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The 10 Most Recommended Law Firm to Watch in 2021
The 10 Most Inspiring CEO’s to Watch in 2021
Gamestop to appoint Ryan Cohen as Chairman
According to the various reports, GameStop Corp, which has been the subject of a recent Reddit-fueled trading frenzy that it plans to elect activist investor Ryan Cohen as chairman, placing him in charge of the videogame retailer’s transformation. Since joining GameStop’s board of directors in January 2021, Chewy co-founder Cohen has pushed for the company’s transformation into an e-commerce powerhouse capable of competing with big-box stores like Target and technology giants and companies like Microsoft.
The reports also suggested that the company announced, six individuals, including Cohen, would be nominated for election to its board of directors at the company’s annual meeting of stockholders. In premarket trade, GameStop stock was up over 3%, breaking a three-day losing streak. The news comes after GameStop raised the valuation of the new stock it would sell from $100 million to around $1 billion on Monday, hoping to profit from a boom in its stock as a result of the Reddit-fueled rally.
Various reports also suggests that the GameStop stock has risen over 900 percent in extremely volatile trading as amateur investors mobilised on social networking platforms like Reddit staged a tenacious buying spree, defeating Wall Street hedge funds that had shorted the stock.
Moreover, Larry Cheng, co-founder and managing partner of investment company Volition Capital, and Yang Xu, senior vice president of global finance and treasury at the Kraft Heinz Co., are also on the board of directors. Kurtis Wolf resigned from GameStop’s board of directors, according to a regulatory filing. According to GameStop, his departure was not the result of any disagreements with the organisation about its activities.
2021 New Hyundai Alcazar Revealed
According to the various reports, the Hyundai Alcazar, the company’s new 6- and 7-seater SUV, has finally been unveiled by Hyundai Motor India. The business had previously published sketches and also showcased the car in a short video when it was still camouflaged. Now, in a render, the company has revealed the car’s final production version. The concept is inspired by the Creta SUV. The new car’s front fascia is identical to the Creta’s, but Hyundai has added some new elements to the signature cascading grille to distinguish the two. The SUV also gets C-shaped DRLs and identical headlamp placement.
The reports also suggested that the side profile would be the best way to tell the two cars apart. The latest Alcazar is much longer, almost taking on the appearance of an MPV. The diamond-cut alloy wheels contribute to the uniqueness of the vehicle. The Hyundai Alcazar will be powered by a 3rd generation Nu 2.0 liter petrol BS6 engine with 159 PS and a U2 1.5-litre diesel BS6 engine with 115 PS. Both engines will be available with 6AT and 6MT transmission options. Eco, City, and Sport modes will also be available for the vehicle. Hyundai claims that the Nu 2.0 l Petrol BS6 engine (6MT) from the third generation accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in under ten seconds.
Moreover, the Hyundai claims that the new Alcazar has an extensive use of 75.6 percent Advanced and High-Strength Steel for defense (AHSS & HSS). Effect energy is absorbed and dispersed through the underbody. In addition, the latest ring structure configuration in the Engine Room, B-Pillar, and D-Pillar has been designed to increase rigidity for improved handling.
Queen Elizabeth II’s Husband Prince Philip Died at the age 99
Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, died on Friday at Windsor Castle in England. Being the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, the father of Prince Charles, and the patriarch of a tumultuous royal family that he worked to ensure would not be Britain’s last, has inspired many young individuals throughout his life. He had reached the age of 99 years. Buckingham Palace confirmed his passing, stating that he rests in peace.
According to the various reports, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh lived a fascinating life — and a most peculiar one — at the very epicenter of British public life, which also touched a wide variety of business organizations. He will be remembered as Queen Elizabeth II’s great support during her reign, the longest serving and living consort in British history.
The reports also suggested that Prince Philip was a supporter of a number of businesses in the fields of engineering, architecture, design, chemistry, and aeronautics. He was a charismatic fundraiser and chaired a committee for the Queen’s Award to Industry. Prince Phillips died as Buckingham Palace was once again in disarray, this time over Oprah Winfrey’s controversial televised interview with Philip’s grandson Prince Harry and Harry’s wife, Meghan, last month. The couple, who are living in self-imposed exile in California, have accused members of the royal family of bigotry and cruelty.
In addition to that we can say the Prince had exceptional life other than being only the part of Royal family. Philip was a modernizer who sought advice from influential entrepreneurs and business leaders. One such figure was the eminent chemist Harold Hartley, with whom he debated a variety of topics, including how businessmen and statesmen had no interest in visiting Australia when praising New Zealand’s welfare state. He was inspired by Hartley to start the study conferences at Oxford, which focused on factory workers’ living conditions.
