Kare Partners

Inflation in job titles is approaching Weimar levels

KIM JONG IL, the North Korean dictator, is not normally a trendsetter. But in one area he is clearly leading the pack: job-title inflation. Mr Kim has 1,200 official titles, including, roughly translated, guardian deity of the planet, ever-victorious general, lodestar of the 21st century, supreme commander at the forefront of the struggle against imperialism and the United States, eternal bosom of hot love and greatest man who ever lived.

When it comes to job titles, we live in an age of rampant inflation. Everybody you come across seems to be a chief or president of some variety. Title inflation is producing its own vocabulary: “uptitling” and “title-fluffing”. It is also producing technological aids. One website provides a simple formula: just take your job title, mix in a few grand words, such as “global”, “interface” and “customer”, and hey presto. ...

Financial reformers try to redefine what it is to be a shareholder

NEW regulations are emerging from Congress in response to the meltdown in the financial industry. Yet their impact, likely to be felt by every public company in America, may weaken rather than strengthen corporate governance.

It was the glaring weaknesses exposed in the boards of Wall Street giants such as Citigroup and Lehman Brothers that prompted some in Congress to propose making it easier for shareholders to nominate candidates for election as directors—something that had hitherto been costly and time-consuming. CalPERS, a big Californian pension fund, is said to have been recruiting a bench of candidates in expectation of a sharp increase in contested elections. Then something went wrong in the process by which two different reform bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate are likely to be reconciled. ...

Sir Terry Leahy checks out of the British retailer he turned into a global force

BY MOST accounts, Sir Terry Leahy’s tenure at Tesco has been a wild success. The 54-year-old Liverpudlian, who announced on June 8th that he would retire next year after a lifetime at the company and 14 years as chief executive, has transformed the once down-at-heel British grocery chain into the world’s third-largest retailer, behind America’s Wal-Mart and France’s Carrefour. But he is leaving unfinished business to his successor, Philip Clarke, in the form of a troubled American venture first billed as “transformational”.

Despite a recession, Tesco’s underlying pre-tax profits rose by 10% to GBP3.4 billion ($5.4 billion) in the year to February 27th, on global sales of more than GBP62 billion. Although Tesco operates in 14 countries, “this is still today a local industry,” Sir Terry says. So Tesco pioneered loyalty schemes not just for marketing but also for data mining. They allow individual stores to tailor their wares more closely to local tastes—right down to stocking, say, ready-made curries next to claret, if those items tend to be purchased together. ...

America’s shareholders find a voice to condemn undeserved compensation

IT IS too soon to call it a trend, but the fact that America’s normally passive shareholders have voted against executive pay packages at two big companies within a week suggests that something is going on. The 54% of votes cast against the remuneration of Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s chief executive, at the phonemaker’s annual meeting on May 3rd, marked the first time that American shareholders had ever rejected a boss’s pay. Four days later they did it again, voting against the wages of Ray Irani, boss of Occidental Petroleum.

Such expressions of discontent are unprecedented in America, not least because until recently no one bothered to ask shareholders to approve executive pay. Last year was the first time a significant number of American firms gave shareholders a “say on pay”, although the votes are usually not binding, and many of the firms that have adopted them were forced to do so as a condition of a government bail-out. This year around 300 big companies are giving shareholders a vote. If certain proposals in the financial-reform bill now before Congress become law, say on pay will become the norm for American public companies, as it already is in Britain. ...

French companies get serious about putting women in the boardroom

MOST French bosses have little time for a new law, now going through parliament, which would compel listed companies to lift the proportion of women on their boards to 40% by 2016. Xavier Fontanet, chief executive of Essilor, an eyewear firm, has quoted Charles de Gaulle as saying, “One may not command without having obeyed.” His point is that few women have had the 30 years or so of experience climbing the corporate ladder that a good director requires.

Nonetheless, the government is determined to make France the second country with a compulsory quota for women in the boardroom. (Norway was the first.) At the start of the year women occupied just 11% of the total of around 580 board seats at France’s biggest 40 firms. Now bosses will have to find as many as 170 new female directors in six years, according to OFG Research. “We are looking for women to fill every seat vacated by a man,” says Diane Segalen, vice-chairman of CTPartners, a headhunting firm in Paris. ...

