SOUTH AFRICA’S stockmarket has Naspers largely to thank for its recent record highs. Shares in the media and internet group have soared by 45% this year; even before then it was Africa’s most valuable firm. So recent unrest among shareholders in Naspers might seem unwarranted. But in the days before its annual general meeting in […]
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PAUL POLMAN runs Europe’s seventh-most valuable company, Unilever, worth $176bn, but he is not a typical big cheese. A Dutchman who once considered becoming a priest, he believes that selling shampoo around the world can be a higher calling and detests the Anglo-Saxon doctrine of shareholder primacy, which holds that a firm’s chief purpose is […]
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ON NOVEMBER 8th 2016, Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, stunned its 1.3bn people by announcing that most banknotes would soon become worthless. Indians then queued for weeks on end to exchange or deposit their banned money at banks. The comfort for the poor was that the greedy, tax-dodging rich would suffer more, as they struggled […]
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VADIM BELYAEV’S start in business in the mid-1980s was to sell foreign watches on the black market in the Soviet Union. He became a financier, and by 2015 had transformed his bank, Otkritie, into post-Soviet Russia’s largest private lender. Named “Businessman of the Year” by a Russian magazine, he used an English term to describe […]
Read moreBosses in France will find it easier to hire and fire staff under new reforms aimed at overhauling the country’s notoriously stringent labor market. The French government laid out 36 new measures on Thursday as part of President Emmanuel Macron‘s plans to encourage employment and business freedoms. These include greater autonomy at a workplace level, […]
Read moreArkema shares fell sharply on Thursday after two explosions were reported at its flood-hit chemical plant in Crosby, Texas. Chemicals were released into the atmosphere after Arkema’s U.S.-based complex sustained significant damage from Tropical Storm Harvey. One police officer helping to secure the site was reportedly taken to a nearby hospital after inhaling fumes, while […]
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The European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator has lamented a lack of developments in the third round of Brexit negotiations, saying that no “decisive progress” has been made on any principal subjects. Michel Barnier said Thursday that the three-day talks in Brussels with his British counterpart David Davis, and their respective delegations, had secured “useful clarification […]
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Rapid gains by the euro against the dollar are worrying a growing number of policymakers at the European Central Bank, raising the chance its asset purchases will be phased out only slowly, three sources familiar with discussions told Reuters. The scheme is due to expire at the end of 2017 but formal talks over its […]
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Euro zone inflation rose to 1.5 percent year-on-year in August, narrowly beating analyst expectations and edging slightly closer to the European Central Bank’s (ECB) target, according to flash estimates released by Eurostat on Thursday. The European Union’s statistics office projected consumer prices in the euro zone would reach its highest level in four months in […]
Read moreThe United States on Thursday flew some of its most advanced warplanes to South Korea to take part in bombing drills aimed at intimidating North Korea, after Pyongyang fired a midrange ballistic missile over Japan earlier this week, South Korea’s military said. Two U.S. B-1B supersonic bombers and four F-35 stealth fighter jets joined four […]
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