Philippa Kaur

Not since the 1980s have Japanese businesses generated so much excitement. Japanese companies’ profit margins have doubled in the past decade or so. They are forking out twice as much to their owners in the form of dividends and share buy-backs as they did ten years ago. Shareholder-friendly changes to corporate governance in Japan have caused foreign investors to flock to the country once again. Having languished for decades, the Nikkei 225 index, which tracks the value of the country’s largest listed firms, is up by 25% over the past year (see chart 1). In February it at last exceeded the record it set in 1989, just before Japan’s bubble burst.Much of this success reflects Japan Inc’s transformation over the past 35 years. Faced with economic torpor at home, brought on by the stockmarket crash and an ageing population, Japan’s industrial giants have spent the past few decades hunting for growth abroad. In 1996 revenue booked by the foreign subsidiaries of Japanese manufacturers was just 7% of their total sales. Last year that figure reached 29%, a record high. More

Dear Max, My employer has a policy of allowing dogs in the office. Almost everyone there seems to think this is tremendous but I don’t like the things. (To be honest, I don’t like people either but I accept that they should be allowed to come to the workplace.) Is there anything I can do, or do I have to grin and bear it?You are not alone: I probably get more letters about this topic than any other. It’s very hard to admit to disliking dogs, so lots of people end up suffering them in silence. You could talk to HR about ending the policy, but would risk being known to all your colleagues as the psychopath who hates puppies. It’s much better to try to subvert the system. My advice is to say that you need to bring another type of much less acceptable animal to the office. If pressed, use the word “wellness” and hint at discrimination if they do not seem keen. With luck they will reach the conclusion that it is best simply to ban all pets. More

In the electronics department, every television is tuned to the same channel, showing a commercial for a cosmetics brand. At the end of the aisle is a sponsored stall promoting bags of popcorn. The music wafting through the air on the in-store radio is occasionally interrupted by advertising spots. Even at the checkout, a few final commercials pop up on screen to catch customers before they leave.Anyone strolling around a branch of Walmart, as more than 200m Americans do each month, will see thousands of goodies on offer. Increasingly, its shoppers are being served up as products, too. Walmart, the world’s top retailer by sales, has discovered that there is serious money to be made in selling access to its customers. On May 16th the company reported that its booming advertising business had helped it deliver a 9.6% increase in operating income, year on year, for its quarter ending in April. As it carpets its physical and virtual stores in commercials, the company is taking a growing share of the ad market. More

After three days in the great outdoors, gnawing anxiety sets in. The air may be fresh but the woman in the advert is not. The backs of her knees have begun to emit an unusual smell. Luckily for her fellow campers, she has packed a tube of Peach and Vanilla Blossom Whole Body Deodorant Cream, a fresh product launched in January by Secret, a personal-care brand.Americans have long had a particular aversion to stench. Last year they bought $6.6bn worth of deodorant, the equivalent of nearly $20 per person—more than in any other rich country, according to Euromonitor, a research firm. Lately companies like Secret have been encouraging them to hunt out odours from their feet to their “underboobs”. Google searches for “whole-body deodorant” shot up by 1,000% in the year to March (albeit from a low base). More

Global gabfests tend to be gloomy affairs these days. Bigwigs bemoan the state of geopolitics, wring their hands over existential risks, urge greater global co-operation—and go home with little to show for it all. The Africa CEO Forum, a gathering that took place on May 16th and 17th in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, offered a welcome contrast. As bosses, politicians and financiers gathered to discuss the role of Africa’s private sector in spurring its economic development, the tone was refreshingly practical.Instead of dwelling on the grand sweep of history or the changing world order, the conference’s attendees knuckled down for discussions on how to boost cross-border commerce and strengthen local supply chains. Permeating all of this was a conviction that Africa must take control of its own economic development. As Aliko Dangote, the boss of Dangote Industries, a Nigerian conglomerate, and Africa’s richest man, summed up, “We Africans will have to do it. If we wait for foreigners, it’s not going to happen.” More

Lululemon, a CANADIAN maker of yoga outfits, does not have many things in common with Rolls-Royce, a British engine manufacturer. One thing they do share, along with scores of other foreign companies, is space in the sprawling Embassy Manyata Business Park in Bangalore. Hundreds of others, among them Maersk, a Danish shipping firm, Samsung, a South Korean electronics giant, and Wells Fargo, an American bank, have offices within a few miles. Many more of these white-collar outposts can be found in cities including Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad.Back in the 1990s global firms such as General Electric, a once-mighty conglomerate, began to rely on Indian workers to perform tedious tasks such as filling in forms and patching software for mainframe computers. Over time much of that drudgery was absorbed by Indian outsourcers such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro. Now foreign firms have begun to think bigger about the types of white-collar jobs that can be done by India’s cheap but well-educated workers. Many have set up “global capability centres” (GCCs) to offshore tasks from data analysis to research and development (R&D), helping fuel a new wave of services-led growth for India. More

In February 1908 Joseph Asscher, a master cutter of diamonds, cleaved the Cullinan at his workshop in Amsterdam. So tough was the South African diamond, the largest ever found, that Mr Asscher’s first attempt split his blade instead. The diamond industry is once again gripped by a nail-biting separation. This time, its most important company is facing the chop.After rejecting a takeover proposal from BHP, the world’s biggest miner, Anglo American announced a radical restructuring of its business on May 14th. As well as selling its coal, nickel and platinum operations, the British mining firm will shed its 85% stake in De Beers (Botswana, where its richest diamond mines are located, owns the rest). BHP has until May 29th to make a new offer for Anglo. Whatever happens, De Beers’s change of ownership marks the end of one of the company’s most enduring relationships—Ernest Oppenheimer, Anglo American’s founder, joined its board in 1926. For the industry, it signals the biggest shake-up since 2000, when De Beers abandoned its policy of controlling diamond prices by managing supply. More

“HE WHO controls the GPUs, controls the universe.” This spin on a famous line from “Dune”, a science-fiction classic, is commonly heard these days. Access to GPUs, and in particular those made by Nvidia, the leading supplier, is vital for any company that wants to be taken seriously in artificial intelligence (AI). Analysts talk of companies being “GPU-rich” or “GPU-poor”, depending on how many of the chips they have. Tech bosses boast of their giant stockpiles. Nvidia’s dominance has driven its market value to more than $2trn. In its latest results, due on May 22nd, it is expected to announce year-on-year revenue growth of more than 200%.GPUs do the computational heavy-lifting needed to train and operate large AI models. Yet, oddly, this is not what they were designed for. The acronym stands for “graphics processing unit”, because such chips were originally designed to process video-game graphics. It turned out that, fortuitously for Nvidia, they could be repurposed for AI workloads. More