Chinas Home-Grown Private Equity Boom - Mergers, Acquisitions,…
The News Review:
- Chinas Home-Grown Private Equity Boom - Mergers, Acquisitions,…
- Linguistic snobbery
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- Intel’s Call
- The day freedom died
- A Welcome Change in Thinking on Immigration
Chinas Home-Grown Private Equity Boom - Mergers, Acquisitions,…
nytimes.com - Sep 24, 2007
As senior executives from Goldman Sachs and Temasek set up their own China-focused private equity funds, The Financial Times’ Lex column says that buyout firms denominated in yuan are poised for greater success. They can soak up domestic liquidity, while offering hard-line nationalists relief that local companies are in the hunt for local assets. The one problem, Lex says, is that too much money may be chasing too few assets, pushing prices up.
Linguistic snobbery
New Statesman - Sep 24, 2007
But the way language is used not only reflects society, it also shapes it. In many countries regional identity is a matter of pride, and regional forms of the language may be more prestigious than the standard form. This is the case in Scotland, where the home-grown version of posh is in no way modelled on posh south of the border; in German-speaking Switzerland, where Swiss-German, once considered a regional dialect to be avoided at all costs in formal situations, is now used in parliament and for university lectures instead of the former prestige language, High German; all the way to Vanuatu (or New Hebrides), where a home-grown pidgin language, Bislama, is an official language on a par with English and French. Regional varieties in England do not enjoy such a position, though they may enjoy a special place in people’s affections. As the social situation evolves, so does the language. Standard English developed in the 19th Century, and has since then been disseminated by institutions such as the public schools, the army, the government in Westminster, the older universities and the BBC. The dialect which was selected for standardization was just the regional dialect of London and the South East