from cash to electronic transactions, and move beyond plastic.
Pioneer For Women In Construction Thandi Ndlovu has died
The cover of the August (Women’s Month) edition of Forbes Africa beautifully captures the essence of the woman I interviewed only a few weeks ago. Gracious, soft-spoken, brimming with life and energy. Dr Thandi Ndlovu impressed the entire Forbes crew on that afternoon cover shoot with her broad smile, and open yet powerful demeanor.
It is with great sadness that Forbes Africa heard of the accident that took her life on Saturday the 24 August 2019.
READ MORE |COVER: Feisty And Fearless Pioneers Thandi Ndlovu & Nonkululeko Gobodo
She had given so much to South Africa and its people – through the apartheid years and during the 25 years of democracy, literally building a better future, first through her medical practice at Orange Farm and then through her company, Motheo Construction Group and the scholarships for tertiary education granted by her Motheo Children’s Foundation.
That sunny winter’s afternoon, I asked her if she, at the age of 65, was considering retirement, and she laughed. A lively, amiable laugh. She told me she was healthy and strong and easily worked 12 to 13 hour days.
She loved hiking, and has climbed Kilimanjaro twice, reached the base camps of Mount Everest and Annapurna in Nepal. At the time of the interview, she was training to climb Machu Picchu, the famed ruins in Peru’s mountains.
One of her biggest passions was to make a difference in people’s lives and to motivate people to achieve the best they could. The other was to redress the racial tensions that still remained in South Africa.
Dr Thandi Ndlovu, South Africa is poorer for your passing.
-Jill De Villiers
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Young Zach McEwen shot some footage of an empty Farm Fresh in Kiln Creek that was shut down last year. So how did it come to this??? One the more successful grocery chains here in Hampton Roads (a part of our community since 1956!) may be gone for good. But given the region’s crowded grocery landscape, two things seem possible, stores are going to be sold or closed. Frustrated employees who endured layoffs last year have been largely kept in the dark about what changes may be on the way.
First, employees were recently told headquarters would be sending them packages via UPS. Then those packages were canceled. Also a series of meetings have been canceled, adding to the nervous speculation. It's a shame... I shop at the Great Neck location. Many of the employees there know my family very well. It will be a sad day when I can no longer see them.


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Trimmed marijuna buds at 253 Farmacy in Montague. The business plans to produce all of its own marijuana within a year.
CONCORD — One of New Hampshire’s top champions of marijuana legalization in the Senate changed his tune Tuesday, announcing it was not the right time to pass a sweeping legalization bill.
Is New Hampshire Ready?
“I don’t think the state is ready for legalization at this time,” said Sen. Harold French, in brief remarks before the Senate Judiciary Committee, arguing the bill needs to be “fixed” first.
French, R-Franklin, made the remarks shortly before the committee recommended 4-0 to shelve this year’s legalization bill. That recommendation will be taken up by the full Senate in January.
The vote signals the latest setback for the legalization campaign in New Hampshire, which for months has struggled to overcome opposition in the state senate and governor’s office, following legislative success with decriminalization and therapeutic cannabis. In 2017, the state decriminalized cannabis; meaning anyone in possession of three-quarters of an ounce of marijuana or less is subject to a fine but not arrest.
In Tuesday’s vote, the senators recommended sending House Bill 481 to “interim study,” a move that would effectively nullify the bill for the rest of the legislative session.
Championed by Rep. Renny Cushing, the bill would have created a regulation and taxation scheme, allowing commercial vendors to sell cannabis and cannabis products and pay a tax to the state. The proposed law would allow personal possession of up to six marijuana plants, and would establish an enforcement bureau to regulate stores across the state.
The bill emerged from a year-long study commission bringing together representatives of health care, banking, law enforcement and others. But by including retail sales of marijuana, HB 481 diverged from legalization schemes in other states, including Vermont, which only allow legalized possession.
The retail and taxation scheme was pitched as a way to raise revenue and bring in out-of-state business, but critics said it would encourage widespread irresponsible use.
In an interview in September, Cushing acknowledged that backlash and said moving forward, his legalization efforts would not include retail or taxation.
Speaking Tuesday, French said that a workable legalization approach could eventually be found in New Hampshire with more study.
“If we hold it we may be able to fix it,” French said, noting that efforts are underway for new legislation next year.
But he also noted uncertainty in Washington as a reason to hold off for now.
In January 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the “Cole memo,” a Department of Justice policy under President Barack Obama that said that the department would not carry out marijuana enforcement in states that have passed legalization efforts. That decision has weighed on some lawmakers, who say it’s unclear whether Granite State residents would be at risk of federal prosecution even if marijuana were legalized.
For now, Sen. Martha Hennessey, a Hanover Democrat, expressed support for hitting pause.
“I agree with you – I believe New Hampshire may not be ready,” she said to French. “But I also primarily believe that this bill had too many things that left us needing answers. And left too many people concerned.”


