February, 2020

• 8 February

  Coronavirus crisis highlights flaws in the ‘Chinese model’

  

  The “Chinese model,” as enthusiasts sometimes describe Beijing’s autocratic system for dictating policy, can look eerily successful — until you consider catastrophic events such as the recent coronavirus outbreak. China’s response to the epidemic that began in Wuhan over a month ago shows some advantages of its police-state approach, and some severe disadvantages: Chinese authorities can commandeer resources to build ...

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• 8 February

  Is Macy’s too Macy’s to save Macy’s?

  

  With the traditional department store in its death throes, Macy’s Inc. is doing its best to keep the concept alive. The struggling retailer last week unveiled a strategic blueprint to defend its business against the twin threats of online and discount competitors. The centerpiece is closing 125 of its department stores over the next three years, including some 30 locations ...

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• 8 February

  Aston Martin, Funding Circle left painful scars

  It’s easy to announce an initial public offering in Europe, but far harder to complete it. Don’t be distracted by the handful of decent-sized share issues launched in January. The recent evidence suggests that the target audience for European IPOs is smaller, fussier and harder to reach than it used to be. Some 17 offerings totaling 1.4 billion euros were ...

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• 8 February

  Germany’s AfD causes a political earthquake

  Germany made post-war history on February 5. In a total shock, one of the country’s 16 state parliaments elected a premier with votes that included members of a hard-right populist party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Worse, one of the AfD leaders in that state, Thuringia, is Bjoern Hoecke, considered to be on the party’s extreme — indeed proto-Fascist — ...

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• 8 February

  Modi’s ‘thalinomics’ is a recipe for a bad economy

  

  Indian food, when done right, comes in a thali — a metal plate with half a dozen or more little bowls of vegetables, pickles, and so on. The word of the week in India is “thalinomics”: The government’s official survey of the Indian economy, published a few days ago, introduced the word to talk about how food was getting cheaper ...

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• 8 February

  Oil giant BP can afford to be radical on climate change

  

  Bob Dudley leaves BP Plc having almost settled the financial costs of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy in 2010 and overseen a necessary overhaul of safety, and more generally culture, in response to the disaster. Successor Bernard Looney inherits a financially strong company. That only increases the incoming CEO’s responsibility to upgrade BP’s strategy to meet the climate crisis. BP and ...

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• 8 February

  Why Google might prefer dropping a $22bn business

  

  For Google, a partial voluntary breakup of its advertising business might be preferable to whatever regulators come up with on their own. Whenever people rattle off big tech deals whose regulatory approval was, in hindsight, a mistake, they tend to include the Alphabet Inc. unit’s $3.2 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008. I’ve done it three times in the past ...

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• 8 February

  GM to recoup Cadillac’s lost mojo with Escalade

  

  Even in its worst days, Cadillac could count on its big, swanky Escalade to deliver profits. It still does, but with Ford Motor Co’s Lincoln Navigator and a handful of European competitors taking a bite out of the large luxury SUV market, General Motors (GM) Co is making a push to turn the fifth-generation Escalade into a high-tech showcase. When ...

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• 8 February

  Ericsson pulls out of biggest mobile event as virus spreads

  

  Bloomberg Ericsson AB withdrew from the telecommunications industry’s biggest annual event to protect its staff and visitors from the coronavirus outbreak. The Swedish maker of mobile networks said it had pulled out of MWC Barcelona, due to be held on February 24 to February 27. As one of the largest exhibitors, with thousands of visitors in its hall each day, ...

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• 8 February

  Virus pushes robots to frontlines of hospitals in China

  

  Bloomberg The deadly coronavirus outbreak, which has pushed the Chinese medical community into overdrive, has also prompted the country’s hospitals to more quickly adopt robots as medical assistants. Telepresence bots that allow remote video communication, patient health monitoring and safe delivery of medical goods are growing in number on hospital floors in urban China. They’re now acting as a safe ...

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