American capitalism has a special reverence for large numbers. They can frighten as debt or reassure as backstops. The $260bn raised by special-purpose acquisition companies (spacs) since the start of 2020 lacks...
Gautam adani is a man of few words but, as Asia’s richest tycoon, plenty of means. On May 15th he agreed to pay $10.5bn for Ambuja Cement, India’s second-biggest cement-maker, controlled by...
America’s clean-energy bosses thought they would by now have more to celebrate. In the presidential campaign of 2020 Democrats tried to outbid one another on climate plans—Joe Biden offered $2trn, Bernie Sanders’s...
Walmart went from strength to strength during the covid-19 pandemic. Its years-long investments in online fulfilment finally began to pay off as virus-wary shoppers swapped aisles for apps. As inflation picked up...
Elon musk recently suggested he might introduce an edit button to Twitter, to let users revise injudicious tweets. He might wish such a thing already existed. Less than a month after tweeting...
A year ago, at the height of the pandemic boom in all things digital, Son Masayoshi embodied in the flesh the futuristic promise of global tech. The flamboyant founder of SoftBank Group,...
COUPANG’S OFFICES in Seoul afford a view of the South Korean e-merchant’s promise. Every dawn the forest of high-rise apartment blocks teems with its vans dropping off orders made the night before....
A FAVOURITE PASTIME in Silicon Valley, second only to inventing the next new thing, is bubble-spotting. Even industry insiders tend to get these things spectacularly wrong. “You’ll see some dead unicorns this...
