Meanwhile, Ping An's approach is being put to the test. When covid-19 first struck in January the company was a year into restructuring its life-insurance business. That involves improving its force of over 1m agents, who are still the main channel f...
When large financial firms do develop systems in-house, they jealously guard them from competitors. Mr Ma has turned that notion on its head by transforming Ping An's technology division into a sales unit and profit centre. When the company developed...
The USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School at Muroc, now Edwards air force base, which he ran from 1962, offered a state-of-the-art simulator that covered every stage of a space flight, from take-off to landing. Applicants swarmed in, and a bare 1% mad...
At 74,700 feet (22,800 metres), and at 2.44 Mach speed, it began to roll uncontrollably, then spin upside down. Completely disoriented, battered by plus and minus g-loads, he remembered his helmet cracking the inner canopy, and not a lot else. At las...
JD Healths IPO was also a success. The health-care division of JD.com, one of Chinas big E-commerce companies, raised $3.5bn in Hong Kong, in the biggest flotation of shares on the citys stockmarket this year. 京东健康（JD Health）的上市计划...
The world this week 本周国际要闻 Business 经济 Americas competition regulator filed an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that it bought WhatsApp and Instagram, two social-media rivals, to suppress competition. Separately, a coaliti...
The Facebook lawsuits centre on its acquisitions. The firm maintained its monopoly in personal social-networking by systematically buying up potential competitors, both contendnotably Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. A smoking gun could be Ona...
Tabar Vzquez, who was twice Uruguays president, died. A doctor turned left-wing politician, Mr Vzquezs victory in 2004 ended more than 160 years of rule by the National and Colorado parties. His second term ended in March this year. 曾两度担任乌拉...
Business 商业版块 Big tech and antitrust 大型科技企业与反垄断 Battle commences 战争打响 A formidable alliance takes on Facebook. Investors dont seem to care 一个强大的联盟与Facebook展开了较量。但投资者似乎不以为...
The world this week 本周国际要闻 Politics 政治 Britain began the worlds first vaccination programme for covid-19 using a fully tested vaccine. Thousands of people, mostly the very elderly and frontline health workers, received the Pfizer/BioN...
Ping An is also becoming better at the lucrative business of cross-selling, or selling customers more products from other parts of the group, which increases income without incurring the cost of acquiring new clients. The share of retail customers th...
But when on October 14th 1947 he was dropped in the Bell X-1, a rocket-powered experimental plane, from the bomb bay of a B-29, he had no idea what lay ahead. Fun, probably, as he loved the X-1, and in his post-war test-pilot job he preferred tactica...
With federal help, states and cities might move faster. One concern is regulation. The EPA last updated its Lead and Copper Rule, setting out how fast lead pipes should be replaced, in 1991. It requires 7% of them in a given site to be swapped out ye...
Three things distinguish Ping An's operating model from that of a standard insurer: its vast platform of services; its approach towards its hundreds of millions of users and customers; and, underpinning it all, its technological prowess. Take its arr...
Mechanic to hero 从技工到英雄 General Charles (Chuck) Yeager, test pilot and the first to break the sound barrier, died on December 7th, aged 97 第一个突破声障的试飞员查尔斯耶格尔将军于12月7日逝世，享年97岁 If a floc...
