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A spat among professional networks Class war (19 November 04:09) |
| Does local beat global in the professional-networking business?IN THE three-way fight between the biggest online professional networks—America’s LinkedIn, France’s Viadeo a... |
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LNG expands in Australia Explosive growth (19 November 04:09) |
| Australia is becoming one of the world’s biggest exporters of gasWALLAROOS, bandicoots and other marsupials on Barrow Island off the north-west coast of Australia will watch curiously ... |
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Corporate crime is on the rise The rot spreads (19 November 04:09) |
| A survey reveals that desperate times have led to illegal measuresTHE recession has taken its toll on morals as well as profits. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a consulting and accounting fir... |
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Schumpeter Remembering Drucker (19 November 04:09) |
| Four years after his death, Peter Drucker remains the king of the management gurusIN THE normal run of things the management world is divided into dozens of mutually suspicious tribes—... |
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Award Gulliver (19 November 04:09) |
| Gulliver, our blog on business travel, won the award for innovation at this year’s Business Travel Journalism Awards. ... |
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The global crackdown on corporate bribery Ungreasing the wheels (19 November 04:09) |
| Governments around the world are making life difficult for corrupt firmsIF EVER a clash was inevitable between one country’s commercial law and another’s business culture, it wou... |
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Counterfeit handsets proliferate in China Talk is cheap (19 November 04:09) |
| Chinese firms are making and exporting ever more suspect phonesCHINESE consumers appear fixated with Apple’s iconic iPhone. It draws throngs of eager buyers in Shanghai’s Xujiahu... |
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The psychology of warranties Protection racket (19 November 04:09) |
| If extended guarantees are overpriced, why are they so popular?CUSTOMERS tend to agonise over the relative merits of different models of electronic goods such as digital cameras or plasma te... |
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EDF Nuclear contamination (19 November 04:09) |
| The giant French utility’s ambition to lead a global revival in nuclear energy is running into difficulties as a controversial new boss takes overNEXT week Henri Proglio will become th... |
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The fallout from GM keeping Opel The German charm offensive (12 November 04:33) |
| GM’s decision to keep Opel has left Germany fumingAFTER General Motors’ dramatic U-turn on November 3rd over the sale of its European subsidiary, Opel/Vauxhall, its chief executi... |
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Media Bulking up (12 November 04:33) |
| Comcast moves closer to creating a content-and-distribution behemothIT SEEMED for a while as though the media business had dispensed with swagger. As the markets push their companies around,... |
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State-owned enterprises Stakes and mistakes (12 November 04:33) |
| India’s government is privatising companies for the wrong reasonsWHICH flavour of condom do you prefer? Strawberry, chocolate or banana, perhaps? Prostitutes in India opted for paan, o... |
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Music piracy Singing a different tune (12 November 04:33) |
| The battle against online music piracy is turning. A return to growth will take a good deal longer“ROCK and roll is dead,” sang Lenny Kravitz. It is certainly poorly. Music was t... |
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Oracle and Sun Microsystems Merger interruptus (12 November 04:33) |
| Regulators may block a big technology tie-up, but their case is not convincingFOR a brief period many hoped that trustbusters in Europe and America would start playing in tune. During the ei... |
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Schumpeter The cult of the faceless boss (12 November 04:33) |
| Too many chief executives are instantly forgettable. It’s the flamboyant, visionary bosses who change the worldTHE European Union is not the only institution that prefers faceless tech... |
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Japan as number one Land of the setting sun (12 November 04:33) |
| Japan’s economy was on course to surpass America’s. What happened?IT LEFT American executives quaking in their loafers and cheered a generation of Japanese salarymen. “The ... |
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Face value Salesman of the irrational (12 November 04:33) |
| Jean-Claude Biver, the saviour of several Swiss watchmakers, has a knack for selling luxuryONCE a year, at his farm overlooking Lake Geneva, Jean-Claude Biver makes cheese. He uses milk coll... |
