Henry Kissinger’s Bloody Legacy
Last week, Henry Kissinger, America’s most famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) Secretary of State turned 100. For reasons we don’t fully understand, Kissinger and the President he served, Richard Nixon, harboured a deep antipathy towards India. The damage Kissinger did to Indo-US relations took 30 years to repair. Lest we forget […]
Belief, support and a long rope: how Chennai Super Kings have built a consistently odds-beating side
Yet another IPL related long piece this week. But this is neither about the game nor the economics of it. This piece is a Master Class in building teams with a people centric culture which all of us in our professions, business or otherwise can draw lessons from. This piece was published before the IPL […]
Buffett’s intriguing bet on Japan
Over the past three years, Warren Buffett has gradually accumulated stakes in five Japanese conglomerates, the so-called soga shosha, namely, Itochu Corp., Marubeni Corp., Mitsubishi Corp., Mitsui, and Sumitomo Corp. As Japan recovers from what felt like a 30-year downturn, these Buffett’s investments in Japan (which are, intriguingly, funded by a yen denominated loan) are […]
Business Breakdowns podcast – IPL: The World’s Fastest Growing Sports League
Even by the high standards of Business Breakdowns, this is a super engrossing podcast on how cleverly the IPL has been constructed from its inception in 2008. Ed Cowan does a great job of explaining the business model of the IPL and the nuances which have allowed it to create tens of billions of dollars […]
She, the civil servant
One of the more powerful forces transforming the Indian economy and society is the rise of women in the work force. This rise is seen even in the prestigious Indian Civil Services as well. In the recent round of hiring for the elite services, more than a third of new recruits were women – the […]
Obituary – Robert Lucas, economist, , 1937-2023
Those of us who spent our youth studying economics came away stunned by the originality of thought demonstrated by Robert Lucas, the Nobel Prize winning economist from the University of Chicago. Especially for those of who lived through pre-liberalisation India and saw the damage that socialism and Keynesian thinking could unleash on an under-developed country, […]
The Great Disconnect
Anand Sridharan works at Nalanda Capital and writes a super interesting blog called Buggy Humans in a Messy World. In his latest blog, he draws upon a well-worn analogy between Test Cricket and long-term investing and then extends the analogy beautifully to highlight the insanity that is perpetrated by many investors. He begins with what […]
26 Empire State Buildings Could Fit Into New York’s Empty Office Space. That’s a Sign.
Office occupancy data in American cities suggests that the work from home (WFH) mode necessitated during Covid has persisted into permanence well after Covid has gone (almost). Yet in cities like New York, one cannot but feel that the buzz is back on the streets at least in certain times of the day and week. […]
U.S. Universities Are Building A New Semiconductor Workforce
The rising economic and hence strategic importance of semiconductors to nations looking to establish global supremacy has resulted in what’s now popularly referred to as the Chip War (thanks to the brilliant book with the same title by Chris Miller). The Chip War is manifesting in many ways, most prominently in the form of sanctions […]
How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking
Did you know that “From January to September 2022, Facebook reported more than 73.3m pieces of content under “child nudity and physical abuse” and “child sexual exploitation” and Instagram reported 6.1m.” As you would expect, tech companies extol the virtues of the tech that they propagate. Most technologies however have a dark side which is revealed only […]
Making Money from Luxury Goods Manufacturers
Marcellus’ Global Compounders Portfolio (GCP) invests in 25-30 deeply moated global companies which are listed in developed countries. The nature of the products and services – which cater to global economic megatrends – and the moats developed around process capacity, R&D, and capital allocation, are the key factors that contribute to the consistency of free […]
The unstoppable advance of the acronym
Pilita Clark’s columns in the FT are unfailingly entertaining. In this column this begins by explaining that the fondness for using acronyms predates the birth of Christ: “It helps to remember that abbreviations date back to at least the time of Cicero, when ancient Romans shortened Senatus PopulusQue Romanus — the senate and people of Rome […]
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