Scottish football & the credit crunch

BBC Scotland presented three little programmes on the effect of the credit crunch on Scottish football. Each is only about 2 minutes long and covers the effects on football itself, transfers and fans.

Like any business right now, it is vital that Scottish football balances it's incomings and outgoings. 81% of chairmen in Scotland said the economic situation was having an effect and 69% said it was their priority to keep banks and sponsors happy. 52% of clubs are looking to cut wages although most believe that will have no effect on the quality of football on show. This is going to be vital as attendances have already dropped by 5% with a further drop expected - less fans equals less incoming money and therefore more cuts. A worrying situation!

Football & the credit crunch http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/scotland/7951565.stm

Transfers & the credit crunch http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/scotland/7951569.stm

Fans & the credit crunch http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/scotland/7955422.stm

The Apprentice - Anita first to go!

Anita became the first candidate to be fired from this years The Apprentice. Both teams were given the task of making as much money as they could from cleaning - it was up to them how and where. They were given a budget of up to £200 to spend on cleaning equipment to help them with the task. Sir Alan wasn't very happy with the girls group who used up nearly all of their budgets so had costs of £196 before they even started making money. He was particularly annoyed that they thought being inside the £200 was a success! His overall view was that the team had shown poor business planning and Anita was booted off for showing none of the business skills she claimed to have. 

S1 Administration Taster Lessons

With the S1 Options approaching, we organised Administration Taster lessons for all 13 of the S1 classes. We talked them through what skills they would learn during the S2 course, what pathway they could follow through school and gave them an idea of the types of job where the skills would be useful.

The classes were all given a task of producing a presentation on a capital city - they had to use the internet to research 3 places to see or things to do, a place to stay and a place to eat in the city. They then had to use MS Powerpoint to create their presentation. And all of this had to be done in 25-30 minutes!

To see many of the Powerpoint presentations the pupils produced, click on the Pupil Work link on the menu on the right. Please feel free to leave any comments about presentations you particularly like. 

Billionaires hit by economic crisis!

The economic crisis has hit the world's richest people hard with only 793 people now able to appear on Forbes Magazine's "rich list" of world billionaires. 332 names were wiped off the list! Only 44 people in the list managed to increase their money compared with 656 who lost money. Interestingly, 9 of the top 20 in the rich list made money from discount retailing, including Karl Albrecht, the german owner of Aldi supermarkets. 

The top 5 were:

• Bill Gates (US) Software $40 billion
  
• Warren Buffet (US) Investments $37 billion 
  
• Carlos Slim Helu & Family (Mexico)$35 billion
  
• Lawrence Ellison (US) Software $22.5 billion
  
• Ingvar Kamprad & Family (Sweden) Retail $22 billion
  

Top "Billionaire Cities"

• 55 billionaires - New York
  
• 27 billionaires - London
  
• 27 billionaires - Moscow

Article on Celebrity Endorsement

I have posted an article on Nestle's use of celebrity endorsement and marketing for it's Nespresso product on the Higher Business Management page. This is well worth a look for anyone studying Business Management. 

Girl sacked for comments on Facebook

A girl was sacked from a marketing company for comments she posted on her Facebook site about the job. She wrote on her site that her job was "boring" and although she never mentioned her employers by name, she was called into the office and sacked for the comments made on a public site. As you probably know, you can only read someone's comments if you have signed up as one of their official Facebook friends. In this case, she had asked her new colleagues to sign up. It was them that reported her! 

Because she had only been in the job 3 weeks, she couldn't claim unfair dismissal. Lawyers talking about the case have said that employees should take note - if you "slag off" your employer outside the workplace, there will be consequences and that could include dismissal. 

Business update......

The current economic downturn shows no signs of improving and each day seems to bring another business related news story. Here are some "highlights" from the last week.....

• RBS announced a record UK loss of £24.1bn
  

• HBOS announce pre-tax losses of £10.8bn in 2008
  

• Lloyds TSB's 2008 profits fell by 80% to £807m.
  

• Mosaic, which owns Oasis, Karen Millen, Warehouse and Coast, has gone into administration. All of these brands have been sold to their main creditor but Principles and the Shoe Studio remain in administration, which could affect 4,200 jobs.
  

There are many more business stories and I recommend you keep following the BBC Business News website.  It really helps to see the stuff we do in class in real life situations. 

Top 10 Most Embarrassing Celebrity Endorsements?

The Observer published a list of the Top 10 Most Embarrassing Sporting Celebrity Endorsements in their Sports Monthly magazine. It is well worth a look for anyone studying Business Management as this is an area we cover in Marketing. I have linked a few of the Youtube videos on the Higher Business Management page of the blog. 

As I said, this is an area which comes up in the Marketing section of Business Management and you are often asked to look at the advantages and disadvantages of using a celebrity to promote your product. Hopefully some of these endorsements the Observer has chosen will help you.