THE MANAGERS of Saudi Aramco could have the cushiest jobs in the energy business. The state-run oil colossus produces 9m barrels of oil a day, more than any other firm and nearly...
IT WAS A bitter farewell. On May 25th Luciano Benetton, the 89-year-old eponymous co-founder, with his three siblings, of the maker of colourful jumpers, told Corriere della Sera, an Italian daily, that...
IMAGINE MEETING a stranger at a party. What makes for a successful encounter? Lesson one is to heed the wisdom of a shampoo commercial from the 1980s: you never get a second...
There is a wry sense of seen-it-all-before in the crucible of the world’s semiconductor industry. When your columnist took the bullet train to Hsinchu Science Park, home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company...
FOR YEARS ExxonMobil was the top dog among the world’s private-sector oil companies. It was the biggest of the Western majors, and the best-managed. It regularly posted higher returns on capital than...
Every day seems to bring fresh bets on artificial intelligence (AI). In the past few weeks CoreWeave, an AI cloud-computing company, and H, a French AI startup, have raised hefty sums of...
Not since the 1980s have Japanese businesses generated so much excitement. Japanese companies’ profit margins have doubled in the past decade or so. They are forking out twice as much to their...
Dear Max, My employer has a policy of allowing dogs in the office. Almost everyone there seems to think this is tremendous but I don’t like the things. (To be honest, I...
