Finanzas

El exgobernador del Banco de España asegura que sus subordinados hicieron bien en no comunicarlo

TRAVELLERS sometimes have to show their travel documents five times when catching a flight: at check-in, at security, then occasionally at outbound immigration, before another check when boarding. Finally there is passport control at the destination. Each is a potential queue. So regular flyers will be interested in anything that might speed up the process. 

One answer could be facial-recognition technology. In the past few weeks, a number of airports have begun to introduce a system that will scan faces, match them with electronic passport photos, and allow those passengers it recognises to skip lines. 

In Tokyo, the government has been trialling facial-recognition technology in two airports since 2014. It hopes to introduce the system in full in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In France, Groupe ADP, which operates Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, began testing similar software in February. Queues at the airport have doubled since new security measures were introduced after terrorist attacks in 2015; this, thinks ADP, might be one way to ease the pain. In Canada, meanwhile, plans are in place to start rolling out facial-recognition kiosks this…Continue reading

Data trafficking

CARMAKING in Israel has amounted to little more than some unstylish models put together in the latter half of the last century and a few rugged off-roaders still assembled for the country’s security forces. A reluctance to make them, however, has not stopped Israel from becoming a thriving centre for the high-tech kit with which cars now bristle, and also for mobility services such as ride-hailing.

The latest evidence of Israel’s pre-eminence in the field came on March 13th, when Intel, a giant American chipmaker, paid $15.3bn for Mobileye, a Jerusalem-based firm that is at the forefront of autonomous-car technology. With the acquisition, Intel joins the ranks of technology companies that are trying to outmanoeuvre carmakers and auto-parts suppliers to develop the brains of vehicles of the future.

Mobileye is an attractive target because of what it does now and what it will soon be capable of. Its EyeQ software is already used by most of the world’s carmakers to help their vehicles stay in their lanes and brake in emergencies, precisely what will also be required in autonomous vehicles. This…Continue reading

PIERRE DE COUBERTIN, the French aristocrat who founded the modern Olympics, was seduced by the world’s fair. In 1900, 1904 and 1908 his games were embedded within such exhibitions. He soured on the arrangement eventually because the games were overshadowed, “reduced to the role of humiliated vassal”, as he put it. The Olympics still criss-crosses the globe, but with city after city ditching ambitions to put on the world’s largest sporting event, the model is under threat.

The latest blow comes courtesy of Budapest, which on March 1st withdrew its bid to host the 2024 summer games after public opposition. Its retreat comes on the heels of Boston, Rome and Hamburg canning their bids within the past two years, whittling a once-crowded pool of candidate cities down to only two: Los Angeles—itself a replacement for the torpedoed Boston bid—and Paris.

The situation ought to feel familiar by now to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the governing body of the games. After lots of cities bowed out of the competition for the 2022 winter games it was again left with two options: Almaty, Kazakhstan and Beijing, China….Continue reading

The way things were

WALK into the Shanghai laboratories of Chi-Med, a biotech firm, and you encounter the sort of shiny, cutting-edge facilities common in any major pharma company in America, Europe or Japan. Chi-Med has just had positive results in a late-stage trial of its drug for colorectal cancer, which is called Fruquintinib. If the drug is approved both in China and in Western markets it could be the very first prescription drug to be designed and developed entirely in China that will be on a path to global commercialisation.

Given China’s ageing population, higher incomes and rising demand for health care it is clear why innovation in drugs is a priority for the country. Its national market for drugs has grown rapidly in recent years to become the world’s second-largest. It could grow from $108bn in 2015 to around $167bn by 2020, according to an estimate from America’s Department of Commerce. By comparison, America spends about $400bn a year on drugs.

Chinese firms mainly sell cheap, generic medicines that earn only razor-thin margins. The pharma industry is extremely fragmented, with thousands of tiny…Continue reading

IF YOU judge only by the volume of screams and the beaming faces of those taking rides at Europe’s most-visited, privately-owned tourist destination, then it is clear that Disneyland Paris has much to celebrate. In the three decades since Disney, an American media firm, agreed to put its European theme park on a site east of Paris, and the 25 years since its doors swung open, in 1992, 320m customers have queued for attractions such as “Space Mountain”, a stomach-twisting rollercoaster, and photo-ops with Disney characters.

