A traditional Chinese tea set.

Glasgow's International Financial services district is really coming up as a key business centre in the UK. With 750m pounds invested and names like Abbey, esure, Goldfish, HBoS, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley moving in, the cheaper real estate and abundant labor is creating something. FT just reported Barclay's creation of 500 new jobs in the hub. financial services jobs aren't only growing in the east! IFSD

just a carry forward from the celtic football club story, Radio DW from Germany did an interesting story on the number of Brazillian and African footballers coming into Europe. Some countries have upto half as many players from abroad. A football match in Poland was drawn when public made racist comments, threw bananas and made monkey faces on the foreign players. Foreign players said that they never felt quite at home in poland and would like to move to the rather developed European nations. Polish experts say, that it has nothing to do with foreigners but just an unrest in the polish youth against the rapid changing communist past. Ironically, the polish face similar isolation in western Europe, especially in the UK where there are about 500,000 polish workers at the moment.

This is an interesting one, the world famous energy drink Red Bull comes from a traditional thai recipe. The drink is even today loved by truck drivers and the rural populace in Thailand. It was only until the Austrian founder figured out the drink that was marketed with chic branding around the world that upscale bars in thailand have now started storing the drink, all imported from Austria.

The earlier avataar of the drink bottle would quite look like a cough syrup. I got hold of it so thought i'd share...not only this a new rival is still going great in the country side. sounds to me like after the cola wars we cud seeing bull fighting with the a new savvy chap branding the other.

IFC's client base has suddenly changed, from a North American and European stronghold, today IFC's 60% clients are in developing countries. Turkish firms going in Romania or Brazillian ones in Angola would be the typical projects, this was shared by Ms Corries Shanahan, senior spokeswoman for the corporation.

visited the Celtic football club of glasgow day before, interesting revelations were made by the business development manager at the club. Celtic is one of europe's leading football clubs, based in Glasgow, Scotland. Interestingly it has seen a good no. of foreign players in the team that have created some good business for the club in their home country. Nakamura from Japan a big japanese phenomenon has got celtic some good business over its broadcast and merchandise. Same with a couple of poles in the team that are making the local club aggresively reach out to polands 40m strong market.

Adidas is having trouble integrating reebok, just another german firm disaster. Adidas sold of its earlier acquitsition of Salomon, a french ski company before it bought reebok. BMW's aquisition of rover in the UK and daimler chrysler also question the German firms ability to make cross border deals work. Some believe it is cultural adaptabilty thats a cause for concern

Switzerlands famous watch export industry about $8bn in revenues sees have of it coming from Asia, not too be surprised that LVMH, the luxury goods maker and Gucci have these percentages around 40% and 45% respectively. The west seems to bored of it anyhow, and affordabilty is being a great concern!

After Tata's bid for corus, the european steel company they plan to bid together for Brazil's Companhia Siderurgica Nacional, another steel company. That's not it recently Tata Motors has acquired the South African production facility of Nissan Motors ..quite a rapid movement. Just falls in line with tata's ambition of creating over 25% of its revenues from beyond India, the country with its traditional stronghold.

Nandan Nilekani is to join the reuters' board from january 2007, as a non executive director. quite a feat for the Indian enterprenuer/ceo of infosys. Probably the only Asian in a very European or a rather British board. Niall Fitzgerald, the ex chief of unilever created quite a steer when he quit unilevers to join the board. An Indian outsourcing hero, synchronising with a western media giant does make us think. doesn't it?