Another tale of “are they or aren’t they” emerged today in relation to a possible alliance of some kind between General Motors and PSA Peugeot Citroen.

It has been widely reported that the two car makers are talking to each other, and have been for some time, but at the time of writing neither company has confirmed this.

Against the backdrop of a very public revolution in Egypt, Procter & Gamble is quietly continuing to pursue its ongoing commitment to investment and growth, as Alan Swaby discovers.

Even if ‘Business management during periods of revolution’actually existed as a module in MBA programmes, it’s unlikely that many would ever have to put it into practice. Yet this is the very real situation that managers at Procter & Gamble (P&G) have had to face during the Egyptian chapter of the ongoing Arab Spring.

Agriculture in many parts of Africa is still struggling to fulfil its potential. Anup Modha, general manager of Tanzania-based Minjingu Mines & Fertiliser, explains how the company has been using environmentally friendly local resources to achieve food security and poverty reduction.

Tracy Bolton, who heads Microsoft South Africa’s Information Worker division, talks to Jayne Alverca about the group’s mission to optimise the user experience.

Going from heavy engineering to lightweight composite materials has changed the fortunes of one Australian company, as Alan Swaby discovers.

It’s not that the world is short of oil and gas. No, there is still plenty—but none of it is in readily accessible places any more. Deep water offshore drilling continues to find new reserves—but at depths of up to 3,500 metres or more, and you can imagine what 3.5 kilometres of steel tubing weighs.    

South African businesses are surprisingly well served with their computer needs and are often in the vanguard of what is new, as Alan Swaby learns.

When Y2K was looming down on businesses at the end of the century, no one was really sure if the whole house of cards would crumble or not. JJ Milner, founder and head of South Africa’s largest Microsoft hosting provider, felt that it wouldn’t; but he understood that his many clients preferred something more concrete to go on than just his gut instinct.

Over the past 42 years Avis has established an impressive average 38 per cent share of the South African car rentals market. Maintaining that position, however, requires continuous innovation and improvement, as chief executive Wayne Duvenage explains to Gay Sutton.

Shell Exploration & Production (Shell Bidco) has made an offer of £992.4 million for East Africa-focused Cove Energy.

UK-based Cove's primary asset is its 8.5 per cent stake in the Rovuma Offshore Area 1 in Mozambique, where operator Anadarko has found over 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The Rovuma offshore basin is a frontier exploration area, holding large resources of natural gas reserves suitable for LNG projects.

Wood Group PSN has been awarded a contract extension from Shell in the UK to deliver midstream engineering and construction services to the St Fergus and Mossmoran gas plants.

The £75 million, two-year contract is effective from April 2012 and includes an option for a further two-year extension. The award is a continuation of the previous contract awarded to Wood Group in 2007.