Which British game show is winning in America?
A half century for The Stuff
Hey Comrade,
Welcome to the 50th edition of The Stuff. It’s an honour and privilege to have reached a half century with people still reading this so thank you for joining each week.
Ironically for a newsletter that is largely about business I have consciously tried to avoid being too business-minded about writing it. Generally the advice is to focus on a niche and generating value for your target audience. Writing about trends in vegetable packaging for the forward-thinking fresh produce executive would no doubt be more successful than writing about ‘stuff’.
But ultimately I love sitting down every Saturday, finding some good if slightly random stories and weaving them into whatever this is. I’m not sure I could have quite so much fun with vegetable packaging. Maybe someday it’d be worth a try.
Carrots & hummus,
Hugo
Chief Vegetable Officer
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
Group chats are the most widely used form of social media 🗣️- less than 2% of the 2.7 billion WhatsApp users only have one-on-one chats. The rest of us are left navigating an unwieldy web of family members, friends and strangers who still talk in that group from that thing you did two years ago. It's nice to feel part of something but all the laughing-crying smilies are a lot.
The families that dominate business in South Korea 🇰🇷- conglomerates owned by families, known as chaebol, are a big feature of the economy. This has led to judges refusing to distribute shares evenly during divorces so as to avoid breaking up these companies. This is just what has happened recently with the country's largest conglomerate, SK.
UK Hydrographic Office is going paperless 🗺️- the organisation responsible for mapping the ocean on which a huge amount of the maritime sector is reliant is moving away from providing paper updates. Despite this, the industry like many others is still hugely reliant on paper. Computers are all good until a lobster snips your power cables.
Former minister advising on Saudi project 🇸🇦 - Bain has hired Lord Gerry Grimstone who was Minister for Investment from 2020 -2022 to advise the Saudi government. Bain has just had a ban from working with the UK Government lifted for its involvement in the ‘state capture’ scandal in South Africa. Lord Grimstone sought closer economic ties with Saudi Arabia whilst in government. The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) have decided that it’s not dodgy, however.
It’s really expensive to insure some actors 💰- when the insurers for Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol told Tom Cruise he couldn’t jump off the Burj Khalifa he responded by sacking them and finding someone else to underwrite the stunt. It’s no wonder that insurance costs in the millions for big-budget, risky films where literally anything going wrong is going to have a big financial impact.
EA launches rebranded football game ⚽- the games company ended its 30-year partnership with Fifa when they demanded more money. 6.8 million people have already paid for pre-release access to EA Sports FC which will come as a relief to them after their fairly ballsy move. It’s a big loss to Fifa as the partnership generated them $150 million a year. Their biggest commercial deal outside the World Cup.
Deloitte has reported a 14% growth in annual revenue 💸 - the largest Big Four consultancy also reported improving its operating profits, enabling partners to take home on average £1.1m. This was helped by the sale of their restructuring business and presumably will be further helped by restructuring themselves as they lay off a planned 800 people.
Naked Attraction has landed in the US and it’s going down a storm 😳 - the UK’s cultural exports to the US are fairly hit-and-miss. Some of the hits (e.g. James Corden) are pretty questionable but it’s no surprise that a programme about people undressing is the No.1 show on HBO Max at the moment. I also discovered recently that Escape to the Country is massive in Sweden.
iPhone designer in talks to make OpenAI device📱- Jony Ive is in talks to build the “iPhone of artificial intelligence” (whatever that means) aided by a $1 billion fund by the trusty folks at Softbank. I’m not quite sure what problem they’re trying to solve here but it’s got Amazon Fire Phone written all over it.
Amazon hoping to catch up in the AI race 💾- the retailer of books and a few other things will invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic because well that’s just what you do if you're a big tech company these days. Anthropic’s language model is called Claude and will hopefully mean Amazon stop feeling left out of the whole AI thing.
Have a good week!
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Quote of the week
“If you don't risk anything, you risk even more" - Erica Jong