China executes many more people than anywhere else. Changes to its laws may reduce a grim total

CHINA executes more of its own citizens than any other country, and more than all others in the world combined. “Thousands” of Chinese were executed in 2009 according to Amnesty International's annual study, which states that an exact number is impossible to determine because information on the death penalty is regarded as a state secret. But this gruesome record may yet change. The National People's Congress is reported to be reducing the number of offences that are punishable by execution. Among the crimes that currently carry the death penalty are bribing an official and stealing historical relics.

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Bosses who walked away with large payouts

ON TUESDAY July 27th BP announced its chief executive, Tony Hayward, was stepping down after just three years in the job. He leaves with a year’s salary, GBP1m ($1.6m), and a pension reported to be worth GBP11m, accrued over 28 years of service. On the same day the company revealed a quarterly loss of GBP17 billion, reflecting the cost of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Mr Hayward has received criticism over his handling of the Deepwater Horizon spill. For all the opprobrium heaped on him over the last few months, Mr Hayward's payout is modest compared with those enjoyed by many similarly high-profile bosses.

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Our latest Big Mac index suggests the euro is still overvalued

Correction to this article

THE Big Mac index is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP), according to which exchange rates should adjust to equalise the price of a basket of goods and services around the world. Our index shows that Asia remains the cheapest place to enjoy a burger, while those on the hunt for a value meal should steer clear of Scandinavia. The euro, despite its troubles, continues to be expensive when compared with many other rich-world currencies, though the British pound is trading close to its fair value. China's recent decision to increase the "flexibility" of the yuan has not made much difference yet—the yuan is undervalued on the burger gauge by 48%. For more on the Big Mac index see article. ...

Facebook has become the third-largest nation

THE world's largest social network announced that it had reached 500m members on Wednesday July 21st. If Facebook were a physical nation, it would now be the third-most populous on earth. And if the service continues to grow as rapidly as in the three months to July, it will reach one billion in about 15 months—almost the size of India. Not least because of its gigantic population, some observers have started to talk of Facebook in terms of a country. “[It] is a device that allows people to get together and control their own destiny, much like our nation-state,” says David Post, a law professor at Temple University, Philadelphia. For more on social networks and statehood see article.

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Asian and Middle Eastern airlines’ share of the world’s aircraft fleet is set to grow

BY THE third day of the Farnborough Airshow on Wednesday July 21st, aircraft-makers had announced new orders worth around $25 billion. A whopping $9 billion order for 40 Boeing 777s from Emirates highlighted the ambitious expansion plans of the Gulf’s airlines. Analysis by Ascend, an aerospace consultancy, shows that the Middle Eastern airlines’ fleets have more than doubled in the past ten years. They have placed orders for over 1,000 new aircraft for delivery by 2020—or 14% of the industry’s entire order book. Even so, the Asian airlines, especially China’s, will be the planemakers’ biggest customers in the coming decade. By 2020, the North American and European airlines will no longer dominate the skies to the extent they do now.

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Deepwater Horizon may be the world's biggest accidental oil spill

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA meets Britain's prime minister, David Cameron, for talks in Washington on July 20th. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and allegations over the company's involvement in an “oil-for-terrorists” deal with Libya are likely to be on the agenda. BP is under pressure to satisfy government officials that the containment cap placed on the leaking well on July 15th is holding. Using the government task force's upper estimate, as many as 4.4m barrels of oil have escaped into the Gulf. This would make it the largest accidental oil spill in history (military attacks have created far bigger spills). Despite that, this quantity of refined oil is enough to keep America's cars and trucks on the road for just a quarter of a day. BP has spent almost $4 billion on clean-up costs to date, with the eventual total estimated at $39 billion.

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Is the Tour de France getting easier?

THE 97th Tour de France finishes on Sunday July 25th in Paris after 3,642km (2,263 miles) of cycling over 21 gruelling days. Although this year's route is regarded by many as particularly tough, it could be considered a mere jaunt through the sunflowers compared to earlier Tours. When the first race was staged in 1903 riders cycled 2,428km over six stages. But distances rapidly climbed to reach a peak of 5,745km in 1926, with the winner completing the race in 238 hours and 44 minutes at an average speed of 24.3km/h. Since then the length of the Tour has fallen steadily but the average speed of the winner has risen to around 40km/h.

