News & numbers


“I was once a child with a dream looking up at the stars. Now I’m an adult in a spaceship looking down to our beautiful Earth.”


Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic


The cost per minute of Jeff Bezos’s 11-minute space odyssey. El Paso Times


$2.5m Chinese firm joins


electric car frenzy Silicon Valley luminaries like Elon Musk have traditionally taken the lead on developing electric vehicles, with Tesla recently enjoying record sales. But as with so much else these days, China is muscling in on the action too. In an October announcement, Xiaomi, a smartphone maker, claimed it would be producing electric vehicles by the first half of 2024. That comes on the back of major investment in the field, with the Beijing-based firm committing $10bn towards its new electric car division over the next decade.


The company has increased hiring for the unit, though it has yet to reveal if it will develop the car independently or team up with an existing manufacturer. Perhaps they could give Elon a call.


Thousands strike


across the US In general, American workers have a less distinguished tradition of industrial action than their European colleagues. But between stagnating wages, poor working conditions and the broader struggles of the pandemic, this appears to be changing. In October, thousands of US employees took industrial action, bringing large sectors of the economy to a standstill.


The strikers came from across business: 2,000 hospital workers in New York joined forces with stage employees in Hollywood, while some 6,500 California lecturers also threatened a walkout. All told, the action represents a revival of union activity after decades of decline, with prominent politicians including President Biden promising to back workers against their employers. Big business has been quick to react to the unrest. After a strike crippled John Deere, the farm equipment maker hired external staff instead. The tactic wasn’t entirely successful: one non-union worker crashed a tractor into a power line and severely damaged an electrical box.


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Executives push world leaders to be bold for net-zero


With governments under increasing pressure to take the climate crisis seriously, business titans made their voices heard too. Marshalled by the alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, over 70 executives, including bosses at Royal DSM and Swiss Re, signed an open letter demanding governments accelerate their transition to net-zero.


Among other things, the letter asked the world’s politicians to publish ambitious


plans for halving carbon emissions by 2030, eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, and phasing coal out of the economy. “It is an important and significant move for this many CEOs to put their names forward for deeper collective collaboration,” said Dominic Waughray, managing director at the World Economic Forum. “It sends a clear signal to policy-makers that many global business leaders are ready to make the transition to a net-zero future.”


CEO pay soars during pandemic crisis – and for decades before


Their workers may be striking, but many executives have seen their payslips rise dramatically over the last year. According to work by Equilar, average pay for CEO at an S&P 500 company hit $12.7m in 2020. And though some executives did see their compensation fall, it’s of a piece with industry more broadly.


Overall, 61% CEOs enjoyed a pay rise in 2020 – just one percentage less than in 2019, even though the economic forecast


was obviously far worse. Nor is this a new trend. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that CEOs on average earned 351 times more than their workers, compared to 31 times in 1978. Reacting to the news, Lawrence Mishel of the EPI was blunt. “Now, if workers are able to assert themselves and do assert themselves, and reap results, that’s going to make it harder for the CEOs to rake it in.”


Corporate giants aim for the stars


From Gates and Jobs to Westinghouse and Edison, CEOs have always had rivalries. But never before have corporate leaders taken their battles beyond the confines of our planet. Executive-watchers the worldover spent much of 2021 gripped by the attempts of Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos to out-space each other. First blood went to Virgin’s Branson, who in July blasted


off with two pilots and three other crew members. Bezos joined the fray the following week, enjoying three minutes in his pod over 60 miles above the earth’s surface. The billionaires tried to downplay their rivalry, albeit without much success. Branson admitted he wanted to be the “first” to blast off, while Bezos took a jab at the window size on Virgin Galactic’s vessel.


Amazon flipflops on WFH policy


In the latest sign that the WFH debate is far from over, Amazon announced it was allowing staff to work from home until the start of 2022. The move marks a delay of several months – staff were initially supposed to be back in from September.


“Our thinking is predicated on what we believe will be most beneficial for customers, while also trying to give employees more flexibility in their work environment and lives,” Amazon said in a statement.


Chief Executive Officer / www.ns-businesshub.com


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