Market Loop - 🌎Good Cop, bad Cop?

ENVIRONMENT
Climate talks come to an end after two weeks 

What’s going on?
After over two weeks of tense negotiations in Glasgow, the UN climate change conference, aka COP26, finally closed on Saturday. The talks between representatives from some 200 countries agreed a new climate deal.

Why is this important?

 “Moment of truth”, “world’s best last chance” and “last chance saloon” are just some of the stark warnings that were used to describe Cop26.

The aim of the last two weeks was to agree how countries would work together to limit global warming to 1.5C, to minimise the impacts of climate change. 

The key pledges made included: 

Takeaway
It was always going to be the case that negotiations between so many countries would result in compromises on all sides. The agreement has been hailed as a landmark as it’s the first to include direct references on coal and fossil fuels. 

However climate activists argue that the deal does not go far enough to limit global warming to 1.5C. Also the fact that it’s not legally binding means that commitments will rely on countries self-policing.

CORPORATE
Why conglomerates are breaking up

In the past week a succession of 100+ year-old conglomerates have announced they are breaking up their businesses in an effort to become nimbler. 

All three companies have had a turbulent time of late: Toshiba has grappled with an accounting scandal, J&J has faced allegations of cancer-causing talcum powder and GE has already offloaded a series of unwanted assets.

The dismantling of these corporate behemoths is driven by a move away from being a “Jack of all trades and a master of none”. One company operating in a wide range of disparate industries can lead to a lack of focus and poor execution.

But a new wave of tech companies could buck the trend. Amazon does everything from selling books to TV production to cloud computing. Alphabet started with the Google search engine and now develops driverless cars and runs YouTube.