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Author

Lily White

  • AFTER A STUNNING run during the pandemic, which put a premium on all things digital, tech stocks have hit a rough patch. The NASDAQ, a technology-heavy index, has fallen by 15% from its peak in November, weighed down by a new outbreak of covid-19 in China and the Russia-Ukraine war, which are gumming up supply…

  • TAKE AN EVENING walk on 17th Cross Road in Bengaluru’s HSR Layout district, and you bump into tech types stepping out of their startup’s office and into one of the local microbreweries. They might work for Udaan (e-commerce), Vedantu (education technology) or another of the growing herd of private startups valued at $1bn, whose proliferation…

  • A consortium of technology firms is ploughing nearly $1bn into a clever market mechanismA GROUP OF rich do-gooders tried a bold experiment 15 years ago. The Gates Foundation, a charity, and five countries put $1.5bn into a pilot project aimed at encouraging research and development in a previously neglected area. The “advanced market commitment” (AMC)…

  • Editor’s note (April 21st 2022): After this article was published, Elon Musk said he has received funding to finance a takeover of Twitter, and that he is exploring whether to launch a tender offer to all Twitter shareholders.IDA TARBELL, author of an exposé of the Standard Oil Company in 1904, described its founder, John D.…

  • Business

    Startups for the modern workplace

    by Lily White

    Sharks, dragons and angels: what are you waiting for?GREAT UPHEAVALS always spark innovation. The covid-19 pandemic is no different. The share of new patent applications in America connected to remote-working technologies more than doubled between January and September 2020. Opportunities abound to invest in a host of transformative early-stage ideas. The pitches below are from…

  • Can it tempt viewers back with advertising?IN JANUARY NETFLIX warned investors that it expected to add only 2.5m subscribers in the quarter ahead, causing a sell-off that knocked nearly 30% off its share price. On April 19th the video-streamer admitted that the reality was worse: Netflix lost 200,000 customers in the period, its first net…

  • Business

    How dealmaking has been reinvented

    by Lily White

    This M&A boom isn’t like the last oneIT WAS ONCE thought that investment bankers, like sharks, needed to keep on the move to survive. Then pandemic lockdowns put paid to their perpetual motion between headquarters, airports and meetings. Greasing the wheels of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) took a backseat to corporate concerns about survival. Deals…

  • Business

    Companies fear consumer boycotts

    by Lily White

    But activists’ interest has little immediate impact on salesANDRIJ MELNYK, the Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin, did not hold back. Mocking Ritter Sport’s advertising slogan, he tweeted on March 29th “Quadratisch, Praktisch, Blut” (square, practical, blood), replacing gut (good) in the firm’s slogan. A couple of days later Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, called for a…