To mark these anniversaries the firm is making bold claims for the park’s economic and social benefits. Nearly €8bn ($8.6bn) has been invested in or near the site, which includes a second Disney studio-themed park, 8,500 hotel rooms, convention centres and a golf course. France’s economy has supposedly seen gains worth €68bn and the creation of 56,000 jobs. Politicians pay it heed: François Hollande, the retiring president, made an end-of-term visit late last month.

But investors tell a different story. Shares in Euro Disney (the French parent company) have performed like a raft on the…Continue reading

Storage salesman

HOW much power does a tweetstorm involving two tech tycoons, the prime minister of Australia and 8.5m Twitter followers generate? Enough, at least, to supercharge a debate about the future role of batteries in the world’s energy mix.

Elon Musk, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur (pictured), may be best known for his gravity-defying ambition, but his core product is the battery: whether for his Tesla cars, for the home or for grid-scale electricity storage. He gave the last of these an unexpected jolt of publicity on March 10th, by responding to a blackout-inspired challenge on Twitter from an Australian software billionaire, Mike Cannon-Brookes. Mr Musk said he could install 100 megawatt hours (MWh) of battery storage in the state of South Australia in 100 days to help solve an energy crisis it faces, or it would be free of charge. “That serious enough for you?” he asked.

In response, Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister, communicated with Mr Musk and appeared to turn from pro-coal sceptic into battery believer. On March 14th Jay Weatherill, the premier of South Australia, went further. Declaring…Continue reading

IF YOU ask financial types in New York for their views on the world’s big banks, they usually come up with similar vignettes for each one. They agree that JPMorgan Chase is an unstoppable force under its boss, Jamie Dimon. Goldman Sachs is on a roll, with its shares up by 36% since the election (even if some worry that its Darwinian culture is going soft given all the regulation it faces). Across the pond Deutsche Bank is struggling to keep its head above water; its leader, John Cryan, embarked on a capital-raising and cost-cutting plan on March 5th. Yet one big bank elicits shrugs of bafflement: Citigroup. Its managers are anonymous and they get paid about a fifth less than their peers at other financial groups. No one is quite sure what Citi is up to or what it exists for. Once too big to fail, it is now too drab to mention.

That Citi has become the world’s half-forgotten bank is surprising. It was America’s biggest firm before the financial crisis, measured by size of assets; it is now the fourth-largest. After suffering huge losses on loans and subprime securities, in 2008-09 it received the biggest bail-out of any American bank. Citi can still…Continue reading

A DECADE ago, visiting Microsoft’s headquarters near Seattle was like a trip into enemy territory. Executives would not so much talk with visitors as fire words at them (one of this newspaper’s correspondents has yet to recover from two harrowing days spent in the company of a Microsoft “brand evangelist”). If challenged on the corporate message, their body language would betray what they were thinking and what Bill Gates, the firm’s founder, used often to say: “That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

Today the mood at Microsoft’s campus, a sprawling collection of more than 100 buildings, is strikingly different. The word-count per minute is much lower. Questions, however ignorant or critical, are answered patiently. The firm’s boss, Satya Nadella (pictured), strikes a different and gentler tone from Mr Gates and Steve Ballmer, his immediate predecessor (although he, too, has a highly competitive side).

Both these descriptions are caricatures. But they point to an underlying truth: how radically the world’s biggest software firm has changed in the short time since Mr Nadella took charge in early 2014. Back…Continue reading

IN THE world of investing, everyone is always looking for a better mousetrap—a way to beat the market. One approach that is increasingly popular is to select shares based on specific “factors”—for example, the size of companies or their dividend yield. The trend has been given the ugly name of “smart beta”.

A recent survey of institutional investors showed three-quarters were either using or evaluating the approach. By the end of January some $534bn was invested in smart-beta exchange-traded funds, according to ETFGI, a research firm. Compound annual growth in assets under management in the sector has been 30% over the past five years.

The best argument for smart-beta funds is that they simply replicate, at lower cost, what fund managers are doing already. For example, many fund managers follow the “value” approach, seeking out shares that look cheap. A computer program can pick these stocks more methodically than an erratic human. A smart-beta fund does what it says on the tin.

But does it work? The danger here is “data mining”. Carry out enough statistical tests, and you will always find some strategy that worked in the…Continue reading