Tag: Business and finance

TRADITIONALLY, to count as an oil power a country had to be a big producer of the black stuff. China is the world’s biggest importer but still wants to break into that exclusive club. On March 26th it launched a crude futures contract in a bid to gain more clout in the global market. Some think that, if successful, the yuan could start to displace the dollar in oil trading. For now, though, that is fanciful.

A previous attempt by China to introduce oil futures, in the early 1990s, failed because of unstable pricing. This time regulators prepared methodically. To ward off speculators, notorious in Chinese markets, they made the storage of oil very expensive. Volumes were light in the first few days of trading—less than a tenth of the averages for similar contracts in New York and London. But all went smoothly. It was a good, if modest, start.

China has two goals. The basic one is to help its companies hedge against volatility. Chinese refiners and traders have struggled to…Continue reading

Along for the ride

IT IS easy to be awed by the Indian railway network. The 23m passengers it carries daily travel, in total, over ten times the distance to the sun and back. It is just as easy to find it unimpressive. Delays are frequent and trains antiquated. It takes 14 hours to get from India’s capital, Delhi, to its commercial hub, Mumbai. The equivalent trip in China—from Beijing to Shanghai, a similar distance—takes just over four hours.

Similarly, India’s economy can be seen in two lights. Its long-term growth rate of 7% a year has proved far more dependable than the rail timetable. GDP has doubled twice in the past two decades. Yet deep poverty still lingers and jobs are scarce. And Indian growth has been left in the dust by the Chinese express (see chart).

After slow running for much of 2017, India is now near to full throttle. Growth of 7.2% in the three months to December put it ahead of China (which grew at a relatively leisurely 6.8%) and…Continue reading

With all the trimmings

“WHEN are you thinking of dying?” asks John Cleese, a British comedian, in a recent television ad. Dressed as the Grim Reaper, he addresses the viewer as he prepares a cup of tea. “Your loved ones could be left all alone and distressed and facing a whacking great bill,” he warns. His advice? Phone in and buy a funeral plan.

As populations age, ads of this sort, imploring people to make financial preparations for their demise, are appearing on both sides of the Atlantic. Some 1.3m Britons now have a pre-paid funeral plan, up from just over 400,000 in 2005. An estimated 2.5m more have a funeral-insurance policy. Millions of Americans prepay some or all of their funeral costs.

The average American funeral now costs nearly $9,000, according to the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA). In Britain prices have risen by 5.5% on average each year over the past decade, faster than inflation. Add to that stories in the press of…Continue reading

A POPULAR riff doing the rounds in tech circles is that, if data are the new oil, then Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica fiasco is the equivalent of Deepwater Horizon. That was the name of an oil platform that exploded in April 2010, coating the Gulf of Mexico and the reputation of BP, the firm responsible, in a toxic slick.

Yet just how damaging are “Deepwater” incidents for firms and their owners over time? Perhaps they cease to matter after the initial burst of media purgatory, grovelling by executives, celebratory cant from competitors and politicians’ grandstanding.

To answer this, Schumpeter has looked at eight of the most notable corporate crises since 2010, including those at Uber and Wells Fargo. The evidence shows that these episodes were deeply injurious to the companies’ financial health, with the median firm losing 30% of its value since its crisis, when compared with a basket of its peers. Facebook should beware.

When a scandal first breaks, executives at the…Continue reading

CYNTHIA NIXON is the latest celebrity to run for office in America; the “Sex and the City” star is trying to be governor of New York. If she succeeds, she will follow in a long line of celebrities-turned-politicians including Sonny Bono, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura and most notably, Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.

This may not be a uniquely American phenomenon. Beppe Grillo, a comedian, launched the Five Star movement, now Italy’s biggest party. Silvio Berlusconi cultivated the celebrity style. George Weah, a footballer, has just been elected president of Liberia. Joseph Estrada, a movie star, was president of the Philippines.

