1 Russian ‘bloodbath’ for corporates (BBC) The chief
executive of Renault Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, has said that manufacturers in
Russia are facing a "bloodbath" because of the plunge in the value of
the rouble. The currency has been dropping steadily for several months, but
suffered very sharp falls earlier this week.
Several rival manufacturers have taken similar
steps. However, Mr Ghosn said he was confident the situation would stabilise,
eventually. "We didn't do it [suspend orders] overall, just on some models
we said, 'Sorry, until we see where this situation is going we don't take
orders,'" he said."When the rouble sinks it's a bloodbath for
everybody. It's red ink, people are losing money, all car manufacturers are
losing money," he added.
The French-Japanese Renault-Nissan alliance is a
major player in Russia's car industry. Other manufacturers have been taking
similar steps in response to the decline of the rouble, which has halved in
value against the dollar this year. General Motors, Audi and Jaguar Land Rover
also suspended deliveries to Russian dealers earlier this week.
If car sales in Russia do continue to decline, it
could affect British manufacturing. Nissan says about 10% of the cars made at
its Sunderland plant are exported to the region.
2 Blackberry hit by low sales (Chris Johnston in The
Guardian) BlackBerry shares have fallen despite the smartphone maker announcing
better than expected orders for the new Passport phone, as well as slashing
losses. The Canadian company lost $148m for the three months to 29 November, a
dramatic turnaround from the $4.4bn loss for the same period a year earlier.
However, sales were $793m – significantly below
analysts’ expectations of $927.8m and almost $400m lower than last year. In
September BlackBerry launched the Passport – an unconventional smartphone about
the size of a closed passport with a large square touchscreen as well as a
keyboard.
John Chen, chief executive, said the flagship model
sold out “a number of times in the quarter”, creating a backlog of orders that
reduced revenue in the period. While some 200,000 Passports were sold, he said
that some orders slipped into the fourth quarter. Chen said recently:
“BlackBerry has survived; now we have to start looking at growth.”
3 Benefits of being an ugly duckling (Omaira Gill in
Khaleej Times) In a world that is becoming more and more superficial, looks are
everything. Standards of beauty have changed throughout history, and the
current flavour of the month is skinny and pretty. Young girls spend their
entire lives obsessing over their looks. Are they pretty enough? Are they thin
enough? Will boys like them? Will they get asked to the dance? What should they
wear to the dance?
Given this, there is something to be said about
growing up an ugly duckling. I was not a pretty teenager. Not even remotely. I
was skinny and awkward, with frizzy hair that I hated and the obligatory
monobrow. My teenage years were a strange landscape, devoid of the usual angst.
I moved to the UK at the age of 14, and was dropped from the clinical
surroundings of an all-girls’ school run by nuns into the hormonal cauldron of
a co-educational institution.
I brought with me years of indoctrination of no
makeup at school, and certainly no fancy hairstyles. Bespeckled and from the
age of 17 to 19, with braces to boot, boys were not only uninterested in me, my
lack of looks became their running joke. Did all of this bother me? It did, and
it didn’t. I never went to a single of my high school parties or dances. I did
this out of choice, claiming I didn’t want to go to something as boring as a
dance, and anyway what would I do there?
At the age of 19, I finally let my older sister
shape my eyebrows. I began wearing kohl, and one evening during some free time
in my university dormitory, a friend begged to make me over, so I let her
because I had nothing better to do. When she showed me my face in the mirror, I
was so shocked that I started laughing. Staring back was a pretty stranger I
hadn’t seen before.
Did spending my teenage years as an ugly duckling
have a negative impact on me? I don’t think so. If anything, they made me who I
am. I learnt that people are shallow, and looks are transient. They’re nice to
have, but if I make it to my old age, I’d much rather have interesting stories
to tell than a albums of faded beauty.
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