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According to Kantar research, pork medallion sales increased by 24% while sales of all promoted cuts grew by 13.9% over 12 months. During the past two years, the same campaign has generated a total of £25m in additional sales for the UK pork industry.
The tongue-in-cheek TV adverts featured a man dressed as a giant disgruntled chicken and were seen by 83% of UK households. According to AHDB, every pound spent on marketing generated an additional £7.31 in sales.
The Kantar research also showed the campaign had successfully improved consumer perception of fresh pork as “suitable for midweek meals” by 10 percentage points compared to pre-advertising.
The latest campaign results showed almost half of the £3.2m additional sales generated came from younger customers in the target category, aged 35 to 54 years old.
To support the TV adverts, the campaign enlisted celebrities and social media influencers, such as health and fitness guru Lucy Mecklenburgh, who encouraged shoppers to “break up with boring”. The campaign also joined up with retailers and independent butchers to help grow sales.
The next phase of the campaign will see a new TV advert hitting screens in autumn 2019 and early in 2020.
AHDB strategy director Angela Christison said: “The uplift in sales is hugely encouraging during both phases of the campaign; however the long game is to switch more consumers over to selecting pork more often. This is a particular aim with younger consumers in order to create habits that will sustain the industry in the future.
“This campaign has attracted new consumers to choose pork by showcasing the ease of cooking this incredibly versatile protein. This is precisely what it set out to achieve and inspiring consumers in this way is building a new image for this delicious meat.”


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Healthy Fast Food Inc. (OTCBB:HFFI – News) opened a second company-owned U-Swirl Frozen Yogurt store in the Las Vegas market. The new store is located at 7595 West Washington Avenue and opened on April 8th.
U-Swirl is a self-serve frozen-yogurt concept where guests choose as many yogurt flavors and toppings as they like and pay by the ounce for their creations.
Healthy Fast Food acquired the worldwide rights to the U-Swirl Frozen Yogurt concept in September 2008 and recently appointed Paul Schloss to the position of chief operating officer and executive vice president. Schloss has been a director of the company since June 2007. In his new position, he will manage all aspects of the company’s operations and implement the strategy to grow the U-SWIRL Frozen Yogurt concept into a national franchised chain.


