Cars and heavy vehicles are two very different businessesGOTTLIEB DAIMLER and Carl Benz built the world’s first motor cars at the same time in 1886, not far apart in Germany. Their names have been tied together since a merger of their firms in 1926. Daimler is the parent company of Mercedes-Benz. Yet the two men…
Posts published in “Commodities”
Executives, not investors, may be to blame for short-termismHOW BEST should managers be incentivised? In the biblical parable of the talents, a master divides his property among three servants before going away. Two put his money to work and double its value; the third buries it in the ground. The first two servants are rewarded…
The world’s biggest caffeine-peddler has its best quarter of the pandemic. It could be betterHOWARD SCHULTZ, former boss of Starbucks, used to imagine its coffee shops as a “third place”: a spot to hang out, as you do at home or in the office. Yet even free Wi-Fi persuaded only one in five Americans to…
ON JANUARY 13TH Honda, a Japanese carmaker, said it had to shut its factory in Swindon, a town in southern England, for a while. Not because of Brexit, or workers sick with covid-19. The reason was a shortage of microchips. Other car firms are suffering, too. Volkswagen, which produces more vehicles than any other firm,…
China’s short-video wars are heating up“WE AIM TO be the most customer-obsessed company in the world,” declares the opening line in the 700-page prospectus from Kuaishou, a Chinese video app. The firm, launched a decade ago by a former software engineer at Google and another at Hewlett-Packard, boasts more than 250m daily active users, up…
A short-selling row highlights the dodgy metrics of online commerceIT WAS A spectacular bit of timing. On November 16th Baidu, a Chinese online-search giant, said it would buy YY Live, a China-focused video-streaming service with 40m monthly users, for $3.6bn. Two days later Muddy Waters, an American short-seller, published a report claiming YY Live was…
An Indian experiment in corporate social responsibilityKITEX GARMENTS is one of the largest private companies in Kerala, a communist-led state in southern India. Its embrace of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is enthusiastic. In the fiscal year ending in March 2020 it allocated 5.3% of its average profit over the past three years to public roads,…
To Donald Trump, Alaska is a promising source of oil wealth and energy security. To energy companies, it is a risk not worth takingTO THE GWICH’IN people, the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska is “the sacred place where life begins”. To environmental campaigners, it is a rare habitat that must…
EXXONMOBIL, ONCE the world’s most valuable publicly traded oil company, is not easily swayed. As green investors urged it to develop cleaner energy, it planned instead to pump 25% more oil and gas by 2025. As rivals wrote down billions of dollars in assets, it said its own reserves were unaffected. But in the maelstrom…
Hollywood’s biggest studios are staking everything on streamingIF ANY INDUSTRY could use help from Wonder Woman, it is cinemas. Lockdowns and a dearth of new releases have reduced worldwide box-office takings by about 70% in 2020. Thankfully for theatre owners, the corseted crusader will charge to the rescue on Christmas Day, giving audiences a reason…