Michael Prest meets the business schools who are queuing up to offer a range of tailored qualifications

The vogue for middle-aged women finding themselves – and then writing tell-all books about it – has become big business. But it makes their journeys of discovery as predictable as the daily commute, says Charlotte Raven

You don’t have to have an MBA to be a CEO, but it clearly helps in so many ways, says Hilary Wilce

With employability skills the key to a first job, more courses are including them, says Steve McCormack

Anyone who saw Stuart Baggs 'The Brand' squirm his way into the semi-finals of The Apprentice in December knows that, in Lord Sugar's boardroom at least, the gift of the gab can get you a long way. In real-world business, however, it may not always be necessary. A growing number are realising that it is possible to gain the required acumen without engaging in the cut and thrust of face-to-face negotiation.

"All through life one learns to be a better negotiator," said Antoine Pecquet, a French diplomat who wrote Discourse On The Art Of Negotiation. That was in 1737, and nearly 300 years later Christophe Lattuada agrees.

Sir Howard Davies, the London School of Economics director forced to step down following the Libyan crisis this month, is phlegmatic about his downfall in a column in April's issue of Management Today. Still, he couldn't resist a few barbs at those journalists who had written unpleasant things about his woes. "What do I think of the media?" he writes. "Well, they are part of the flora and fauna of British life, I suppose. They have a job to do, like ticket touts at Stamford Bridge or men in braces in the City."

Lucy Lee didn’t have grand globetrotting plans. At school, she assumed she would follow the usual route: GCSEs and A-levels at a local school, hopefully leading to a degree at a UK university. That’s pretty much how things panned out – until she set her heart on postgraduate study at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee (KHB) in Berlin.

Are you thinking about doing a Masters degree or PhD in a European country? There’s no need to learn a foreign language if the Netherlands is your choice.

London taxis from Saudi Arabia to Azerbaijan are dragging Manganese Bronze back into the black. Sarah Arnott reports

Do I know her?

The jurors who will decide the fate of hedge fund giant Raj Rajaratnam heard the voice of the Galleon founder for the first time yesterday on wiretapped recordings that prosecutors say reveal him receiving illegal insider share tips.

Although the predicted cuts in public sector funding are yet to translate into substantial job losses, the UK government is already searching for ways that the private sector can plug the employment gap.

Outlook If Raj Rajaratnam had returned to the UK after business school in Pennsylvania and set up his hedge fund, Galleon, in the City of London instead of in the US, would the British authorities have been able to put him in the dock on charges of insider trading? The answer, sadly, is certainly not.