Following a lacklustre second quarter for the European oil and gas sector, there were distinct signs of improvement in the three months to September, with eleven disclosed value deals taking place, between them worth $2.96 billion. While it is true that the lion’s share of this is accounted for by just one deal, the $2.65 billion purchase of North Sea assets from Statoil by Austrian company OMV, analysts feel that this could be a sign that the second quarter was an exception and stimulate a greater volume of deals going forward.

Mr Teke, who is non-executive director at Optimum Coal, replaces out-going president Mark Cutifani. Other appointments announced at the Chamber’s 123rd Annual General Meeting included Khanyisile Kweyama, executive director of Anglo American South Africa, being made first vice president and Graham Briggs, CEO of Harmony Gold, being made second vice president.

The Ancient Mariner complained abut the lack of drinking water on his ship in 1798 but fails to mention (perhaps Coleridge didn’t know) that Samuel Pepys had requested one of his naval captains to carry out “… an Experiment of producing fresh water (at Sea) out of Salt” as early as 1684. The outcome of that is not known, but it can’t have been that successful as onboard desalination doesn’t seem to have progressed much until the invention of the multi-stage flash (MSV) distillation process in 1955.

“If you ask me what factors have contributed most to our success,” says SOS Safety International’s Managing Director, Carmen Nieves, “I would have to say it is a healthy combination of hard work and effort, a lot of negotiating, a lot of sales and ultimately a lot of satisfied customers.”

With its stable, multi-party parliamentary democracy and an economy buoyed by strong agricultural, tourism and mining sectors, Namibia has a lot going for it as a nation. This fact was reaffirmed this year when Bloomberg named Namibia the top emerging market economy in Africa and the 13th best in the world.

Sharing its borders with the Kalahari Desert and the South Atlantic Ocean, Namibia is one of the youngest countries in Africa and as such enjoys vast potential for future prosperity. Since gaining independence in March 1990, Namibia has successful transitioned into a multiparty democracy with an estimated annual GDP per capita of $5,828.

Struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry has fired its CEO Thorsten Heins, who leaves with a $22 million severance package. He will be replaced at the end of November by John Chen former CEO of Sybase. The move comes as the company turns its back on a $4.7 billion rescue deal from its principal shareholder Fairfax Financial, in favour of a plan to raise $ 1 billion in convertible bonds: Fairfax has pledged to buy $250 million worth of them.

Founded in 1992 by sisters Caron and Elaine Harris, FATS (the initials stand for Forwarding African Transport Services) has been built up from nothing to become a R200 million services company and a major player in the South African freight forwarding industry.

The company, run by US investor Warren Buffett, has reported that net profit rose 29 percent to $5.05 billion in the three months to September from the same period last year.

This was mainly down to its investments at the peak of the financial crisis in General Electric and Goldman Sachs, boosting it by $1.2 billion. Meanwhile, Berkshire's revenue also grew 13 percent to $46.5 billion.