He adds that he does view the threat to the rand as "a real risk".
"Despite being sheltered from the subprime crisis, growth in SA is suffering from an inflation-induced tightening of monetary policy," says Mercier.
Reuters reports that the rand weakened one percent against the dollar on Monday, tracking weaker global markets as investors fled risky assets.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Rand poses 'real risk'
Yahoo CEO stakes out mobile phone market strategy
In a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show, an industry agenda-setting conference taking place in Las Vegas this week, the Yahoo co-founder will highlight a series of enhancements the company is making to its Internet services to optimize them to run on hundreds of millions of existing mobile phones.
Marco Boerries, the executive in charge of Yahoo's division supplying Web services for phones, TVs and other devices beyond PCs, told Reuters in an interview ahead of Yang's speech that Yahoo wants to play a big role in these new markets while staying true to its roots as an Internet services pioneer.
Sallie Mae Names Terracciano Chairman; Lord Still CEO
Lord will be vice chairman of the board and remains chief executive officer, Reston, Virginia-based SLM, known as Sallie Mae, said today in a Business Wire statement. John F. Remondi was named vice chairman and chief financial officer.
Lord, 62, served as Sallie Mae's CEO from 1997 to 2005 and resumed the post on Dec. 14, after the collapse of a proposed $25.3 billion takeover by investors including J.C. Flowers & Co.
U.S. Stocks Rise for First Time in 2008; JPMorgan, Celgene Gain
Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest U.S. banks, climbed. Celgene Corp., a maker of cancer treatments, rose after saying profit will jump 45 percent in 2008. Microsoft Corp. gained after Chairman Bill Gates said the world's biggest software maker shipped 100 million copies of its Windows Vista operating system.