Philippa Kaur

Few firms in America are more unloved than health insurers. As gatekeepers of the world’s costliest health-care system, their miserly response to claims is a constant source of patient unhappiness. Investors, by contrast, have long regarded them as soothingly safe bets: boring businesses with steady returns. That is no longer the case. UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest insurer, stunned investors in April by reporting unexpectedly disappointing results. Within weeks it had replaced its boss and scrapped its profit forecast for the year. Its latest results, released on July 29th, offered more misery. Since November UnitedHealth’s market value has collapsed from $575bn to $240bn. More

America’s biggest technology companies are combining Silicon Valley returns with Ruhr Valley balance-sheets. Investors who bought shares in Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft a decade ago are sitting on eight times their money, excluding dividends. Spending on data centres means the firms possess property and equipment (accounting-speak for hard assets) worth more than 60% of their equity book value, up from 20% over the same period. Add the capital expenditure of these firms during the past year to that of Amazon and Oracle, two more tech giants, and the sum is greater than the outlay of all America’s listed industrial companies combined. Jason Thomas of Carlyle, an investment firm, estimates that the spending boom was responsible for a third of America’s economic growth during the most recent quarter. More

Read the headlines and the easy conclusion is that big business has abandoned the fight against climate change. In the past two weeks BP, an oil giant, sold its American onshore-wind business; Jaguar Land Rover, a carmaker, has reportedly delayed the launch of its new electric Range Rover; and HSBC, a bank, left the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (nzba), a group committed to lending in a greener way. But these bits of news are only part of the picture. Taken as a whole, companies are quietly making progress on their climate goals. More

America’s tech giants are masters of the digital realm. Yet as they bet stupendous sums on artificial intelligence (ai), their ambitions are facing constraints in the physical world. Shortages of chips and data-centre equipment such as transformers and switching gear mean soaring prices and lengthy waits. Just as pressing is access to energy as utilities struggle to match the demands of Silicon Valley. On July 24th President Donald Trump published an “ai action plan” which describes America’s stagnating energy capacity as a threat to the country’s “ai dominance”. How is big tech coping with a worsening power crunch? More

Louis Vuitton’s new 17,000-square-foot development in Shanghai is, quite literally, the luxury brand’s Chinese flagship. The structure, which serves as a store, restaurant, museum and billboard, is shaped like a giant boat, its hull emblazoned with Louis Vuitton’s unmistakable monogram print. To some, it is also a metaphor for Louis Vuitton’s parent company, LVMH, which is floundering in China and beyond. Is it a superyacht headed for promising new waters, asks Flavio Cereda-Parin of GAM, an asset manager, or “Titanic 2.0”? More

Mariners know that the sea can be harsh, unpredictable and sometimes destructive. After weathering a pandemic and attacks by Houthi rebels that all but closed the vital trade route through the Suez canal, container-shipping companies may have hoped for some calm before the next storm. Alas, Donald Trump’s ever-changing tariffs and his plans to impose exorbitant port fees on Chinese vessels have led to more choppy waters. More

Every industry has its nobility. The “PayPal mafia” are sovereign in Silicon Valley. Many Wall Street financiers trace their genealogy back to Julian Robertson or Michael Milken. The equivalent for railroaders is E. Hunter Harrison, who died in 2017. He ran three of the six big “Class I” railways at various times and pioneered “precision railroading”, a scheduling technique that is now the industry standard. His disciples are spread far and high. More

The promise of South-East Asia has long been obvious to venture capitalists. Its young and growing population of 700m is becoming richer and more urbanised. And they are poorly served by stodgy incumbents. After a pandemic-era frenzy, however, shares of the region’s listed tech darlings plunged amid rising interest rates as investors lost patience with persistent losses. Valuations are yet to recover. More