S2 Business Management - Revision Material

My S2 have an end of unit test coming up on Ownership. I have posted some revision material on the S2 Business Management page of the blog that you may find useful to help you with your studying.

Remember to see me if there are any areas you are unsure of!

S3 Business Management - The Make Your Mark School Challenge goes live

I have posted the brief for the Make Your Mark Challenge on the Intermediate Business Management page of the blog. Feel free to start coming up with ideas and researching information now to help you next week.

Best of luck!

Rangers - what is the story?

A colleague came up to me today and asked what the real implications are for Rangers in a business sense after all the media speculation over the last few days following comments by Walter Smith, the Rangers manager.

News has been circulating that the Lloyds Banking Group have taken over the running of Rangers having forced David Murray to step down, news rejected by David Murray's son. It seems either a new owner needs to be found or the bank will run the business in a way that minimises its debt. Newspapers have reported that Barry Ferguson's £1m sale and the removal of 10 fringe players from the wage bill came as a result of an audit conducted by Lloyds. There was even reluctance to give David Weir a one-year, pay-as-you-play contract! A couple of weeks ago a Lloyds employee, Donald Muir, was voted onto the club's board of director in a move which was seen to show a lack of confidence of the people currently at Ibrox. Muir will represent Lloyds on the board and is classed as a "business transformation specialist". He is likely to oversee a radical overhaul at Ibrox, something that Lloyds allegedly forced upon Rangers under threat of being put into administration.

So what of the future? It is difficult to say. It seems that the entire first team squad is available for sale should any offers come in and a new owner is being actively sought. Only a takeover is likely to prevent a mass sale of first team players and replacement by youth players. But Rangers lack many assets on the pitch who would generate meaningful income and there is a real shortage of people willing to invest in a football team in the current economic situation. This is particularly true when you consider Rangers opportunity to generate more income is restricted as they are in the Scottish Premier League with no real avenue of escape.

Rangers are almost 90% owned by Murray International Holdings whose most recent accounts showed a net debt of £760 million, £704 million of which is in the form of bank loans and £432 million payable within the next one or two years. With Lloyds owning around 10% of MIH and currently in the process of trying the prevent the government lifting its stake from 43% to 60%, they will be keen to reclaim the £30m borrowed by Rangers and to address the financial issues of MIH.

It seems odd that a team reportedly only £30 million in debt are in so much trouble when you compare it to the monumental debt of some English and European clubs. However, the unravelling of Rangers fortunes has been rapid and shocking. This is a club who for the last 20 years have paid top dollar for players in the form of salaries and transfer fees and have reaped the success on the domestic front. Those days of profligate spending look like coming home to roost and the one saving grace may be Lloyds awareness of the negative implications of forcing such an institution as Rangers into administration. That might be their only hope!

Rangers' Sale of the Century

Class Representatives

I attended a CPD session on evaluating curricular development after school last week and one of the ideas our working group came up with was the introduction of class representatives. As a result of this, my four classes at S2 and S3 level have each democratically elected 2 peers to represent them. I felt it was important to give the pupils the responsibility of electing the people involved rather than me selecting them.

The idea behind this is to develop a closer link between the pupils and myself in relation to learning and teaching in the classroom. If pupils within the class would prefer to learn in a different way (e.g. group work, pair work, reading, internet research) or are finding a specific area difficult and want further revision, they can speak to their representative confidentially who can raise the issue with me. If I am able to do something about it, I will and if not, I can provide feedback to the representative as to why not.

This is a pilot scheme and I hope it benefits the learning the pupils experience in my class.

Barclays buy Standard Life Bank

When I left university in 1999, my first job was in the call centre at Standard Life Bank, part of Edinburgh based life assurance company Standard Life. At that stage, the bank had only been open a year and exciting times were anticipated as the bank rapidly grew its mortgage and savings book with its telephone and internet based approach. However, the bank remains a minnow in the financial world with only 287,000 savings accounts and 78,000 mortgage accounts and Standard Life feel that in light of the recession, lending money to the bank doesn't fit with the long-term objectives of the company. As a result, they have sold the bank to Barclays, a world renowned bank with millions of customers, for in the region of £230 million and all 270 Standard Life Bank employees will transfer to Barclays. The Standard Life Bank brand will eventually be scrapped, with £8.8bn of mortgages moving into the Woolwich home loan side and the £5.5bn of savings moving into Barclays itself.

