The Hussey family, owners of the Terra Nova hotel in Kingston, broke ground on Tuesday on the construction of a $7-billion complex called ‘The Residences’, to be developed on lands adjoining the hotel at Waterloo Road. The 14-storey development,...
Business process outsourcing operator Concentrix is on a drive to hire 1,000 persons over six months, which the company said would serve to double its Jamaican operations. The positions to be filled include customer service agents, as well as...
Port company Kingston Wharves Limited, KW, invested $800 million in its terminal operations between January and March, four times more than the funds spent in the similar period a year ago. The expenditure included the acquisition of a new crane...
• The two resort-based pharmacies operated by Fontana Limited are lagging the other four in the chain, due to the downturn in tourism. The Montego Bay and Ocho Rios pharmacies are expected to bounce back, however, once the tourism market recovers,...
The OPEC oil cartel and allied producing countries have confirmed plans to return 2.1 million barrels of crude per day of oil output, balancing fears that continuing COVID-19 outbreaks in some countries will sap demand against rising demand from...
Brazil’s economy grew more than expected in the first quarter of 2021, continuing its rebound from pandemic recession as many declined to hunker down amid COVID-19’s brutal second wave. Latin America’s largest economy grew 1.2 per cent from the...
With favourable winds and high equipment availability, Wigton Windfarm Limited breezed past its 2020 profit performance, topping the $664 million earned last year by nearly 19 per cent. The improvement came despite third quarter wind-availability...
India’s economy, pummelled by the coronavirus pandemic, contracted by 7.3 per cent in the 2020-21 financial year, just before the country was hit by another catastrophic surge in infections. The economy grew at a 1.6 per cent annual rate in the...
Various food and meat producers have announced price increases in recent weeks, but one of Jamaica’s largest manufacturers, Grace Foods, says it is exploring various means to minimise the pass-through of prices to consumers. Production costs have...
Sometime in the next 12 months, when the pandemic is fully brought under control in North America and Europe, visitors will return to the Caribbean in significant numbers. Once that begins to happen, governments, conscious of tourism’s ability to...
How do you craft a strategic plan for a group of companies? Why do so many efforts end up with nothing more than last-year’s-plan-plus-5%? Discard this path of least resistance if you hope to capitalise on COVID opportunities. Conglomerates are, in...
QUESTION: Why does a will take so long to probate? – Margaret FINANCIAL ADVISER: How long it takes to get a grant of probate for a will depends on the executor, the attorney-at-law handling the matter and the court. Under Jamaican law, no...
Today’s article, even though it was conceived last November, is the by-product of a piece that I wrote in this newspaper 11 years ago titled ‘Many Dangers Lurking in Cyberspace – Managing the Threats’. As one of 28 people worldwide to hold the four...
Victoria Mutual Group, VM, is gunning for one million members by 2025, which would triple its current base, as part of a wider programme to transform and grow the 143-year-old institution and its markets. The group’s ambitions were laid out to...
The Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) Combined Index declined on Friday with an advance/decline ratio of 38/50. The index advanced by 1,040.94 points or 0.25 per cent to close at 424,190.62. The JSE Main Market Index advanced by 754.27 points or 0.18...
Gordon Baldie’s plan to build out a car parts remanufacturing and recycling operation in western Jamaica at a cost of just over US$18 million, or about $2.7 billion, won him the Jamaica Stock Exchange pitch competition in 2018. Since then, the...
GraceKennedy Financial Group Limited, GKFG, is in discussions with a business that for now is only being described as a “large operator in the Caribbean”, as a potential partner in Scotia Insurance Eastern Caribbean Limited, SIECL, a new...
The Marshall Plan was one of the most successful foreign-policy initiatives devised by the United States. It was a $12-billion programme meant to rebuild Europe following the devastation of World War II. Members of the Roosevelt administration...
Ford Motor Company expects 40 per cent of its global sales to be battery-electric vehicles by 2030 as it adds billions to what it’s spending to develop them. The automaker said in a presentation for investors on Wednesday that it will add about US$...
American pipeline operators will be required for the first time to conduct a cybersecurity assessment under a Biden administration directive in response to the ransomware hack that disrupted gas supplies in several states this month. The United...
After the most severe global recession in decades, private and official forecasters are increasingly optimistic that world output will recover strongly this year and thereafter. But the coming expansion will be unevenly distributed, both across...
Victoria Mutual Investments Limited, VMIL, is awaiting guidance from financial regulators to determine whether it can provide an avenue for its clients to trade cryptocurrencies, which it views as an emerging asset class. Both the Bank of Jamaica...
The pandemic-induced shift towards digital transactions has resulted in a dramatic decline in the usage of cheque to pay for goods and services for the first two months of this year, to nearly half the levels of previous periods. The decline...
Jamaica dropped to third spot in the Playa group, having been overtaken by Dominican Republic in the first quarter of 2021. After disposing of two resorts in Jamaica amid the pandemic, revenue from that market for Playa Hotels...
