
“NO ONE buys furniture in a crisis,” laments Konstantinos Vourvoulakis. He and his father used to sell handmade furniture, but as customers became strapped for cash, they shut up shop in
Read more: Greece exits its bail-out programme, but its marathon has further to go

IT IS the summer of 1979 and Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, the everyman-hero of John Updike’s series of novels, is running a car showroom in Brewer, Pennsylvania. There is a pervasive mood
Read more: Japan still has great influence on global financial markets

THE maelstrom that hit global financial markets a decade ago is known in Japan as the Lehman Shock, after the bankruptcy of the American investment bank that caused it. Japanese banks
Read more: Japanese banks’ foreign exposure may threaten financial stability
LAST month KKR, a private-equity firm, announced that it would buy Envision Healthcare, one of America’s largest providers of doctors to hospitals. The deal was valued at $9.9bn, including debt. If

BENJAMIN GRAHAM is considered the father of value investing, the business of picking stocks that are cheap. He might also fairly be described as the father of not trying to pick
Read more: Why simple rules are best when spreading your investment bets
DARREN GUIVER started out as a trainee at a Ford dealership in 1986. He moved quickly up through management, buying dealerships until he had created Spire Automotive group, a network of
Read more: Car dealerships have become targets for cross-border investment