The end of an era.....

Britain still in a recession....

Hopes that the UK would come out of the recession were dashed today as the economy shrank by 0.4% between July and September. This is the first time the UK gross domestic product (GDP) has contracted for 6 consecutive quarters since records began. The service sector unexpectedly declined with catering and hotels doing particularly badly. Unlike Germany and France who still have manufacturing, the UK is heavily reliant on the service sector and financial services which may have been the reason the recession continues.

The gloomy economic news had an immediate effect on the exchange rate with the £ falling against the $. The UK may soon become the only major economy still in recession. It will also have a negative impact on Labour's hope of re-election as they hoped they would be able to show they were the party to lead the country out of the recession rather than the Conservatives.

Vocabulary

• GDP - the total amount of goods and services produced by a country
• Quarter - 3 monthly period e.g. July-September

My mortgage woes.....

I popped into the Royal Bank of Scotland on Saturday to enquire about whether they plan to reintroduce a 95% or 100% mortgage in the near future. Alas, the answer was a rather definite no. I spoke to one of the managers in the branch who told me that the days of lending that type of mortgage have gone, if not for ever than certainly for the forseeable future. He also explained that the maximum mortgage they would do on a house under 3 years old is 75% and they will no longer allow someone to make up the remaining part of the mortgage with a loan from a financial institution, something they were inclined to turn a blind eye to in the past.

Why do I tell you this, I hear you say?

Well, it is the "credit crunch" affecting the person on the street. Only a few years ago, someone like myself, with a decent, secure salary, would have been exactly the type of person a bank would be looking at. Multiples of salary of 4 or 5, even 6 or 7, were commonplace as people were encouraged to take out ever increasing mortgages to pay the ever increasing house prices. With the banking crash, all that has come to an end and despite the average house price tumbling to a much more reasonable level, the problem is that banks are imposing more stringent lending criteria.

Gordon Brown himself has stated that "never again should banks and credit card companies encourage you to borrow more than you can realistically afford to repay" and that "we need much tougher rules to make sure that high loan-to-value or high loan-to-income mortgages are offered only when the lender has done rigorous checks to ensure people can keep up repayments."

I suppose to get a deposit together, I have to return to the thing my parents and their parents had to do in days gone by.....save!

Watch out for the phisherman!

At least 30,000 names and passwords from email providers including Yahoo and AOL have been posted online, according to the BBC News. The list also included thousands of Microsoft Hotmail users.

The term "phishing" relates to the practice of using fake websites to lure people into revealing data such as bank accounts or log in names. This phishing scheme seems to have targeted the whole email industry.

Advice from experts is to be very careful when opening attachments or links from both known and unknown sources and to install and regularly update anti-virus software. People should also change their passwords regularly as getting access to one password enables someone to access lots of things - 40% of people in a survey were found to use the same password for every website.

Phishing attacks are getting more and more clever and fake websites have been set up to look like reputable companies, asking for users login details.

Technology threat to Estate Agents

My Higher Business Management and Intermediate Business Management classes are both currently looking at Business and ICT and this story from todays Sky Business provides a slight twist on what we have been studying. We have looked at the importance of ICT in businesses and the role it plays in developing markets, encouraging new and existing customers and cutting costs.

However, the National Association of Estate Agents today announced that due to the popularity of on-line property websites like Rightmove, the days of the high street estate agent may be numbered. In the last 2 years, one in four UK estate agents have closed down yet the online property market has seen a 35% growth and most homes on the market can now be found online.

TV presenter Sarah Beeny who presents property programmes has set up a free website to help homeowners sell their property without having to pay out the huge fees often associated with moving. She says that selling your house online can be quite straightforward.

Has the improvement in ICT changed the estate agent market for ever?

Watch carrots and cows live at Asda!

Er, not sure about this story. The Guardian reported today that Asda have set up a series of web cams in a show of corporate transparency to let us know what goes on behind the scenes.

You can watch carrots on conveyor belts, cows getting milked or the foyer at Asda House. Click on the link below if you are in anyway interested!

Asda Webcams