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There was a very cute “report” on the Rawesome Food Club raid and raw milk on The Colbert Report. It’s a comedy show, so they had to make it sound funny–out-of-control government, chuckle-chuckle on the “Raw”–but the seriousness did come through when they showed the actual footage of the raiders with their guns drawn June 30. Hard to escape reality.
I’ll give David Acheson, the former head of food safety at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, credit for being the straight man in allowing himself to be interviewed, and skewered.
The good news about the segment was that the government June 30 raid footage was finally shown to a national audience. (Huge numbers of people get their “news” from this and “The Daily Show”, another comedy news show.) The establishment media, of course, shy away from such stuff.
The segment also did good by presenting the raw milk issue as a matter of rights (“Pasteurization without representation,” as Rep. Ron Paul stated) and the best line of the segment, in my judgment, went to James Stewart of Rawesome when he said, “It’s my right to get dysentery if I choose to.” Sounds crazy, but we do have the right to consume foods that damage our liver (alcohol), kidneys (highly salted snack and other foods), and pancreas (the many high-sugar foods).
Unfortunately, the show couldn’t examine the followup problems that I described briefly in my previous post. I think Tim Wightman has the right idea about The State’s intentions in a raid, in his comment following my previous post. But the effects are increasingly to make life miserable for suppliers caught up in the dragnet via the follow-on harassment and heavy-handed techniques.
My sense is that consumers are ever more prepared to continue buying from producers who have been targeted. Some of those producers simply duck under the radar and go their way to quietly supply customers. From what I’m told, Rawesome Food Club has seen its membership climb since the June 30 guns-drawn raid. That has to scare the authorities, because if consumers won’t be scared off by goons with drawn guns in their food outlet, then what will they be scared off by?
But it’s the drip-drip-drip of the follow-on harassment that can be the undoing of suppliers. That seems to be the case with Morningland Dairy. I’ve since gained access to some of the documentation in that situation, and it appears Morningland Dairy, the cheese producer unfortunate enough to have its cheese seized in the June 30 raid and discovered by California agriculture authorities to contain listeria. (Milky Way is correct that the amount of listeria identified by authorities wasn’t revealed; I assumed it was a trace amount, since no one has gotten sick from that cheese, this year, or in thirty years of company operations; presumably something more than a trace would have made at least one of the hundreds, or perhaps thousands, who ingested it sick.)
The correspondence between the Missouri Milk Board and Morningland Dairy suggests there is a huge dispute about additional testing that was done on the company’s cheese at a private lab in Missouri–testing in addition to that conducted by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. (I have the correspondence in a number of pieces, so am not immediately able to make it available on the blog.) But essentially, the state says it supervised tests of 14 samples of the company’s cheese in late August, and found listeria monocytogenes in six of the samples, and staphylococcus aureleus (a bacteria that can cause staph infections) in all the samples.
The company says the samples were independently and improperly provided by one of its employees–who had just come from a hospital setting and hadn’t washed–without regulator involvement and oversight, as required in such situations. In other words, little if any attention was given to the kinds of matters Ron Klein describes in his comment on my previous post.
Morningland points out that a subsequent thorough inspection of its premises by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found no evidence of pathogens of any sort, but its efforts to convince the Missouri Milk Board to re-do the tests on its packaged and unpackaged inventory have been unavailing.
With the U.S. Food and Drug Administration obviously leaning heavily on the Missouri Milk Board, the agency is demanding that the company destroy all cheese produced since the start of the year–about 50,000 pounds, or $250,000 worth–“because of the serious nature of the pathogens present in the embargoed cheese products…” I say the FDA must be leaning on the agency because we haven’t seen such draconian measures in other food recalls where not a single person has become ill.
In a letter of “objection” to the Missouri Milk Board, the company states, “To date, there has been no legitimate test performed on Morningland Dairy cheese, although Morningland Dairy owners have repeatedly requested that proper tests be done. California authorities did not sign the test they allegedly performed until 55 days after product was seized at gunpoint from Rawesome Foods. No sample of said product was shared with Morningland Dairy as is required by California and Missouri statutes; therefore, there is no confirmation of the findings reported by the California Department of Food and Agriculture.”
Morningland Dairy officials indicate they are not going to take the order lying down. “Because of the untenable nature of the order of destruction, we cannot comply…”
They offer a compromise, an “offer to test each batch of cheese in our cooler prior to shipping the product to our customers.” Seems reasonable, especially as they note, “it is far from a light matter to put families out of work and out of business when no harm has occurred to anyone in a thiry-year history…”
They add: “At this point, Oct. 6, 2010, we have been required to recall six months of work, have been completely shut down and forced to dump milk for nearly five weeks, are being told we must destroy at least eight months of work. Further, we have no assurance that we will be allowed to continue to produce our product without subjection to overzealous enforcement actions on the part of the FDA or the Missouri Milk Board. We seek justice, reason, logic and decency, and we desire to live peaceably and to profit from our labor. Due process is inherent in our system, and we request that it be followed.”
Reason? Logic? Decency? Due process? That’s asking a lot from regulators fighting their version of a holy war against producers of nutrient-dense food.
One final note: There is mention ?in a comment following my previous post about accusations being made by the people running Rawesome Food Club as to the integrity of its food. It seems that even within the food rights movement, individuals can become very passionate about whether particular food measures up to particular standards. There is a lot of “he-said-she-said” in the back-and-forth of what’s happening. It’s my sense that this is another example of the difficulties created by the business pressures of that June 30 government raid on Rawesome.


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InSphero CEO and co-founder Jan Lichtenberg receives Swiss "Emerging Entrepreneur" award from EY.
Congratulations to InSphero CEO and co-founder Dr. Jan Lichtenberg, who on Friday, October 23 was honored as the 2015 Swiss "Emerging Entrepreneur" at the EY Entrepreneur of the Year™ 2015 award ceremony held in Zurich, Switzerland. Dr. Lichtenberg was one of four honorees at the 18th annual event, which also recognized the top Swiss entrepreneurs in Trade/Services, Industry/High-Tech/Life Sciences and Family Business categories.
Ernst & Young press release:
Dr. Jan Lichtenberg: Building bridges with an eye for revolutions
The "Emerging Entrepreneur" category always features surprising entrepreneurs who dare to reconsider conventional practices and look at new ideas as the rule rather than the exception. In all economic sectors, this continually leads to useful innovations that make progress for the entire industry, and not just for the emerging entrepreneurs' companies. A great example is Dr. Jan Lichtenberg, who has won the award for Entrepreneur Of The Year 2015 in this category. With his biotech company InSphero AG, he aspires to bring about a revolution in testing practices in drug development, using his systems and materials to bring greater efficiency, reliability and effectiveness to the testing process. Organotypic 3-D micro-tissues are the centerpiece of the InSphero revolution. The jury was fascinated by the opportunities offered by Dr. Lichtenberg's innovation, and was impressed by his ability to concentrate the focus of a diverse, international research team of top specialists to target a common goal and stay on course. What's more, he also communicates eye-to-eye with investors. Dr. Lichtenberg is an entrepreneur of international standing and global potential, so it is no surprise that he can count himself among the winners of the Entrepreneur Of The Year award in 2015.


