More stories

  • in

    Multinational firms are finding it hard to let go of China

    Few jobs are guaranteed to turn hair grey faster than running operations for a multinational business in China. Diplomatic spats and consumer boycotts are hazards of the job. A zero-covid policy that causes intermittent local lockdowns, such as the one that recently began in the southern city of Guangzhou, has disrupted supply chains and made the country inhospitable to foreign managers. A fractious workforce is adding to the woes. On November 23rd a riot erupted over pay and working conditions at the main factory that makes Apple’s iPhones in China. In a survey by the European Chamber of Commerce in China, 60% of members reported that the business environment has become more challenging.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

  • in

    What Disney can learn from Elton John

    You have to hand it to Sir Elton John. Not only is he the only musician ever to have top-ten hit singles in Britain for six decades in a row. He is also a rare septuagenarian megastar who knows how to bow out in style. On November 20th at a relatively tender 75 years old, he performed what he said would be his last ever concert in America at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. One of the showstoppers was “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, the theme song for graceful retirements. If only Disney, who live-streamed the event on Disney+, had been listening.It wasn’t, because shortly before the performance started, a bombshell landed. Its hospitality tent at the stadium was convulsed by the news that Robert (Bob) Iger, the Walt Disney Company’s own Rocket Man, was coming out of semi-retirement, aged 71, to retake control of the firm he left only 11 months previously, leaving Bob Chapek, his handpicked successor, out on his ear. It was startling. It shouldn’t have been. After all, as Jeffrey Cole, a communications expert at USC Annenberg puts it, “Disney has had a 40-year succession problem”. During his decade-and-a-half as CEO, Mr Iger postponed his retirement four times, elevating and nixing potential successors. His predecessor, Michael Eisner, expensively jettisoned possible replacements twice during his 21-year reign, before finally settling on Mr Iger. Disney’s board has now given Mr Iger two years—a deadline unlikely to be set in stone—to have another go at finding a suitable heir. Succession problems are not unique to Disney. In fact they plague corporate America, especially when departing CEOs achieve near mythical status—besides Mr Iger, recall GE’s Jack Welch and Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ barista-in-chief. Some high-profile CEOs cling onto power for so long that their firms appear to grow old with them: exhibit a is FedEx, the delivery firm whose founder Fred Smith stepped down as boss in June after 49 years. There is a probationary air to some imperial handovers. Andy Jassy may have done all the right things to become boss of Amazon, but there is little doubt Jeff Bezos, the founder, would swoop back in if the e-commerce giant got into trouble. Then there are the leaders who have made their firms so iconoclastic they are almost irreplaceable: think of Berkshire Hathaway’s investment genius, Warren Buffett, or Elon Musk and his impossible-to-emulate greatest show on earth. What makes it so hard to fill such oversized shoes? One clue comes from Mr Iger himself. It is hubris. In his memoir, “The Ride of a Lifetime”, published in 2019, he acknowledges that all CEOs like to think that they are irreplaceable. Yet good leadership, he adds, demands the opposite. It is about bringing on a successor, identifying skills they need to develop and being honest with them when they are not ready for the next step. That is true. Yet what he doesn’t admit is that grooming a replacement is psychologically tough. It brings leaders face-to-face with their own mortality. It brings up the vexing question of legacy. Tellingly, Mr Iger writes almost mournfully about the day in 2005 when Mr Eisner left Disney for the last time with no board seat, no consulting role—not even a farewell lunch thrown by his colleagues. “Now he was driving away knowing that his era was over,” he wrote. “It’s one of those moments, I imagine, when it’s hard to know exactly who you are without this attachment and title and role that has defined you for so long.” With such a bleak perception of corporate afterlife, it’s no wonder Mr Iger was loth to let go.In theory, that’s where strong, independent board members should have come in. It’s their job to handle succession planning. While the CEO has a responsibility to nurture layers of talent within the firm, it’s up to the board to examine internal and external candidates and decide on a replacement. In practice, however, A-list bosses often dominate their boards. In Disney’s case, the directors went as far as elevating Mr Iger to chairman in 2012 after his masterful acquisitions of Pixar and Marvel, two animated-film studios, sealed his status as monarch of the Magic Kingdom. When Mr Chapek took over as CEO in 2020, the board continued in Mr Iger’s thrall. He remained executive chairman until the end of last year, reportedly still calling the shots in ways that undermined his successor’s authority. In June, under Susan Arnold, a new chairman, the board unanimously extended Mr Chapek’s contract, though by then his credibility was virtually shot. Five months later, the board sacked him. It could barely disguise its delight at having its more-beloved Bob back. For all such corporate-governance fiascos, some comebacks work. Mr Iger’s might. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management likens his return to that of second-world-war generals such as Douglas MacArthur or George Patton, motivated more by restoring Disney’s lustre than by personal ambition. The day after taking back control at Burbank, Mr Iger swiftly set out to dismantle the centralising strategy orchestrated by Mr Chapek, putting decision-making back in the hands of Disney’s creators. Mr Sonnenfeld believes the returning boss already has “excellent” replacement candidates up his sleeve. If he does, he will be able to rectify the biggest mistake in a mostly blemish-free career. When are you gonna come down? Some high-profile successions work, too, most notably the transition at Apple, maker of the iPhone, from the late Steve Jobs to Tim Cook, and, indeed, Mr Iger’s follow-on from Mr Eisner. In both cases, the new bosses succeeded first by not trashing their predecessors’ legacies and second by articulating a strong vision for the future. Yet ultimately the most important thing may have been that their long-serving bosses, however celebrated, had by then left the stage. Long-standing financiers such as Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Larry Fink of BlackRock; moguls, such as Rupert Murdoch, of News Corp; all should take note. Listen to Sir Elton’s ode to life after superstardom—and learn. ■ More

