The Wallenberg dynasty is corporate royalty in Sweden, known for its strict hierarchy, sense of civic duty and firm-handed guidance. But it was the experiment of a family icebreaker at the home of elder statesman Peter ‘Poker’ Wallenberg Jr more than a decade ago that set the stage for its latest succession efforts. It was a small but telling break with tradition: the aim not to anoint the next ro...
The Wallenberg dynasty is corporate royalty in Sweden, known for its strict hierarchy, sense of civic duty and firm-handed guidance. But it was the experiment of a family icebreaker at the home of elder statesman Peter ‘Poker’ Wallenberg Jr more than a decade ago that set the stage for its latest succession efforts. It was a small but telling break with tradition: the aim not to anoint the next round of leaders but to cajole cousins and members of the sprawling tradition-bound family to chat to one another. That low-key meeting now stands as the quiet beginning of a much broader overhaul — and a test of whether a family built on long-term control can modernize to confront rising challenges ahead. The stakes are high given the Wallenbergs’ power over the Swedish business landscape — from stakes in buyout firm EQT to telecoms giant Ericsson . Through an intricate web of foundations, holding companies and dual-class share structures, they wield outsized decision-making clout on their home turf, giving them by some accounts sway over about 40% of the companies on the local stock exchange. It’s a system some believe is ripe for an overhaul. In recent months, movement has quietly been afoot as the clan elevates new faces, with the so-called fifth generation leadership near conventional retirement age. Jacob Wallenberg Jr, 33, joined EQT as a board member and Fred Wallenberg, 35, became a director of the board at Investor AB, the family’s key investment vehicle. Other recent nominations include Martina Wallenberg, 36, to the board of lender SEB and Stephanie Gandet, 40, as a board member to the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation , but it’s still far from clear who will ultimately take over. The largely untested new crop is set to inherit a range of issues along with the keys to a $40 billion business empire. While the dual-stock system is touted as promoting stability and a long-term perspective, some say it entrenches privilege and disadvantages minority shareholders. I...
On TV, you’re never really dead. When a beloved character is killed off on your favourite show, you can be forgiven some scepticism. Who’s to say they won’t be miraculously revived in future? The BBC hit The Night Manager brought arms-dealing antagonist Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie) back to life mid-series to face off against his old adversary, MI6 agent Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston). The action du...
On TV, you’re never really dead. When a beloved character is killed off on your favourite show, you can be forgiven some scepticism. Who’s to say they won’t be miraculously revived in future? The BBC hit The Night Manager brought arms-dealing antagonist Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie) back to life mid-series to face off against his old adversary, MI6 agent Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston). The action duly cranked up several gears, building temptingly towards Sunday’s finale. Will Roper be eliminated for good this time? View image in fullscreen Making a comeback! … Richard Dormer as Gerry in Blue Lights. Photograph: Steffan Hill/BBC/Gallagher Films/Two Cities Television Meanwhile, devotees of Bafta-winning Belfast police drama Blue Lights were abuzz at this week’s news that fan favourite Constable Gerry Cliff (Richard Dormer) – tragically shot dead during the debut series – will be making a shock return in the forthcoming fourth run. We’re assuming it’ll be in flashback, exploring his shadowy past in special branch, but will find out for sure when it airs this autumn. Yep, returning from the grave has become something of a TV trope. We’ve picked TV’s 10 best Lazarus moments. Beware: plot spoilers aplenty … 10 Jon Snow (Game of Thrones, 2011-2019) “They stabbed me. Olly put a knife in my heart. I shouldn’t be here.” Westeros heads went into mourning when Jon Snow (Kit Harington) perished in the season five finale, stabbed by the mutinous brothers of the Night’s Watch and left bleeding out in the snow. Luckily for the Bastard of the North, red priestess Melisandre (Carice van Houten) was able to resurrect him two episodes into season six. This mystery was never satisfactorily explained and seen by some as the start of the show’s decline in quality. The fur-shouldered favourite might have been better served by staying dead. 9 Dan Conner (Roseanne/The Conners, 1988-2025) Goodman’s alive! Patriarch Dan (John Goodman) was retrospectively revealed to have died of a heart attack i...
The UK’s first superfast-charging train running only on battery power will come into passenger service this weekend – operating a five-mile return route in west London. Great Western Railway (GWR) will send the converted London Underground train out from 5.30am to cover the full Saturday timetable on the West Ealing to Greenford branch line, four stops and 12 minutes each way, and now carrying up ...
