The Economist

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China’s zero-covid industrial complex

PRESIDENT XI JINPING’S zero-covid policy has been a plague on China’s firms and a headache for Western ones reliant on its suppliers and consumers. The 25m residents of Shanghai, the country’s commercial...

Activist investors are becoming tamer

“WHEN WE GO at ’em,” Carl Icahn growls, proudly, “we go at ’em.” After decades as chief executives’ number-one tormentor, the 86-year-old’s disdain for them has softened only a tad. “I wouldn’t...

The woolliest words in business

FIRE-FIGHTING FOAM starves the flames of oxygen. A handful of overused words have the same deadening effect on people’s ability to think. These are words like “innovation”, “collaboration”, “flexibility”, “purpose” and “sustainability”....

Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

BOSSES HAVE always kept tabs on their workers. After all, part of any manager’s job is to ensure that underlings are earning their keep, not shirking and definitely not pilfering. Workplaces have...

Turkish builders are thriving in Africa

SELIM BORA has had quite a run. In March his company, Summa, won a contract to rebuild and run Guinea Bissau’s new international airport. Months earlier it had completed a 50,000-seat national...

The war in Ukraine is rocking the market for edible oils

WHEN VLADIMIR PUTIN’S tanks rolled into Ukraine in late February, crude-oil markets reacted instantly to the uncertainty and, in short order, to the sanctions imposed on Russia, the world’s second-biggest exporter of...

A flotilla of startups wants to streamline global supply chains

FORTO SEEMS an unlikely tech darling. It does not make gadgets, build the metaverse, forge cryptocurrencies or launch rockets. The six-year-old startup from Berlin, whose main business is arranging the transport of...

Why working from anywhere isn't realistic

FOR MOST white-collar workers, it used to be very simple. Home was the place you left in order to go to work. The office was almost certainly the place you were heading...

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