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Americas carmakers make a comeback Rinsed and raring to go (05 November 04:31) |
| After a terrible year there are signs of hope for DetroitAMERICA’S carmakers appear to have returned from the grave. This week the three big ones—Ford, General Motors and Chrysle... |
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Foreign investors in Hungary Less welcome (05 November 04:31) |
| Are populist politicians turning on foreign capital?FOREIGN investment helped catapult central Europe to prosperity over the past 20 years. To escape the current recession it will need more ... |
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Video games move online A giant sucking sound (05 November 04:31) |
| The internet swallows another media business, but spits out some hopeIN THE eyes of media executives, the internet is a malevolent vacuum-cleaner, sucking in one business after another. Musi... |
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Berkshire Hathaway buys BNSF Express from Omaha (05 November 04:31) |
| America’s most famous investor buys a railway companyWARREN BUFFETT describes his latest deal as “an all-in wager on the economic future of the United States”. On November ... |
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Gift certificates get a makeover The gift that gives back (05 November 04:31) |
| Retailers are using gift certificates to drum up more businessGIFT certificates, or rather their high-tech new replacements, gift cards (certificates in the form of credit cards), are Americ... |
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Schumpeter Food fight (05 November 04:31) |
| Kraft and Cadbury need to think about the loyalty of future consumers as well as existing onesIT SEEMS that food still trumps everything. The past few months have seen a parade of proposed c... |
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Schumpeter Fish out of water (29 October 05:23) |
| Policymakers are turning their minds to the tricky subject of promoting entrepreneurshipUNEMPLOYMENT is creeping ever higher. In the United States it will soon exceed 10%. In parts of Europe... |
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The worlds ailing postal services Dead letter (29 October 05:23) |
| Letter volumes are plummeting around the world, highlighting stark differences among national postal servicesON OCTOBER 28th Japan’s new government ousted the president and almost the ... |
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Geely closes in on Volvo On a roll (29 October 05:23) |
| Ford seems likely to sell its last luxury brand to a Chinese upstartDESPITE lingering misgivings, Ford Motor Company announced on October 28th that it had picked China’s Geely as the p... |
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Elections to American boards Sinecures in peril (29 October 05:23) |
| A glimmer of hope for corporate democracyUNTIL recently HealthSouth, which runs a chain of hospitals and clinics, was known more for corporate scandals than for corporate governance. A serie... |
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JBS spreads its wings Cluck moo oink ka-ching (29 October 05:23) |
| A Brazilian livestock firm has grown to prize-winning sizeUNLESS you work with quadrupeds, it may have escaped your notice that a Brazilian company, JBS, is about to become the world’s... |
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Airline alliances and antitrust All together now (29 October 05:23) |
| Why antitrust immunity granted in Washington may not wash in EuropeAS MORE and more big companies are learning to their cost, satisfying America’s supposedly tough competition authorit... |
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Yum! Brands new corporate culture Taking the hill less climbed (29 October 05:23) |
| A management guru leads an overhaul of some iconic fast-food chainsTHE fast-food industry is not usually known for lavish investment in its employees, even if dismissive talk of “McJob... |
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Americas struggling newspapers Big is best (29 October 05:23) |
| Most national papers in America are faring better than metropolitan onesTHE slope down which America’s metropolitan newspapers are tumbling became steeper this week. On October 26th th... |
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The information-technology industry revives Back to the circuit board (22 October 04:13) |
| Tech firms are doing so well that boosters say they will spur a broader economic recovery. That is unlikelyTHIS year’s Web 2.0 Summit, an annual technology conference in San Francisco,... |
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Russia raises taxes on beer Sin-tax error (22 October 04:13) |
| Public health trumps brewing, but not distillingAT DIFFICULT moments politicians have been known to turn to drink. And with gaping holes in public finances the chance to raise taxes in the n... |
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China and the market for iron ore Testing their metal (22 October 04:13) |
