“How the Vatican built a secret property empire using Mussolini's millions”

m.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/21/vatican-secret-propert...

#finance #religion

Papacy used offshore tax havens to create £500m international portfolio, featuring real estate in UK, France and Switzerland

Behind a disguised offshore company structure, the church's international portfolio has been built up over the years, using cash originally handed over by Mussolini in return for papal recognition of the Italian fascist regime in 1929.

Since then the international value of Mussolini's nest-egg has mounted until it now exceeds £500m. In 2006, at the height of the recent property bubble, the Vatican spent £15m of those funds to buy 30 St James's Square. Other UK properties are at 168 New Bond Street and in the city of Coventry. It also owns blocks of flats in Paris and Switzerland.

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According to an SML trusted source [1] as well as available public media sources, Japanese fashion retail brand Uniqlo is considering a public listing by introduction on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2013 with no additional funding. The main purpose of the IPO is believed to be further establishment of brand image.

My being a lover of Uniqlo’s products, it is a no-brainer that it is on my buy-list.

1. SML#P#KHL — SML Thank You

2. www.morningwhistle.com/html/2013/Company_Industry_0123/21...

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It takes someone with a vision to steer a company, and it takes someone with principles to be the gate keeper for optimal user experience. Having the guts to believe in something will likely upset many people in the process. Doing so will often facilitate hate from the team. It will not make you popular, but the fate of the company rests in that person’s hand.

I cannot help but notice that Apple’s user experience went to dust after Steve Jobs died. I am not even a member of the Mac cult myself, as I use every single OS in the market. I started using OSX as my main operation system after falling in love with Gnome with Ubuntu in 2008. So my conversion is dissimilar to most. It was not because of my hate for Microsoft, but my love for Linux.

Pictured is the latest iTunes update. I was looking for Genius but I cannot find it. For the first time I consulted with the help for iTunes. I have never once before used the help docs for doing anything inside iTunes. It seems that to evoke Genius you now have to Control-click to start a genius play. Who the __ came up with this unusable nonsense? What is wrong with the UX team? Is there massive fight overs now that Steve Jobs died? One can only imagine the politics inside this US technology business after the powers that be is no longer alive.

SML2AAPL: take care of your customers. When you fail that you will see your stock plummet like a free-fall. Just look at $FB. Stop the infighting if it exists. I hope that I can expect better from you in the future. Like you said, think different. After Jobs’ death I can hardly differentiate you from other technology business anymore.

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“SMLGYM” $GOOG $YHOO $MSFT

SML Opinions:

Yahoo has had a good year. I reason that it largely has to do with the economy of China. Although in Google is the defacto search engine in the US, when you move around the world you will notice that different parts of the world’s primary search engine differs greatly.

For example, in Hong Kong, the number 1 search engine that people reference (just by casual conversation) is Yahoo. In the UK, it seems that people reference Bing often. This is unusual to me. But if you think deeply, Google has many properties which are blocked by China’s Great Firewall. Google could not survive in China so if China is slowly becoming the creditor of the world, then it would make sense for companies which are able to survive in China to do well.

One must also not forget Baidu. There are a ton of amazing content available in Chinese. Just because you cannot read it does not mean that data is not available. This is often the number 1 thing I noticed about technology companies based in the US—they ignore the audience in other parts of the world while trying to be a global products and services company. You can’t force your language and culture onto others. Learn from history regarding world peace and diplomacy. Then you will go far.

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