THE FLOTILLA of tugs and a giant digger look tiny against the backdrop of Ever Given, reflecting the scale of their task. One of the world’s largest container ships was wedged athwart the Suez Canal on March 23rd, blown off course by high winds. The problem for global shipping seems as immense.Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More
ON MARCH 21ST Canadian Pacific Railway unveiled a $25bn bid for Kansas City Southern, a smaller American rival. The biggest-ever tie-up of freight railways would, if blessed by antitrust authorities, leave the merged firm with tracks linking Canada with Mexico, via the entire length of America’s contiguous states. It would also drive what Canadian Pacific’s boss, Keith Creel, enthusiastically dubs “an industrial renaissance”. “The prospects are compelling for growth across the industrial heartland,” Mr Creel says.Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More
AT FIRST GLANCE the Indian names on the billionaires list compiled by Hurun Report, which tracks such things, reinforce the image of the powerful growing more so. At the top, to no one’s surprise, was Mukesh Ambani (worth $83bn), followed by Gautam Adani ($32bn). Both owe their riches to industrial conglomerates (centred, respectively, on petrochemicals, and ports and power plants). Both have a knack for navigating India’s obstreperous courts and bureaucracy. Both operate mainly in Maharashtra and Gujarat, the industrial heartlands in the west of the subcontinent.Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More
THERE IS SOMETHING of the “Herbie” about Herbert Diess, boss of Volkswagen Group. Like his four-wheeled namesake, the star of several Disney films, he has a mind of his own and a flair for grabbing attention. He is in a high-stakes race in which he is seen as the underdog. And his main rival, Tesla’s Elon Musk, is a “frenemy” with whom occasionally he banters. Investors are salivating: during the past month the German giant’s share price has surged by 60% while Tesla’s has slipped. That is mainly because of a change of heart about which of the two will win the electric-vehicle (EV) contest. Investors have, it seems, caught “The LoEV Bug”. Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More
A YEAR HAS passed since many developed economies locked down and office workers, like Bartleby, started to toil from home. This was a plague that launched a thousand forecasts, with pundits predicting everything from a revolution in working lives to an eventual return to normal.Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More
EVER SINCE Ostpolitik was conceived in the 1970s, Germany has preferred engagement with Russia to confrontation. Now political relations are at a low point after an attempt last year by Russian security agents to poison Alexei Navalny, a prominent opposition politician, who was flown to Germany for treatment. So is trade. In the wake of sanctions imposed after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its incursion into Ukraine in 2014, the country’s trade with Germany dwindled in value to €45bn ($54bn) last year, from €80bn in 2012. In 2007 Germany was Russia’s biggest trading partner. Today it is a distant second behind China, which exchanged goods worth $104bn with Russia last year.Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More
THE MISSION statement of Bilibili, often dubbed “China’s YouTube”, stands out for its modesty. Instead of promising to change the world, the firm aspires merely to “enrich the everyday life of young generations in China”. If user figures are a guide, the Chinese young feel enriched. In the last quarter of 2020 the number of people who used the service at least once a month shot up by half from a year earlier, to 202m. Nearly nine in ten were under the age of 35. Videos on the platform, which range from sports highlights to self-help lectures and everything in between, attract an average of 1.2bn daily views.Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More
AS FIRST AN engineer and later an executive climbing the ranks of Eni, Claudio Descalzi (pictured above) worked in difficult environments, from Libya to the Republic of Congo. However, the most inhospitable terrain he has had to navigate as chief executive of the Italian oil giant was in a Milan courtroom—as a defendant in a mammoth corruption trial related to a Nigerian oil deal. On March 17th the ordeal ended with the acquittal of the man who has led the Italian energy firm for seven years. Had Mr Descalzi been convicted, he could have faced eight years in jail.Listen to this storyYour browser does not support the element.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More
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