In response to Tina Tsai’s Snapchat Rejects $3 Billion In Cash Blog I would say Spiegel definitely  took a gamble by turning down Facebook’s offer. The IPO market is always unpredictable and could turn south before Snapchat goes public. Notoriously fickle teenagers may move on to the next “cool thing” before Snapchat can go public or gets another $3 billion offer.
As of right now Spiegel knows that he has a growing audience of teenagers that Facebook desperately, and increasingly, wants. He’s banking on that audience getting much bigger and more valuable.While $3 billion is a lot of money, Speigel may figure he can hold out and make a lot more just like Twitter’s recent IPO.

Source
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2013/11/14/maybe-snapchat-is-crazy-to-turn-down-3b-but-was-facebook-nuts-to-offer-it/

In my opinion college, regardless of the cost is very important. In Zilue (Sunny) Zheng’s Blog- College: Is It A Good Investment?, he does come to the conclusion that “a bachelor degree will strengthen job prospects” and i completely agree. If we are looking at college like an investment then I believe compared to other investments(stocks, bonds etc.)it  pays off the most in future returns, thanks to the earnings advantage you can see above.

Like any investment, the benefits from college are unknown and even risky. Some college students wind up at Goldman Sachs or Google and others wind up with $100,000 in debt and unemployed. Whether college is right (and what college is right) for every 18-year old like Sunny and I is not knowable. Whether college is failing as an institution is knowable — and it’s not

Source
http://www.hamiltonproject.org/images/uploads/thp_image_uploads/charts/EarningsEmployment.JPG

French professors Karan Girotra and Serguei Netessine have recently blogged about Amazon constantly editing their business model in the Harvard Business Review.
They basically explain how amazon went from a  “sell all, carry few” company to “sell all, carry a lot” one. They only had a handful of warehouses at the time but now due to growing demand they are about to spend 14 billion dollars to build about 50 warehousing facilities and take on the challenge of  “same day delivery” within the USA.

What I really liked about the blog is that how smart businesses like Amazon.com develop ways of constantly questioning what they do and they reconstruct their business model based on a regular basis as if it has an expiry date. Amazon teaches us that a company can’t afford to sentimentalize the icons of its past: it needs to be disciplined about challenging and breaking its existing business models.

Source

http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/11/amazon-constantly-audits-its-business-model/

Earlier this year British Airways signed a contract to replace their previously used Boeing 747 model with the A380 airbus jumbo-jets.

Airbus claims that the giant planes, with an upper deck six feet wider than the Boeing 747s they will replace, will each save the airline £100m in fuel costs over their lifetimes. The fuel bill for one long-haul flight runs into six figures and the A380 is said to be 16% more efficient. More significantly for those under the flightpath, the A380’s “noise footprint” on landing at Heathrow – the area greatly affected by noise disturbance – is claimed to be a quarter of that of a 747.

All BA’s A380s will be powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines built at Derby which means up to 40 per cent of the value near £300million cost of each super jumbo – or around £120million –  is ‘British made’. Airbus said that over its lifetime of the A380 plane will contribute £15billion to the UK economy with the Rolls-Royce engines adding another £11billion.

Sources

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jul/04/british-airways-airbus-a380-heathrow

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2355472/British-Airways-takes-delivery-new-270m-Airbus-A380.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9nq2QCU18E

Tesla Motor Inc.’s all-electric Model S became the top-selling car in Norway last month, with drivers in the country of 5 million people paying a premium to buy the award-winning luxury car second-hand to avoid having to wait five months for a new one, dealers said on Tuesday.The high performance Tesla S, which went on sale in Europe in August, had a market share in Norway of 5.1 per cent last month, pushing the conventionally-powered Volkswagen Golf into second place with 4.6 per cent, according to the latest official figures. Some drivers in Norway are now willing to pay as much as $20,000 extra to get the new Model S from existing owners.

Norway’s favouritism towards eco-friendly vehicles is evident in its exemption of electric cars from tolls and their access to bus lanes in the capital Oslo. In this way, the country, which ironically owes much of its tremendous wealth to oil exportation, has created incentives to increase the demand for eco-cars in ways that other countries cannot afford to.

Sources

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/new-cars/auto-news/teslas-110000-model-s-is-now-norways-best-selling-car/article14739655/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2012/07/11/why-tesla-is-beating-gm-ford-and-toyota-at-electric-cars/2/

Kenya’s economy has seen steady growth since 2002, averaging between 4 and 5 percent per year, according to the World Bank. Kenya’s economy briefly slowed down during the 2008 global economic downturn, but recovered quickly. The country’s economy was expected to grow nearly 6 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, and the Nairobi Stock Exchange is up 21 percent in the last 12 months. But in light of recent events it is about to drop substantially.