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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Virgin America, the only airline headquartered in the Bay Area, today celebrates the launch of its new service to Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC) – the latest destination city in the carrier’s network. The addition of SJC expands the airline’s presence in the greater Bay Area and brings new competition on an important California business route connecting two global centers of innovation in the Golden State. Known for its award-winning blend of upscale service and competitive fares, Virgin America will serve SJC with four daily nonstop flights from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The new service will also offer San Jose travelers connections via Los Angeles to Virgin America’s expansive network, including major east coast business destinations such as Newark and Philadelphia. The airline’s business-friendly flights, with amenities including WiFi on every flight and power outlets near every seat, will offer a fresh new option for travelers. Today, commercial guests on the very first LAX-SJC inaugural flight traveled onboard Virgin America’s new Airbus A320, appropriately named “#nerdbird,” and were greeted by Virgin Group Founder Sir Richard Branson at a red carpet welcome at SJC’s new Terminal A.
“Virgin America offers an innovative flight experience unlike any other in the United States. Our tech-forward features reflect our roots here in the Bay Area – and have helped us build a loyal frequent flyer following in this community, especially among local entrepreneurs,” said David Cush, Virgin America’s President and CEO. “Our flyers have asked for this route for some time and we’re appreciative of Mayor Reed, the airport and local leaders like Carl Guardino for helping us expand our footprint into the heart of one of the world’s most vibrant economies. We hope our new service will help business travelers stay connected and productive from Silicon Valley to Silicon Beach.”
Upon arrival at SJC’s brand new Terminal A, travelers were given a red carpet welcome with a touch of Silicon Valley-inspired irreverence: flight guests were given nerd glasses and pocket protectors onboard. The inaugural #nerdbird flight received a traditional water cannon salute as Flight 534 touched down in San Jose. Once deplaned, the inaugural flight guests were greeted by Mayor Reed, U.S. Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, business and civic leaders and Virgin Group Founder Sir Richard Branson, for a champagne brunch gate-side to toast the new route.
“I am excited to celebrate the arrival of Virgin America’s #nerdbird at San Jose International Airport,” said Mayor Reed. “This new service from San Jose to Los Angeles will become a popular mode of travel for Silicon Valley start-up and corporate entrepreneurs. I thank Sir Richard Branson and CEO David Cush for their confidence and look forward to supporting Virgin America’s success at SJC.”
To introduce the new service, Virgin America invited guests to bring a colleague or a friend along for a stylish ride with a “Double Your Deals” two tickets for the price of one promotion for guests traveling on the same itinerary between LA and San Jose (offer available for travel occurring between May 1, 2013 and May 31, 2013 and applies to non-refundable Main Cabin fares only, excludes refundable Main Cabin, Main Cabin Select, Instant Upgrade to MCS and First Class).**
“San Jose has world class businesses and facilities. Virgin America’s new service recognizes the opportunities for growth in serving the South Bay,” said Rep. Lofgren (D-San Jose). “Expanded flight service like this means more travelers will choose Mineta San Jose International as their gateway to Silicon Valley, and in the process, boost our local businesses and community.”
Known for outstanding service, beautifully designed cabins and unrivalled in-flight entertainment, Virgin America has swept the travel awards since its 2007 launch, including being named “Best Domestic Airline” in both Conde Nast Traveler’s Readers’ Choice Awards and Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Awards for the past five years. In December 2012, Virgin America opened its first airport lounge, which offers guests a sleek and modern retreat with a selection of amenities and a space that reflect the look and feel of the airline’s mood-lit aircraft and overall design aesthetic.
“Increasing air service options at SJC helps businesses in the Silicon Valley thrive, so we couldn’t be more pleased that Virgin America has launched this new service,” said Carl Guardino, President and CEO for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. “These new flights will provide an attractive new option for business travelers and others traveling between Silicon Valley and the innovation corridors of Los Angeles. Virgin America really focuses on the business traveler and we appreciate their innovative amenities that offer guests an office in the sky and keep guests comfortable, connected and productive at 35,000 feet.”
Also today, Virgin America kicks off a #nerdbird Goes South online promotion sweepstakes inviting Elevate® frequent flyer program members to enter their membership number by May 16 for a chance to win a prize that includes Elevate Gold Status and 15 single-use WiFi passes good for any Virgin America flight through the end of 2013, courtesy of Gogo®. All entries will get a code good for 25% off flights between San Jose and Los Angeles (restrictions applying).*** For contest rules please visit: https://www.virginamerica.com//html/pdf/130501_nerdbird_contest.pdf
“Virgin America’s four flights at SJC create new jobs and generate direct economic impacts, and, most importantly, they provide improved travel options for Silicon Valley residents and businesses,” said SJC Director of Aviation Bill Sherry. “Besides being a top destination from SJC, LAX also offers convenient connections. I’m confident that with Virgin America’s unique product branding, superior customer service, and well-timed flights that the airline will be successful at SJC. We warmly welcome Virgin America and look forward to their continued growth in San Jose.”
The new SJC-LAX route will also carry the codes of Virgin America codeshare partners Hawaiian Airlines and Singapore Airlines, offering seamless connectivity for guests traveling to and from San Jose via LAX. The addition of Virgin America San Jose-Los Angeles service creates convenient new online connections for San Jose guests traveling to and from Virgin America’s Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, New York (JFK and EWR), Orlando, Philadelphia, and Washington DC (IAD) destinations.


