Philippa Kaur

It has been one of Europe’s dirtiest companies for more than a century; now rwe is aiming to be among the cleanest. Germany’s largest power generator has recently taken two big steps towards this goal. On October 1st it agreed to buy the renewable-energy business of Consolidated Edison (ConEd), an American utility, for $6.8bn. Three days later it signed an agreement with Germany’s regional and federal governments to bring forward plans to stop generating electricity with lignite, an especially filthy sort of coal, by eight years to 2030. But is this enough to burnish its green credentials?Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

It is easy to think of the computing cloud as the placeless whereabouts of the latest Netflix series, your Spotify playlists, millions of wanton selfies and your digital assistant. It is even easier to ignore it altogether, at least until Alexa alerts you that your storage space is filling up and helpfully offers to rent you extra room, of which there always appears to be more available. Necessary, disembodied and, for $9.99 a month, to all intents and purposes limitless: it is the ether of the digital age. This ether, though, has a very unethereal side—the vast data centres where all this information is physically stored and, increasingly, processed by powerful computers known as servers. The semiconductor hardware that makes the servers powerful is fast becoming the hardest-fought front in the battle over the $600bn global market for computer chips.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

The deal is on! Isn’t it? With Elon Musk’s courtship of Twitter, it is hard to know. In April the world’s richest man agreed to join the social network’s board, only to change his mind a week later. He then signed a deal to buy the company, but within days was tweeting insults at its leaders. In July he said the deal was off, prompting Twitter to sue. On October 3rd he said he would buy it after all.Does Mr Musk mean it this time? Markets think so: Twitter’s shares leapt from $43 to $52, just shy of Mr Musk’s offer of $54.20. Twitter shareholders had already okayed the takeover and antitrust regulators see no problem, so the acquisition could close within days.If it does, Twitter will have won the world’s highest-stakes game of chicken. Mr Musk claimed he was backing out because Twitter had more “bots”, or fake users, than it had disclosed (it denies this). But he surely regretted spending $44bn on a company whose value by July had fallen below $30bn, amid a rout of tech stocks. Many thought Twitter might offer Mr Musk a discount, to avoid fighting him in court. Instead it is Mr Musk who has blinked.His case looked doomed: the bots argument was always thin. And whereas Mr Musk might have hoped to pay only a termination fee of $1bn, the judge repeatedly sided with Twitter in pre-trial hearings, raising expectations that she would order Mr Musk to cough up the full $44bn should he lose.He might have rolled the dice, but the trial’s discovery process was proving damaging. On September 28th the court released 33 pages of cringe-worthy text messages between the magnate and his business pals. “You have my sword,” promised Jason Calacanis, a would-be Twitter investor, quoting “The Lord of the Rings”. “Put me in the game coach!”If dodging the trial solves one problem for Mr Musk, owning Twitter will present others. Advertising, Twitter’s revenue source, has been hit by war in Europe and broken supply chains in Asia. Twitter’s staff mistrust Mr Musk and will like him even less when he starts slashing costs. He will need a new chief executive after a public spat with the incumbent, Parag Agrawal, one of few to emerge from the debacle with his reputation intact.Trouble is brewing in Washington, too. On October 3rd the Supreme Court said it would hear two cases about social media. One, against Google’s YouTube, seeks to make tech platforms responsible for the content their algorithms recommend. The other, against Twitter, argues that platforms abet terrorism by hosting sympathetic material. Either case could destroy the way Twitter and other social networks operate. Mr Musk has all this to look forward to—and for only $44bn. More

The ceo-whisperers of Bain, Boston Consulting Group (bcg) More

The ceo-whisperers of Bain, Boston Consulting Group (bcg) More

Though he likes to write letters to thousands of CEOs at once, Larry Fink must flinch these days when one lands on his own doorstep. In recent months the boss of BlackRock, once feted for “democratising” access to investment, has received stinging missives from Republicans and Democrats alike. “Dear Mr Fink,” started one from 19 GOP state attorneys-general on August 4th, accusing BlackRock of selling its customers short by pursuing an “activist” agenda on climate change. “Dear Mr Fink,” began another on September 21st from the progressive head of New York City’s Office of the Comptroller, telling BlackRock it was shortchanging investors—and the planet—by “backtracking” on its climate commitments. The charges are mirror images of each other, making them all the harder to deal with. BlackRock cannot appease one set of government clients without upsetting the other. Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

The arc of current management thinking bends towards virtue. Co-operation is what makes teams purr. Low-ego empathy is the hallmark of a thoroughly modern boss. Purpose matters to employees as much as pay; society looms as large as shareholders. But appealing to people’s better nature, and ignoring their vices, is an incomplete approach. Nor is being good necessarily great for your own career. Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

Like business leaders in other countries, Italian captains of industry have a history of striving for cordial relations with whomever is in power. That includes dealing with questionable characters like Silvio Berlusconi, a media tycoon who has been tried more than a dozen times for fraud, false accounting and bribery, and outright villains like Benito Mussolini, the second-world-war-era fascist dictator. Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More