The deal with Tango, which boasts 200 million users, forms part of Alibaba’s hopes to strengthen its presence in the mobile-messaging sector. Its move follows last months’ acquisition of one of the biggest players in the sector, WhatsApp, by Facebook in a deal valued at $19 billion.

"The sheer power of free communication has changed the way we connect with others," Uri Raz and Eric Setton, founders of Tango said in a blog post. "Today, the amount of texting from over-the-top messaging apps surpasses carrier SMS."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer confirmed that industry groups' lobbying for increased support to help them cope with the impact of carbon taxes and clean energy subsidy schemes on energy bills had paid off. "We need to cut our energy costs," said George Osborne. "We're going to do this by investing in new sources of energy: new nuclear power, renewables, and a shale gas revolution... But above all we are going to have a £7 billion package to cut energy bills for British manufacturers - with benefits for families and other businesses too."

Located to the east of the Dominican Republic and to the west of the Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is renowned for its exotic locations, white sandy beaches, mountains, valleys and various natural splendours. Classified by the World Bank as a high income economy and as the most competitive economy in Latin America by the World Economic Forum, it also boasts the highest GDP per capita of any other nation in the Caribbean.

One of the select few oil companies in the world to operate through the length and breadth of the industry, from exploration and distribution through to the commercialization of the end products, Petroleos Mexicanos, or PEMEX as it is better known, is Mexico’s biggest enterprise, the largest taxpayer in the country and one of Latin America’s largest companies.

Having previously worked as a professional exploration geologist in Eastern Europe, Australia, and Central and Southern Africa for a number of leading mining and exploration companies, including Tesla, KGHM, Rio Tinto and Caledonia, it was in 1999 that Julian D. Green founded GeoQuest.

I think it is fair to say that Julie Shuttleworth recognises a great mining development when she sees one. For 13 years Shuttleworth was a part of Barrick Gold, working at various sites in Tanzania and at its Granny Smith mine in Western Australia where, in her role as general manager, she led a team of around 700 people.

Beginning life in the early 1960s as a general contractor for medium to large scale projects occurring within Greek territory, AKTOR would go on to expand rapidly during the subsequent decades making it one of the leading players in the Greek construction sector by the mid-1990s.

Aggreko was founded in the Netherlands in the early 1960s to provide temporary power generation to local companies. In 1973 it moved to the UK, establishing its headquarters at Dumbarton in Scotland, the first step in an expansion programme that has brought it to where it is today, present in 47 countries and employing around 6,000 people. The London Stock Exchange-listed company, a member of the FTSE-100 index, provides power and temperature control solutions to customers who need them either very quickly, or for a short or indeterminate length of time.

First coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs, the acronym BRIC, referring to the countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, is today an almost universally recognised entry in the economic dictionary. While the fact that the four countries account for over a quarter of the world’s land mass and are home to more than 40 percent of the world’s population cannot be denied, projections of the future power of the BRIC nations have always differed widely.

The development, which will be located in the Outer Moray Firth, will include the construction of two neighbouring projects, one headed up by Moray Offshore Renewables Limited and the other by Beatrice Offshore Windfarm Limited. The combined development will involve a total of 326 turbines, making it the world’s third biggest offshore wind farm, one capable of generating electricity for more than one million homes. It is estimated that at the peak of construction of the turbines the project could provide work for up to 4,600 people.