Business

“Farewell,” the flag-waving Chinese children chanted to Donald Trump as he strolled along the red carpet back to Air Force One at the end of his summit with Xi Jinping in Beijing.

The US leader claimed he was leaving with a cluster of “fantastic” trade deals to sell US oil, jets and soya beans to China. That has not been confirmed by his smiling host, but one thing was crystal clear from the two days of meetings: the global balance of power is shifting, from the declining petrostate in the west to the rising electrostate in the east.

Or just the usual lust from a European intellectual – darn them damn Yankees?

Trump flew home to chaos – war with Iran, surging gas prices, spectacular unpopularity, friction with former allies and a 20th-century policy of “energy dominance” that seeks to turn back the clock

US is a net exporter. Higher fossil fuel prices benefits them.

a more useful – and maybe even hopeful – analysis needs to take into account the tectonic changes that are shaking not just the foundations of politics, but the very nature of human power, as the world shifts from molecules to electrons.

Sigh.

History has proven that when the dominant form of energy changes, there is often a shift in the global pecking order. We are now in the midst of one such transition as the epoch of petrol, predominantly produced in the United States, Russia and Gulf states, starts to give way to an era of renewables, overwhelmingly manufactured in China. But the outcome remains contested, and the process could be ugly. The new energy order is winning the economic and technological battle – wind turbines and solar panels were already producing record-cheap electricity even before the Iran war pushed up the costs of gas and oil-fired power plants. But the old petro-interests still have political, military and financial might on their side, and they are using that to try to turn back the energy clock.

Yep, usual European intellectual wankfest. So there’s a new tech in town, is there? Cool! So, the people who will get rich, who will have the power, will be the people who *use* the new tech best. Not who sell it, or make it, but who *use* it. From the failure to grasp that all other errors follow.

Sigh.

As a result, democracies across the planet are now threatened by what might be called fossil fuel fascism – an extremist political movement that breaks laws, spreads lies and threatens violence in an increasingly desperate attempt to maintain markets for oil, gas and coal that would otherwise be replaced by cheaper renewables.

Oh, and a good dose of conspirazoid fantasies of course.

With the Trump administration aggressively meddling in what schools and universities are able to teach, it may not be long until billionaire life stories are taught to US schoolchildren. Who needs to learn about slavery, and how it continues to shape the racial wealth gap, when you can hear the heartwarming story of how a young Mark Zuckerberg called a bunch of his peers “dumb fucks” for trusting him with their data and then went on to build a trillion-dollar company accused of facilitating genocide?

And also, along the way, provides free telecoms for half the species. There are, after all, costs and benefits to most things.

Saudi Aramco profits jump despite conflict in Middle East

Despite? Oil price doublkes (or whatever) and a rise in profits for an oil company is a despite?

But Guardian, numbers, business, etc, etc.

More than 1,000 low-paid workers in Kenya have been abruptly sacked by an outsourcing company contracted by Meta, in what activists said was a shocking move exposing the precariousness of tech jobs in the global south.

Sama, a company based in Nairobi to which Meta outsourced content moderation and AI training work, announced on Thursday that the workers were being laid off after Meta terminated a contract.

Of course the activists want to make sure such workers could not be fired – which means that, of course, they’d never be hired in the first place.

But lefties, eh?

Pet owners across the UK could be banned from buying flea treatment for cats and dogs under new government rules.

Ministers have begun an eight-week consultation on letting only veterinary practitioners or pharmacists give out the potent, pesticide-based flea treatments, to ensure “correct usage”. At the moment, the flea and tick treatments can be bought from any pet shop.

That’s right children, “restrictive practice”. If only vets can sell Advantix then there will be no competitive pressure to reduce the price of Advantix. “Restrictive practice”.

So, Amazon wants low prices on its site. If you’re selling elsewhere cheaper, then you don’t get access to the goodies – promotion, good siting etc – on Amazon. Seems OK to me.

CA claims this means Amazon is forcing higher prices everywhere else. Well, no, not really.

Hundreds of previously redacted records reveal how Amazon has put pressure on independent sellers using its platform into raising their prices on the sites of competitors such as Walmart and Target, so that Amazon can appear to have lower prices, California authorities allege.

Not wholly – the pressure was to lower their prices on Amazon, surely?

“And big picture – the oil and gas industry are never going to build ‘excess production’ so there’ll never be meaningful spare capacity in global fossil fuel supply, which is why whenever there’s a big supply shock it has such catastrophic effects on prices.”

If people build more production then prices fall so that – as always – supply meets demand. That excess production thus turns up as lower priecs for everyone.

This is bad? Doesn’t happen?

Anyone willing to participate in the frenzied response to the Noma news cycle should also be willing to look at the system that creates environments for abuse. Profit margins, unrealistic demands by wealthy guests for luxury and theatre, a media that skips due diligence and the staggering lack of gender parity all play a role. As do the award programmes that hold an undeserved amount of power over chefs and diners.

