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Posts published in “Asides”

An auction at Sotheby’s raises $676m

WHEN SOTHEBY’S raised the gavel on the season’s biggest art auction on November 15th the sellers, Harry and Linda Macklowe, did not arrive as one to watch the proceedings from the discreet skybox above the auction floor, as those disposing of a collection often do. The couple can hardly stand to be in the same…

Shell mulls a breakup

PITY BEN VAN BEURDEN. The boss of Royal Dutch Shell is an affable man steering a Scylla-and-Charybdis course between oil-loving shareholders on one extreme and carbon-hating ones on the other. His latest task is to convince investors that Shell’s strategy of doubling down on oil and gas production while bulking up on renewables is viable...

The business phrasebook

REED HASTINGS HAS built the culture at Netflix around it. Ray Dalio made it a founding principle at Bridgewater, a successful investment fund. “Radical candour” is the idea that bracing honesty is the best way to run a business: no one dances around the truth, and swifter feedback improves performance...

Walmart gets its bite back

IN THEORY THIS should be a good time to be Walmart, the doyen of American retailers that came of age in the stagflationary era of the 1970s. Inflation is back, yet no one knows better than the Beast of Bentonville how to use the power of the growl to convince suppliers to lower prices...