NOTHING IS MORE likely to sabotage a brand’s reputation than a customer complaint that goes viral. Social media often blow the problem out of proportion, leading television programmes and newspapers to pick up the story, which is invariably one that pits plucky members of the public against some heartless corporate Goliath. Consumer gripes—and stories about…
Posts published in “Personal Finance”
America’s government viewed one gay-dating app with Chinese ties as a national-security concern. Can another that has just listed in New York expect similar treatment?“I USED TO think that I was the only person in the world attracted to people of the same gender.” So begins Ma Baoli’s letter to investors. The 43-year-old Mr Ma…
A managerial quality that is hard to define but important to possessTHE PANDEMIC has required many people to make difficult judgments. Politicians have had to decide which restrictions to impose on citizens’ behaviour and individuals were forced to assess how much personal risk to take. Managers, faced with tough calls like which parts of their…
The food-delivery firm could last longer in the DAX 30 index than the firm it replacedJOINING THE index of Germany’s 30 biggest listed companies is usually a cause of celebration for the joiner rather than of controversy. Yet the arrival of Delivery Hero in the DAX 30 on August 24th ignited a fierce debate. How,…
Green companies vie not just to generate power but also to store and manage itDEPENDING ON WHOM you ask, California is a leader in clean energy or a cautionary tale. Power outages in August prompted stern critiques from Republicans. “In California”, Donald Trump tweeted, “Democrats have intentionally implemented rolling blackouts—forcing Americans in the dark.” In…
A new report tries to quantify the returns to multinationals from kickbacks they payMANY BIG companies may be struggling with depressed sales, but these are busy times for bribery-busters. Mexico is abuzz over allegations by an ex-boss of Pemex, the state oil giant, that several senior politicians received bungs from companies including Odebrecht, a Brazilian…
IN THE SHARP-ELBOWED world of business, the dividends that firms pay to their shareholders are often considered a bloodless topic. Compared with share prices, they rarely set pulses racing. Corporate-finance theory says that dividends are largely irrelevant to a company’s underlying value and its shareholders’ wealth—just as withdrawing cash from an ATM machine doesn’t make…
Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub AS A SPECIAL-OPERATIONS pilot in the American air force, Joe Shamess was used to handling some tricky situations. But the sudden arrival of the coronavirus pandemic this…
From September 15th the Chinese telecoms giant will no longer be able to buy vital semiconductorsHUAWEI IS ON the ropes. From midnight on September 14th the Chinese technology giant will be cut off from essential supplies of semiconductors. Without chips it cannot make the smartphones or mobile-network gear on which its business depends. America’s latest…
David Cote, the industrial conglomerate’s ex-boss, has written an excellent—and useful—memoirTHE MEMOIRS of chief executives can be exercises in pompous self-justification or, just as bad, in grandiose philosophising about social and political trends. Occasionally, however, a corporate titan writes a book that is both readable and a practical guide for managers hoping to follow in…