Even conventional politicians are expected to show a bit of star quality. Al Gore failed in his run for president in part because his public demeanour was seen as wooden and dull (it was said he reminded women of their first husbands). The attempts in last year’s election campaign to create…Continue reading

“FASTEN your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” Those famous lines of Bette Davis in “All About Eve” may turn out to be the motto for the markets in 2018. After the “volatility vortex” in February, sparked by concerns about inflation, markets have thrown a “tariff tantrum” after President Donald Trump sparked fears of a trade war with China.

In February stocks sank on heavy hints of American levies on imported steel and aluminium. The prospect of trade measures against China, signalled on March 22nd, again hit shares. Then reports that China and America were making progress in trade talks caused the S&P 500 index to rise by 2.7% on March 26th, its best day since August 2015. It promptly fell again by 1.7% the next day (see chart).

Further volatility seems likely, not least after the appointment of John Bolton, an ultra-hawk on foreign policy, as Mr Trump’s national security adviser. That raises the possibility of increased tension with North Korea, despite the…Continue reading

WHEN migration from Europe to Australia first got going in the nineteenth century, it would take several months to get there by ship. Even by the end of the second world war, the trip still would take over 30 days. But in 1947 Qantas, Australia’s flag carrier, cut the time it took to fly between the two to a matter of days when it opened a new air service between London and Sydney called the “Kangaroo Route”. Even so, the trip was slow and expensive compared to today’s flights. The original “Kangaroo route” took four days and nine stops, and cost at least £525 per passenger—equal to two and half years’ wages for an average worker. Now the same trip, via Dubai or another Asian hub, takes less than 24 hours and costs less than a week’s pay.

Qantas hopes that a new non-stop service between Britain and Australia will again revolutionise the economics of flying between the two countries. On the morning of March 25th, the first scheduled nonstop flight from Perth to London landed…Continue reading

NEARLY every day new stories hit the headlines about misbehaving flyers who get drunk on flights, turn violent or try to bring weapons or unusual animals on board. But it is not just the behaviour of passengers that now appears on a downward slide, but that of crew as well.

Last week videos were posted to Weibo, a Chinese social-media platform, that appeared to show an orgy of at least six people in a hotel room. Reports followed that the participants were flight attendants for China Eastern Airlines, a Chinese flag-carrier, or possibly its subsidiary Shanghai Airlines. In a statement apparently issued by the company, it denied that its flight attendants were involved and suggested that the creators of the video were seeking to damage its reputation. According…Continue reading

ALMOST one year ago to the day, Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost carrier, announced plans to begin serving Ukraine. The eastern European country had been a glaring hole in the airline’s route network, deliberately avoided because of the anti-competitive advantages afforded to Ukraine International Airlines (UIA), the flag carrier based in Kiev, the capital city. A new infrastructure minister, Volodymyr Omelyan, brokered the deal between Ryanair and Boryspil Airport, Kiev’s main gateway and home base of UIA. But it collapsed within months. Now, Ryanair, the government and the airport are trying again.

On March 23rd Ryanair announced that it will launch ten routes to Kiev and five to Lviv in October. The most recent move marks a scaling up of Ryanair’s original plan. The airline never lost interest in serving Ukraine, but said its business confidence was “dented by the Kiev experience”. Continue reading

IN THE original Godzilla movie, made in Japan back in 1954, the testing of American nuclear weapons leads to the creation of a giant dinosaur that threatens to destroy not just Japan, but the rest of the world. Now Asians face another American creation that seems to be laying waste to all around it.

President Donald Trump has already pulled out of the TPP (the Trans-Pacific trade pact) and the Paris climate change agreement. Now he appears determined to roll back the international trade arrangements that have been in place since 1945. Yesterday’s announcement of tariffs on $60bn of Chinese trade threatens to launch a trade war between the world’s two largest economies (the Chinese have already suggested retaliatory measures). Small wonder that Asian markets have taken a hit today (March 23rd); Japan’s Nikkei was down 4.5%, China’s Shanghai Shenzhen dropped 2.9%; Hong Kong’s Hang Seng 2.5%. European markets…Continue reading