Congratulations on joining our internship programme. For most of you this is your first experience of the workplace, and with that in mind we have prepared a guide to office etiquette. Other chapters cover what to wear (more), when to use emojis (less) and when to speak in meetings (it depends). More
For the second time in two years, the Adani Group, one of India’s largest conglomerates, has been accused of criminal activity from the other side of the globe. The first barrage came from Hindenburg Research, a short-seller in New York which accused the group of fraud last year. The second came on November 20th, when federal prosecutors in New York filed a 54-page indictment against Gautam Adani, chairman of the group and one of India’s richest men, along with his nephew, Sagar Adani, and six others. The prosecutors allege that “senior executives and directors” engaged in a scheme “to pay over $250m in bribes to Indian government officials, to lie to investors and banks to raise billions of dollars, and to obstruct justice,” according to Lisa Miller, the deputy assistant attorney-general for the case. More
WHEN SAM ALTMAN, boss of OpenAI, posted a gnomic tweet this month saying “There is no wall,” his followers on X, a social-media site, had a blast. “Trump will build it,” said one. “No paywall for ChatGPT?” quipped another. It has since morphed from an in-joke among nerds into a serious business matter. More
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
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