Until we rejig how we measure greatness, until the kingmaking awards – the Michelin Guide and the World’s 50 Best Restaurants – include some basic labour standards in their criteria, there will be no meaningful change.

So, folks are trying their darndeest to create perfection. OK, so Noma isn’t my idea of it – I’d enjoy a decent backon butty more than spray foams of whatever. But, you know, excellence.

Excellence, near perfection, is difficult. Kitchens have always been difficult places – so many things have to happen at precisely the same time, perfectly.

But apparently that’s not OK if people get shouty with it. We might even call that a rather female response to a rather male environment.

Fortnite makes around $4bn a year in revenue, it is the fourth most played PC game in the world. Epic Games is estimated to have made $6bn in revenue in 2025. But somehow it is spending more than it’s making. Midway through his note, Sweeney tacitly alludes to the fact that one of the company’s biggest costs has been its expensive legal actions against Google and Apple. Not much those developers could have done about that.

OK, I know it’s about the games industry, but teenage resentfulness or what?

But they’ve revenue! How can they lose money?

I’ve been writing about games for 30 years and it has always struck me that the wrong people are running the industry. But now, the stakes are so much higher on each shoddy, short-term bet. Famously, in 1983, the US games industry almost destroyed itself when too many manufacturers and software companies flooded the market with consoles and games that were merely weaker copies of what Atari was doing. Since then I’ve seen trends rise and plummet – arcade-style racing and fighting games, guitar games, toys-to-life games, pet sims, life sims, stealth games, massively multiplayer online games, gangster games, open world adventure games … One or two successful titles, then a glut, then the audience moves on and jobs evaporate.

That’s just how markets work, Matey. In everything.

I laugh at them too much maybe?

Yet that doesn’t change the fact that the TG Jones moniker has fallen flat with the great British public. With shoppers increasingly staying away from the stores, it is hardly a shock that Modella is already drawing up drastic cost-saving measures – a move that is expected to lead to a sizable number of its shops being closed for good.
Judging by the feedback from Telegraph readers to the news, few people will mourn the chain’s fate. I expressed similar feelings when WH Smith announced it was getting out of the high street last year.
A visit to a WH Smith store is about the most soulless shopping experience that exists today, I said. Yet with hindsight, such sentiment may be a classic case of “be careful what you wish for”.
It no doubt sounds far-fetched, given the desperate state of some TG Jones stores, but the future of the high street could depend on their survival.
For decades, WH Smith was regarded as a high street “anchor tenant”: a household retailer that helps tether other, smaller businesses to town centres, because they drive a disproportionate amount of footfall to the area.
When these big names pull out from somewhere, a domino effect often occurs, prompting others to scramble for the exit.

Something that people don;t go to is not an anchor tenant. Obviously.

Faced with a shortage of available land in Europe, reindustrialisation would necessitate new approaches to construction, and some seriously creative thinking. Could tomorrow’s production be enmeshed in novel ways in landscapes and even within our cities? What if a factory could move and mutate to build a product where and when it was needed? What if infrastructure doubled as protective environments for flora and fauna? Could we re-engineer our technologies to run on the overlooked resources around us, such as the kinetic energy created by movement on roads and sidewalks? (Tourist footfall would take on a new significance). There is enough necessity at the moment to mother some significant invention.

You’d need to have a significantly free market environment to be able to do that. Because there would have to be endless experimentation for it to be able to work. Most importantly you’d have to kill the licensing and permission Raj – REACH and on and on – so that people can change and experiment as the results of iteration 1 come in and iteration 2 is developed.

Therefore there’s absolutely no chance of it happening in Europe, of course.

The owners of WH Smith’s former high street empire have parachuted in a team of corporate troubleshooters less than a year after taking over the chain.

The Telegraph understands that private equity firm Modella Capital has asked advisers at Teneo to come up with a restructuring plan that will put the business – now trading under the name TG Jones – on a more sustainable footing.

Of course, this is why Smith’s sold them anyway – it’s a difficult line of business these days. But no doubt we’ll soon enough see people blaming private equity rather than the tough line of business.

The UK and Irish assets of BrewDog, the Scottish self-styled “punk” brewer, have been sold to the US cannabis and drinks firm Tilray for £33m, in a deal that will cost nearly 500 jobs and leave legions of the company’s early-stage crowdfunders empty-handed.

The cash out – such as it was – happened some years back. Without looking up the details there was some private equity money that came in. OK. But as part of that capital raising – or maybe it was payout to founder, not sure – there was an issuance of 18% cumulative preference shares. And you don’t need many years of 18% cumulative before that eats all the equity. Which is why other investors are geting nowt.

James Watt and Martin Dickie, who co-founded the business in 2007, are thought to have already made £100m between them – three times Monday’s sale price – by cashing out shares in 2017, when the private equity group TSG bought 22% of the company.

