Blogs

Every share you own comes with a set of customers attached to it. Here is what quietly changes inside a business when the biggest of those customers happens to be the state.

A plain-English guide to the trade margin: the slice of the printed price that never comes back to the company. Why a brand people ask for by name can afford to pay the shop less, where you can actually see this in India, and the four things the test cannot tell you.

Cement, gravel, bricks and bottled water are shielded from distant competitors by nothing cleverer than the cost of the truck. A plain-English guide to value per kilo, the freight line in the profit and loss account, and why a natural local advantage still cannot save a bad balance sheet.