Tech

Yandex split marks end of Russian tech hopes

1 Dec 2022

The group once known as the “Russian Google” may split its international and Russian businesses. Ex-finance minister Alexei Kudrin will head the shrunken local arm. The company’s founders can start anew, but investors in the former Nasdaq darling will likely remain bereft.

Capital Calls: Ticketmaster and Taylor Swift

18 Nov 2022

Concise views on global finance: A meltdown involving the pop star’s upcoming “Eras” concert tour is attracting an audience on Capitol Hill and risks an unwanted corporate fight with the artist herself.

Blockchain hype gets useful Aussie wake-up call

17 Nov 2022

Bourse ASX is pausing its much-delayed distributed-ledger clearing system and taking a $170 mln hit. The troubled project was beset by old-school problems like poor communication and planning. Such human flaws, though, bleed into how the technology gets developed.

Tech mess hastens Irish economic turn inwards

11 Nov 2022

Multinationals like Meta Platforms bring in a quarter of Ireland’s $68 bln tax revenue, and the salaries they pay prop up its housing market. Now they’re shedding staff, the risk is a budget hole. Irish business may not like how a future Sinn Féin government would fill it.

Japan lives at the bleeding edge of good enough

11 Nov 2022

Energy costs are spiking, the currency plunging, the population aging. Growth is meh. Tokyo, afraid of being left behind, is trying to compete with Silicon Valley. Yet returns on innovation may be overestimated. The country’s biggest problems are a matter of will, not patents.

Brazil can buoy Sea’s growth ambitions

28 Oct 2022

The Singaporean games-to-payments group is exiting smaller countries and cutting costs to satisfy impatient investors. But it is making progress in the fast-growing Latin American market, where losses are narrowing. A $6.5 bln cash pile suggests Sea can stay the course.

Kakao has plenty more data fires to put out

20 Oct 2022

The $16 bln South Korean superapp owner's co-CEO has stepped down following a massive outage. Given how dependent the country is on the company's online services, that's unlikely to quell a rising public backlash. The costs of added rules and regulatory scrutiny will add up.

Wall Street sends regulators a poop emoji

28 Sep 2022

Eleven firms have paid $1.8 billion in fines for employees’ unapproved use of platforms like WhatsApp. The rules may have been hard to enforce. But the response — to collectively flout them at every level — is alarming. Meanwhile the mass fine looks essentially toothless.

Silicon Valley’s post-Covid brain drain

27 Sep 2022

Before the pandemic, 75% of venture capital was invested in California, New York and Massachusetts. In this Exchange podcast, AOL co-founder Steve Case explains that a hybrid working revolution is reversing that trend and encouraging permanent investment away from the coasts.

Capital Calls: EasyJet, Nexi

27 Sep 2022

Concise views on global finance: The budget airline scraps its offset plan and focuses efforts on cleaner technology; the 12 bln euro payment company’s valuation gap with peer Worldline looks increasingly hard to justify.

Capital Calls: Clock ticks for reining in TikTok

26 Sep 2022

Concise views on global finance: The Chinese-owned social media network’s prodigious growth will make the U.S. government’s attempts to allay security concerns trickier still.

Capital Calls: Sea’s distress call

21 Sep 2022

Concise views on global finance: The boss of Singapore’s $26 bln e-commerce to video-games outfit has laid out plans to achieve financial self-sufficiency, sending a wake-up call to other cash-burning peers in the region.

Capital Calls: SPAC unwind, U.S. trustbusters

20 Sep 2022

Concise views on global finance: Chamath Palihapitiya, who personified the excess of the blank check market, is returning cash in two of his vehicles. Investors in companies that went public via SPACs are the main losers. And American antitrust enforcers suffer a second court loss in a month.

Samsung climate inertia is by-product of Seoul’s

20 Sep 2022

The $274 bln conglomerate's 2050 net-zero goal underwhelms next to those set by Apple, Intel and others. Blame South Korea’s power-market monopoly and regressive renewable policies. With investors and customers demanding action, Samsung's corporate heft will be put to the test.

Capital Calls: Ralph Lauren

19 Sep 2022

Concise views on global finance: The $6 bln retailer known for its iconic Polo shirts is cheaply valued compared to European counterparts.

Capital Calls: Paytm protest vote

22 Aug 2022

Concise views on global finance: A majority of the Indian fintech posterchild’s public institutional investors voted against the pay of founder and boss Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

Jack Ma’s exit would smooth Ant’s IPO march

29 Jul 2022

The Alibaba founder may cede control of the fintech giant. This could mark a big advance in Ant's efforts to clean up governance and placate the officials who derailed its $37 bln float in 2020. A simpler ownership structure puts the company one step closer to a revived listing.

Chip sector’s bright spot brings back bad memory

28 Jul 2022

Semiconductor demand is faltering as companies and officials spend billions adding supply. The $166 bln memory-chip market is consolidated at present, so leaders like Samsung can quickly cut output to protect profit. Chinese entrants and reshoring efforts might upend that soon.

Hard tech fad leaves Chinese apps out in the cold

26 Jul 2022

Tencent-backed Soulgate is among the country's startups rushing to list in Hong Kong as investors pile into chips and robotics. Ballooning losses at the $2 bln social network will be a tough sell. For larger peers like TikTok-owner ByteDance, the clock to go public is ticking.

Capital Calls: LVMH succession, Swedish Match

22 Jul 2022

Concise views on global finance: Bernard Arnault insures the luxury group against future family feuds; the oral tobacco company’s results will embolden deal resisters.