IN 1909 THE founder of General Motors (GM), William Crapo Durant, offered to buy Ford for $8m. Henry Ford spurned the advance, making way for one of the fiercest and most multifaceted...
"A FLOTATION is like your own funeral. You usually do it only once,” deadpans the chief financial officer of a software company that recently staged a blockbuster initial public offering (IPO). Some...
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM has it that the capital of Europe’s most powerful economy is poor, bolshie, chronically indebted and utterly reliant on subsidies from richer states. The debacle of the construction of the...
IN THE 1800S greeting an associate in the West meant doffing your hat. A hand may have been kissed. But seldom was it shaken—a gesture deemed too pally. The handshake has since...
A ROCKSTAR’S WELCOME greeted Universal Music Group when it launched on Amsterdam’s Euronext exchange on September 21st in Europe’s largest listing of the year. Giddy investors all but threw their knickers at...
FOR A MAN who wants to live for ever, Peter Thiel has already done enough in his 53 years to leave mere mortals exhausted—and mostly frustrated. The venture capitalist, techno-Utopian and scourge...
WHEN YOSHINO AKIRA, a Japanese chemist, worked on rechargeable batteries in the 1980s, it was with a view to powering portable devices. His Nobel-prizewinning research led to the first commercial lithium-ion (Li-ion)...
FOR MOST people, coming into work is about more than picking up a pay slip. Not everyone aims to change the fate of humankind at the office. But even a sense that...