The UK’s first superfast-charging train running only on battery power will come into passenger service this weekend – operating a five-mile return route in west London. Great Western Railway (GWR) will send the converted London Underground train out from 5.30am to cover the full Saturday timetable on the West Ealing to Greenford branch line, four stops and 12 minutes each way, and now carrying up to 273 passengers, should its celebrity stoke up the demand. The battery will recharge in just three and a half minutes back at West Ealing station between trips, using a 2,000kW charger connected to a few metres of rail that only becomes live when the train stops directly overhead. View image in fullscreen The train can travel up to 200 miles on a single charge. Photograph: Steve Cotton/Alamy There are hopes within government and industry that this technology could one day replace diesel trains on routes that have proved difficult or expensive to electrify with overhead wires, as the decarbonisation of rail continues. The train has proved itself capable of going more than 200 miles on a single charge – last year setting a world record for the farthest travelled by a battery-electric train, smashing a German record set in 2021. The GWR train and the fast-charge technology has been trialled on the 2.5-mile line since early 2024, but has not yet carried paying passengers. GWR’s engineering director, Simon Green, said: “This is a significant moment for all those involved in this innovative project and comes at a crucial time as we focus on plans to replace our ageing diesel fleet. View image in fullscreen The new train can carry 237 passengers. Photograph: James Manning/PA “Our fast-charge trial has successfully demonstrated that battery technology offers a reliable and efficient alternative to power electric trains, in cases where overhead lines aren’t possible or desirable.” Network Rail’s western route director, Marcus Jones, whose teams installed the fast-charge infrastruc...
Moving home can be incredibly stressful. How should you make sure you get everything from A to B without breakages or injuring yourself? Removal professionals share the secrets to a smash-free, smooth move. The more time, the less stress Manny Sahmbi, director of Happy2Move, a removals company in Slough, says he and his team can pack up the average four-bedroom house in a day. “Possibly even a fiv...
Moving home can be incredibly stressful. How should you make sure you get everything from A to B without breakages or injuring yourself? Removal professionals share the secrets to a smash-free, smooth move. The more time, the less stress Manny Sahmbi, director of Happy2Move, a removals company in Slough, says he and his team can pack up the average four-bedroom house in a day. “Possibly even a five or six-bed house, depending on the contents.” For people doing it themselves, he recommends a week for a one-bed, a fortnight for a two-bed and so on. “Book more than one day off work to move and don’t just leave a weekend to pack,” agrees Hannah Crawford – AKA Han With a Van – who is based in north London and offers “big sister energy” when helping clients with removals all over the UK. “Not only is it going to take you a bit of time practically to get everything packed, actually do the move and then unpack, but if you don’t give yourself enough time, then everything takes much longer to settle down at the other end.” Decluttering and packing to move are two different things, says Crawford: there isn’t time to have a big sort out if moving day is imminent. Measure up View image in fullscreen The sofa not fitting in a new place is a common problem when moving. Photograph: Posed by models. Resolution Productions/Getty Images/Tetra images RF It is easy to forget to take measurements in advance and then not be able to fit furniture into your new home. “The sofa is a common one,” says Sahmbi. “We take it to the new place and it is too big to fit because of windy stairs or other access issues.” In this situation – and despite running a storage business too – Sahmbi cautions against paying to keep things in a unit: “From my experience, it will end up staying there for years and you’re going to regret it. I always recommend either donating to a friend or a charity shop.” Become box savvy Always uses boxes not bags, says Crawford. “The number of times I’ve shown up and people hav...
The Sánchez government is under fire after two crashes. But politicians of all stripes have prioritised opening new lines over maintaining existing ones Spain has the most extensive high-speed rail network in Europe and the second-largest in the world after China. A source of immense national pride, the train system has grown and become more affordable thanks to a boom in rail passengers and compe...
