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China’s communist authorities are tightening their grip on the private sector

IT MIGHT BE confused for one of the world’s savviest tech investors. China Internet Investment Fund’s (CIIF) portfolio is the envy of venture capitalists everywhere. It owns part of ByteDance, the Beijing-based...

China’s Communist authorities reinvent state capitalism

IT MIGHT BE confused for one of the world’s savviest tech investors. The portfolio of China Internet Investment Fund (CIIF) is the envy of venture capitalists everywhere. It owns part of ByteDance,...

Herbert Diess’s job is once again on the line

WHEN BERND OSTERLOH, the mighty boss of Volkwagen’s council that represents workers, announced his resignation in April many investors breathed a sigh of relief. Frequent, acrimonious clashes between him and Herbert Diess,...

Science and technology lifts the gloom for property investors

OXFORD NANOPORE’S MinION is a tiny but powerful device. When a hotel worker in Sydney tested positive for covid-19 in March last year, the portable DNA sequencer traced the infection to a...

Chief executives are weirder than ever

CELEBRITY BOSSES used to have nicknames that made a virtue of short fuses and brutality. “Chainsaw Al” and “Neutron Jack” sounded more like wrestlers than men in suits. That kind of moniker...

The non-zero costs of zero-covid

THE TRADE war between America and China paradoxically brought some of the countries’ citizens closer together. Ben Kostrzewa, a trade lawyer for Hogan Lovells, moved from Washington, DC, to Hong Kong to...

General Electric breaks up

PERHAPS THE most remarkable characteristic of General Electric (GE) over its 129-year history has been how thoroughly it reflected the dominant characteristics of big American business. Most of its history was a...

Companies want to build a virtual realm to copy the real world

CALL IT THE multiplication of the metaverses. Ever since Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook—sorry, Meta—laid out his vision in late October for immersive virtual worlds he thinks people will want to...

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