In all he did, Prince Philip used military logic. If he took on a project, he put his heart and soul into it and saw it through. He enjoyed a good debate and never took anything at face value. He had the impatience of a man ready to put his plans into action. He had an uncanny ability to detect stupidity and ignorance. He had a strong disdain for CEOs who swooped in to give slick speeches during royal visits, and he liked to catch them off guard if they hadn’t perfected their brief. The complete scope of his accomplishments can be known only when an official biographer has access to his well-kept archive.
Pipe raises almost USD 2 billion in Valuation
Fintech is a rapidly developing industry. According to the various reports the transaction, Pipe has raised another round of funding at a $2 billion valuation, just weeks after raising $50 million in growth funding. Pipe has recently raised $150 million in a massively oversubscribed round led by Baltimore, Md.-based Greenspring Associates, despite the fact that the round is still ongoing. The reports also suggested that even though the company has signed a term sheet, more capital might still come in. The fundraise was attended by both new and current investors. The company’s current valuation is a big step up from its previous one. Pipe has refused to comment on the offer, despite the fact that its platform was only launched in the last year. Pipe raised almost $6 million seed round led by Craft Ventures a little over a year ago to help it pursue its mission of providing SaaS companies with a funding option other than equity or venture debt.
As per the various reports, the money was used to offer SaaS companies a way to get their revenue up front by connecting them with investors on a platform that offers a discounted rate for the annual value of those contracts.
Pipe, based in Miami, recently announced a new round of investment — $50 million in strategic equity funding from a slew of high-profile investors. Pipe’s software interacts with a customer’s payroll, payment processing, and banking processes to evaluate key metrics. It then analyses the company’s results in real time and decides whether or not they are eligible for a trading cap. Trading caps currently vary from $50,000 for smaller early-stage and bootstrapped businesses to over $100 million for late-stage and publicly listed businesses, with no upper limit on the amount of money that can be traded. Hundreds of millions of dollars were traded on the Pipe platform in the first quarter of 2021.
Apple to add two advances to Siri Voices
As per the various suggests, in the latest beta version of iOS, Apple is adding two new voices to Siri’s English offerings and removing the default female voice option. This means that when someone sets up Siri, they will be able to select their own voice and the voice assistant will no longer default to being female, a subject that has gotten a lot of attention in recent years due to sexism in voice interfaces. The beta edition ought to be accessible to programme participants right now.
The reports suggested that this is a good move forward since it encourages people to select their preferred voice without being affected by the default bias. The two new voices also add some much-needed versatility to Siri’s voices, allowing users to choose a voice that speaks to them from a wider range of speech sounds and patterns. Siri also has a male voice default in certain countries and languages. However, with this move, users will be able to make their own decisions for the first time.
As per various reports, a statement from Apple says, “we’re excited to introduce two new Siri voices for English speakers and the option for Siri users to select the voice they want when they set up their device.” “This is a continuation of Apple’s long-standing commitment to diversity and inclusion, and products and services that are designed to better reflect the diversity of the world we live in,” it adds.
As per various reports, the two new voices are created by combining source talent recording’s with Apple’s Neural text to speech engine, which allows the voices to flow more naturally through phrases that are formed on the fly. For iOS users, they’ll be a welcome addition of options. More sound, tone, and regional dialect diversity can only be a good thing about how inclusive smart devices feel. We’ve finally seen some action from Amazon, Google, and Apple in the last few years to actively correct situations where virtual assistants have exposed bias in their responses to questions that include derogatory or abusive language. If we continue to see an influx in voice-first or voice-native interfaces, changes there, as well as questions on social justice issues and overall accessibility improvements, are critical.
Many reports also stated that the Siri voices in Ireland, Russia, and Italy have also been upgraded to Neural TTS in this latest beta, taking the total number of voices using the new technology to 38. Siri currently processes 25 billion requests per month across 500 million devices and is available in 36 languages. The voices are available in English-speaking users around the world, and Siri users could choose from 16 different voices.
Why i am resolute in my afro-optimism despite the continent’s challanges
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It is becoming clear that most – if not all – our major social, economic and political decisions over the next few years will be made through the prism of the coronavirus and the ripple effects of the pandemic.
However, it is certain that we are yet to see the worst of the disease, in terms of health, social impact and the economy. While lockdown measures are evident in much of the region, public health experts are unanimous in their view that we won’t escape a surge in new infections, especially as we head into the colder winter months.
