Ranked: The world’s best performing chief executives of 2017 as Inditex’s Pablo Isla and WPP’s Martin Sorrell take the top spots | City A.M. October 24, 2017 The boss of Zara’s parent firm Inditex, Pablo Isla, has been named the best-performing chief executive in the world for 2017, by the Harvard Business Review. The Spanish businessman, who ranked third last year, took the top spot for the first time, over WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell. Since becoming chief executive in 2005, Isla has [...]
Now Amazon is bringing one-hour Prime delivery to Scotland July 27, 2016 Amazon's mission to deliver its goods to impatient customers faster than anyone else took another step forward as it extended its Prime one and two-hour deliveries to Scotland for the first time. Residents of Glasgow rejoice, particularly those in the areas of Parkhead, Shawlands and Paisley, where anyone ordering can get thousands of items to their [...]
The Amazon Echo is an artificially intelligent speaker and virtual assistant that can play music, order curries and hail an Uber September 14, 2016 The Amazon Echo is a hands-free speaker that you operate using voice commands. Inside it (well, somewhere in the cloud to be precise) lives Alexa, an artificial intelligence and essentially Amazon’s version of Siri. Alexa’s machine-learning algorithms and rapidly expanding skillset make her smarter as time goes on: so while today she can play music, [...]
Walmart nabs Amazon rival Jet.com in $3.3bn deal August 8, 2016 US retail giant Walmart has scooped up Amazon rival Jet.com in a $3.3bn (£2.5bn) takeover, the companies announced today. The deal, which Walmart will use to bolster its online offerings, has been approved by both companies' boards of directors and is expected to close in the second half of this year. Part of the $3bn [...]
Belmond Andean Explorer review and prices: All aboard one of the highest train routes in the world January 24, 2018 South America’s first luxury sleeper train traverses Peru’s high Andes along one of the highest train routes in the world. Lizzie Pook packs her altitude sickness tablets and checks in. It’s 2am and there’s a loud, metallic clank outside my train cabin. I’d be alarmed, but I already know what it is: oxygen tanks. The [...]
Amazon has just been fined 0.01 per cent of its second quarter profits for shipping dangerous goods September 23, 2016 Amazon has been fined £65,000 by Southwark Crown Court after it was convicted of breaching rules on dangerous goods. The online retail giant was found guilty earlier this week on four counts of causing dangerous goods to be delivered for carriage in an aircraft after it tried to ship lithium ion batteries (which have been banned from flights [...]
Data might be like oil, but reputation is still the real black gold October 24, 2017 For those firms harbouring inordinate reserves of our personal information, despite the endless profit-churning opportunities, an unblemished corporate reputation remains priceless. Today’s internet giants were founded on our personal data. Amazon, Facebook, Google. They don’t have high street stores. There’s next-to no human interaction. It’s all data. But today, data is a democracy. Businesses in [...]
Six market charts that matter: Italy’s problems, Greek bonds, the Vix spike March 2, 2018 Each month, the investment writing team at Schroders highlight the most significant charts to cross their desk. Italian election: the country's most pressing business problems Elections (not to mention referendums) have been a major source of market uncertainty and volatility in recent times. The latest comes this weekend in arguably the most important election in [...]
European regulators have totally missed the point about Google and monopolies June 28, 2017 When is a monopoly not a monopoly? When it’s big – but fragile. That’s why it was such a mistake to go after Microsoft in the 1990s for pre-installing Internet Explorer on Windows machines. Microsoft had a big share of the market, yes, but it has been eclipsed by rivals like Android, iOS, and Linux. [...]
Facebook Watch video: Social network makes major move with original shows taking on TV, Netflix and YouTube August 10, 2017 A new and powerful contingent has entered the content wars and it’s likely to inspire fear among broadcasters and tech companies alike. Facebook has launched a new platform dedicated to TV-like video content called Watch and it will feature “shows are made up of episodes – live or recorded – and follow a theme or [...]