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In the West Bank, everyone calls him ‘The Godfather’ or ‘The Duke of Nablus’ – Munib al-Masri, 79, is the richest Palestinian, the patriarch of a prominent Palestinian family that has produced bankers, consultants and politicians, and also one of the most influential.…

THE GASIFICATION market in the UK, using waste or biomass to produce clean energy is ready to take off, experts say, especially when mega-projects under construction start operations, and local authorities could reap some serious financial benefits.

Advanced thermal gasification, as opposed to burning waste in an incinerator to produce energy, is “clean, safe, very efficient, and being of a moderate scale is acceptable to local communities, because nobody wants a huge incinerator in their back yard,” George Willacy, the chairman of Refgas Ltd, a Flintshire-based specialist in gasification fuelled by waste and biomass told Utility Week.…

One of the many dispiriting elements of the Stafford Hospital scandal over poor patient care was a lack of leadership and allegations about a culture encouraging the bullying of nurses. But the Stafford episode is just a reflection of what can be found “all over the NHS [National Health Service],” according to Julie Bailey, the founder of the ‘Cure the NHS’ initiative that campaigns for accountability in Britain’s health sector.…

IT is said that should the ravens that live in the Tower of London fly away, then the British monarchy will fall. What does this say, then about Canada’s own political talisman – the stray cats of Parliament Hill? For these indomitable semi-feral mousers, for decades parliament’s unpaid rat catchers – were given their marching orders this winter.…

JUST as the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) was launching its consultation on the draft International Integrated Reporting Framework in London, the European Commission was pushing in Brussels for large companies to disclose information on social and environmental matters.

The European Union’s internal market Commissioner Michel Barnier tabled on April 16 an amendment to the EU’s fourth (78/660/EEC) and seventh (83/349/EEC) directives on annual and consolidated accounts.…

SUCCESSION issues are a significant and growing challenge for companies and could be an opportunity for qualified accountants who may step up internally or be drafted in to even become the next CEO or CFO.

“Many businesses spend very little time, if any, thinking through who will lead the various aspects of their business in the future,” said Karen Young, a director for the senior finance section of global recruitment experts Hays, and whose remit includes qualified accountancy jobs including finance director, financial controller, management accountant, financial accountant, or practice accounting.…

IT seems for all the world like the setting for a Graham Greene novel: a British-trained chartered accountant in charge of an almost unfathomably wealthy state-owned holding corporation in a distant outpost.

Yet Greene would barely recognise the 21st century context in which Our Man in Kazakhstan operates.…

A SLOW revolution in the use of biomass for firing or co-firing power generation is picking up pace this year as a number of competing technologies for the production of ‘biocoal’ move more convincingly towards full commercialisation.

Biocoal produced through torrefaction – in which dry biomass such as wood, paper, food waste and even sewerage waste is slow-heated anoxically (to avoid combustion) at 200C to 300C to reduce moisture and drive off low-energy volatile chemicals – offers slightly degraded fuel with lower emissions and carbon footprints (it is carbon neutral) than traditional biomass and, certainly, than coal.…

TO listen to opposing sides in a polarised debate, February 14, 2013, could go down in European business history as a St Valentine’s Day Massacre of Europe’s capital markets or as the start of a beautiful love affair with regulation that could help to prevent speculative trading turning boom to bust.…

MAJOR companies within the European Union (EU) suffering from major cybercrime attacks will have to inform regulators under a proposed EU directive on network and information security. If the legislation is approved by the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers, it would assign that duty to operators of critical infrastructure in the financial, transport, energy and health sectors; IT services, such as app stores, e-commerce platforms, internet payment systems, cloud computing companies, search engines and social network; plus public administrations.…