Already, the economic effects of lockdown can be felt, as informal traders and small to medium enterprises grind to a halt due to government restrictions. The effects, while impossible to fully predict, are likely to reshape the future of the continent in fundamental ways.
While our current focus is on overcoming the immediate challenge posed by the virus, I cannot help but look up and consider what awaits us beyond the immediate horizon. And, despite the chaos and uncertainty we all presently feel, I remain highly optimistic about our collective future, both as a business leader and as an African citizen.
Inspiring an entrepreneurial spirit
Due to the digital skills divide and a number of other factors, most Africans are not actively working in the digital economy. The overwhelming majority of Africa’s citizens are informal traders, smallholder farmers and other forms of entrepreneurs.
An estimated sixty percent of Africa’s workforce are engaged in agriculture alone. The continent’s 250 million smallholder farmers, working on plots of around 2ha each and earning less than $1,000 per year, produce 80% of all food consumed here. A single smallholder farmer financially supports multiple family members and makes an invaluable contribution to food security. Any intervention that supports this sector has the potential to deliver dramatic socio-economic returns.
We can see this in Nigeria, where an initiative by the Convention on Business Integrity’s for-profit arm CBI
Innovations has seen the deployment of a technology tool to support 850 000 maize farmers and connect them more sustainably to the agricultural value chain.
Where countries have invested in building stronger agriculture sectors, the entire economy has been lifted. World Bank data shows that Ethiopia’s poverty levels dropped by a thirds since 2000 mainly thanks to impressive agricultural GDP growth of nearly 10% per year.
A growing and evolving continent
Africa’s population growth has been on an accelerated path for some time. Experts agree that, at current rates,
the continent’s population will double by 2050. This will be accompanied by a mass urbanisation that could see rural areas empty as more citizens seek a better life in fast-growing cities.
The World Economic Forum predicts that the population in Lagos in Nigeria could pass 88 million by 2100, making it the most populous city on the planet.
However, these oft-quoted predictions are extreme. The latest data shows that the working age population
in Africa – those aged between 25 and 64 – is growing faster than other age groups, which provides an opportunity for accelerate economic growth, also known as the ‘demographic dividend’.
How we engage, mobilise and equip this demographic dividend in service of the continent’s socio-economic goals will be instrumental in our collective effort to build a better future.
Which makes the advances in digital skills development, driven by investments from public and private sector organisations into digital skills development among teachers and students, all the more exciting.
Digital skills training crosses tipping point
With more than 700 million youth spread across 54 countries, Africa’s wealth of youthful talent is the envy of even more developed nations that face ageing – and in some cases, declining – populations.
A broad collective effort has been underway over the past few years to equip this youthful talent pool with the skills and knowledge they need to be active participants and contributors to the global digital economy.
Much of the developed world has been able to quickly shift learning to online platforms thanks to the pervasive high-speed internet connectivity and broad use of internet-enabled devices in those markets. In Africa, too many children simply don’t have that option.
Public and private sector organisations will need to build on the success that has been achieved over the past years to bring digital skills learning to more of the continent’s youth. Such efforts should focus not only on expanding access to technology among especially rural communities, but on equipping teachers and educators with the tools and knowledge they need to be effective digital learning champions.
The investments we make in training our youth today will pay huge dividends as we steer through the coming years and decades.
Diversity our greatest strength
Just as technology is supporting smallholder farmers by connecting them to better information and market opportunities, so too will we see innovations that empower female entrepreneurs to maximise their business ventures.
In the latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Women’s Report, sub-Saharan Africa boasted the highest rate of female entrepreneurs at 21.8%. This against a global rate of 10.2% – in Europe, the rate drops to 6%. This means more than one in five women in Africa are engaged in some form of entrepreneurial activity.
Social entrepreneurship is also gaining ground as a more sustainable and broadly beneficial business model for addressing socio-economic challenges on the continent. In 2019, Africa hosted the Social Entrepreneurship World Forum, first established in 2007, in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. In that country alone, 55 000 social enterprises have sprung up to address a wide spectrum of challenges. Surprisingly, more than a quarter of social entrepreneurs in the country are women, compared to only 4.5% who lead mainstream Ethiopian businesses.
I believe it is our diversity and multiculturalism that gives us immense strength in innovation and resilience. Three thousand ethnic groups speaking more than two thousand languages lend the continent an unmatched richness in perspectives and lived experiences.