A significant percent of Kenya’s economy relies on tourists, who travel thousands of miles to go on safari through Kenya’s Great Rift Valley and other wildlife reserves. Approximately 1.8 million tourists visited Kenya in 2011, primarily from Europe and the United States, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. Tourism from China and India has also grown in recent years. It is not clear how the attack in Nairobi will impact the country’s economic prospects, at least in the near term but  Economist and local business owners fear that Kenya’s political instability will horrifically impact the economy and cause the number of tourists visiting to drop by 30% from its statistic of 1.8 million tourists in 2011. Not only will this adversely impact the country’s GDP and the success of businesses directed to tourism but the standard of living in Nairobi..

Sources
http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/04/westgate-mall-attacks-kenya-terror#part-two

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/attack-kenyas-economic-future-was-bright

Apple have always set themselves apart from their competitors and have always stood out in the exponentially increasing tech market because of their innovative abilities. As always Apple has outdone themselves again by announcing two different IPhone concepts at the same time.
The 5C has been introduced to customers as a more affordable option and starts from $599 while the 5S starts at $719. Even though the 5S has way more internal advantages, the 5C’s cheaper and more colourful options appeal to more buyers.

Blackberry is regarded as a financial basket case now days due to its lack of innovation and inability to compete in today’s digital economy. However Fairfax Holdings Limited is willing to bale Blackberry out in a $4.7 million deal. Apple made nearly double in its opening week for its new iPhones. Once a powerhouse in the tech market, Blackberry is barely making ends meet. Apple is generating more revenue in one weekend than what all of blackberry will sell for.

Sources:
http://allthingsd.com/20131007/these-iphone-5c-price-cuts-are-coming-dangerously-close-to-a-trend/
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-revenue-versus-blackberry-sale-price-2013-9
http://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/07/iphone-5s-tops-sales-charts-at-major-u-s-carriers-as-iphone-5c-and-galaxy-s4-battle-for-second/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamthierer/2012/04/01/bye-bye-blackberry-how-long-will-apple-last/

After filing for it’s long anticipated IPO, twitter is looking to raise $1 billion in this initial offering. Twitter have not set a fixed date as of yet, nor have they fixed a price for their shares. But after recent valuation of the shares at $20.62, it will turn some of their shareholders and founders into millionaires and billionaires when it debuts on the market.
Twitter will be offering up 472,613,753 shares of stock it’s initial release. It currently has 218.3 million monthly active users and the same users have created over 300 billion tweets. 200 billion tweets per day was the amount stated by twitter and 75% of those users access it from their mobile phones. An interesting contrast is that Facebook had no mobile revenues at all when it filed for IPO.
Although twitters’ IPO is not valued as highly as Facebook’s was but it has been a hotly anticipated event for some months now.
Sources
http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/03/twitter-files-for-1-billion-ipo-will-list-as-twtr/
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/twitter-ipo-falls-between-zynga-facebook-thompson-gLC4mELpTCSz3l9ZPTdb1w.html

This year Manchester United were finally removed from the throne as the “most valuable” team in the world by Real Madrid.
Manchester United have topped the list for as long as i can remember but they have finally fallen behind the Spanish club whose current value of $3.3 billion is the most of any sports team.
.Just in the past year Real Madrid have made a record revenue of $650 million. The Spanish side have reduced their debt by 27.4% and increased net profit by approximately $13 million.
Soccer fans all around the world have the same questions regarding Real Madrid, and that is how they manage to continue buying the world’s most expensive players and still remain one of the most valuable teams in the world. Real Madrid president, Florentino Perez believes that the big named stars will eventually pay their own way in merchandising sales. One example is that of Cristiano Ronaldo who was previously the most expensive player in the world and was bought for $130 million.But after signing Ronaldo, they made $145 million just in shirt sales. Perez has been proved right time and time again.

Sources:
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/real-madrid-overtake-manchester-united-to-top-the-forbes-most-valuable-sports-teams-list-8709822.html
http://www.forbes.com/teams/real-madrid/

On 24 April 2013, what is considered to be the greatest garment-factory accident occurred in the capital of Bangladesh killing 1129 people and injuring approximately 2515 people.
The building was called “Rana Plaza”  and it contained clothing factories, a bank, apartments, and several other shops. The factories had around 5000 employees and manufactured goods for a number of high end brands like Benneton, Primark, Mango and Walmart. Before the building collapsed, cracks had been discovered but they were ignored by the garments workers as ordered by Sohel Rana, the owner of Rana Plaza. The reason why the building collapsed was ultimately because of greed, later on reports suggested that the upper four floors were built without a permit and the structure was not strong enough to bear the weight of the heavy machinery.
After this incident, the Bangladesh Fire and Safety Accord a contract between the retailers and the trade unions in Bangladesh was made. It’s a legally binding, five-year pact that makes independent safety inspections of factories and public reporting on them mandatory.
Even though most of the high end clothing brands are taking a big approach to try and improve worker health and safety, this incident is a perfect example of how greed and incompetence can go against Business ethics.

Sources- http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rana-plaza-gap-worker-safety
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rana-plaza-gap-worker-safety