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DFW Airport invests in data sharing platform by Nallian for cargo
This new application-based technology will reduce the amount of time and paperwork required for cargo shipments coming through the airport and is part of its digital transformation strategy.
Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW Airport) has started using Nallian’s cloud based data sharing platform for cargo customers, allowing seamless transactions across the supply chain. Over time, this will include freight forwarders, shippers, ground handling agents, 3PLs, airlines, customs and border protection, and trucking companies – empowering them to coordinate their cross-company processes.
“DFW Airport continues to focus and invest in our cargo business. This new platform makes processing cargo through DFW more efficient by providing accurate and timely information to our cargo community,” said John Ackerman, executive vice president of global strategy and development at DFW Airport. He added, “We are excited to work with Nallian and our international airport partners to offer this digital platform to our cargo and logistics customers.”
Jean Verheyen, CEO at Nallian, added, “We are honored to work with DFW Airport who is committed to raising the bar for innovation and excellence in air cargo. With Nallian’s mission in mind - ‘to make the world operate as one’ - we are thrilled to see how our infrastructure also empowers forward-thinking airports such as DFW and their partners to leverage the power of digitization on a global level.”
This new application-based technology will reduce the amount of time and paperwork required for cargo shipments coming through the airport and is part of its digital transformation strategy. A dedicated slot booking application allows truckers and freight forwarders to request and reserve dock door slot times, eliminating wait times while reducing roadway congestion and harmful emissions. Future enhancements will include real time pharmaceutical tracking and monitoring capabilities, ensuring higher levels of safety and product integrity. This allows multinational collaboration among global cargo hubs.
DFW is focused on air cargo, an essential industry to North Texas. The airport handled 971,000 tonnes of cargo in FY19 and has steadily risen to become one of the top international cargo hubs. DFW’s central US location is the nexus of Latin America-Asia transit freight, and an ideal hub for e-commerce. Strong Asian freighter service and the ongoing growth of its Latin America network add to the airport's geographic advantage.


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ProLogis (Denver), a global provider of distribution facilities and services, recently released the latest edition of the ProLogis Supply Chain Review entitled, “Product Proliferation -- The Scourge of Lean Supply Chains.”Authored by University of Denver logistics experts Paul Nuzum and Carl Johnson, the report explores the massive increase in individual consumer products, or SKUs, that has occurred globally in recent years.
"Product proliferation is an unavoidable--and in many respects laudable--byproduct of the global trend toward more efficient manufacturing and distribution," said Leonard Sahling, first vice president of research for ProLogis. "At the same time, it can wreak havoc on a smooth-running supply chain. This new report provides valuable insights into the downside impacts companies face when they maintain too many SKUs."
Findings in the report include:
- Product proliferation is in large part a result of the deep-seated trend toward so-called "mass customization," in which middle-class consumers are insisting on custom-designed, personalized products at affordable prices.
- The problem can also be blamed in part on the widespread failure by companies to effectively manage SKU life cycles. Many suppliers maintain individual products long after they have been displaced or rendered redundant by new offerings. In doing so, they introduce unintended cost and complexity into their logistics operations.
- Supply chain managers are often at odds with their sales and marketing departments when it comes to pruning product lines. Sales executives typically oppose eliminating SKUs, arguing that it's better to offer a broader range of choices to customers.
- "Postponement"--the practice of timing production of finished products to receipt of firm orders from customers--is the classic logistics strategy used by companies to neutralize the ill effects of product proliferation. Indeed, after having implemented effective postponement strategies, many companies have been able to expand their product-lines and SKUs without commensurate increases in their inventory levels.
The report is based on in-depth interviews conducted with supply chain executives at more than 30 major companies from a variety of industries.


