Skip to main content

Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

-
Image
  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen
Post a Comment

VW CEO's embrace of Elon Musk's playbook sends stock soaring

-

 By Bloomberg Time of article published Mar 18, 2021

WOLFSBURG - Volkswagen has swiftly gone from corporate dinosaur status to stock market darling, and its chief executive officer's imitation of Elon Musk has a lot to do with it.

Herbert Diess has taken a page out of the Tesla CEO's script for captivating investors big and small, taking a hands-on role in getting VW's message out on social media and staging splashy events big on ambition. It's paying off - the carmaker's common shares are now up almost 70 percent this year while the more liquid preference shares are up more than 40 percent.

VW shares surge on bullish profits outlook
Volkswagen says cost cutting and electric vehicles will drive a recovery in its profits, and the bullish outlook saw its shares surge higher on Tuesday morning. Julian Satterthwaite reports.

The turnabout in sentiment has been dramatic and sudden. VW's market capitalisation dropped last year as Tesla vaulted past all other carmakers to become the world's most valuable by a wide margin. But already this month, VW has added about 36 billion euros (R632bn) to its valuation, as optimism that it may be able to catch up to Tesla squeezes short sellers.

"This may be driven in part by US retail investors jumping on the electric vehicle train," said Frederic Benizri, a cross asset sales trader at Louis Capital Markets. High short interest in VW's common shares is probably driving the squeeze, he said, with buying of American Depositary Receipts fuelling outperformance.

The amount of market value VW has added in March is well over half the total capitalisation of Diess's former employer, BMW, which set a goal on Wednesday for roughly half of total sales to be all-electric by the end of the decade.

VW's stock started its ascent when UBS Group analysts issued a bullish set of reports on its findings from tearing apart VW's first mass-market model built off a dedicated EV platform, the ID.3 hatchback. The car is "the most credible EV effort by any legacy auto company so far," wrote Patrick Hummel, who raised his price target on the shares.

Much like Musk tries to dominate the news cycle, VW has made rapid-fire announcements in the weeks since then. It took the wraps off a more spacious version of the Porsche Taycan, doubled the VW brand's EV sales share target for Europe and announced through Diess's LinkedIn and Twitter accounts that it would host an event similar to Tesla's "Battery Day" in September.

"VW's Power Day was a watershed event in the company's history," Tom Narayan, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a report Wednesday, raising his price target by roughly a third. He said VW's battery-electric vehicles "should enable shares to re-rate higher given improved profitability."

VW followed up its declaration that it aims to build six battery factories in Europe alone by the end of the decade with an annual earnings conference that it also chose to focus on EVs.

While the healthy gains Diess has generated lately are still a far cry from what Musk pulled off last year, they have partially made up for lowered compensation. The CEO's salary, including pension contributions, fell to 7.7 million euros last year, from 8.4 million in 2019, VW disclosed Tuesday in its annual report.

Bloomberg

ADVERTISING
ELECTRIC CARSVOLKSWAGEN

SHARE THIS ARTICLE:

Related Articles

We use cookies to give you the best possible experience.

Learn more about how we use cookies.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

-
Image
  By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen
Read more

Are there any planets outside of our solar system?

-
Image
  Academic rigour, journalistic flair COVID-19 Arts  +  Culture Business  +  Economy Education Environment  +  Energy Health  +  Medicine Politics Science  +  Technology In French Artist illustration of an exoplanet.  dottedhippo/iStock via Getty Images Are there any planets outside of our solar system? July 19, 2021 2.06pm SAST Author Jean-Luc Margot Professor of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles Disclosure statement Jean-Luc Margot receives funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and philanthropists. Partners University of California  provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. The Conversation is funded by the National Research Foundation, eight universities, including the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Rhodes University, Stellenbosch University and the Universities of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Pretoria, and South Africa. It is hosted by the
Read more

If everyone on Earth sat in the ocean at once, how much would sea level rise?

-
Image
  There are a lot of people, but the oceans are very big.   Rosley Majid/EyeEm via Getty Images If everyone on Earth sat in the ocean at once, how much would sea level rise? March 29, 2021 2.07pm SAST Author Tony E. Wong Assistant Professor of Mathematical Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology Disclosure statement Tony E. Wong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Partners Rochester Institute of Technology  provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. The Conversation is funded by the National Research Foundation, eight universities, including the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Rhodes University, Stellenbosch University and the Universities of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Pretoria, and South Africa. It is hosted by the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Western Cape, the African
Read more