Volkswagen has raised the profit target on its VW-branded vehicles for 2020, after the car manufacturer almost hit the goal nearly three years ahead of schedule. Volkswagen said Thursday that its namesake brand will exceed its 2017 margin target of 2.5 to 3.5 percent. This result is remarkable, considering the hugely disruptive diesel scandal in […]
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GREAT expectations attended digital journalism outfits. Firms such as BuzzFeed and Mashable were the hip kids destined to conquer the internet with their younger, advertiser-friendly audience, smart manipulation of social media and affinity for technology. They seemed able to generate massive web traffic and, with it, ad revenues. They saw the promise of video, predicting […]
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MUSIC lovers do not typically go to the opera to buy a speaker. But at the Palais Garnier in Paris they now can: Devialet, a local maker of high-end speakers, on November 29th opened a store in the 19th-century music venue to sell its most sophisticated product, called Phantom. Looking like a dinosaur egg, this […]
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THE “kapsalon” is a healthy mix of chips, melted Gouda cheese, shawarma, lettuce and garlic sauce and is a tried and tested hangover cure in the Netherlands. So naturally, a butcher’s shop on the Spui, in The Hague, put it on its takeaway menu, alongside burgers and sausage rolls. As two young women walk out, […]
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CENTRAL bankers may control short-term interest rates, but long-term ones are mostly free to wander. They do not always behave. When Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, was raising short rates in 2005, he described a simultaneous decline in long rates as a “conundrum”. His successor-to-be, Ben Bernanke, blamed foreign investments in American […]
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“WHAT does not kill me makes me stronger,” wrote Nietzsche in “Götzen-Dämmerung”, or “Twilight of the Idols”. Alternatively, it leaves the body dangerously weakened, as did the illnesses that plagued the German philosopher all his life. The euro area survived a hellish decade, and is now enjoying an unlikely boom. The OECD, a club of […]
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ANGLO-SAXON capitalism has had a bad decade. It is accused of stoking inequality and financial instability. A relentless pursuit of shareholder value has led big firms to act in ways that often seem to make the world a worse place. Aeroplane seats get smaller, energy firms pollute the air, multinationals outsource jobs and Silicon Valley […]
Read moreFinance ministers from Latvia, Luxembourg, Portugal and Slovakia bid on Thursday to replace Jeroen Dijsselbloem as the powerful head of euro zone finance ministers, the Eurogroup, ahead of a vote next week among the 19 countries sharing the euro. The president of the Eurogroup chairs monthly meetings of finance ministers and heads the euro zone […]
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WHILE the world of geopolitics looks as risky as ever, the markets seem to go on their sweet way, recording new highs for equity indices. In large part, of course, this is down to signs of an improving global economy and sense that politics doesn’t really matter, despite the tweets of President Trump (defending Vladimir […]
Read moreIrish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on Thursday named Foreign Minister Simon Coveney as deputy prime minister, replacing Frances Fitzgerald, whose resignation over a policing scandal on Tuesday allowed the government to avoid a snap election. Varadkar also appointed Heather Humphreys as Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation and Josepha Madigan as Minister for Culture. Source: […]
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