To thrust his eyewear giant, EssilorLuxottica, into the digital age and shake up Italian high financeMOST OCTOGENARIANS would, given the opportunity, rush to the sun lounger in Monaco. It was widely assumed that Leonardo Del Vecchio, Italy’s richest man, would do just that. He turns 86 in May and some years ago moved his principal…
Posts published in “Commodities”
Getting rid of pointless rules and regulationsA BANKER TAPED a picture, drawn by one of his small children, to his office wall. When he arrived at work the next morning, he found the picture was covered by a large notice, saying he was in violation of company policy which required personal items to be put…
The covid-19 travel freeze has clobbered Rolls-Royce, Pratt & Whitney and GE AviationTHE ABSENCE of vapour trails in a clear sky is an obvious sign that commercial aviation has been hit hard by covid-19. The upshot for the makers of the jet engines that create those ephemeral streaks—fewer planes sold, fewer flying hours and older…
Our glass-ceiling index shows some progress in some places. But not enoughWALL STREET’S glass ceiling cracked at last on March 1st, as Jane Fraser took charge of Citigroup, becoming the first woman to head a big American bank. That cracking sound has also been echoing across the rest of America Inc. Last year Carol Tomé…
THE PANDEMIC is throwing up a new set of ethical issues for businesses. The premise of “stakeholder capitalism” is not just that firms should consider the interests of employees and customers, as well as shareholders. It is that, by doing so, everyone gains; shareholders will prosper if workers and customers are treated decently. But the…
A sluggish public vaccination campaign spurs Deutschland AG into actionGERMANS ARE used to being top of the class. Early in the pandemic, when Germany controlled its outbreak better than most of the West, they felt they were. In vaccinating citizens against covid-19, by contrast, the country has been a laggard. One in 20 has received…
TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES exhibit a curious lexical property. Google and Zoom are verbs. So, in Chinese, is Taobao, the name of Alibaba’s vast e-mall. Uber and Didi, its Chinese ride-hailing rival, are synonyms for “cab”. Facebook means, simply, the internet in Vietnam, where people mostly access the web through its social networks. Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and…
LAST WEEKEND Mark Murrell, the founder of Get Maine Lobster, bought an Oculus virtual-reality (VR) headset. It is a plaything, but he quickly thought of business. “I can’t wait until everybody has one,” he says. “If only I could have an ad in one of those.” His business is delivering lobsters, at an average $190…
“SUCCESS BREEDS complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” So said Andy Grove, the Hungarian emigré who helped turn Intel from a scrappy startup in the 1960s into the firm that did more than any other to put the “silicon” in Silicon Valley. They will be ringing in the ears of Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s…
But he will not kill the internal combustion engineTHE SCRAMBLE to electrify motoring resembles a car race. Tesla and like-minded startups, unencumbered by the legacy of the internal combustion engine (ICE), are surging up the straight. Behind them, jostling for position at the first corner, are the established carmakers, urged on by ever-tightening government deadlines…