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Boss take heed: What today's woman wants
by Sylvia Ann Hewlett
Julia Jia was the first girl from her small village in Shandong province to go to university. Now 30, she works for Louis Vuitton China's retail department and would like to have a career in luxury goods, perhaps in sales development or public relations. ''Of course, I want to be in top management,'' Ms Jia says, echoing the high-flying aspirations that have catapulted so many Chinese women into the business elite. Then in a seeming contradiction, she adds that she worries about work/life balance. ''I would feel frustrated working 60 to 70...
 

Germany's hidden weaknesses
by Norbert Walter
Workers assembling cars at a Mercedes factory in Stuttgart, Germany. Despite its increasing market share in global exports, economists expect Germany to face economic slowdown. BLOOMBERG
With Greece once again nearing default, calls are going out this week for Germany to step in to help. And many Germans are, once again, responding with indignation, saying they should not have to bail out their profligate neighbours. But there is another...

How e-books and the Net can help save the earth
by Jeffrey D Sachs
Sustainable development means achieving economic growth that is widely shared and that protects the earth's vital resources. Our current global economy, however, is not sustainable, with more than one billion people left behind by economic progress and the earth's environment suffering terrible damage from human activity. Sustainable development requires...

Playing the waiting game
by Colin Tan
Artwork by YEN YOK
It has been nine weeks since the additional buyer's stamp duty (ABSD) on residential property was imposed. Have private home prices made their long-awaited move downwards? At this week's Singapore Property Analytics Conference 2012, opinion from the floor -...

Look no further, it has to be Harry
by Henry Winter
Light the beacons across the land, let the church bells ring out with joy and record in the annals of history that Fabio Capello's final decision as England manager proved to be his best. England were stagnating. On his watch. On £6 million (S$11.8 million) a year. It was time for Capello to go. It is time for the Football Association (FA) to go for Harry...

Construction sector has to build homes better, faster
by Richard Hartung
Watch a construction site anywhere around Singapore for a while, and you may start to wonder why it takes so long to build a building or construct a tunnel. You are not the only one wondering. Last year, the Economic Strategies Committee (ESC) said that ''in construction, productivity levels are half that of the United States and one-third that of Japan''....

A better life - without damaging the planet
by Jacob Zuma and Tarja Halonen
The world is on an unsustainable path and must urgently chart a new course forward, one that brings equity and environmental concerns into the economic mainstream. To do so, we must put sustainable development into practice now - not in spite of the economic crisis, but because of it. Our challenges today are many. Economies are teetering, ecosystems are...

The wrong way to unseat Syria's Assad
by Bloomberg editorial BLOOMBERG
The veto by Russia and China of a United Nations resolution urging a political transition in Syria and an end to the bloodshed there was, as United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rightly put it, ''a travesty''. The challenge now is to stop travesty from turning into tragedy. President Barack Obama has seemingly ruled out ''outside military...

Apple points way that Sony needs to go
by William Pesek
Kazuo Hirai, charged with halting Sony Corp's downward spiral, could be excused for asking: Do I really want this job? Last week, the consumer-electronics giant said it expects a US$2.9 billion (S$3.6 billion) loss in the year ending March 31, putting it on course for an unprecedented fourth consecutive year in the red. It's a stunning reminder of the depths...

Answer to Europe's crisis lies in Mona Lisa's smile
by A A Gill
Europe needs to dig into its cultural inheritance, such as its art, to recover from its economic doldrums. AP
They discovered another Mona Lisa at the Prado in Madrid, just hanging about in the stock room. ''What do you think that is?'' asked some Spanish curator. ''Let's clean it and see. Caramba. It's another Mona Lisa,'' painted contemporaneously by Leonardo da...
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