Here is another set of global business questions from our Guest Quiz Master – G. Sreekanth. Hope you will find them interesting.

Q 1. It wasn’t until late 1990 that a solo female entrepreneur featured on the cover of Forbes. Who featured on the cover in Oct 1990 with dollar signs shining on a pink costume and accompanied by the question, “America’s Smartest Businesswoman?” 

Ans. Madonna

Q 2. The first case of this phenomenon was reported in 1969 in the shipping department of Japan’s largest newspaper company. In 1987, as public concern increased, the Japanese Ministry of Labour began to publish statistics on this. This phenomenon is also common in South Korea, where it is referred as gwarosa and in China, where it is called guolaosi. What concerning phenomenon, that also led to some life insurance companies putting one-year exemption clauses in their contracts?

Ans. Karoshi or death from overwork

Q3. The first legal casino opened in this city in 1978 and in 1983 it was projected to earn more from gambling than Las Vegas. Which city, that is associated with a very popular board game and has also been home to Miss America pageant since 1921? 

Ans. Atlantic City, which inspired the American version of the board game Monopoly, especially the street names.

Q4. It is said that a Northwest Airlines 747 pilot named Robert Plath reinvented air travel when he came up with the idea of Rollaboard. What was Rollaboard, a brand also seen in the 2009 movie Up in the Air, starring George Clooney? 

Ans. Rollaboard was one of the earliest version of ‘suitcase with wheels.’

Q5. Which media tycoon known for his passion for boats, balloons and motorcycles, owned more Faberge eggs than even the Soviet government and at one point in time had a collection of Faberge pieces that ranked ‘second only to Queen Elizabeth’?

Ans. Malcolm Forbes

Q6. The Motley Fool is a financial-services company that provides financial advice for investors through various stock, investing, and personal finance services. The US based company was founded in 1993 by brothers David and Tom Gardner; and Erik Rydholm. The name of the company is taken from which comedy believed to have been written in 1599 and first published in 1623?

Ans) Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

Q7. Which European city’s central business district is referred to as Mainhattan?

Ans. Frankfurt – the word is a portmanteau of Main, the river on which Frankfurt lies, and Manhattan, a reference to the inner-city area’s visually impressive high rises and skyscrapers.

Q8. A popular legend attributes the tax-free status of this territory to the heroic acts of the inhabitants during a maritime tragedy in 1794, often referred to as “Wreck of the Ten Sails”.  King George III rewarded the island with a promise never to introduce taxes as compensation for their generosity, as one of the ships carried a member of the King’s own family. Which offshore financial haven?

Ans. Cayman Islands

Q9. Who ran this ad in 1988 explaining the purchase of New York’s Plaza Hotel?

Ans. Donald Trump

Q 10. Breakthrough Starshot is a $100 million research and engineering program aiming to demonstrate proof of concept for a new technology, enabling ultra-light unmanned space flight at 20% of the speed of light; and to lay the foundations for a flyby mission to Alpha Centauri within a generation. Who, along with the Russian billionaireYuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg, is on the board of this research program?

Ans. Stephen Hawking

Q 11. To which three great Americans did the rapper-businessman Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs dedicate his perfume, ‘I Am King’?

Ans. Muhammad Ali,Martin Luther King, and Barack Obama

Q12. Everything was on track in the early days of this now famous company, until the Arab oil embargo hit in 1973. Suddenly the company costs increased and there was a cash crunch. The founder knew how to play blackjack from his days during the Vietnam war. His $27,000 winnings at the casino lifted the confidence and later helped the company save itself. Who is this ‘great gambler’ whose ‘world changed overnight’?

Ans. Fred Smith, FedEx founder. Infact, FedEx uses the tagline ‘The World Overnight’, which has been used as a subtle clue in the question!

Q13. He is often called America’s Money Manager but critiques himself by saying that he always makes mistakes by selling away stocks too early. In 1989, he got a call from Warren Buffet who wanted to use a line “Selling your winners and holding your losers is like cutting the flowers and watering the weeds” in his year-end report for Berkshire Hathaway. Who is this famous money manager and from which well-known book authored by him is the line from?

Ans. Peter Lynch. The line that Warren Buffet borrowed is from Lynch’s famous book ‘One Up on Wall Street’.

Q 14. In the 1980s, Ross Perot, founder of EDS and Perot Systems, sold EDS to General Motors and got into the business of backing the next generation of entrepreneurs. In 1986 he did something that helped someone who too had ‘big ideas’. What did Perot do?

Ans. Ross Perot seed funded Steve Jobs with $20 million with which the latter started NeXT Computer.

Q 15. Who is this fashion icon and entrepreneur, now well-known for inventing the ‘wrap dress’?

Ans. Diane von Furstenberg

• Compiled by Guest Quiz Master G.Sreekanth – G.Sreekanth is a National level Business Quiz Champion. He works and lives in Singapore