The Sánchez government is under fire after two crashes. But politicians of all stripes have prioritised opening new lines over maintaining existing ones Spain has the most extensive high-speed rail network in Europe and the second-largest in the world after China. A source of immense national pride, the train system has grown and become more affordable thanks to a boom in rail passengers and competition among train companies. Every few minutes, a train departs from Madrid for Barcelona and vice versa, linking the country’s two most populous cities. This 600km journey takes less than three hours for an average fare of €65 . Thirty-four years after the first high-speed train between Madrid and Seville, the network now connects more than 50 cities in Spain . Along with being a badge of pride for the country, it even commands a rare political consensus. At least that was the case until this month’s calamities. In the first accident, one train derailed and collided with another near the town of Adamuz in Andalucía, killing 45 people and leaving dozens more injured. A second accident in Catalonia, caused by the collapse of a wall in bad weather, killed the driver of a commuter train in Barcelona. The local network, which has suffered delays and malfunctions for years, was completely halted for days as a result. María Ramírez is a journalist and deputy managing editor of elDiario.es, a news outlet in Spain Continue reading...
The Chronology of Water is a ‘punk rock ayahuasca trip’ of a film that takes no prisoners. Stewart and her star, Imogen Poots, talk about the passion and pain that fuelled it ‘The movie is to be eaten alive and re-metabolised and shat out differently, from everyone’s perspective,” says Kristen Stewart, bracingly. The actor’s directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, has been doing the rounds at ...
The Chronology of Water is a ‘punk rock ayahuasca trip’ of a film that takes no prisoners. Stewart and her star, Imogen Poots, talk about the passion and pain that fuelled it ‘The movie is to be eaten alive and re-metabolised and shat out differently, from everyone’s perspective,” says Kristen Stewart, bracingly. The actor’s directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, has been doing the rounds at film festivals, and when we meet in London the reviews are coming in. Stewart knows that this impressionistic, arthouse collage of a film – adapted from an experimental memoir about a woman’s pain and loss, the elusive nature of memory and the reclamation of desire – is not going to be for everyone. “My favourite Letterboxd review is: ‘The Chronology of what the fuck did I just watch?’” But it matters to her that people respond to it. “Whether it’s your least favourite movie or your most favourite, it’s not lying, it’s genuine. And I’m so fucking proud of that.” Stewart is sitting next to the film’s star, a slightly more sanguine Imogen Poots. Watching Stewart talk, her leg bouncing, her vocabulary ferocious, feels a bit like being sandblasted. It is invigorating and strangely galvanising, but you don’t go into a conversation with her half asleep. The same can be said for the film itself. “Language is a metaphor for experience,” writes the author Lidia Yuknavitch, at the beginning of the book on which it is based. “It’s as arbitrary as this mass of chaotic images we call memory.” Continue reading...
Bloomberg's Francine Lacqua sits down with Peter Wallenberg Jr., one of the three men leading Sweden's Wallenberg family empire. They discuss succession, and how they're confronting geopolitical uncertainty and technological change. (Source: Bloomberg)
Bloomberg's Francine Lacqua sits down with Peter Wallenberg Jr., one of the three men leading Sweden's Wallenberg family empire. They discuss succession, and how they're confronting geopolitical uncertainty and technological change. (Source: Bloomberg)
Bloomberg's Francine Lacqua sits down with Peter Wallenberg Jr., one of the three men leading Sweden's Wallenberg family empire, and in charge of succession planning. After more than a century of tightly-held control, the family is quietly carrying out a handover. They discuss what global uncertainty means for succession, how Europe can be more competitive, and the impact of technology and AI on t...
Bloomberg's Francine Lacqua sits down with Peter Wallenberg Jr., one of the three men leading Sweden's Wallenberg family empire, and in charge of succession planning. After more than a century of tightly-held control, the family is quietly carrying out a handover. They discuss what global uncertainty means for succession, how Europe can be more competitive, and the impact of technology and AI on the companies they're invested in. (Source: Bloomberg)
Last November, I’d been out for the evening with friends who were visiting Los Angeles. Afterwards, I checked the notifications on my phone. There was a motion alert from one of the cameras around my house. It had captured a big black bear nosing around my bins. We get wildlife here: raccoons, skunks. But I’d never had a bear rummaging through my trash. I watched as it turned things over, then wan...