  • in

    Amazon makes a new push into health care

    AS BIG tech companies face a brutal slow-down the hunt is on for new areas of expansion. Amazon, which is now America’s second-biggest business by revenue, is a case in point. In the final quarter of 2022 its sales are expected to expand by just 6.7% year on year. Last week, on November 17th, Andy Jassy, the firm’s chief executive, confirmed that it had begun laying off employees and would continue to do so next year. Mr Jassy said it was the most difficult decision he had made since becoming boss. But he also noted that “big opportunities” lay ahead. One that he highlighted is the largest, most lucrative and hellishly difficult businesses in America: health care.Many tech firms have health care ambitions. Apple tracks wellbeing through the iPhone; Microsoft offers cloud-computing services to health firms and Alphabet sells wearable devices and is pumping money into biotech research. But Amazon is now busy creating the most ambitious offering of them all. Two days before Mr Jassy’s statement, on November 15th, it launched “Amazon Clinic”, an online service operating in 32 states that offers virtual health care for over 20 conditions from acne to allergies. Amazon describes the new service as a virtual storefront that connects users with third-party health providers.The Amazon Clinic launch follows the $3.9bn takeover, announced in July, of One Medical, a primary care provider that offers telehealth services online and runs bricks-and-mortar clinics (the deal has yet to close). It has 790,000 members. The deal was led by Neil Linsday, formerly responsible for Prime, Amazon’s subscription service, who has said health care “is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention”.These latest moves complement existing assets that Amazon has. Its Halo band is a wearable device that monitors the user’s health status, and which went on sale in 2020. In 2018 it bought PillPack, a digital pharmacy that is now part of Amazon Pharmacy, for $753m. Amazon Web Services launched specific cloud services for health care and life science companies in 2021.The move into primary care, jargon for the role of the traditional family doctor, is a big step but has an obvious logic. Walgreens, a pharmacy chain, reckons the industry is worth $1trn a year. Around half of Generation Z and millennial Americans do not have a primary-care doctor and One Medical’s membership has almost doubled since 2019. Amazon Clinic will accept cash for its services, rather than relying on America’s nightmare insurance system to recoup costs.The company is betting that primary care will become more digital. And it is likely that it will seek to integrate these services with other parts of Amazon’s health care offering. Amazon Clinic’s new users can buy drugs from Amazon Pharmacy. Over time the firm could add features to the Halo band that give people reminders to take medicine or set up clinics in branches of Whole Foods, the supermarket chain it acquired in 2017. And it may wrap health care into Prime which now has some 200m members worldwide. “The low-hanging fruit is offering discounts on membership to Prime members”, says Daniel Grosslight of Citigroup, a bank.Amazon’s health push comes with several risks. One is that its own record is far from flawless. It is closing Amazon Care, which it launched to provide health services for its own employees and which expanded to offer some services to outside customers. Haven, a collaboration with Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet’s investment firm, and JPMorgan Chase, a bank, to procure lower cost health care for employees was set up in 2018 but died less than three years later.Another danger is competition. cvs, an American retail pharmacy, reportedly outbid Amazon for Signify Health, a large primary-care provider in September. In October, Walgreens increased its stake in Villagemd with a $5.2bn investment. JPMorgan recently opened primary-care centres of its own. Amazon’s new venture will also be competing with the likes of Ro and Hims & Hers, both tech startups that are dedicated to providing virtual health care.Finally Amazon will have to grapple with regulators. The Federal Trade Commission, a trust-busting agency, is examining the One Medical deal. The takeover and the launch of Amazon clinic will raise questions about who should be allowed to hold sensitive health care data. Amazon has said “we remain focused on the important mission of protecting customers’ health information”. The firm may need to set up hefty firewalls to separate customer information held by clinics from that gathered through other products and services. But satisfying data-privacy concerns could wipe out many of the data-sharing opportunities that Amazon deftly deploys across the rest of its business.Amazon’s attempts at disrupting health care will be subject to intense scrutiny. Nonetheless it should have a positive effect on health care in America. Its experience at keeping customers happy while generating razor-thin margins could improve primary care and force other providers to up their game. It may also prompt other tech giants to do more to disrupt health care themselves. All this may be just the medicine that America’s heath-care system—and Mr Jassy’s tenure as Amazon’s boss—badly need.■ More

