Posted: April 18th, 2012 | Author: Nick Hood | Filed under: All, Travellers's Tales | Tags: BTG Global Network, BTG GN, Economy, Nick Hood, Spain, unemployment, Youth | No Comments »
Schlepping into downtown Madrid from Barajas airport on the wonderfully efficient Metro, it was hard not to look around the crowded carriage at young Spaniards heading out to start their weekend with some serious Friday night partying and wonder not just if they had jobs, but if they would ever work, or at least in the foreseeable future. Youth unemployment is now over 50%.
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Posted: April 18th, 2012 | Author: Nick Hood | Filed under: All, Travellers's Tales | Tags: Begbies Traynor, BTG Global Network, BTG GN, Economy, gdp, Nick Hood, Sicily | No Comments »
The party line is that the Mafia is in retreat, not the force it was, so perhaps the shocking dilapidation of Sicily’s capital, Palermo is more down to Italy’s northern political bias starving its southern-most outpost of funding, rather than simple corruption siphoning off the cash.
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Posted: December 7th, 2011 | Author: Nick Hood | Filed under: All, News | No Comments »
Londoners tend to think their city is the centre of the universe, but for three days in early November this fiction became a reality as BTG GN members gathered for our 2012 World meeting.
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Posted: November 16th, 2011 | Author: Nick Hood | Filed under: All, Travellers's Tales | No Comments »
Spending time in London with overseas visitors is to see the UK’s capital through different eyes. When those eyes belong to insolvency practitioners from all over the world, the risk is that the view will inevitably be jaundiced, especially when these vampires of the recession start comparing their countries’ financial woes and the incompetence of their political leaders.
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Posted: September 27th, 2011 | Author: Nick Hood | Filed under: All, Travellers's Tales | Tags: debt, eurozone, Italy, politics, venice | No Comments »
The name of Venice’s airport prepares visitors nicely for the impracticalities of getting around one of the world’s most charismatic cities. Surely Marco Polo must have faced as many obstacles on the Silk Road as unwary tourists here, from marauding brigands (for which read touts for the wildly expensive cafes and restaurants in the Piazza San Marco) and local warlords exacting a high tariff for safe passage (the €110 water taxi ride into the City).
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Posted: September 13th, 2011 | Author: Nick Hood | Filed under: All, Travellers's Tales | Tags: banking, debt, Economy, gdp, Poland, profit, retail, spending | No Comments »
Leaving a storm-threatened UK for a balmy, late summer day in Warsaw seemed the perfect metaphor for the comparative strengths of the two economies. Poland continues to be a minor but extremely creditable financial miracle.
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Posted: September 13th, 2011 | Author: Nick Hood | Filed under: All, Travellers's Tales | Tags: Berlin, Chancellor Merkle, crisis, Economy, eurozone, germany, growth | No Comments »
Flying into a quiet Berlin’s Tegel Airport less than a week after Germany shocked itself and the world by announcing a shuddering halt to its previous strong climb out of recession was a first step into a world of strange uncertainty.
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Posted: August 11th, 2011 | Author: Nick Hood | Filed under: All, Travellers's Tales | No Comments »
Escaping from the rolling road block of the M5 motorway into picturesque Devon in a warm August rain squall promised a voyage of discovery into the delights of this year’s must-take tourist activity in austerity-battered UK, the great British staycation.
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Posted: June 30th, 2011 | Author: Nick Hood | Filed under: All, Travellers's Tales | No Comments »
China imported 33.5m bottles of Bordeaux wines worth $475m in 2010. No wonder the price of an average 2008 Grand Cru Classé at a small St Emilion merchant’s tasting outlet defies current European economic logic at an eye watering €49 a bottle. With the nouveau riche from India and Russia adding to the upward price pressure, Bordeaux can afford at least for the moment to ignore the complaints of budget-conscious developed-world wine buffs that claret is no longer affordable. The world still drinks 14 bottles of the stuff every second.
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Posted: June 22nd, 2011 | Author: Nick Hood | Filed under: All, News | No Comments »
When we received a request late last week from BTG GN member Zoltan Tenk at Noerr & Partner in Budapest for help in finding a lawyer to advise a Hungarian client about issues in Yemen, even my internationalist eyebrows were raised.
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