The goldfish is swimming happily in the fishbowl. The smell of hyacinth is inebriating. And every biscuit tin in the house is overflowing with nana-made goodies. Every year, in the third week of March, Iranian families around the world get together and celebrate Noruz ("New Day"), welcoming in the New Year. Iranians love to host and spoil guests, but many will have to cut back on the excesses associated with Noruz this year. The EIU estimates a 27% inflation rate in 2012, and it forecasts an increase to 28% in 2013. There is no better indicator of how hard Iranians are feeling the pinch...

Many of the Chinese companies listed on the German Stock Exchange in Frankfurt continue to trade below their issue price. A lack of trust in these companies and those listed on other western exchanges has persisted since the Sino-Forest affair. This is notwithstanding strong growth and high profits. Yet recent news indicates that this could change soon.A quick recap for those who have been able to forget Sino-Forest: great uproar surrounded the Toronto-listed Chinese company in June 2011 when Muddy Waters implied that its IPO was orchestrated as a fraud right from the very beginning. Among...

Asia’s growing competitiveness and its relative resilience have been an important support to the nascent recovery in the global economy argues Ramesh Venkataraman, Senior Partner and Head of Direct Investments at Samena CapitalIt strikes me that Asia competes on four important dimensions, all of which I have seen in action on a recent business trip across the continent.Firstly, Asia is innovative. In Bangalore I met a company that is second only to Google in mobile advertising, employing 1,000 people in 37 countries and attracting strong interest from the likes of Samsung, Facebook and...

Seven billion people speak seven thousand languages. The world is a noisy place and so we struggle to overcome a persistent obstacle: understanding each other. Around the world, more people are interacting, sharing, cooperating, and trading than ever before. Thanks to the surge in developing countries’ growth relative to the developed world, this interchange is accelerating. Companies and institutions hoping to compete across borders need staff who can do more than ace a language exam. They need intrepid employees armed with both cultural and linguistic skills to navigate a new territory....