A tale of fake mayors and real deals MARKETING, its veterans like to say, is all about the “three Rs”: reaching the right person in the right place at the right time. Hence the growing interest in marketing circles for mobile-phone-based social networks such as Foursquare and Gowalla that let users “check in” to shops [...]
Alfa Romeo’s cars have not always lived up to its stellar brand. That is changing IN 1995 Alfa Romeo ignominiously pulled out of America, having managed to sell only 400 cars there that year. Yet this month the sporting Italian marque, which is celebrating its centenary, was the star of the annual Pebble Beach Concours [...]
Military service makes Israeli techies tougher MANY Israeli start-ups should pay royalties to the army, says Edouard Cukierman, a venture capitalist in Tel Aviv. He is only half joking. Despite the recession, Israel’s technology exports grew by more than 5% last year. Mr Cukierman thinks military service deserves some of the credit. Israel’s army does [...]
A South Korean state firm joins the scramble for oil IN THE clubby world of Korean commerce, hostile takeovers are rare. The idea of a state-owned firm attempting one seemed unthinkable until recently. But when the board of a British target rejected a friendly offer, the Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC) took off its gloves. [...]
A Western media company offers a product the Chinese can’t resist: education ON A Tuesday at 6pm, children begin arriving at a bland commercial building just as the office workers are leaving. A small storefront leads to an English-language school run by Disney. It is not much of an entrance, squashed between a dusty drugstore [...]
General Motors’ return to the stockmarket heralds a remarkable turnaround for America’s carmakers WHAT a difference 15 months makes. On June 1st 2009 General Motors applied for Chapter 11 protection, triggering the largest industrial bankruptcy in American history. This week the carmaker filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission to pave the way for [...]
Traditional listed firms are facing competition FOR most of the past 150 years public companies have swept all before them. Wall Streeters have dissolved their cosy partnerships to go public. Communists have abandoned their five-year plans in favour of stockmarket listings. And Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have bowed before the god of the IPO—the initial public [...]
Asia’s powerful thirst for beer does not mean bumper profits for brewers DRINKING beer is not a competitive sport—unless you are a student or a rugby player. But if it were, Asia would now have the bragging rights. Recent figures from Japan’s Kirin Institute of Food and Lifestyle (owned by the Kirin brewery) show that [...]
Businesses may have to start putting leases on their balance-sheets WHEN you lease something—a boat, a warehouse, a machine for making ball-bearings—you agree to pay for it bit by bit over time. So it is like incurring a debt, say the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and America’s Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Therefore, it [...]
It’s not just that his lips are moving “ASSHOLE!” That was what Jeff Skilling, the boss of Enron, called an investor who challenged his rosy account of his firm’s financial health. Other bosses usually give less obvious clues that they are lying. Happily, a new study reveals what those clues are. David Larcker and Anastasia [...]