In 1922 Vladimir Lenin, criticised by Communist militants for tolerating a minuscule role for the private sector in Bolshevik Russia, insisted that it was a reasonable trade-off because the state would still...
The bad news just keeps coming. Ten months after America’s stockmarket peaked, its big technology companies have suffered another rout. Hopes that the Federal Reserve might change course have been dashed; interest...
Elon musk’s takeover of Twitter raises questions of policy: is it right for the world’s richest man to own such an important forum for public debate? It raises issues of law: is...
Twitter is no longer a public company, but it is being run in a more public way than ever before. Elon Musk, who took the social network private on October 27th at...
Conglomerates could hardly be less fashionable. The diversified industrial empires of old are taught as case-studies in underperformance, misaligned management incentives and poor capital allocation. Bosses fear that a “conglomerate discount”—the difference...
Elon Musk plans to charge Twitter users $8 a month for a “verified” account, and to adjust the fee based on “purchasing-power parity”. How might that work? Think about what $8 can...
The MoPei phone-swing device is ingeniously depressing. It is a cradle for smartphones that rocks back and forth when it is plugged in, and it is designed to cheat fitness apps into...
In the past few years Guo Guangchang, chairman of Fosun, a Chinese conglomerate, has watched as the Communist Party has taken down his rivals. Two executives at hna, an indebted airline that...