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Bharti bids for Zain Low-cost bundle (18 February 04:12) |
| India’s biggest mobile operator makes a fresh attempt to enter AfricaIN SIGNING up over 118m subscribers in India, Bharti Airtel, the country’s biggest mobile-phone operator, has... |
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Schumpeter A different class (18 February 04:12) |
| Would giving long-term shareholders more clout improve corporate governance?THE spectacular collapse of so many big financial firms during the crisis of 2008 has provided new evidence for th... |
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Antitrust in the European Union Unchained watchdog (18 February 04:12) |
| Businesses think Europe’s trustbusters should be kept on a tighter leashIT WAS probably with some relief that Joaquin Almunia took up his post as the European Union’s competition... |
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The collapse of TIBC A mystery in the Gulf (18 February 04:12) |
| The bizarre mechanics of a huge financial scandalTHE past two years have exposed plenty of untoward behaviour at the world’s financial institutions. But there has been nothing quite li... |
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Gome and Huang Guangyu Power cut (18 February 04:12) |
| China’s biggest electronics retailer, like its founder, is in troubleNO ONE epitomises China’s boisterous embrace of modern consumerism better than Huang Guangyu, who transformed... |
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Mergers in the fertiliser industry A growth business (18 February 04:12) |
| Feeding the world has become a mouth-watering opportunityFOR thousands of years farmers would try to ensure a decent harvest with exhortations to various deities. The weather may still be in... |
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Face value BRAC in business (18 February 04:12) |
| Fazle Hasan Abed has built one of the world’s most commercially-minded and successful NGOsSMILING and dapper, Fazle Hasan Abed hardly seems like a revolutionary. A Bangladeshi educated... |
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Signs of life in American retailing Simon buys (18 February 04:12) |
| Big takeover bids suggest the worst is over for America’s retailersTWO judges will have a big impact on the fortune of David Simon, the boss of his family’s American shopping-mal... |
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Schumpeter Getting the cow out of the ditch (11 February 04:08) |
| Toyota's woes highlight the question of how to manage a product recall—and how not to“FIRST, get the cow out of the ditch. Second, find out how the cow got into the ditch. Third,... |
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Saturated mobile networks Breaking up (11 February 04:08) |
| Will the rapid growth in data traffic overwhelm wireless networks?BEFORE the end of next year the internet will collapse, predicted Bob Metcalfe, a noted network engineer now turned venture ... |
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Baseball in China Striking out (11 February 04:08) |
| America’s baseball moguls hope to follow basketball’s lead in ChinaIN A few days America’s pitchers and catchers are due to report for spring training. So you would expect ... |
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Google v Facebook Generating Buzz (11 February 04:08) |
| The search giant makes a belated attempt to take on the social-networking siteFOR years Google has stayed on the fringes of the social-networking industry, leaving the field largely to the l... |
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Charity as advertising Give and take (11 February 04:08) |
| Will Pepsi profit by enlisting the public in its philanthropic efforts?THE 107m Americans who tuned in to watch the Super Bowl on February 7th did not see any advertisements for Pepsi. Inste... |
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Cruise lines in the recession Damn the torpedoes (11 February 04:08) |
| Travel companies are launching luxurious ships into perilous watersIN LATE January Silversea Cruises christened its newest ship, the Silver Spirit, with champagne and sent it on a 91-day voy... |
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SAPs boss departs abruptly Threes a crowd (11 February 04:08) |
| An old broom sweeps the German software giant’s chief executive asideLEO APOTHEKER’S tenure as boss of SAP, the world’s third-biggest software firm, was short-lived. He had... |
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Schumpeter The silver tsunami (04 February 04:11) |
| Business will have to learn how to manage an ageing workforceMARTIN AMIS and Christopher Buckley are writers who are entering their silver years and are worried about the costs of an ageing ... |
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The nuclear industry Unexpected reaction (04 February 04:11) |
| The handful of firms that build nuclear reactors face new competitionTHE nuclear industry got an unexpected boost from Barack Obama in his State of the Union address last month. The presiden... |
