SITTING ON THE board of a large American company is at once the plummest and most thankless work in business. Plum because, when everything is going right, you pocket $300,000 a year in cash and stock for showing up to a well-catered meeting every month and a half. Thankless because you seldom get credit for things going right but take the blame when they go awry. And awry they go with disturbing regularity. More
The biggest supermarket merger in American history is dead. In the space of just a few hours on December 10th, federal and state judges both sided with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), America’s main antitrust regulator, to block the acquisition of Albertsons, a big supermarket chain, by Kroger, another such firm. By the next day the pair were adversaries: Albertsons has not only called off the deal, it is also now suing Kroger for failing to make “best efforts” to get regulatory approval. More
THE 12 DAYS of Christmas are meant to start on December 25th. But not in the world of artificial intelligence (AI). On December 5th OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, began a blizzard of product shipments dubbed, gratingly, the “12 days of shipmas”. It has included a full roll-out of Sora, its video-generation tool, as well as Canvas, a writing and coding product. More
On the night of December 7th San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, with its lakeside colonnade echoing a Roman ruin, turned into Mar-a-Lago, as Silicon Valley’s newly emboldened right-wingers gathered for a Christmas bash organised by the All-In podcast. The festive good cheer did not extend to everyone; The Economist in particular was made to feel most unwelcome. But not before being privy to a riotous celebration of how a clique of billionaires—the so-called PayPal Mafia—helped clinch Donald Trump’s election victory and has taken Washington by storm. More
Things have never looked rosier for foreign firms in China—at least according to the country’s Council for the Promotion of International Trade. The body, which is controlled by the commerce ministry, claims that 90% of foreign companies rate their experience in China as satisfactory or better. According to a recent survey by the council, foreign firms say the economy is strong, local markets are attractive and their outlook is bright. Following years of isolation during the covid-19 pandemic, China’s government insists that the country is open again for business, and that reforms have made life easier for foreign companies. More
TALK TO EUROPEAN bosses about their continent and the responses are as varied as the languages they speak. Katastrophe, bark the Germans. The Italians wave their hands in exasperation. The French offer a resigned Gallic shrug. The British change the subject to the weather (which isn’t exactly fabulous, either). With governments collapsing centre-left (in Germany last month) and centre-right (in France on December 4th), plus war raging in next-door Ukraine, chaos is the political watchword. More
“We’ve got your back,” Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told parents on November 29th, a day after pushing through some of the world’s strictest limits on screentime. One year from now, under-16s will be banned from using social media, in a move intended to protect them from harm. Teenagers groaned. Parents discreetly high-fived. Policymakers around the world took notes. More
Silicon Valley and the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, have a strained relationship. Regulators in Brussels blame American tech giants for everything from the struggles of European startups to teenage depression. American tech firms whinge that they are targeted by jealous Europeans. Now, after years of acrimony, a détente is possible. On December 1st a new commission took office. More