That’s the bunny with the 18% cumulatives…..

Britain’s HR sector has grown by 83pc since 2011, expanding more than five times as fast as overall employment over the same period.
It means 1.6pc of the workforce is now employed in human resources, far above America’s 1pc and double the EU’s 0.8pc. This translates into more than 200,000 workers, with incomes estimated at £10bn per year.

Fire them all…..It’s actually in one of the only three management books everyone should read, “Up the Organisation”. There shouldn;t be a personnel deaprt (as HR used to be called) at all. The hiring process is the assistant to the line manager looking to hire. If you don;t trust the line manager to make the right hiring decision then what in buggery are you doing employing them as a manager?

Global Counsel, the advisory firm co-founded by Peter Mandelson, is to collapse into administration, blaming the “maelstrom” caused by revelations about the former peer’s relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Companies including Barclays, Tesco and the Premier League have all deserted Global Counsel, despite the company’s efforts to sever ties with Mandelson and the company’s co-founder Benjamin Wegg-Prosser.

The point of such “advisory” firms is the Rolodex of those who set it up. Once they’ve gone there is nothing in the firm of any value.

Well, OK, that’s just how they work….or don’t, obvs.

A group of families have called for an urgent inquiry into a charity caring for their highly vulnerable disabled relatives which is under threat of closure after running up debts of £1.6m in unpaid taxes and paying £1m to one of its own trustees.

Earlier this month, a judge gave the charity, William Blake House, just weeks to pay off its debts to HMRC or face a winding up order. The charity’s accounts show auditors have routinely questioned whether it is a viable business.

The families say the wellbeing of residents is in jeopardy and public money is at risk. They have questioned why the charity has paid more than £800,000 in strategy fees and £240,000 in consultancy fees to a company owned by the charity’s chair, despite its deteriorating finances.

It’s popssible to think, to posit, that there could be an amount of self-dealing there that should be looked at. Worth finding out perhaps?

the charity has paid Van Kruger Consulting, a company solely owned by William Blake House’s chair, Bushra Hamid,

In the clearest sign yet that Tesla is pivoting away from its electric car business, CEO Elon Musk announced on Wednesday’s investor call that the company would discontinue production of its Model X SUV and Model S full-size sedan.

“It’s time to basically bring the Model S and X programs to an end,” Musk said. “We expect to wind down S and X production next quarter.”

The model S and X factory in Fremont, California would be converted to produce Tesla’s upcoming Optimus robot, Musk said.

Further, given the wave of Chinese competition who would really want to spend the necessary (say, $billion?) on a wholly new platform? That is, make something else instead…..

The UK business secretary, Peter Kyle, has said he is “betting big” and “picking winners” as the government takes direct stakes in growing businesses to boost economic growth.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have been talking up Britain’s prospects, Kyle said ministers were taking an “activist” approach to industrial policy.

Yep, he is.

He highlighted the recent decision to allow the £26bn state-owned British Business Bank to buy equity stakes in companies, including the announcement last week of a £25m investment in the energy supplier Octopus’s software spin-off, Kraken.

“The most potential in our economy, in the short and medium term, is scale-up companies,” Kyle said. “I was at Octopus yesterday. They’re now employing 1,500 people in their head office in London alone.

“We can find other companies that are on that kind of trajectory and we can expedite their growth. Then it will create thousands of new jobs, and it will create enormous amounts of wealth, which will recycle through the economy in a really fast way.”

Spray it all right up the wall.

There’s a vast PE and VC indistry already scouring the economy for those things. What makes anyone think that government – moving slower, with weaker incentives – is going to find hidden gems?

To understand why the lights are on but no one is working at Oeno House is to delve into the murky world of fine wine investment, for which there is no financial protection when things turn sour. Dozens of people, possibly hundreds, fear substantial losses after Oeno House’s sister company, Oenofuture Limited, ran into trouble, amid widespread complaints of poor management and lax communication, as well as allegations of fraud (which are yet to be substantiated). Total losses could run into the millions.

An awful lot of weight on that “yet” there.

It was all so different in 2015 when, riding on the crest of a global fine wine investment wave powered by the Far East, Oeno was launched with a promise of healthy returns and a “360-degree personalised” service.
“To be in wine, you need to be in every part of wine – trade, investment, merchant, collecting advice, and understanding the retail side,” the company’s 35-year-old co-founder and former chief executive, Michael Doerr, said when Oeno House opened six years later.

Yep, yet is the important word.

No, of course I know nothing at all about this. No detailed knowledge in the slightest. But years in the Russian metals business does give a nose for, erm, interesting business propositions.

Donald Trump has said he might block ExxonMobil from investing in Venezuela after the oil company’s chief executive called the country “uninvestable” during a White House meeting last week.

“We can’t invest there”

“I’ll ban you from investing there!”

Hmm…..