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Face value Cultural revolutionary (04 February 04:11) |
| Qi Lu, the boss of Bing, hopes to get Microsoft back in the online gameTHE boss of Microsoft’s online-services arm, Qi Lu, tends to flourish in the face of adversity. When he was five,... |
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How firms fool equity analysts Stockpickers suckered (04 February 04:11) |
| Chief executives pull the wool over analysts’ eyes, againHOW do you pump up the value of your company in these difficult times? One tried and tested way is to hoodwink equity analysts,... |
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Japans vulnerable newspapers The teetering giants (04 February 04:11) |
| Japanese newspapers are in worse shape than they appearAS NEWSPAPER companies across the developed world took a beating in the past few years, those in one rich country merely shrugged. Japa... |
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Shell and Cosan team up on ethanol Generation game (04 February 04:11) |
| A champion of futuristic biofuels embraces the old-fashioned kindRISING oil prices and mounting concern about global warming may have stoked demand for biofuels, but oilmen and farmers still... |
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Electric cars A Netscape moment (04 February 04:11) |
| Investors get out their chequebooks for electric-car start-upsTHE idea of the “Netscape moment”, a fund-raising that signals the spawning of a whole new industry, is dear to Sili... |
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Toyotas troubles deepen No quick fix (04 February 04:11) |
| The damage to the world’s biggest carmaker may be lastingSAFETY recalls are a common enough occurrence in the car industry. If handled correctly, few have long-term consequences for th... |
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Testing Indias graduates The engineering gap (28 January 04:10) |
| India’s tech workers are not as good as the country hopes and America fearsEACH year India produces about twice as many engineering and computing geeks as America, counting those with ... |
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Saving Saab At last GM finds a buyer (28 January 04:10) |
| A Dutch sports-car firm aims to revive ailing SaabDEATHBED reprieves do not get any more dramatic than the agreement reached by General Motors on January 26th to sell Saab, its Swedish subsi... |
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Apple unveils the iPad Steve Jobs and the tablet of hope (28 January 04:10) |
| The innovation machine churns out another game-changing device“HEROES and heroics” is one of the central themes of the current season at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in Sa... |
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The Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger A union of pariahs (28 January 04:10) |
| American regulators bless the creation of a live-music colossusTICKETMASTER, which sells admission to performances as diverse as Shakespeare and hip-hop, is perhaps less popular with consume... |
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Samsungs leadership saga All in the family (28 January 04:10) |
| Lee Kun-hee may returnJUSTICE in South Korea can be elastic. Industrialists who break the law have had their sentences commuted or been pardoned on the basis of their contributions to the na... |
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Tax preparation Building Block (28 January 04:10) |
| H&R Block has escaped death by focusing on taxesTHE tax season is under way in America, a three-month period to April 15th when millions of families try to fill in their tax return in a ... |
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The sweetener battle Sweet and lowdown (28 January 04:10) |
| The competition to make the most natural fake sugarAMERICANS have a sweet tooth and odd expectations. They slurp caramel macchiato as coffee and believe that candy, when placed in a bowl, be... |
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Schumpeter The tale of Mr Jackson (21 January 04:07) |
| The public sector has had its fill of management consultantsMARGARET THATCHER regarded Beatrix Potter’s “Ginger and Pickles” as the only business book worth reading. The BB... |
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Capitalism in China The spirit of enterprise fades (21 January 04:07) |
| The cradle of China’s start-up firms is showing its ageCHINA’S remarkable resurgence began three decades ago with the designation of Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong, as a ̶... |
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Americas car industry Small cars big question (21 January 04:07) |
| Can Americans learn to love small cars? The industry’s future depends on itFOR ALL the woes of the city that hosts it, Detroit’s annual motor show is still a bellwether for Ameri... |
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Renault and meddling politicians Attempted carjack (21 January 04:07) |
