The Economist: Business
Business
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American retailing: Left on the shelf
Americas retailers need to respond to plummeting consumer demandTHE unthinkable has happened. American consumers are losing their urge to shop. Maybe it is because they have been scared into prudence, maybe it is because they can no longer get the credit to which they have long been addicted, but th ...
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Face value: Climate of fear
Can Stavros Dimas successfully defend the environment against economic gloom?STAVROS DIMAS concedes that his appointment in 2004 as the European Unions environment commissioner was taken by some as a sign that Europe was going soft on tackling climate change. All hope is lost, wailed the Guardian, a ...
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Kirk Kerkorian: No country for old men
Kirk Kerkorian is unexpectedly selling out of Ford THIS is proving a ghastly year for Kirk Kerkorian, a 91-year-old billionaire who began 2008 as the worlds 41st richest person. He reportedly told friends recently that he had lived one year too long, after the value of his stake in MGM Mirage, which ...
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Technology start-ups face the downturn: Fright night in the valley
Having learnt from the dotcom bust, technology entrepreneurs hope to stay afloat this time aroundHALLOWEEN is still a week away, but homes throughout Silicon Valley are already adorned with images of witches, skeletons and assorted ghouls and gargoyles. Horror stories have also been plentiful in the ...
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Face value: Hip-hope
Can Russell Simmons promote entrepreneurship as well as he sells music, fashion and finance?THATS real hood, says Russell Rush Simmons, with evident disapproval. He has just screened his companys latest advertisement on his laptop, and is not inclined to approve it for release. The ad, for a Rush Vi ...
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European retailing: Shopped around
Is Carrefour an example of activist investing gone wrong?WHEN Carrefour, the worlds second-biggest retailer, reports its third-quarter results on October 23rd, everyone will be looking to see how it did in the rentree scolaire, the period when French families back from their holidays stock up on foo ...
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ZTE: Silent mode
An emerging Chinese telecoms giant is growing steadilyand stealthilyIN THE last quarter of 2007 there were three new entrants in the top ten list of mobile-phone makers. Most people know two of themApple, maker of the iPhone, and Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerrybut not the third: ZT ...
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GM and Chrysler: Follow the money
Merging the two sickly car firms makes little senseexcept for one thingOBJECTIONABLE, but necessary. The description by Hank Paulson, Americas treasury secretary, of the federal rescue package for Americas banks, is a mantra that may soon be repeated in boardrooms across the land as recession-hit fi ...
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Industry and the financial crisis: Meanwhile, in the real economy...
How the worlds most basic industries are coping with the crashIT IS about as far as you can get from the woes of Wall Street and this weeks dramatic rescues of American and European banks. The mucky business of digging ore out of the ground, shipping it across the oceans and turning it into steel, t ...
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Logistics in Africa: Network effects
Connectivity and commitment pay dividends in African transportASIDE from a few niche industries such as cut flowers, which are air-freighted from Kenya and Ethiopia to auctions in the Netherlands, African trade has not changed much since the end of the colonial era. Unprocessed raw materials go out; ...
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Telecoms: Satellites? Are they nuts?
A new satellite-broadband system hopes to succeed where others failedMAKING a big, risky investment in these turbulent times might seem a bit daft. And investing in a satellite-broadband project sounds dafter still: billions were lost on similar projects during the 1990s. So why would investors in O ...
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Yahoo!: Boo hoo!
More bad news for the struggling internet giant, this time from JapanEVER since Yahoo! rejected Microsofts offer of $31 a share in February, its fortunes have only worsened. Growth in internet advertising, Yahoo!s main source of revenue, is slowing as the economy sours. An alliance with its main riv ...
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India's car industry: A new home for the Nano
Protesters force Tata Motors to abandon a car factory in West BengalEACH year Indias Bengalis celebrate the goddess Durga, offering prayers before dazzling religious tableaux called pandals. This year Santosh Mitra square in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) hosted an unusual example: a yellow replica of ...
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Correction: Richard Branson
Our profile of Richard Branson (Virgin rebirth, September 27th 2008) said Ansett was a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines. In fact Ansett was owned by Air New Zealand, in which Singapore had a 25% stake. Sorry. ...
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Bankruptcy in China: Silent busts
More Chinese businesses are collapsingthough you would never know itOFFICIALLY, only a few thousand companies will declare bankruptcy this year in China. Unofficially, local manufacturing groups believe many more than that will go out of business in the southern province of Guangdong alone. And the ...
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Face value: The bailiff
Sheila Bair of the FDIC is at the forefront of Americas response to the financial crisisWHEN she was summoned from academia in 2006 to head the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), some people wondered why Sheila Bair would want to run such a sleepy backwater. The institution charged with a ...
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Outsourcing: In a pinch
How the financial crisis will affect the outsourcing industryIN ONE respect it has been a record couple of weeks for outsourcing. Around the world, governments and taxpayers have agreed to help ailing financial firms offload their toxic loans and resolve their liquidity worries. Banks are not the on ...
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The paperless office: On its way, at last
No longer a joke, the paperless office is getting closerSTEPHANIE BREEDLOVE and her husband founded Breedlove & Associates 16 years ago to help families who (legally) hire a nanny with the crushing burden of paperwork that this entails. There are pay stubs to be sent, federal and state tax retur ...
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Video games and music: Playing along
Guitar Hero and other games are boosting music sales for some artistsAS THE music industry searches for a new model in the age of digital distribution and internet piracy, it is getting a helping hand from an unexpected quarter: video games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band, which let people play al ...
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Bankruptcies: Shutting up shop
The long-feared surge in bankruptcies in America is now under wayTHE Sharper Image store on Manhattans West 57th Street is sharp no more: its last state-of-the-art massage chairs and stylish humidifiers have been put in storage and its windows papered over. A few doors away, the assistant in the Sha ...
The Economist: Business
