Finanzas

WORK can make you sick and shorten your life. That is the argument of a hard-hitting book* by Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In an obvious way, that claim is outdated. Health-and-safety rules help explain why deaths from accidents in American workplaces fell by 65% between 1970 and 2015. But one problem has not gone away: stress. As many as 80% of American workers suffer from high levels of stress in their job, according to a survey entitled “Attitudes in the American Workplace”. Nearly half say it is so debilitating that they need help.

Firms are at least aware of the issue. A study in 2008 by Watson Wyatt (a consultancy that is now part of Towers Watson) found that 48% of organisations said job-related stress affected performance. But only 5% of employers said they were doing anything to deal with the matter.

Mr Pfeffer’s book focuses on America, where the problem seems particularly acute. One survey found that 55% of employees log into…Continue reading

EVEN the most celebrated firms have their hiccups. On July 16th Netflix, an online-streaming giant, presented disappointing news to investors: it had added just 5.2m new subscribers in the second quarter of 2018, well below its projected number of 6.2m. Shares plunged by 14%; they have since recovered some ground.

This most recent bout of volatility may say more about the firm’s soothsaying abilities than the strength of its underlying business. Although Netflix’s subscriber growth fell short of its own projections, it was still in line with that of past quarters (see chart). In percentage terms, Netflix registered a bigger miss against projected subscriber growth in the second quarter of 2016, when its shares fell by 13%. The firm has also had much bigger forecasting misses on the upside.

When asked this week to explain the forecasting error, Netflix’s chief executive, Reed Hastings, responded that the company never worked out what happened in 2016 either, “other than…Continue reading

Going with the flow

OPEN a toolbox, pull out a spanner and you may be holding a bit of the answer to global warming: vanadium, a metal named after Vanadis, the Scandinavian goddess of beauty. Used mostly in alloys to strengthen steel, its appearance may not live up to the romance of its name. Yet vanadium could become a vital ingredient in large clean-energy batteries, in which case it will shine a lot brighter.

Its price has already been rising faster than cobalt, copper and nickel, all of which are used in lithium-ion batteries (see chart). The main reason for the run-up is prosaic. About nine-tenths of the world’s vanadium is used to harden steel; China has tightened standards on the strength of rebar to make buildings more earthquake-proof. Mark Smith, boss of Largo Resources, which mines high-purity vanadium in Brazil, says this alone should increase demand for the metal by up to 15,000 tonnes in 2018-19. Last year total production was 83,000 tonnes.

But…Continue reading

“THERE’S only two things you do in the navy,” says Vice-Admiral Al Harms, former commander of the USS Nimitz, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that is one of the world’s biggest ships. “You fight, and you train to fight. Hopefully, most of the time you’re training.” The navy got Mr Harms hooked on continuous education, and in his 60s he felt the need for a top-up, so he took the online MBA programme of the University of Illinois (UoI), alongside his son. “I found it a very cool way to learn. You have the self-directed portion, working by yourself, and the enriching portion with class projects.”

When the web started to shake up higher education a decade or more ago, it was widely expected that the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) it spawned would disrupt universities in the same way that digital media undermined newspapers and music firms. But that assumption rested on a misunderstanding of what students are paying for. They are not…Continue reading

Making a Kylian

CHEERS erupted from Calais to Cannes when Kylian Mbappé, a 19-year-old striker, thumped in France’s fourth goal in the World Cup final on July 15th. Among the smuggest onlookers were the accountants at Paris Saint-Germain, Mr Mbappé’s club. He was already a prized asset before the tournament, having broken the record for goals scored by a teenager in the Champions League, Europe’s premier-club competition. CIES Football Observatory, a research organisation, reckoned then that his club could charge €190m ($223m) for him. But an electrifying World Cup, with four goals, has surely increased his value.

That, at least, is how the transfer market usually responds to international tournaments. According to 21st Club, a consultancy, each time a player found the net in the World Cup and European Championship tournaments in 2004-16, his price went up by, on average, 13%. After the 2014 World Cup James Rodríguez, whose six goals for Colombia made…Continue reading

A LOT rests on the shoulders of the euro zone’s top central banker. The president of the European Central Bank (ECB) is not just in charge of ensuring monetary and financial stability in one of the world’s largest economies. In the absence of a single European fiscal authority, it also falls to the ECB to act as a backstop for the currency bloc. In times of crisis, the very survival of the monetary union seems to depend on the president’s words and actions. Central-bank bosses in America, Japan or Britain bear no burden as great.

With such demands, though, comes great influence. Those in need of convincing need only cast their minds back to July 2012. Greek interest rates were soaring and investors were entertaining the possibility that the euro zone would break up. But Mario Draghi, the ECB’s boss, soothed markets with a promise to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro. Six years on, that commitment still helps to contain Italy’s sovereign-bond yields, despite unease about its new…Continue reading

Ultima la venta de otra cartera de créditos inmobiliarios procedentes de la CAM a Deutsche Bank valorados en unos 2.500 millones

“THE making of a big tech reckoning,” blared one typical headline earlier this year. “The case for breaking up Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google,” touted another. Based on media coverage alone it might seem as if the tech titans are in trouble. Add in the news, on July 18th, of a record €4.3bn fine for Google by the European Commission and that impression is strengthened. But if you look hard at where the regulatory rubber is actually hitting the road, the techlash seems much less brutal. Notwithstanding this week’s fine—which amounts to just over $5bn and is the biggest antitrust penalty ever—the online giants are nowhere near being reined in.

To be sure, the mood has changed. In America a survey for Axios, a news website, found that between October and March the favourability ratings of Facebook, Amazon and Google had fallen by 28%, 13% and 12%, respectively. Republicans such as Ted Cruz, a senator, now employ anti-tech rhetoric. Last month the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)…Continue reading

Rodrigo Echenique, actual presidente del banco, admite que «fue una desgracia que 305.000 accionistas hayan perdido su dinero y se merecen que se les diga por qué»

Rodrigo Echenique, actual presidente del banco, admite que «fue una desgracia que 305.000 accionistas hayan perdido su dinero y se merecen que se les diga por qué»