| The French government tries to grab the wheel at RenaultIN AN off-message moment in front of journalists on January 15th, Christian Estrosi, France’s industry minister, asserted that h... |
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The business of dissecting electronics The lowdown on teardowns (21 January 04:07) |
| Ripping apart smart-phones reveals their true costGADGET-LOVERS the world over are already salivating at the thought of getting their hands on Apple’s much-hyped tablet computer, which... |
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Professional-services firms Laid-off lawyers cast-off consultants (21 January 04:07) |
| The downturn is sorting the best professional-services firms from the restWHAT do you say to a recent law-school graduate? “A skinny double-shot latte to go, please.” From New Yo... |
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Face value Indonesias Teflon tycoon (14 January 04:15) |
| Aburizal Bakrie has survived controversy in business and politicsALTHOUGH Aburizal Bakrie, one of Indonesia’s most prominent businessmen, lost his job as Indonesia’s welfare mini... |
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Pills get smart Potential encapsulated (14 January 04:15) |
| Medicines that can talk to doctors herald a new direction for drugs firmsNOVARTIS, a Swiss pharmaceuticals giant, is involved in two deals at the moment. Its $50 billion takeover of Alcon, a... |
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Australias ailing education business Under attack (14 January 04:15) |
| A spate of assaults puts off foreign studentsTHE Australian state of Victoria is host to 45,000 students from India. On January 2nd one of them, Nitin Garg, was stabbed to death in Melbourne... |
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The return of the mainframe Back in fashion (14 January 04:15) |
| The mother of all computers no longer looks that oldGEEKS may roll their eyes at the news that Namibia is only now getting its first mainframe—a technology that most consider obsolete.... |
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France and the internet Helicopters at the ready (14 January 04:15) |
| A proposed new tax typifies France’s ambivalent attitude to the internetFRENCH internet executives, bloggers and web users cringed in early January when an independent report for the m... |
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A railway bonanza in China Trouble down the track (14 January 04:15) |
| China’s love affair with high-speed rail is a boon to foreign suppliers—for nowIN SHARP contrast to the usual smooth collaboration between political and business interests in Hon... |
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Public relations in the recession Good news (14 January 04:15) |
| Other firms’ suffering has bolstered the public-relations businessTHE past year or two has tested the idea that all publicity is good publicity, at least when it comes to business. Und... |
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Schumpeter Driven to distraction (14 January 04:15) |
| Two and a half cheers for sticks and carrotsTHIS is bonus season in the financial world. That means, of course, that it is bonus-bashing season everywhere else. The righteously outraged have... |
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Schumpeter Making a success of failure (07 January 04:12) |
| America's enlightened treatment of bankrupt firms remains a model to the worldTHE American model has seldom looked so tarnished. America’s unemployment rate is 10%. Soup kitchens are d... |
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Hollywood and the internet Coming soon (07 January 04:12) |
| The film business tries to learn from others’ mistakesHOLLYWOOD came late to the internet. Protected for years from digital piracy by huge file sizes, it was not forced to develop an o... |
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Novartiss bid for Alcon In the eye (07 January 04:12) |
| Minority shareholders in Swiss firms have fewer rights than they thoughtSWITZERLAND is one of the world’s oldest democracies. Yet in the corporate realm at least, as minority sharehold... |
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Germanys solar subsidies Fed up (07 January 04:12) |
| Germany’s support for solar power is becoming ever harder to affordAMID the unexploded bombs, rockets and poison-gas shells that litter a former Soviet military training ground in east... |
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Americas census and business A count that counts (07 January 04:12) |
| This year’s tally of America will help shape corporate strategy for a decadeTHIS week 13 vehicles embarked on an 800-stop tour across America, which will include visits to popular even... |
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Japan Airlines clouded future On a wing and a rumour (07 January 04:12) |
| Bankruptcy beckons for Japan’s struggling flag carrierEVEN by its own turbulent standards, Japan Airlines (along with its long-suffering shareholders) has had a pretty wild ride in the... |
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