Philippa Kaur

AFTER A STUNNING run during the pandemic, which put a premium on all things digital, tech stocks have hit a rough patch. The NASDAQ, a technology-heavy index, has fallen by 15% from its peak in November, weighed down by a new outbreak of covid-19 in China and the Russia-Ukraine war, which are gumming up supply chains, and inflation, which erodes the value of future cashflows, making risky growth stocks less attractive to investors. On April 20th the market value of Netflix crashed by a third, or $54bn, after the video-streaming titan reported the first quarterly net loss of subscribers in more than a decade.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

GREAT UPHEAVALS always spark innovation. The covid-19 pandemic is no different. The share of new patent applications in America connected to remote-working technologies more than doubled between January and September 2020. Opportunities abound to invest in a host of transformative early-stage ideas. The pitches below are from startups that aim to improve the modern workplace and are inexplicably struggling to raise capital. Are you in?Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

A GROUP OF rich do-gooders tried a bold experiment 15 years ago. The Gates Foundation, a charity, and five countries put $1.5bn into a pilot project aimed at encouraging research and development in a previously neglected area. The “advanced market commitment” (AMC) they created promised rewards to drugmakers that came up with an effective vaccine against pneumococcus, a disease which killed many children in poor countries. Defying sceptics, three vaccines have since been developed. More than 150m children have been immunised, saving 700,000 lives.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

COMPANIES HAVE always had to answer to their investors. But these days shareholders have new questions—lots of them. On April 28th shareholders in three big drug companies, Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Moderna and Pfizer, are set to vote on resolutions filed by Oxfam, a charity, that seek to widen access to covid-19 vaccines. In May Amazon’s shareholders are due to vote on a proposal from New York state’s pension fund, asking for an audit of the e-commerce giant’s policies on racial equity. Carl Icahn, a notoriously fierce corporate inquisitor, has broadened his attention from profits to pigs. He has filed proposals at McDonald’s and Kroger, a grocer, in a quest to end the confinement of pregnant sows.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

IN JANUARY NETFLIX warned investors that it expected to add only 2.5m subscribers in the quarter ahead, causing a sell-off that knocked nearly 30% off its share price. On April 19th the video-streamer admitted that the reality was worse: Netflix lost 200,000 customers in the period, its first net drop in more than a decade. The firm expects to lose another 2m between April and June. By April 20th it was worth 35% less than the day before—and 63% less than at the start of the year, wiping out nearly $170bn in market value and making it the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500 index.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

Editor’s note (April 21st 2022): After this article was published, Elon Musk said he has received funding to finance a takeover of Twitter, and that he is exploring whether to launch a tender offer to all Twitter shareholders.IDA TARBELL, author of an exposé of the Standard Oil Company in 1904, described its founder, John D. Rockefeller, as “the most successful man in the world”. By that she meant “the man who has got the most of what men most want”. These days Elon Musk fits that description to a tee. Not only is he worth more than God. He invents things that are changing the world, from electric cars to space rockets. A word from him—on anything from crypto to meme stocks—turns retail investors into slobbering Pavlovians. With millions of adoring fans, he is an idol of modern capitalism.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

ANDRIJ MELNYK, the Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin, did not hold back. Mocking Ritter Sport’s advertising slogan, he tweeted on March 29th “Quadratisch, Praktisch, Blut” (square, practical, blood), replacing gut (good) in the firm’s slogan. A couple of days later Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, called for a boycott of the maker of chocolate snacks tweeting: “Ritter Sport refuses to pull out of Russia citing possible ‘serious effects’ for the company. However, remaining in Russia brings worse effects, such as a fatal damage to reputation.”Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

TAKE AN EVENING walk on 17th Cross Road in Bengaluru’s HSR Layout district, and you bump into tech types stepping out of their startup’s office and into one of the local microbreweries. They might work for Udaan (e-commerce), Vedantu (education technology) or another of the growing herd of private startups valued at $1bn, whose proliferation in the area has prompted locals to dub it “Unicorn Street”. That name might be outdated, says Mohit Yadav, co-founder Bolt.Earth, a unicorn wannabe housed in the MyGate building. “Unicorn neighbourhood” would be more apt, he chuckles.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More