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The Sun King gets a licence to gild his ... Gold plummets as Switzerland jumps ship... Stals comes out smelling of rose... Stealing the show with icons of the mode... British investors give SA airship compan... |
THE WEEK AHEADMONDAY: Cosatu and the ANC government are putting up a united front today when Parliament starts its hearings on the planned Basic Conditions of Employment Bill. Cosatu abandoned a two-day strike after achieving certain compromises in a meeting with the ANC last week. Cosatu wants to tighten the conditions of the Bill by introducing longer paid maternity leave and a statutory 40-hour working week. Employers, on the other hand, have criticised the Bill, arguing that it entrenches worker rights and will severely stifle job creation. The government wants to pass the Bill before the summer recess next week. TUESDAY: The Reserve Bank is this week expected to distribute a discussion document to the banking community dealing with new and more flexible account accommodation procedures between the Bank and commercial banks. The main thrust of the proposals is a new upgraded national payment system, extension of the minimum cash reserve accounts held by banks and opening up market-making in government bonds to private-sector institutions. WEDNESDAY: Information technology group Dimension Data today releases its year-end results for the 12 months to end-September 1997. Judging from its recent share-price performance, the results are likely to come in at the high end of analysts' expectations. The group's share price has achieved annual compound growth of more than 100% over five years. Its recent acquisition of Australian IT group Datacraft should give the company significant upward potential in the new financial year. THURSDAY: The government's much-vaunted jobs summit to find new solutions to the country's unemployment problem is unlikely to see the light this year. Nedlac's management committee is set to meet this week to prepare the agenda for a summit now scheduled for early next year. It is unlikely that the summit will ever get off the ground with the main players, business and labour, miles apart on their views on how to boost employment growth. Business says the solution is a more flexible labour market whereas the union is seeking government intervention and greater distribution of resources. FRIDAY: The Life Offices Association - the umbrella body for the life insurance industry - has adopted a new set of self-imposed regulations for insurance sales people to give better protection to investors. The regulations become effective from tomorrow. The main thrust is to force sales people to provide investors with more information than is available at present. Investors will also have to be informed when changes are made to the product. The regulations relate only to life insurance and not investment products.
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