Last November, I’d been out for the evening with friends who were visiting Los Angeles. Afterwards, I checked the notifications on my phone. There was a motion alert from one of the cameras around my house. It had captured a big black bear nosing around my bins. We get wildlife here: raccoons, skunks. But I’d never had a bear rummaging through my trash. I watched as it turned things over, then wandered off. I assumed he had left. The next morning, I checked the critter-cams and saw the bear again, now captured by a camera I’d placed by a little mesh-covered opening near the small basement under my house. I watched as a massive shape emerged from the hole. My brain refused to believe it. The bear looked too large to fit in that tiny gap. I watched it again, shocked. My hands started to sweat. 0:37 CCTV footage showing the bear coming out of Johnson's basement I scrolled back through the footage. There he was, hours earlier, pushing his body into my home. That evening, I showed the clips to a few friends, who laughed and swore. One said, “Ken, you’ve got to do something about this.” The next day, I watched the bear come out in the early morning – then that camera died. I went around to change the batteries. I heard this huff, then a stomp. A growl that felt like a death warning. I glimpsed him, and my body went straight into fight-or-flight. I ran back inside my house, started shaking and couldn’t stop. After that, my life split into two. There was ordinary life – making coffee, feeding my indoor cat, Boo – and life with the bear. I monitored the cameras, wondering what was happening beneath me. It was as if I was the guy in the upstairs apartment and he the tenant below. Boo would hear banging under the floor and go running, then look at me with wide eyes as if to say: are you hearing this? View image in fullscreen The bear walking around Johnson’s house, past the column he partially demolished I tried everything people suggested: stomping, blasting music, creating “...
Wrexham AFC , the Welsh soccer club controlled by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney and backed by Apollo Global Management Inc. , has been caught up in the collapse of UK currency brokerage Argentex Group Plc . The club had placed £4.6 million ($6.3 million) with London-based Argentex, which collapsed into a form of insolvency in July as a result of soured foreign-exchange trades, a...
Wrexham AFC , the Welsh soccer club controlled by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney and backed by Apollo Global Management Inc. , has been caught up in the collapse of UK currency brokerage Argentex Group Plc . The club had placed £4.6 million ($6.3 million) with London-based Argentex, which collapsed into a form of insolvency in July as a result of soured foreign-exchange trades, according to documents filed in the UK. The sum exceeded the amount of cash on hand reported at the end of 2024 by Wrexham’s operating company, Wrexham AFC Ltd., filings show. UK soccer clubs are cash-intensive projects, often losing money in their bid to defeat rivals. The involvement of the club adds to the far-reaching nature of Argentex’s collapse. The firm’s unraveling, caused by a portfolio of high-risk US dollar trades imploding in April, tied up thousands of derivatives transactions along with £34 million of loans owed to a company owned by UK mogul and Reform UK donor Christopher Harborne . While administrators overseeing the wind-down are confident that customers in Wrexham’s category will be repaid, others may not be so fortunate, filings show. A spokesperson for Wrexham declined to comment. A spokesperson for FRP Advisory, the firm overseeing the insolvency, said that no money has been paid back to creditors yet and that any repayments will need to be signed off by a court. Read More: Argentex Nearly Felled After ‘Zero-Zero’ Margin Dollar Trades Reynolds and McElhenney bought Wrexham for about £2 million in 2021 when it was playing in the lower tiers of English football. The club’s profile has risen significantly since then, after a documentary chronicling the actors’ ownership and three consecutive league promotions. They announced a deal to sell a minority stake to New York-based Apollo in December, and are now challenging for promotion to the Premier League. Wrexham used Argentex for basic FX services and didn’t have any derivatives with the firm, people famil...
London’s top property brokers, who have overestimated house price growth in the city’s priciest neighborhoods for years, have finally thrown in the towel. Savills Plc — which cumulatively overestimated prime central London house price growth by a margin of 42.7% percentage points in the 11 years through 2025 — now sees back-to-back annual declines. It’s the first time it has made such a gloomy pre...
London’s top property brokers, who have overestimated house price growth in the city’s priciest neighborhoods for years, have finally thrown in the towel. Savills Plc — which cumulatively overestimated prime central London house price growth by a margin of 42.7% percentage points in the 11 years through 2025 — now sees back-to-back annual declines. It’s the first time it has made such a gloomy prediction since the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The broker predicted that prices would drop 4% in 2025 — its most bearish call in years — though that was still a slight underestimate. It sees prices falling another 2% this year and failing to rise again until 2028. It’s a striking reversal. Since the downturn began in 2015 the broker saw prices rising a cumulative 18 percentage points when in fact they’ve fallen by 24.7 points. To be sure, a series of shocks in years when Savills had expected robust growth, including the Brexit vote, the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that triggered new transparency rules for UK property, account for much of the aggregate overestimate. Now the broker sees previously announced measures like the end of tax breaks for non-domiciled overseas residents delivering more of the same. “Despite global wealth continuing to grow, it remains reluctant to find a home in London in the current tax and regulatory environment,” Savills said in a report published this month. “Combined with an already shallower pool of buyers following the end of the non-dom regime, there is little to suggest a return to growth this year.” Read more: London Luxury Home Market Had Worst Year Since Pandemic The broader slump in the London market, driven partly by hikes to the stamp duty transaction tax and the coming so-called mansion tax on homes valued at more than £2 million ($2.8 million), has prompted some desperate vendors to offer discounts of as much as 50% over the past year. Residential sales above £5 million tumbled 18% in the first ...