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Friday, November 23, 2012
Earlier and staggered store openings result in shorter lines, less frenzy the day after Thanksgiving.
Varied opening and sale times at retailers for the Black Friday rush seemed to spread out shoppers throughout North Jersey’s biggest stores this weekend. This year marked a new marketing tactic—more retailers opened Thanksgiving night. While some stores bought into the new trend, others stuck to the traditional early-morning opening times Friday, while others chose to open at 7 or 8 a.m. And, the different opening times gave shoppers a lot of options, and the ability to hit multiple stores. Long nighttime lines awaited shoppers at the Rockaway Townsquare Mall, which saw customers skipping Thanksgiving dinner to line up almost a day before some stores’ 8 and 9 p.m. openings. The line at the Walmart in Watchung started forming at 1 p.m. …
Area shops roll out red carpet to welcome Black Friday shoppers while looking forward to Small Business Saturday.
Karen Thompson of Warren fled the Black Friday crush of the mall and the long line at the Vera Bradley store she was trying to enter when she remembered her morning email about sales at Apogee in downtown Basking Ridge. "There had to be 70 people in line," at the store at the mall, Thompson said. By contrast, in the small shop later on Friday morning, she was receiving personalized attention while browsing through what she said was the same selection. "It was a mob scene," Thompson said of her Friday morning trip to the mall. "Plus, it's good to support local businesses," she added. After leaving the fashion boutique, she said she was heading down South Finley Avenue to Down Cellar, a collectibles and crafts store also in Basking Ridge. …
Thursday, November 22, 2012
We've got some Black Friday sales and what's happening nearby.
You won't have to interrupt any after-dinner naps to go shopping in Warren Thursday—local stores are closed—but we've got the low-down on where to do your shopping in the area. On Friday, be sure to check the specials at Hillary's Fashion Boutique and TRU Salon+Spa, both of which are offering holiday specials. Hillary's Fashion Boutique is offering 50 percent off all boots and shoes; 30 percent off jeans and 20 percent off "everything else." Early shoppers will find a special ghift with each purchase (as long as suppies last). TRU Salon+Spa is offering special discounts with its membership programs, which begin at just $29 per month and offer discounts off facials, hair and nail services. Stop in at the salon for details. Heading to the …
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
What's open, what's closed Thanksgiving and how to get around during the holiday season.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
The day before Thanksgiving is known as the most traveled day of the year. Getting around North Jersey can be a difficult task any time, but with the start of the holiday season Thursday, traffic will be more congested. Want to find a better way to get around our area? From trains, to buses, to light rails, here’s a Patch list to help you plan how to get around this holiday weekend and what’s open and closed for Thanksgiving and Black Friday. • NJ Transit trains will run on a weekend/major holiday schedule, with extra trains running on the Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast, Raritan Valley and Morris & Essex lines to accommodate customers traveling to and from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The Gladstone branch remains suspended…


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Searching For Cloud Glory
Google ushered in 2017 ready to throttle an enterprise cloud business that had struggled in previous years to meet the large expectations placed upon it. However, with Senior Vice President Diane Greene at the helm, Google Cloud leaders believed the right combination of technology and leadership was finally in place to successfully pitch Google Cloud Platform to the traditional business customers flocking to hyper-scale competitors.
In the first months of the new year, the team recruited by Greene implemented changes in messaging, channel program structure, sales organization, and product portfolio, all the while leveraging Google's expertise in containers, artificial intelligence, analytics and security.
At least to some degree, those efforts bore fruit -- Google Cloud Platform enjoyed impressive growth in 2017. While Google does not break out cloud financials directly, industry researchers estimated the business roughly doubled year-over-year in each fiscal quarter.
But in a red-hot cloud market, consistent three-digit growth wasn't enough to substantially close the gap with Microsoft Azure, or challenge Amazon Web Services' dominant position in the market. As the third-quarter ended in October, GCP looked to hold roughly six percent market share.
Partnerships with other name-brand vendors forged in the second-half of the year, however, might propel Google even further in 2018.
Get more of CRN's 2017 tech year in review.


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Tsareena and Dragonite Will Join Pokémon Unite This Month With Many Festive Updates
Today, the Pokémon Company announced a large number of festive updates for Pokémon Unite, the free-to-play multiplayer online game.
The seasonal event will kick off tomorrow with the grass-type Pokémon Tsareena joining the fight. Announced earlier this month, Tsareena is an All-Rounder whose moveset includes Trop Kick and Grassy Glide. Players can get a free licence for Tsareena just by logging in before December 31.
The rest of the festivities will begin on December 15 and last through January 16. This will start with Snowball Battle mode. In this mode, players will fight in quick battles where KO’d Pokémon will turn into snowmen. While they are frozen in place until their revival, they can still provide tactical information to their team.
In these Snowball Battles, players will have a chance to defeat Delibird. Doing so will win the player a gift box that has a random one-time battle item that immediately equips. Players can also take on Articuno during these battles.
In addition to the new battle mode, players can take part in the Illumination Challenge where they need to light up the tree in the player lobby. Players can obtain these lights through daily and challenge missions. Collecting these lights will unlock decorative items and bonuses including a one-day licence for Alolan Ninetails, new fashion items and other holiday decorations.
Between December 24 and January 1, players can also open Pokémon Unite to receive daily rewards such as Aeos tickets and item enhancers. There will also be special gifts with a limited selection of items. Then from January 1-3, players will be granted access to every Unite licence in the game. Now you can finally try out the Pokémon you never bought the licence for!
The Pokémon Company also released a trailer to showcase the upcoming seasonal updates. The trailer gives players a sneak peek of what’s coming this month, and a tease of Dragonite in action. Dragonite will be flying into Unite on December 20. So be sure to keep logging in this month to take advantage of the holiday season!


