When AstraZeneca briefly became the largest company in the FTSE 100 earlier this summer its ascent appeared to dovetail neatly between strong investor appetite for pharmaceuticals and public hopes of a Covid-19 vaccine. Big Pharma does not become so big without a certain ruthlessness. For every blockbuster drug the largest firms develop, many treatments […]
Big
Trump’s forced TikTok sale will only entrench the power of big tech
This move will do little to alleviate the monopolistic position of the tech giants and more to entrench their power and dominance than any taken to check the industry in the past ten years. Meanwhile, Zhang – a genuine entrepreneur and innovator – is being forced to bin his boldest […]
Calls to ‘save’ high streets miss big picture
Indeed, the distinction between online and bricks-and-mortar retail is increasingly blurred. Two thirds of the businesses that trade on eBay also have a physical premises. John Lewis is aiming to be a 60pc online retailer, from 40pc before Covid. There are also lots of firms that started online and then […]
Metro Bank needs some big ideas to move on up
Unfortunately Metro’s half-year results were a blizzard of bad news, with seemingly all of the numbers going in the wrong direction. There was the £112m provision for bad loans, pushing it to what one analyst called an “eye-watering” £241m pre-tax loss. Its net interest margin, a key measure of profitability, […]
Big Tech’s online empires will one day fall
In the 1950s, IBM was accused of holding a monopoly over punch-card processing machines, resulting in an agreement with the US government that opened up the market in 1956. In the next decade, computing had moved on to mainframes, and the company’s 70pc share of the market led to a […]
Big Tech is now a proxy for the American government
Boosting Europe’s technological capabilities is also a central policy in Europe’s plan to recover from the Covid-19 recession, alongside green energy. Taking a leaf out of China’s book, the EU is moving towards a more active industrial policy. This has further fuelled US concerns – and was partly responsible for […]
Why splitting up the Big Four will not fix shoddy audits
Mid-tier firms may even be forced to endure the expense and distraction of splitting their own audit operations from their consulting divisions. BDO and Grant Thornton, the two biggest challenger firms, are already making preparations for ringfencing to ensure they can credibly compete with the Big Four on auditor independence. […]
Ocado stuck in the queue as big payoff finally arrives
Meanwhile, its systems emphatically failed to cope with lockdown demand. Such was the surge in traffic to the website that Ocado servers thought they were under attack from cyber criminals. Many customers who were unable to get delivery slots for weeks went to Tesco, Sainsbury’s or Morrisons instead. Having spent […]
The audit watchdog must cut the Big Four down to size
There needs to be more responsibility and independence beyond box-ticking so that accounts are properly scrutinised. Questionable accounting methods have become too widespread. Replacing the “going concern” statement with a broader declaration of “resilience”, and requiring auditors to at least “endeavour to” find wrongdoing, are also excellent proposals. Directors can’t […]
Big Tech companies have got universities in their sights
“Part of our education system is doing what they need – our Caltechs and MITs and so on are doing what they need – but that’s not what most of our education system is doing,” says Richard Scott, emeritus professor of sociology at Stanford University, who co-authored a book about […]