I think it is fair to say that Julie Shuttleworth recognises a great mining development when she sees one. For 13 years Shuttleworth was a part of Barrick Gold, working at various sites in Tanzania and at its Granny Smith mine in Western Australia where, in her role as general manager, she led a team of around 700 people.

Beginning life in the early 1960s as a general contractor for medium to large scale projects occurring within Greek territory, AKTOR would go on to expand rapidly during the subsequent decades making it one of the leading players in the Greek construction sector by the mid-1990s.

Aggreko was founded in the Netherlands in the early 1960s to provide temporary power generation to local companies. In 1973 it moved to the UK, establishing its headquarters at Dumbarton in Scotland, the first step in an expansion programme that has brought it to where it is today, present in 47 countries and employing around 6,000 people. The London Stock Exchange-listed company, a member of the FTSE-100 index, provides power and temperature control solutions to customers who need them either very quickly, or for a short or indeterminate length of time.

First coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs, the acronym BRIC, referring to the countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, is today an almost universally recognised entry in the economic dictionary. While the fact that the four countries account for over a quarter of the world’s land mass and are home to more than 40 percent of the world’s population cannot be denied, projections of the future power of the BRIC nations have always differed widely.

The development, which will be located in the Outer Moray Firth, will include the construction of two neighbouring projects, one headed up by Moray Offshore Renewables Limited and the other by Beatrice Offshore Windfarm Limited. The combined development will involve a total of 326 turbines, making it the world’s third biggest offshore wind farm, one capable of generating electricity for more than one million homes. It is estimated that at the peak of construction of the turbines the project could provide work for up to 4,600 people.

Political uncertainty and the serious lack of infrastructure development have gone hand in hand to hold back the development of mineral resources in the DRC. We frequently cover gold mining projects in both West and East Africa that have been in development since the mid 1980s, however though it's among the richest natural resource countries in Africa, the DRC seems to have lagged badly.

Innovation has always been essential for any organisation wanting to grow. The importance of sustained innovation however, has been less widely recognised up until recently, but is taking on more significance as a result of two key factors.

Vodafone will pay €7.2 euros to acquire the private equity-owned business which offers cable TV and internet services to its more than 1.9 million Spanish customers.

This latest move furthers Vodafone’s expressed plan to spend up to £25 billion of the £84 billion generated from the sale of its stake in Verizon Wireless on investment in core European networks. It also comes six months after the company purchased a controlling stake in German cable operator Kabel.