On Global Markets

The life cycle of the archetypal successful American firm was once straight forward. The initial entrepreneur would at first fund their start-up idea utilizing cash from the so-called three Fs of family, friends, and fools. If their business proved to be a hit it would expand using a mixture of debt and injections of equity […] 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology continues to advance rapidly and grab the attention of investors, policymakers, and media opinion formers. For the latter, the ability of the latest generation of large language models (LLMs) to not only write increasingly passable copy but to do so in the style of named authors is causing more than a […] 

Short-termism is one of the frequently invoked criticisms of the management of publicly listed firms, asset managers, and individual shareholders. Critics allege that over the past few decades changes in the structure of financial markets and investor behavior have aligned into a system that encourages managers to focus on short term profits, at a potential […] 

At the end of the twentieth century, the average speed of trips made across central London was lower than in the year 1900. The reason for this regression was obvious to anyone spending time in a car in the United Kingdom’s capital: heavy congestion and frequent traffic jams snarling up the roads. In 2003 London […] 

There are plenty of reasons why Japanese policymakers might favor a stronger yen. With Japan increasingly reliant on both imported food and imported energy, anything which increases the nation’s international purchasing power can be seen as positive. But the supposed benefits of a stronger currency run beyond that obvious implication. It helps to support household […] 

Looking back from 1919, the economist John Maynard Keynes wrote of the pre-Great War world as a high point of what would now be termed globalization. As he set out in the Economic Consequences of the Peace: “The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of […] 

Private equity investing, as the name rather helpfully suggests, involves buying (and later selling) equity in firms that are not listed on the public markets. Under that, rather broad umbrella, a whole variety of different investing strategies can be found. Varying from venture capital (the provision of early-stage investments to often quickly growing companies) to […] 

Economics is an unusual discipline. Most fields of study are just that, a study of a specific field. Economics though is, in its broadest sense, almost a way of thinking, a common approach to methodology rather than a set subject matter. This can come as a surprise to non-economists. Often, possibly all too often, telling […] 

This week three Republican senators called upon President Biden to formally block a take-over of U.S. Steel by the Japanese firm, Nippon Steel.  As senators Vance, Hawley, and Rubio noted in their letter, whilst President Biden has made clear his opposition to such a take-over in the past he has yet to formally intervene. By […] 

There are two veins that tend to run through the tone of European economic commentary when the continent’s residents – or at least those in Western half – compare themselves to the United States. Broadly put these can be classified as either hand-wringing pessimism or rather smug complacency. The pessimistic case is based on the […]