Emerging Southeast Asian nations need to pour $300bn into transport links to help ease freight bottlenecks. That just got harder as the prospect of reduced Federal Reserve monetary stimulus pushes up borrowing costs.

Technology executives are the biggest buyers from a mobile device, with more than two-fifths reporting they use mobile to research transactions greater than $100,000, according to a Forbes Insights and Google survey of 511 executives.

Retail has an $800bn problem, according to research firm IHL Group. That is the collective cost of inventory distortion in out-of-stocks and overstocks among retailers today, and it could increase same-store sales by 9.2 percent if completely fixed.

The latest communication from the Global Air Cargo Advisory Group (GACAG), a body which packs in all the heavy hitters involved in the supply chain, from forwarding agents to airlines, makes very plain the views of the air cargo industry regarding the recently stalled Doha Round of trade negotiations held under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and specifically designed to lower trade barriers and simplify processes, particularly to allow two way market access to developing countries.