Business gazeteer

Published on Wednesday 7 November 2007 00:14

KILLER QUOTE

WE HAVE borrowed an awful lot of money and now the bill is coming to us. I think we are definitely in for a slowdown that I think will be a bigger slowdown than [Fed chairman Ben] Bernanke is seeing."

Billionaire investor George Soros, on the credit crunch and the state of the US economy.

RECIPE FOR FAILURE

Web of dissent around tourism

A RESOUNDING "I told you so" from the Association of Dumfries and Galloway Accommodation Providers (ADGAP) on the bleeding of more red ink by eTourism Ltd, the public-private partnership behind Scotland's national shop window - Visitscotland.com.

Despite clear promises and assertions, new figures for 2006 show the website incurring total pre-tax losses of 3.43 million, up from 2.02m in 2005. According to ADGAP, which insists that the website is unfairly subsidised and user-unfriendly (see www.reclaimvs.com) the game is surely up. It argues: "More important than our being proved right is the damage to Scotland's tourism. In a sense, the abject commercial failure of the booking system is irrelevant, what hurts is the failure to market Scotland properly. Sooner or later there will be a realisation that eTourism is a barrier to growth, not the solution."

That date has not yet arrived for VisitScotland, which insists that its web partner "continues to evolve to meet visitor and industry needs. We believe it's moving in the right direction." Except financially, it would seem.

FACT OF THE DAY

$600bn

NORWAY'S oil fund, which invests the country's fossil fuel wealth, is expected to grow to $600 billion (290bn) in four to five years from $350bn currently, according to the country's central bank governor Svein Gjedrem. The Government Pension Fund - Global, commonly known as the oil fund and charged with investing Norway's oil-and-gas revenues for future generations, is one of the world's biggest pension funds and has expanded rapidly in the past few years as oil prices rallied to record levels.

BAD DAY

Mattel

THE toymaker has recalled 155,000 of its products made in Mexico over safety concerns. An EU official confirmed that around 17,000 items had been recalled in Europe due to concerns that small pieces could detach from the toys and cause children to choke.

GOOD DAY

Car dealers

SCOTTISH new-car sales accelerated last month and are now on track to exceed last year on an annual basis. Figures from the Scottish Motor Trade Association show 13,789 new registrations in October, a 14.8 per cent rise on the same month last year.