Coca-Cola to buy Costa coffee chain for £3.9bn

Coca-Cola is to buy Costa coffee from its UK owner Whitbread for £3.9billion ( $5.1bn. Whitbread shares leapt forward 18 per cent after it unveiled a deal to sell its Costa Coffee chain to Coca-Cola including debt. The sale marks the end of Whitbread’s 23-year ownership of Costa, which the Group bought for £19million  when…

Uber’s elevate shortlists five countries

U ber has shortlisted five countries including Australia, France, India, Brazil and Japan that could be home to the first international Uber Air City within the next five years. Uber Elevate, the ride-hailing platform’s aerial taxi arm announced the shortlisted countries at the first “Uber Elevate Asia Pacific Expo” in Tokyo. Uber will choose one…

Ermenegildo |enga buys Thom Browne label

Italian men’s luxury group Ermenegildo Zenga has agreed to buy 85 per cent of US luxury lable Thom Browne from Sandbridge Capital for $500m. The Milan based family owned company by acquiring Thom Browne, a $1.2bn business built on traditional menswear, brings men’s suite for younger generation. Gildo Zenga, CEO of Ermenegildo Zenga said Thom…

Netflix global push to be overseen by Whetstone

Rachel Whetstone is  dumping Facebook for Netflix to run global communications for the streaming service, as it focuses on international markets that have become the source of most of its subscribers growth. The British Silicon Valley operator who had already worked in past at Uber and Google before moving to Facebook last year. Netflix is…

Warren Buffett to invest $300m in India’s Paytm

India’s largest mobile payments group, Paytm is to get $300m investment from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. The investment in One97 Communications signals Mr Buffett growing more comfortable with new technology and payments companies through Berkshire’s holdings in Apple and Visa. Paytm founded by a 40-year-old, Indian entrepreneur Vijay Shekhar Sharma, ranked as India’s youngest billionaire…

London Notting Hill Carnival

Over a million revellers turned up at West London over the 59th edition of Bank Holiday Notting Hill Carnival, the world’s second biggest after Rio de Janeiro’s and the largest in Europe to watch Steel drums , dancers and Brazilian music. The London Notting Hill Carnival fell silent for 72 seconds to pay their respect…

Kerala floods 8000 cattle and 47 dogs killed

Several animal rescue help lines have been set up, and rescue teams are using WhatsApp and social media for instant emergency respond. “We are getting over 100 calls a day on our helpline. The number of animals rescued have been moved to higher ground” Anand Shiva of Kerala Animal Rescue. In Thrissur alone, rescue workers…

Eighty years of Russia through the prism of one family

Connor O’Clery, tells the story of the Soviet century-spanning Stalin to Putin era. Stanislav Suvorov, a bespoke shoemaker, had a full order book and a growing clientele, he had it all modern luxuries like Television, camera, Fridge but lived in the wrong country. In Europe or US, he would have been a Yuppie, upwardly mobile…

The big are getting bigger- Adam Smith

Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, clearly a fan of Adam Smith, gave a speech at the Edinburgh Book Festival, this week. His irritation with the rise of corporate power, oligopoly and monopoly which Smith was often concerned about. One of his quotes “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment…

Superstar welcome for Pontiff in the park

The Argentine Pontiff Pope Francis starts a two-day tour taking in a global Catholic Congress tonight at Ireland Cork Park’s 80,000-seat Dublin Stadium with an outdoor mass tomorrow at Phoenix Park, that is expected to draw half a million pilgrims. Superstars like Mick Jagger and Taylor Swift performed here in May and June 2018, respectively. Ireland’s…