Bloomberg Businessweek-Europe Edition 2/12/2018

Asia ● Crews in Taiwan rushed to rescue dozens of people trapped under rubble after a 6.4-magnitude earthquake. ● Maldives President Abdulla Yameen jailed two Supreme Court justices and blocked lawmakers’ access to parliament, calling the actions a response to an attempted coup. ● Forty-seven Russian athletes made last-ditch appeals to the International Olympic Committee to compete in the Winter Games in Pyeongchang. The IOC had barred Russia over allegations of widespread doping during the 2014 Games, but said decisions on individual athletes’ eligibility would be made on a case-by-case basis. ● China’s Zhejiang Geely maneuvered to buy 3 percent of Daimler, the parent of Mercedes. Geely, which also owns Volvo, has been on a shopping spree, buying the London Taxi Co., Lotus, and Terrafugia, a U.S. startup focused on flying cars. ● Alibaba took a…

It was a sight to warm the heart of an Indian nationalist: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at the Republic Day celebration on Jan. 26, welcoming one by one his 10 chief guests, the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean. They stood alongside Modi and watched an hourslong parade that, in its cheerful mishmash of tanks, marching sailors in spats, kilted bagpipers, female motorcycle daredevils, camels, ballistic missiles, dancing schoolchildren, and tableaux representing such abstract concepts as ethical taxpaying, is a fair representation of this bewildering and vibrant country. You could see the presence of Asean’s leaders as a sign of India’s rise and allow yourself to hope that this most diffident of countries was finally stepping into a global role. Just the previous week, Modi had…

It seems increasingly likely that, on immigration, Congress will face a stark choice in the weeks ahead. It can either pass a narrowly drawn bill that attends to border security and provides legal status for “Dreamers,” the undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, or it can fail across the board. Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona and Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware have introduced legislation designed to achieve the better outcome. Their bill is similar to a bipartisan effort already introduced in the House, where it’s co-sponsored by 27 Republicans and 27 Democrats. It would grant legal status to Dreamers who’ve been in the U.S. since 2013, a population of approximately 1.8 million. The legislation would require the secretary of homeland security to produce a southern border…

Since it was cobbled together from a passel of national aerospace groups a half-century ago, Airbus SE has spread its operations across Europe in a delicate effort aimed at maximizing political expediency without sacrificing too much economic efficiency. There’s little industrial logic, after all, in shuttling airplane parts among 14 factories in a half-dozen countries, with some wing components crossing the English Channel nine times before being mounted on planes. Yet it makes perfect sense if you want the backing of governments seeking jobs for their workers. Today, with Brexit looming, the quid pro quo is poised to become more complicated as the plane maker faces growing pressure from countries that buy the bulk of its planes to shift some manufacturing onto their shores. “Airbus will set up production capacity…

Standing next to a clothing rack on a TV studio set in West Chester, Pa., Pat James-Dementri, a host on home shopping channel QVC, urges viewers not to wait to buy a blouse and tank top set. Order now, she says, and get 30 percent off. Then she translates the price into the channel’s signature math: “Three easy pays of $16.66.” That folksy, old-school style of selling, used by the company since its founding in 1986, is burned into the memories of many people who haven’t shopped the channel in decades. A recent Philadelphia magazine article described QVC fans, for instance, as “silver-haired grannies ordering slow cookers and vibrating belly bands from landline phones.” Yet QVC isn’t that cable shopping channel anymore. About half its sales occur online, and two-thirds of…

The isolated city of Ningde, on the mountainous shoreline of the East China Sea, is best known for fishing and farming. Only recently have a few Starbucks and McDonald’s outlets begun to show up in this home to 3 million. When President Xi Jinping apprenticed here as a Communist Party chief in the 1980s, it was the poorest city on the coast. Now, however, Ningde should have Panasonic, Samsung SDI, and LG Chem, the Big Three makers of lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles, running scared. For seven years, Ningde has been home to the sprawling headquarters of Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd., or CATL, which has quickly become China’s EV battery leader and is setting its sights on the rest of the world. On the landfilled mudflats across a lake from…