As a greater share of our daily work output becomes automated by more efficient machines and algorithms, we’re likely to see a shift back to those skills and qualities that make us uniquely human. Empathy, creativity, compassion, the ability to consider and engage with a diverse set of views – these are the skills that will distinguish us as we head into the coming decades.
In closing
There’s no doubt we face a difficult and uncertain road ahead. Things are likely to get worse before they
get better. But we have done so much work over the past decades, achieved so much, overcome such immense socio-economic challenges, that I take heart that our continent will survive.
More than that, I believe we are well-placed to create a pan-African community with a shared vision for a
more equitable future, one driven by the deeply African belief in Ubuntu. Some global analysts believe there is opportunity for Africa to rival China’s economic might, despite our challenges.
I think Africa will chart its own course, one that is no less transformational than the so-called Chinese Miracle, but takes all our best qualities: our diversity, our natural wealth, our youthfulness, our creativity and resilience, and forges an inclusive future for all who call this continent home.
ENDS
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To Survive, we must embrace the leadership of both the genders
With Covid-19 still on everyone’s minds and the uncertainty that the pandemic brought, the importance of strong leadership has been highlighted. Last year, much was said about how differently different world leaders lead their countries through this crisis – with a focus on the success in some of the countries with female leaders.
As deputy CEO of one of the biggest financial services companies in South Africa, with a footprint in the UK, India and the African continent, I am proud to say that we value the role women play in society. But I don’t like gender generalisations. I prefer to simply focus on the learnings and apply it where relevant to all of us as leaders. What I found was that these female heads of state responded to the crisis distinctly, and the importance to them was to to care and connect, to use relationships as a channel to nurture, support and show empathy. And that seems to have made all the difference.This has led me to the work done by Richard Barrett who is certainly the world authority on values, both personal and organisational, and the interconnected link between the two.
About a million people globally have completed his personal values framework. It is important to know that Richard Barrett through his research, differentiates between values that tend to be embraced by men and values that tend to be embraced by women.
Of course, this is not always typical and true, as there are always individual differences. However, the two genders, when one looks at them from a distance certainly adopt different sets of values:
- Men mostly embrace values such as strength, competitiveness and logic.
- Woman on the other hand typically embrace values such as compassion, empathy and caring and relationship-based values.
To create the dynamic that makes the world successful both sets of male and female values are relevant and important and need to be combined.
But right now, our world is in crisis and is in urgent need of the values that women bring, to keep societies going. To keep a connection and to keep our small worlds functioning.
Richard Barrett’s survey has also been conducted with thousands of organisations over the last two decades with interesting results. Many other great researchers in the field of organisational success have come to exactly the same realisation.
- During the last 50 years of the previous century companies that were successful adhered to principles such as rules, hard structures, competitiveness, brazen ambition, hierarchy and often bureaucracy.
- There can be no doubt that value systems over the past 30 years have changed significantly.
- Since the turn of our current century a major change has been happening. This major change is asking for a different approach, a different value system.
Organisations and countries that excel now, are organisations that are embracing the value system and preferences of women. Organisations in the 2020’s are asking for people to connect in much more authentic ways. Organisations are asking of leaders to care more. Organisations that embrace diversity and are much more inclusive, are outperforming organisations that are less inclusive.
Organisations have become so specialised and complex that processes alone cannot fix the disconnect between
divisions and departments. People in organisations must collaborate significantly more in natural and unforced ways. Only caring people with a real need to connect can take organisations in the 2020’s to the next level of performance.
When we look at organisations in the 2020’s we have to look at organisations through the lens of its stakeholders. Our stakeholders directly include all our employees, independent advisers supporting us, their clients and people who may be our future clients. It is our obligation as leaders to bring our values to all our
stakeholders. We need to connect with all our stakeholders with care, empathy and understanding. We must reach out to those we can reach out to and make sure that relationships are alive and well. Because by doing this we are showing new ways in which relationships can determine success in the future.
In our new world, people who influence are leaders… being a leader is not the result of someone’s title.
The new definition of a leader is a person who can influence. To influence things into the right direction is being asked of every person in a business, not only of managers and people with titles. The culture of organisations can only change if there are thousands of people influencing. To create a better future for humanity, we need an even more connected, nurturing, caring, collaborative sharing ecosystem – we need all our leaders to rise to the challenge of becoming influencers and leaders.
Some people say that all this care makes organisations less ambitious. Truth be told, have a look at any mother
and say that they are not ambitious for their families, or that they don’t want their kids to succeed! This is also the bold finding of Richard Barrett and hundreds of other researchers in the domain of organisations and leadership. All the evidence clearly shows that organisations become more successful if they embrace the values women are great at.