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The share of foreign-born labour in rich countries

AS ECONOMIES across the developed world fell into recession in 2008, legal permanent immigration to the mostly rich members of the OECD declined by 6%, after five years during which growth averaged 11%. Despite the slowdown in the arrival of new migrants, the number of foreign-born workers in most OECD countries rose in 2008 from a year earlier. In 2007 one in every four workers in Australia was born abroad; in 2008 that share rose further, to 26.5%. Among the 18 OECD countries for which 2008 data are available, the share of the foreign-born in the labour force fell only in Luxembourg (not shown), Austria, Belgium and France. The number of foreign-born workers in America rose by 308,000 in 2008, to 25.1m.

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Who restricts travel for people with HIV

THERE are some 33m people living with HIV in the world today, estimates UNAIDS, the United Nations agency charged with combating the disease and supporting the rights of those affected. Travel restrictions are one type of discrimination these people can face. In the past year, both China and America have lifted 20-odd-year bans stopping individuals with HIV from entering, but 51 countries still restrict movement in some form (be it entry to the country or a stay therein) based on a person's HIV status. Our tables show those countries applying the severest restrictions to HIV sufferers, including the denial of entry visas and even deportation. Many countries in the Middle East impose strict restrictions—and also report among the lowest HIV prevalence rates.

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The development of new technologies to enhance skeletal healing after fracture or surgery is an important goal of musculoskeletal regenerative medicine. Although the bone morphogenetic proteins have shown some efficacy in this area, there is a need for more effective and less expensive therapies for bone repair and regeneration. A recent report demonstrating that Wnt signaling could be used to stimulate bone healing may provide a new direction for designing anabolic therapies for the skeleton. The identification of human phenotypes demonstrating robust bone formation as a result of mutations in Wnt signaling provides a strong basis for pursuing this area of investigation.

The deconvolution of corrupted biological pathways in disease and the translation of patient-specific molecular mechanisms into tailored management algorithms have begun to extend the reach of individualized medicine from principles to practice. A case in point is the emergent deciphering of the pathobiology underlying life-threatening human diseases caused by dysfunction in adenosine triphosphate (ATP)–sensitive potassium (K_ATP) channels. In a recent paper in Science, researchers used humanized mouse models to recapitulate a pathogenic K_ATP channel mutation and pinpoint tissue-restricted lesions that stratify the consequences of genetic variation on disease traits. Advances in the molecular medicine of K_ATP channelopathies offer new perspectives for personalized diagnosis and therapy.

An implantable sensor capable of long-term monitoring of tissue glucose concentrations by wireless telemetry has been developed for eventual application in people with diabetes. The sensor telemetry system functioned continuously while implanted in subcutaneous tissues of two pigs for a total of 222 and 520 days, respectively, with each animal in both nondiabetic and diabetic states. The sensor detects glucose via an enzyme electrode that is based on differential electrochemical oxygen detection, which reduces the sensitivity of the sensor to encapsulation by the body, variations in local microvascular perfusion, limited availability of tissue oxygen, and inactivation of the enzymes. After an initial 2-week stabilization period, the implanted sensors maintained stability of calibration for extended periods. The lag between blood and tissue glucose concentrations was 11.8 ± 5.7 and 6.5 ± 13.3 minutes (mean ± standard deviation), respectively, for rising and falling blood glucose challenges. The lag resulted mainly from glucose mass transfer in the tissues, rather than the intrinsic response of the sensor, and showed no systematic change over implant test periods. These results represent a milestone in the translation of the sensor system to human applications.

During the evolution of humans, an inactivating deletion was introduced in the CMAH (cytidine monophosphate–sialic acid hydroxylase) gene, which eliminated biosynthesis of the common mammalian sialic acid N-glycolylneuraminic acid from all human cells. We found that this human-specific change in sialylation capacity contributes to the marked discrepancy in phenotype between the mdx mouse model for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and the human disease. When compared to human patients with DMD, mdx mice show reduced severity or slower development of clinically relevant disease phenotypes, despite lacking dystrophin protein in almost all muscle cells. This is especially true for the loss of ambulation, cardiac and respiratory muscle weakness, and decreased life span, all of which are major phenotypes contributing to DMD morbidity and mortality. These phenotypes occur at an earlier age or to a greater degree in mdx mice that also carry a human-like mutation in the mouse Cmah gene, possibly as a result of reduced strength and expression of the dystrophin-associated glycoprotein complex and increased activation of complement. Cmah-deficient mdx mice are a small-animal model for DMD that better approximates the human glycome and its contributions to muscular dystrophy.