Philippa Kaur

Torture, for some, might be spending five nights on a Taylor Swift-themed cruise in the Bahamas. But for Aubreigh Gniotczynski, a 26-year-old from Texas, it is a dream come true. Ms Gniotczynski and her husband—a “fan by marriage”—have each paid more than $1,500 to enjoy karaoke nights and fancy-dress parties on the cruise, which is not affiliated with the star. In preparation, Ms Gniotczynski has been busily making friendship bracelets showcasing Ms Swift’s lyrics, which she will give to her fellow passengers. More

In a suburban car park near Seattle Bill Gates recently posed for an unusual photo shoot. Sporting a high-vis jacket and safety boots, the billionaire philanthropist shovelled asphalt from a wheelbarrow into a pothole. Mr Gates was there to tout his investment in a company involved in “carbon utilisation”, a neglected area of climate tech that is heating up. More

The year 1843 was a tremendous one for humanity. The Economist was founded. Almost as importantly, the modern weekend started to take shape. A campaign was launched in Manchester to give industrial workers half a day off on Saturdays, designed to ensure that more of them turned up ready to work on Monday morning. It succeeded, and the practice was eventually adopted into law; over time, a five-day week has become the norm in most countries. More

India has never seen a fight quite like this. Late on Saturday August 10th Hindenburg Research, a short-selling firm in New York, posted a follow-up to a report it produced in January last year which described the Adani Group, one of India’s biggest conglomerates, run by one of its richest men, as “the largest con in corporate history”. In its latest broadside Hindenburg alleges that the limited response by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to its first lot of claims is the result of the conflicted interests of its chairwoman, Madhabi Puri Buch. Although opposition politicians in Delhi have called for an investigation and her resignation, Ms Buch seems safe for now. Still, the saga is set to bring lasting improvements to India’s capital markets. More

Chief executives like to measure their worth in hard currency. One yardstick is their pay. Another is the market’s reaction when they move jobs. Howard Schultz has twice returned to the helm of Starbucks, the coffee giant he built up from a handful of trendy shops in Seattle. Shareholders greeted him cautiously both times. But they have given a rapturous welcome to Brian Niccol, the current boss of Chipotle Mexican Grill, a chain of canteen-like restaurants, who was named Starbucks’ next chief executive and chairman on August 13th. Since then, its market value has risen by $19bn (see chart), adding the equivalent of roughly ten Cheesecake Factories or one Domino’s Pizza. More

It is lonely at the top. So lonely, in fact, that sometimes American presidents and titans of industry have only one individual of similar stature to turn to: each other. Over almost two centuries they have played golf together, enjoyed movie nights and told jokes to each other. Some have developed genuine friendships; others have openly hated one another. It is an uneven relationship, of course. Though chief executives tend to stick around longer than presidents, there is no doubt who is higher in the pecking order. But rarely have any mogul’s dealings with presidents past, present and possibly future been as hard to fathom as those of Elon Musk, who once enjoyed the largesse of Barack Obama and is now cheerleader-in-chief for Donald Trump. More

What are companies for? Five years ago the Business Roundtable, a coven of American chief executives, overturned orthodoxy on this question. For decades company bosses had agreed that their mission was to make their shareholders richer. Doing good meant doing well. More precisely, it meant raising their firm’s share price. Such a narrow measure of success, it was argued, would keep managers focused and honest. More

When Tinder, a mobile dating app, launched on college campuses in America in 2012, it quickly became a hit. Although online dating had been around since Match.com, a website for lonely hearts, launched in 1995, it had long struggled to shed an image of desperation. But Tinder, by letting users sift through photos of countless potential dates with a simple swipe, made it easy and fun. More