Bloomberg Businessweek-Europe Edition 9/11/2017

Asia ● Cambodia charged the leader of its main opposition party with treason. Kem Sokha faces as many as 30 years in jail as the ruling party tightens its grip before parliamentary elections next year. ● Digital assets such as bitcoin swooned as China banned fundraising through new cryptocurrencies. ● Facebook bid $610 million for the digital rights to the Indian Premier League cricket tournament—and still came up short. Star India, a unit of 21st Century Fox, won by pledging $2.6b for both broadcast and digital rights. ● “They’ll eat grass, but they won’t abandon their program unless they feel secure.” ● An international consortium of journalists accused Azerbaijan of using a $3b slush fund to bribe European politicians and buy luxury goods. President Ilham Aliyev’s office issued a statement calling the accusations “totally groundless.” ●…

North Korea looks pretty scary at the moment, firing off missile after missile, threatening to target Guam, and, on Sept. 3, testing what the regime claims was its first hydrogen bomb. And the country’s dictator, Kim Jong Un—so ruthless he may have had members of his own family murdered—might be just crazy enough to push the button to initiate a catastrophic war. Or maybe not. Look deeper, and you’ll find a North Korea that isn’t as much of an immediate danger to the U.S. as the headlines and rhetoric suggest. That’s because Pyongyang isn’t very likely to use its nukes and missiles against the U.S.— or anyone else. Don’t get me wrong: North Korea still presents a huge security risk to East Asia and the world. Kim’s neighbors include three of the…

Neo-Nazis are having a hard time doing business these days. After a white-supremacist rally in Virginia ended in violence in August, a pressure campaign has induced a lengthening list of companies to shut down accounts used by the participants and their fellow travelers. From dating apps to ride-sharing services, seemingly every right-thinking company is joining the crackdown. That may appear to be a triumph for decency. In fact, it risks setting a dangerous precedent. Consider a vile neo-Nazi website called the Daily Stormer. After the rally, both Google and GoDaddy stopped hosting the site’s domain registration, and Cloudflare stopped protecting it from cyberattacks. Such services are the nuts and bolts of online life. And in refusing to deal with the Daily Stormer, they effectively kicked it off the internet. Good for the…

Humira, a treatment for inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis made by AbbVie Inc., is the planet’s best-selling drug. It’s also been around almost 15 years. Those two facts alone would normally have rival drugmakers eagerly circling, ready to roll out generic versions that could win a piece of the aging medicine’s $16 billion in annual sales. Yet last year, when the patent on Humira’s main ingredient expired, not a single competitor launched a copycat version. Figuring out how to manufacture it wasn’t the obstacle. The real challenge was the seemingly impregnable fortress of patents AbbVie has methodically constructed around its prized moneymaker. The more than 100 patents AbbVie has secured over Humira’s lifetime make it difficult for another company to replicate the drug without using processes and techniques…

“The definition of leadership is still largely male” In his first assignment for L’Oréal, Rob Imig spent 10 months pitching a shu uemura lipstick to beauty editors across the country. The editors—all women—often reacted with confusion or amusement. “The reaction was a bit startled sometimes,” says Imig, now a 13-year veteran of the company. “The beauty business is dominated by women. They thought it a bit odd that a guy named Rob was coming to show them a new lipstick.” While big companies around the world are striving to improve the gender balance of their workforces, most are focusing on hiring more women. But for L’Oréal, balance means attracting more men. The €25.8 billion ($30.6 billion) French beauty products company has been a pioneer in the push for gender equality, regularly earning…

Many Americans have probably never heard of ethylene. But this colorless, flammable gas usually made by superheating oil or natural gas is arguably the most important petrochemical on the planet—and much of it comes from the Gulf Coast region savaged by Hurricane Harvey. Ethylene and its derivatives make up about 40 percent of global chemical sales, says Hassan Ahmed, an analyst at Alembic Global Advisors. The U.S. accounts for 1 of every 5 tons on the market, and ethylene plants globally were already running almost full-out before Harvey, Ahmed says. “So any little hiccup—and this is much beyond a hiccup—will dramatically tighten supply-demand balances,” he says. Texas produces almost three-quarters of the nation’s ethylene supply. That’s critical because this basic chemical building block is the foundation for making plastics essential to…