  • in

    Management lessons from the next World Cup winners

    On December 18th the winners of the football World Cup in Qatar will lift the famous golden trophy. Several rituals will then unfold. The final entry will be made on fans’ wall charts. Pundits will share their lists of players of the tournament. In the victors’ home country, cars will clog the streets and drivers will lean on their horns. And in the days that follow, leadership coaches will post drivel about the secrets to be learned from the successful manager. Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

  • in

    India’s hospitality workers head to the World Cup

    As is the fate of anyone running a hotel in Kerala these days, Bijoy George is a man with too much to do. Before pandemic-induced lockdowns began in 2020, he managed 40 employees at the Eighth Bastion Hotel near the old Dutch cemetery in the charming historic quarter of Kochi, a bustling coastal city. Now that business is back to pre-covid levels he needs the same number of staff again. But he has only 20 workers. His plight is shared with every other hotel, café and bar. It is a result of the state’s hospitality employees moving en masse to Qatar, not to watch football but to take up employment tied to the World Cup.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

  • in

    From GE to FTX, beware the Icarus complex

    It is hard to think of two more different firms than GE, a once-exalted symbol of American inventiveness, and FTX, a Bahamas-based fly-by-night crypto exchange. Besides high-pitched voices, it is hard to think of two people with less in common than the late Jack Welch, GE’s legendary former CEO, and Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s disgraced founder. The former, son of working-class parents, was fiendishly competitive about profits, had a frat-boy approach to life, and was as much at home on a golf course as he was on the factory floor. The latter, son of Stanford law professors, is scruffy, nerdy, a player of “League of Legends”, and claims to be motivated to make money only so that he can give it away. Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

  • in

    Alternatives to Twitter see an influx of users

    “Twitter is the worst! But also the best,” Elon Musk tweeted recently. Not everyone agrees with the second sentiment. Soon after he purchased the social network for $44bn on October 27th, the hashtag #TwitterMigration started trending. Concerned with what Mr Musk has planned for the social-media platform, some are searching for alternative spaces to swap news, views and pictures of pets. Along with renewed interest in established platforms such as Tumblr, Discord and Reddit, newcomers are under consideration. What chance do they have of pecking away at Twitter’s 240m users?Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

  • in

    FTX’s failure and SoftBank’s struggles point to a tech investing hangover

    The meeting is a dream come true for the screenwriters who are already said to be at work on the film version of events. In 2021 Sequoia Capital, a large venture-capital (vc) firm, made its first investment in FTX, a now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange. To publicise the deal Sequoia published part of the transcript from the virtual pitch meeting on its website. Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, explained how he wanted the firm to be a “superapp” where “you can do anything you want with your money from inside FTX”. Sequoia’s investors swooned. “I love this founder,” said one in a chat function; “Yes!!!!” declared another. An FTX executive who sat close to Mr Bankman-Fried during the pitch noticed another detail: “It turns out that that fucker was playing ‘League of Legends’ throughout the entire meeting.”It also turns out that ftx was doing more with customers’ money than it had promised. Its demise has forced Sequoia to write down its $210m investment. It will also hurt another embattled backer. On November 11th More