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Kno starts shipping tablets for students
- Staff Silicon Valley Business Journal
Educational tablet company Kno announced that it began shipping the first of its devices to preorder customers this week.
Santa Clara-based Kno launched its 14.1 touch-screen tablet that blends textbooks, course materials, note taking, Web access, educational applications, digital media and sharing.
“Since launch, we have been encouraged by the positive response to Kno and we are excited to deliver the first units to our most passionate customers -- students and educators,” said Osman Rashid, CEO and co-founder.
Rashid, the co-founder of Chegg, and Babur Habib, a consumer electronics veteran, founded Kno in May 2009. The company is funded by Andreessen Horowitz, Floodgate, First Round Capital, Ron Conway, Silicon Valley Bank and TriplePoint Capital.
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Vietnam accuses Netflix of evading taxes
Vietnam’s information minister on Tuesday denounced foreign streaming organizations like Netflix and Apple of evading their tax duties, saying it would make unreasonable rivalry for homegrown firms.
Foreign stream firms, which have consolidated incomes of almost VND 1 trillion (roughy Rs. 300 crores) from 1,000,000 supporters, as indicated by the information and communications ministry’s computations, have never paid assessment in Vietnam.
“Domestic companies have to abide by tax and content regulations while foreign firms do not, which is unfair competition,” the minister, Nguyen Manh Hung, told a government meeting. “Some content on Netflix has flouted regulations related to the history and sovereignty of the country, violence, drug use, and sex,” he added.
Vietnam presented a digital protection law two years back that requires all foreign organizations procuring pay from online exercises in Vietnam to store their information in the nation.
However, Netflix still can’t seem to share any designs to put its workers locally or open an office in Vietnam. The firm said in an announcement a month ago that it was working with Vietnamese specialists to set up an instrument for tax assortment.
Netflix had no prompt remark when reached by Reuters and said it would give a reaction later.
Hung said the information ministry, finance ministry and tax department were cooperating to encourage tax assortment by figuring foreign streaming firms incomes in Vietnam since their entrances into the market. Tech goliaths are progressively confronting harder financial systems in Southeast Asia, where controllers held talks a year ago on a local push to burden tech giants more.
The Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia have as of late passed or drafted enactment planning to guarantee taxes are paid.
Read this M1 Macs will not work with external GPUs
Brian is the news author at Research Snipers which mainly covers Technology News, Microsoft News, Google News, Facebook, Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, and other tech news.


