Society

Draghi’s corporate inbox will keep flashing red

31 Mar 2021

Rome’s to-do list, left over from the last government, includes selling dud bank MPS, resurrecting carrier Alitalia, expanding broadband and ending a motorway row. With vaccinations and recovery his legacy, these secondary tasks will slip to the bottom of Mario Draghi’s pile.

Capital Calls: BlackRock’s Archegos angle, SPACs

30 Mar 2021

Concise views on global finance in the Covid-19 era: The fallout from the collapse of Bill Hwang’s family office gives regulators reasons to focus on funds, not fund managers; and bosses of blank-check companies don’t take investor questions.

Capital Calls: WFH deals, Suez Canal, NorNickel

29 Mar 2021

Concise views on global finance in the Covid-19 era: Fintech firm Broadridge pays a full price for trading platform; with the waterway clear, all sides will be taking up positions for a legal battle royal; the Russian nickel producer cashes in on high copper prices.

Review: “A World Without Email” is a long way off

26 Mar 2021

Tending to electronic communication takes a third of our working day, making us miserable and less productive, Cal Newport argues. Virtual to-do lists are useful hacks to regain control. Yet even if email is defeated, interruption by pervasive digital messages seems here to stay.

Boulder killings could break U.S. Senate’s back

23 Mar 2021

The second U.S. mass shooting in a week begs for laws favoring tougher gun checks. Like a $3 trln infrastructure plan, that measure is stalled because of arcane Senate filibuster rules. There are ways to untie the knot, but each step forward could lead to an even bigger breakup.

Capital Calls: Leon Black, Happiness index

22 Mar 2021

Concise views on global finance in the Covid-19 era: Apollo’s founder still has his imprint on the Museum of Modern Art and Dartmouth College; people are proving surprisingly resilient in the pandemic, a recent poll suggests.

Office landlords can live with homeworking shock

19 Mar 2021

Firms like HSBC hope working from home will let them cut costs. Goldman Sachs thinks it is a fad. Yet even if employees spend more time at home, their needs and social distancing rules will limit how much space can be freed up. The slump in office property stocks looks overdone.

Cox: Global vax race is lesson in risk appetites

18 Mar 2021

The widening gap between the jabbed and the jab-nots, with the U.S., UK and Israel light years ahead of Europe and Canada, isn’t just about healthcare systems. It’s about culture, too. Some societies are just better at embracing innovation and putting faith in technology.

The Exchange: Will home working outlive Covid-19?

16 Mar 2021

The pandemic has relocated many office workers to their studies and dining tables. Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom tells Dasha Afanasieva that many companies will continue working from home two days a week. But allowing too much flexibility could bring diversity risks.

Capital Calls: McKinsey, Celebrity SPACs

10 Mar 2021

Concise views on global finance in the Covid-19 era: McKinsey’s new boss isn’t new enough; the SEC tells investors to be careful of celebrities bearing SPACs.

Capital Calls: TV’s royal boost, Shared offices

9 Mar 2021

Concise views on global finance in the Covid-19 era: Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and his wife Meghan is a boon for ViacomCBS’s streaming ambitions; IWG’s revamp depends on a workplace revolution.

Capital Calls: American Airlines, Crypto PayPal

8 Mar 2021

Concise views on global finance in the Covid-19 era: The U.S. carrier is issuing new debt and hocking some airline miles to pay back the U.S. Treasury loan that carried restrictions on pay and dividends; PayPal investors give a shrug over another dive into bitcoin-land.

White supremacy dies hard on the grocery shelf

5 Mar 2021

New Orleans craft beer Dixie will soon shed its name for a less racially divisive marque. It’s a big risk for a small company. But if a Southern staple can jettison a racially insensitive brand, what’s taking $60 bln giant Colgate, maker of “Black person toothpaste,” so long?

Review: The human response to a man-made disaster

5 Mar 2021

Mankind’s impact on the planet is irreversible, Elizabeth Kolbert writes in “Under a White Sky”. She focuses on people trying to limit the damage, whether by breeding hardy coral or reflecting the sun. Wilfully shaping nature raises new dilemmas. But we may have no choice.

Capital Calls: Soho House, Aston Martin

25 Feb 2021

Concise views on global finance in the Covid-19 era: The private members’ club shrugs off lockdowns to plan a New York IPO; The loss-making luxury carmaker’s shareholders need to buckle up.

Putin has the cash to ease one driver of protests

22 Feb 2021

Anger at the Kremlin is about falling living standards as well as Alexei Navalny. Fiscal rules have complicated efforts to help the poorest Russians. But higher oil prices make it easier to placate those opposition supporters whose gripes are economic rather than political.

Review: Bill Gates engineers climate risk clarity

19 Feb 2021

In “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” the Microsoft founder argues states should throw money at climate change research. Technology will indeed be critical in figuring out how to eliminate carbon emissions. But his book’s main quality is to define the challenge in a graspable way.

The Exchange: Editorial lessons from Lionel Barber

16 Feb 2021

The former Financial Times editor discusses his views on journalism in the post-Trump, post-Brexit, post-print era with Rob Cox. He also shares some of the juicier stories from his memoir, “The Powerful and the Damned,” like the time he told off Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman.

Capital Calls: Deloitte castoff, Banks and Brexit

15 Feb 2021

Concise views on global finance in the Covid-19 era: The UK auditor chooses an unfortunate moment to offload its lucrative restructuring practice; The Bank of England pours cold water on the idea of a regulatory bonfire after Britain leaves the European Union.

Review: Bellingcat’s model upends journalism

12 Feb 2021

Eliot Higgins’ book describes how the open-source investigator used online images to reveal who downed a plane in Ukraine and poisoned a Russian defector in Britain. His donor-funded and volunteer-driven approach offers broader lessons for the newsgathering business.