Over the past five years, the Southeastern region, led by Atlanta, has gone from being “one of the best kept secrets” in tech, to a vibrant ecosystem teeming with a herd of the billion dollar tech businesses that are referred to in the investment world as “unicorns” (thanks to their supposed rarity). In those five…
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We’ve been hearing how “data is the new oil” for more than a decade now, and in certain sectors, it’s a maxim that has more than panned out. From marketing and logistics to finance and product, decision-making is now dominated by data at all levels of most big private orgs (and if it isn’t, I’d…
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The chief executive of India’s Serum Institute, the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer, has warned that shortages of jabs will persist for months after Narendra Modi’s government failed to prepare for a devastating second coronavirus wave. Adar Poonawalla told the Financial Times that India’s severe vaccine shortage would continue through July, when production is expected to…
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The UK generates a mere 1.1 per cent of global emissions of greenhouse gases. This makes it the 16th largest emitter. Even if all its emissions were to cease tomorrow, the world would hardly notice. So what might be its role? The answer is that it could be both an example and a leader. It…
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For André Schmidt, the new boss of the Priory, the coronavirus pandemic has created an opportunity to expand the group’s rehabilitation services. The chief executive of Germany’s Median, responsible for running Britain’s biggest chain of mental healthcare clinics, plans to extend its rehabilitation services to “long Covid” — long-term effects from coronavirus infections — and…
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A few weeks before Christmas, Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro made a major announcement about his plans to tackle coronavirus. His vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, had just arrived back from Moscow bearing seasonal tidings of comfort and joy regarding Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. “We have guaranteed more than 10m doses of vaccines for the first quarter of…
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In Brazil, the debate over environmental protection increasingly hinges on one factor: money. A lack of it is invoked by the Brazilian government when demanding billions from western nations to stop the destruction of the Amazon rainforest or when justifying budget cuts at its environmental protection agencies. For a cohort of investors in Latin America’s…
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Vodafone is teaming up with Google’s cloud division to jointly develop data services they can eventually sell to other companies, in the latest sign of convergence between the telecoms and technology sectors. Around 1,000 workers in the UK, Spain and the US will be seconded by the two companies to create a new cloud-based storage…
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Investors are tuning into psychedelic stocks. A succession of market newcomers is raising funds to explore the use of mind-altering drugs for mental disorders. It is a controversial area of research. But given the need for better treatments, the nascent market could grow rapidly. Atai Life Sciences, a Berlin-based company backed by tech investor Peter Thiel,…
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“I think the psychology of the leader often becomes the psychology of the organisation,” says Brian Chesky, reflecting on a year in which his company, Airbnb, was thrown into disarray by the global pandemic. There was no panic, the chief executive and co-founder of the accommodation-booking platform says, even as bookings plummeted by more than…
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