Philippa Kaur

ASK ORDINARY Americans about Dallas and you are likely to elicit a few common responses. American-football fans will tell you that the Dallas Cowboys, once the country’s most formidable team, have seen better days. Soap-opera junkies, at least those alive in the 1980s, may reminisce about the long-running series named after the north-Texas city. The few who paid attention in history class may recall that it is where Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy. You will probably not hear breathless comparisons to the world’s industrial capitals. More

In less than four years the share price of Chegg, an online education service, has dropped by 99%. A post-pandemic slump in digital learning is partly to blame for its tumble. A bigger problem for the company, though, is artificial intelligence (AI). Its customers are mostly students who want help answering their homework assignments, which often involves the virtual support of a human tutor. The rise of ChatGPT and its kind have created a free substitute for that service. On an earnings call on November 12th Nathan Schultz, Chegg’s boss, admitted that “technology shifts have created headwinds”. The same day the firm said that it would fire a fifth of its workforce. More

Budget airlines are rarely loved by passengers. Cutting costs to the bone and charging for every conceivable extra makes for cheap fares but often unpleasant journeys. Few will therefore have much sympathy for the tribulations of Spirit Airlines, perhaps America’s most despised low-cost carrier (lcc), which filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on November 18th. Yet its failure, which illustrates the parlous state of America’s budget airlines, should worry travellers. More

To which country does Shein belong? The online apparel giant, headquartered in Singapore, is expected to list its shares in London in the coming months. Earlier this year Donald Tang, its executive chairman, proclaimed it to be American, by virtue of its values and the fact that it makes most of its money there. Meanwhile, most of Shein’s employees are in China, where the company was founded in 2012. All this might suggest Shein is multinational, beholden to no single country. Unfortunately, the matter of nationality is not so straightforward for a firm that straddles China and the West. More

Corporate America has at least one big thing to celebrate about the presidential election: it has erased the possibility of a rise in the country’s corporate-tax rate, as had been proposed by Democrats. Weighed against the cost of tariffs—and more abstract concerns about the health of America’s institutions—the promise of lower taxes and deregulation warmed bosses to Donald Trump during the campaign. Shareholders, who stand to benefit directly, rejoiced at Mr Trump’s victory, sending the S&P 500 index of American stocks to a record high. More

A spectre hangs over Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, where diplomats, scientists and activists are gathered for the UN’s annual climate-change summit. Last time he was in office Donald Trump, a fossil-fuel booster and climate-science denier, yanked America out of the UN’s Paris climate agreement (it later rejoined). The president-elect has vowed to do so again on his first day back in office. More

Vimal Kapur, the boss of Honeywell, should have seen it coming. Industrial conglomerates like his have long been out of fashion. Between the beginning of June last year, when Mr Kapur took over at Honeywell, and November 11th the firm’s shares had risen by just 16%, compared with 46% for industrial companies in America’s S&P 500 index. On November 12th Elliott Management, a feared activist investor run by Paul Singer, announced it had taken a $5bn stake in the company, probably its largest ever such position, and called for Honeywell to break itself up. Investors seemed pleased with the idea, sending Honeywell’s shares up by 4% on the day of the announcement. More

Confidence is contagious. Someone declaring a position with ringing certainty is more likely to inspire than someone who hedges their bets. “We may fight them on the beaches; it depends a bit on the weather,” would have been a lot less persuasive. What is true of Churchill’s wartime oratory is true in less dramatic circumstances. A study by Matthias Brauer of the University of Mannheim and his co-authors analysed language used in letters from activist investors; it found that more confident letters were associated with more successful activist campaigns. More