| Chinese efforts to gain influence over a vital commodity have come to naughtTHE offer that BHP Billiton, a mining conglomerate, made in mid-October to buy United Minerals, a prospecting firm... |
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Domestic outsourcing in India Bittersweet synergy (22 October 04:13) |
| Offshorers find rich opportunities—and tough critics—onshoreINDIANS are rightly proud of their information-technology firms. But although the industry finds its biggest fans at h... |
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Schumpeter The three habits (22 October 04:13) |
| …of highly irritating management gurusSTEPHEN COVEY is fond of telling people that he is writing a book on the evils of retirement, “Live Life in Crescendo”. There is no da... |
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The rise of thin-film solar power Leaner and cheaper (22 October 04:13) |
| The future of solar power is not only bright but also thinTHE modernist box that won this year’s Solar Decathlon, a contest for solar-powered houses sponsored by America’s Depart... |
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Selling foreign goods in China Impenetrable (15 October 04:18) |
| Despite widespread hope that China will help pull the world out of recession, foreigners are finding it as arduous as ever to do business thereEVERY year, says Paul French, head of Access As... |
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American courts ponder 8220honest service8221 Are you being served (15 October 04:18) |
| The Supreme Court will hear appeals by Conrad Black and Jeffrey SkillingUNTIL Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme collapsed last year, landing its 71-year-old architect with a jail sentence o... |
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Business news in China Bad advertisement (15 October 04:18) |
| Turmoil envelops a forthright Chinese magazineCHINA may pride itself on its business prowess, but its state-controlled media shed little light on the way its companies work. A rare exception... |
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Renaults electric-car gamble Mr Ghosn bets the company (15 October 04:18) |
| The French carmaker aims to be the first big producer of zero-emission vehiclesOVER the past few weeks Renault has been giving politicians, journalists and big commercial customers across Eu... |
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Business schools in the recession Resilient wreckers (15 October 04:18) |
| The market for MBAs is defying the economic gloomBUSINESS schools have been widely accused of fashioning the wrecking balls and training many of the demolition crews that have wreaked such h... |
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Schumpeter Someone to watch over them (15 October 04:18) |
| One hat is enough for (almost) any chief executiveIS THERE any limit to the audacity of Scandinavians? Not content with stirring up America’s polarised politics by awarding Barack Obam... |
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Award Ludwig Siegele (15 October 04:18) |
| “Matrix der Welt: SAP und der neue globale Kapitalismus”, by Ludwig Siegele, one of our technology correspondents, and Joachim Zepelin, has won the getAbstract International Book... |
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The fight for GVT Call options (15 October 04:18) |
| Foreigners vie for a bigger slice of Brazil’s telecoms marketTHE bitter fight that has broken out between Telefonica, a Spanish telecoms giant, and Vivendi, a French conglomerate, for ... |
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Italys business clusters Sinking together (15 October 04:18) |
| Italian manufacturing hubs have not withstood the recession as hopedLORRIES no longer come and go along the rough road beside the olive trees at La Martella, in the rolling countryside a few... |
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Corporate governance at Petronas Drilling and nation-building (08 October 04:17) |
| Malaysia’s national oil firm is successful but remains mired in politicsA DECADE after opening, the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur are no longer the world’s tallest. But Pe... |
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Big beermakers vie for FEMSA A fight brewing (08 October 04:17) |
| The world’s big brewers are circling Mexico’s second-largest beermakerLIKE a thirsty partygoer swigging from two different bottles, big Western brewers are simultaneously pursuin... |
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The satellite industry goes into orbit Beaming (08 October 04:17) |
| The spread of satellite television bolsters a once shaky businessEARTH may have been hit hard, but the recession, it turns out, has not done much damage in space. Turnover among operators of... |
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Telenor and Alfa are reconciled A strong signal (08 October 04:17) |
| A merger forged in adversity shows the obstacles foreign firms face in RussiaPEACE has unexpectedly broken out in one of Russia’s longest-running and most bitter boardroom battles. Aft... |
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