Philippa Kaur

“Costs, costs, costs” are what Oliver Blume, the boss of Volkswagen (vw), recently said the car giant must address most urgently. His diagnosis of vw’s longstanding problem is nothing new, but his approach to dealing with it undoubtedly is. On September 3rd Mr Blume announced that, for the first time, vw was considering closing factories in Germany to tackle the “demanding and serious situation” confronting Europe’s carmakers. Even if he succeeds in doing so, however, shutting factories will not be sufficient to reverse VW’s dwindling sales and stay ahead of the looming onslaught of cheap Chinese electric vehicles (EVs). More

Warren buffett’s birthday present arrived early this year. On August 28th, two days before America Inc’s favourite great grandpa turned 94, his bricks-to-motor-insurance conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, reached a market value of $1trn. It became only the eighth American company to claim that title and, as a child of the Nebraskan heartland, the first not to emerge from the west-coast tech scene. Its class-A shares now change hands for $715,000, 55,000 times what they were worth when Mr Buffett took control of a struggling textile mill in 1965. In that period the total return, including dividends, of the S&P 500 index of America’s biggest firms has risen just 400-fold. When Berkshire’s longtime shareholders wish Mr Buffett many happy returns, his customarily folksy response might be: right back at ya. More

Decarbonising the world’s electricity supply will take more than solar panels and wind turbines, which rely on sunshine and a steady breeze to generate power. Grid-scale storage offers a solution to this intermittency problem, but there is too little of it about. The International Energy Agency (IEA), an official forecaster, reckons that the global installed capacity of battery storage will need to rise from less than 200 gigawatts (GW) last year to more than a terawatt (TW) by the end of the decade, and nearly 5TW by 2050, if the world is to stay on course for net-zero emissions (see chart 1). Fortunately, though, the business of storing energy on the grid is at last being turbocharged. More

For many, 2023 was the year of the chip. Just ask anyone holding shares in Nvidia, whose stock rose by 246%. But it was also the year of the Sloane Pant. The popular tailored trouser helped send the shares of Abercrombie & Fitch, a 132-year-old clothing firm, up by 274% (see chart). More

Triumphs are fleeting in China’s fast-changing economy. Earlier this month Colin Huang, the founder of Pinduoduo, a Chinese e-commerce darling, became the country’s richest man. The company, founded in 2015, rose to success by offering a gamified shopping experience where users can buy in groups to secure lower prices. Today it is China’s third-largest e-commerce firm by sales, behind only JD.com and Alibaba. More

The one thing that managers reliably lack is time. They will often be doing their existing jobs as well as supervising others. They have bureaucracies to navigate—expenses to authorise, hiring requests to make—and mini-crises to solve. It is all too easy for the weeks to whizz past; suddenly it is September and the northern-hemisphere nights are drawing in again. But it is possible for even harried managers to ask themselves questions that force useful moments of reflection. For example: More

Parked outside the front doors of a handsome 1920s brick building in a Parisian suburb is a bright yellow Renault 5, a new electric vehicle (ev) unveiled by the French carmaker in February. It is permitted this enviable spot because it belongs to Luca de Meo, the boss of the company, whose top brass occupy the building. Mr de Meo has brought a renewed confidence to Renault since taking over as its chief executive four years ago. He has turned the business around—and readied it to take on the Chinese carmakers that are looking to expand in the European market. More

When Southwest Airlines launched in 1971, flying three Boeing 737 jets between Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, few imagined the impact its business model would have on the aviation industry in America and beyond. In the decades that followed, low-cost carriers (LCCs) pummelled incumbents by offering cheap, no-frills fares to keep costs down and planes full, flying point-to-point rather than connecting through big hubs. More