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Presented by SAP The consumer packaged goods industry is experiencing a fundamental shift that's forcing even the most established brands to rethink how they operate. It's what some folks call the CPG squeeze, or a convergence of margin compression, trade policy headwinds, and the sobering reality that pricing-led growth is no longer a viable strategy. For companies that have relied on price incre...
Presented by SAP The consumer packaged goods industry is experiencing a fundamental shift that's forcing even the most established brands to rethink how they operate. It's what some folks call the CPG squeeze, or a convergence of margin compression, trade policy headwinds, and the sobering reality that pricing-led growth is no longer a viable strategy. For companies that have relied on price increases to drive revenue, it's a structural change that demands new approaches to operations, strategy, and competitive positioning. CPG companies now need to achieve annual productivity gains of 5% or more just to stay competitive. Traditional cost-cutting measures like travel freezes, hiring pauses, and other age-old efficiency drives from simpler times might yield a couple of percentage points at best. The solution lies in a more sophisticated approach: identifying which processes can be digitally enabled before making organizational changes, confronting questions about process efficiency, manual workflows, and opportunities for automation. But piecemeal solutions that address isolated problems can't deliver the systemic efficiency gains that CPG companies now require. This is driving increased interest in integrated technology platforms that can support decision-making and execution across all functional areas simultaneously. The data challenge at the heart of CPG decision-making Modern CPG operations run on data, but of course not all data strategies are created equal. Companies are facing a dual-barreled challenge: they need deep insights into their internal operations, while simultaneously understanding external market dynamics and consumer behavior. Historically, this has meant extracting operational data, which means losing critical business context in the process, and then needing to invest big on reconstituting that context so it can be analyzed alongside consumer and retail data. The disconnect creates real problems. When data loses its business context during extr...
Gigi Luk, CIO at GGL Capital Investment Group, says she's looking at strategies that focus on the global tech supply chain as she expects investors to continue to shift from mega caps to value AI names. She speaks with David Ingles and Annabelle Droulers on Bloomberg's The China Show. (Source: Bloomberg)
Gigi Luk, CIO at GGL Capital Investment Group, says she's looking at strategies that focus on the global tech supply chain as she expects investors to continue to shift from mega caps to value AI names. She speaks with David Ingles and Annabelle Droulers on Bloomberg's The China Show. (Source: Bloomberg)
Ceri Breeze/iStock Editorial via Getty Images Wells Fargo ( WFC ) raised CEO Charlie Scharf's 2025 compensation by 28% to $40M, marking a significant milestone for the bank. Scharf's package includes a $2.5M base salary and $37.5M in bonus and incentives, up from a salary of $2.5M and a bonus of $28.7M a year earlier. The bank's board credited Scharf's leadership in resolving major compliance issu...
Ceri Breeze/iStock Editorial via Getty Images Wells Fargo ( WFC ) raised CEO Charlie Scharf's 2025 compensation by 28% to $40M, marking a significant milestone for the bank. Scharf's package includes a $2.5M base salary and $37.5M in bonus and incentives, up from a salary of $2.5M and a bonus of $28.7M a year earlier. The bank's board credited Scharf's leadership in resolving major compliance issues and driving earnings and revenue growth. Wells Fargo CEO pay aligns with peers: Goldman Sachs ( GS ) CEO David Solomon got $47M (up 21%), while JPMorgan's ( JPM ) Jamie Dimon received $43M (up 10%). More on Wells Fargo Wells Fargo: Unappealing Growth Setup Wells Fargo & Company (WFC) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript Wells Fargo Is Strong, But Further Upside Looks Limited Wells Fargo hires Amazon Web Services exec Faraz Shafiq for AI push Wells Fargo CEO: ‘Growth to be stronger than people expect’