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(Pocket-lint) - The cinema is dying. It was once a place where families gathered to share films and even TV shows while people smoked and enjoyed the escapism that a home without TV could not offer. Nowadays many people own a huge TV with surround sound and have access to the latest films easily. This is one reason that cinema sales have been in decline since records began in 1991, the other is streaming.
Streaming via Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video, Now TV and others offers such a convenient way to watch movies that the cinema now seems like an effort.
In 2014 figures for UK and Ireland cinema earnings showed a 2.9 per cent decline to £1.13 billion, nothing to sniff at but still the most significant fall since 1991. 2014 was also the first year no film broke the £40m mark since 1998.
Perhaps streaming services becoming ever more prevalent is part of that. In the UK more than three million households subscribed to Netflix in 2014, twice as many as a year ago. More than one in ten households have signed up to streaming services in the last 12-months.
The Orange Wednesdays promotion, which let cinema goers get two tickets for the price of one, has been cancelled after 10 years of running. This follows EE TV being released and the company, which is part of Orange, wanting its customers to watch at home rather than at the cinema.
Why else is streaming killing the cinema?
The cinema isn't cheap. Tickets are typically over £10, a price that could buy you a film on Blu-ray or online to keep. That's also more expensive than a whole month of access to the entire library of Netflix films and TV shows.
While the price sounds steep for a film it doesn't even cover the costs of making it for most, these are made from the sales of sweets, drinks and popcorn. When sweets from the supermarket and a streaming subscription are so much cheaper why would people want to pay to struggle to hear a film over people crunching popcorn?
With larger and larger TVs in the home and ever advancing sound systems the cinema has a real fight to dazzle customers. Now that we can have 4K OLED TVs streaming high quality visuals as well as complete surround sound from Dolby Atmos – which many cinemas don't have – why would we want to leave the lounge?
Films do come out sooner at the cinema but for those that don't mind downloading illegally even these can often be attained at full quality shortly after release. And for everyone streaming it often just means waiting a while and getting it far cheaper in the comfort of home.
The future of streaming is exciting as formats are only limited by the bandwidth of the internet connection and the TV. Netflix has announced it will be adding high dynamic range streaming on top of its 4K and high frame rate offerings. When you offset the one-off cost of a TV every few years to keep up against the cinema it seems like an attractive prospect, especially as most people use it daily.
This is where cinemas can still excel with screens like the IMAX and Dolby's new cinemas still able to dazzle the audience with laser aligned booming sound and 8K laser projectors creating a truly immersive experience. But at £15 a pop you'd expect that.
Streaming services are becoming more ingrained into our devices. Most smart TVs, consoles, tablets, phones and computers can access Netflix, Now TV or Amazon Instant Video from within a dedicated app. This remembers the user's choices to let them carry on viewing from where they left off or find new shows and films they're likely to enjoy. It's just so easy.
Going to the cinema often means queues, sitting through adverts even though you're paying to be there and then having to put up with noisy people ruining the atmosphere.
Freedom and talent
The way that streaming providers are going about creating their own shows is brilliant as it provides funding and lets the artists create freely. The end result is high quality, original programming. Often traditional networks limit this freedom by specifying actors or writers.
Another freedom for streaming shows is time. Often shows online vary in length since they don't need to fit a certain TV time slot. It also means an entire series will be released at once so the modern trend of binge watching can be achieved.
There are only so many films that can be shown in the cinema. Online there are no limits to the libraries that can be built by streaming companies. In fact backdated TV shows and films are often up for grabs to the highest bidder, killing off the need to buy and keep media.
The limited time frame on cinema releases is also an issue. A big blockbuster might have a long run that's easy to catch but a lower budget indie film may only be on at a few select cinemas and even then only for a short time. Of course, if you want to see a film first, you'll need to visit the movie theatre but considering the turn around windows for home releases are getting shorter and shorter these days, with streaming services also signing exclusives for an even quicker cinema to home screen transition, many are happy to wait a few more weeks.


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Edie Parker founder Brett Heyman hosted a lively breakfast Tuesday morning to debut the label’s Spring/Summer 2020 collection as well as the newest additions to the Flower line, which launched this past spring and offers a bevy of cannabis accoutrements. Unsurprisingly, the showcase was nothing short of dope.
Hosted at Oddfellows on Houston Street, guests were greeted by a curbside Airstream trailer—with smoke curling out of the windows as though it was being hotboxed (yes, really). Inside, pieces from the collection—acrylic handbags, mini bongs, one-hitters, pipes, rolling trays, and the Top Secret Bag with a “stash” compartment—were arranged alongside more breakfasty items like just-baked croissants.
The morning drew an A-list crowd including Wes Gordon, Paul Arnhold, Nicky Hilton Rothschild, Indré Rockefeller, Nell Diamond, Lala Kent, Christy Turlington Burns, and others.
The full collection, including Flower, can be shopped on edie-parker.com.


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Realme has so far launched a couple of V-series smartphones in China, including the Realme V11, Realme V13, and Realme V15v. According to a new report, the Realme V25 will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 768G SoC and will have specifications similar to the Oppo K9 5G, which was released in China this week.
The Realme smartphone was found with the model number RMX3143 on the TENAA certification website, and its photos and specifications have been leaked. The Realme RMX3143 spotted on TENAA is likely to be renamed the Realme V25 in China, as informed by the tipster.
According to the Chinese source, the RMX3143 handset’s 2.8GHz octa-core processor may be the Snapdragon 768G, and the phone’s specs are identical to the OPPO K9 5G. The TENAA listing was released a few days ago, and the tipster has also posted screenshots from the site in order to leak additional phone specifications.
Realme V25 Leaked Design
The AMOLED display on the RMX3143 smartphone measures 6.43 inches. The phone is scheduled to be available in China in RAM versions of 6 GB, 8 GB, and 12 GB. It could have storage capacities of 128 GB and 256 GB. The unit is 159.1 x 73.4 x 8.1mm in size and weighs 174 grammes. According to the rumoured listing, the phone would be available in black and blue colour choices.
Realme V25 Leaked Specifications
The RMX3143 is powered by a 4,400mAh battery. It has a 32-megapixel front camera and a rear camera system with a 64-megapixel main camera, an 8-megapixel lens, and a 2-megapixel snapper. These specifications, like the phone’s dimensions, are identical to the K9 5G.