Comments from Detroit’s Big Three in the Financial Times appear obvious in the face of oil and fuel prices doubling. The Big Three and all U.S. car producers need to adjust the mix of vehicles from minivans and SUVs to smaller cars. Well, no surprise there. That has been obvious for the last year. Sales of small […]

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Although our blog readership is steadily growing, we seem to be misperceived by many as being quite “niche”. It is true to say that we aren’t going to be writing about Britney Spears or Paris Hilton (unless they happen to don some new metalized bra or something) but to say that the metals industry is […]

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For any consumer of Cobalt metal or components with any significant Cobalt content the price pressures must have been nigh on unbearable this past year. Driven by consumer demand and an element of speculative buying in the face of tight supplies, Cobalt has increased from $13/lb at the beginning of 2006 to $27/lb at the […]

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Back in my Andersen days (yes, that Andersen), the firm had the motto “think straight, talk straight.” Not that we always did, but that certainly was the goal. My boss at Andersen, a wonderful guy named Jim Broering, had an even better motto: “Don’t make them yawn.” You laugh, but it had profound ramifications on what […]

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