Philippa Kaur

TALK TO AMERICANS about their health-care system and many reach for Xanax. Together they spend around $5trn a year on keeping themselves in good nick, 40% more than in 2010 after adjusting for inflation. That comes to $13,400 per anxiety-ridden head, $6,000 more on average than in other rich countries, without being any healthier for it. Politicians of all stripes have long railed against this injustice—and fingered big pharma as the main culprit. President Donald Trump is now demanding that drugmakers charge no more for medicines in America than they do in comparably well-off places. More

Rising high over Burbank’s sprawling film lots, the Warner Bros water tower is an emblem of old Hollywood. Ten miles south, in Culver City, TikTok’s colourful glass-fronted office symbolises the industry that threatens to take its place. Media’s great battle is between professional production studios, such as Warner, and tech platforms like TikTok that serve up algorithmically sorted, user-generated content. Now a pair of deals could bring both companies under the sway of one family. More

Despite having twice the market value of Ford, Singapore’s Sea Ltd is not even half as well known as the storied carmaker. Sea’s founder, Forrest Li, is publicity-shy. Yet the company’s brands are famous among South-East Asia’s 700m consumers. Ads for Sea’s e-commerce arm, Shopee, are plastered all over the Singapore metro. Every day 100m people play “Free Fire”, a “Fortnite”-like video game developed by Garena, Sea’s gaming business. Sea has also built a financial arm, Monee, which holds a $7bn portfolio of loans. More

Biemlfdlkk is a mouthful. It is not exactly clear how to enunciate the eight-consonant jumble in the Chinese golf-apparel brand’s English name. It is even hard to write. But the company is expanding overseas, recently acquiring two foreign brands. This was probably a factor that led it to ditching the odd string of letters it had operated under for 21 years. This year it is swapping the old name for one that is a bit more intelligible: Biemlofen. More

“Nestlé, the proud, Swiss tradition-steeped company, suddenly appears to be a madhouse,” laments the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a Swiss daily. Barely a year after ousting its previous chief executive, Mark Schneider, on September 1st the board of the world’s biggest food firm sacked his successor, Laurent Freixe, for not disclosing a romantic relationship with a subordinate. The turbulence at the top is unprecedented in the 159-year history of the company. More

FRANCE IS THE land of haute cuisine and haute couture. Of elegance and aesthetics. Of sophistication and sex appeal. This stereotype extends to business. The largest French companies, LVMH and Hermès, are purveyors of luxury to the global elites. Yet as the country enters another political crisis following the collapse on September 8th of the second government in less than a year, it is a rather duller side of France SA that is outshining the rest. More

The thirty-year job interview has concluded at last. On September 8th the Murdoch family announced that it had resolved a decades-long dispute over who will control its television and newspaper empire when Rupert Murdoch, who is now 94, dies. The upshot of a complicated deal is that Lachlan Murdoch, the third-eldest of six Murdoch children, will inherit a controlling stake in Fox and News Corp, the family firms. Their combined market value is $42bn; their combined influence—with brands including Fox News, the New York Post and Wall Street Journal—is greater still. The agreement, announced on Mr Murdoch’s 54th birthday, makes him one of the world’s most powerful people for decades to come. More

In a dimly lit arena in London, the crowd counts down from 20. Two athletes crouch inside a maze of bars and ramps, waiting for the buzzer. One will chase, the other will try to escape. This is “World Chase Tag”, a professional league that has turned a childhood pastime into a spectacle, complete with referees, sponsors and television deals. It has attracted millions of viewers and struck broadcast agreements with ESPN in America and Channel 4 in Britain. More