ATS started life in 1996 by plugging a hole in the market. A Canadian minerals company working in Ghana and other African countries found it impossible to get the support it needed at its remote sites – like an army, an exploration company marches on its stomach. It hired an experienced facilities manager Jez Simms to meet its immediate needs, with such success that the unit quickly grew into an entity in its own right, taking its first outside contract in 1997.

Approximately 65 kilometres away from Santiago, in the Metropolitan Region, and 3,500 metres above sea level, one will find the Los Bronces division of Anglo American. Managed by a team of executives, the head of which is General Manager, Christian Thiele, the Los Bronces division boasts a workforce of more than 1,700 people, including company employees and operation and project contractors. Collectively they are responsible for implementing the Los Bronces Development Project, the objective of which is to boost the mine's production capacity.

When asked to explain just how important North Sea oil and gas remains, it doesn’t take Malcolm Webb, chief executive of Oil & Gas UK, very long to respond with what I think you will agree is a pretty conclusive response. “Today the UK is reliant on oil and gas for approximately 73 percent of its primary energy supply.”

According to a recent study by security firm McAfee and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIC), The Economic Impact of Cyber Crime and Cyber Espionage the USA, the world's largest economy, loses about £65bn from cybercrimes every year including loss of key business data and intellectual property. The report also states that cybercrime costs the global economy $500bn annually and is a main contributor for dragging down economic growth across the world.

From an investment perspective, are there particular global trends, the high level of demand for gold in the Middle East and Asia at present for example, that give you encouragement for future growth in Africa’s mining sector?
The thing about gold that you have to remember is that there is actually very little physical gold around the world today. That is why in India, for example, gold is currently trading for around $1,600 an ounce.

A survey conducted by market research firm IDC shows that 1.004 billion devices were delivered to customers during the course of the year, a 38.4 percent increase on 2012’s results. This means that smartphones made up considerably more than half of the 1.8 billion phones sold in total.

One of my clients was recently honored as the “Supplier of the Year” by one of their major customers, a relationship that was barely four years old. In discussing this achievement, a senior executive from the supplier organization cited famed artist Andy Warhol’s observation that “In the future, everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes”. This executive’s comments were insightful along several dimensions:

Of all the economies in Africa that are waking up to the resources they are blessed with, Tanzania stands out for several reasons. Not least among these must be its stability. Though it has never been a rich country, since independence in 1962 it has hardly ever been in the news. Turbulent decades have attracted the wrong type of attention to every one of Tanzania’s neighbours: cross-border conflict, inter-ethnic tension and population displacement have too frequently characterised the post colonial era.